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 lets hear it yall.. I am a muswell hillbille  girl myself.. but i dig some village green on the side

xoxooxo
suga

Arthur is my "faviorte". :)

Something Else, with Arthur a close second.

Cheating, but I like double album compilation KINKS KRONIKLES best

I find it impossible to pick a fave amongst the consecutive studio albums Face to Face, Something Else, Village Green..., Arthur. If push came to shove and I had to decide, I'd smoosh the best tracks together into SOMETHING GREEN ON ARTHUR'S FACE (or "Face it, Arthur Green, You are Something Else!") :-)

The Kelvin Hall Live deal with the ridiculously overamplified crowd sounds is also close to my heart for some reason. 
   

You're damn right.
Kronikles is the best. It has the best cuts from all the great albums, plus Have You Seen His Name and Big Black Smoke. Wow, I love that album.

 I can dig....

suga

Agreed on Kinks Kronikles, but lets not forget some fine post- Muswell Hillbillies work: Preservation Act I  and Schoolboys In Disgrace...and, as always, avoid Preservation Act II at all costs!

I agree, the  best comps are much better than their albums, which I've always wanted to love and never quite been able to. I have only got many of their albums relatively recently, I was really looking forward to Something Else and found it a bit drab other than the songs I already knew. Village Green is the best I think, although it came in so many different versions it's hard to know which is the 'real' one. Great songs but veering off towards a 'selective' audience, which is odd for a band that much such great popular singles up to 1970 and occasionally beyond.

Definately 'Village Green.' When you grow up in a 'larger-Small town community,' it's almost the perfect record. I'm also a big fan of Arther as well. I've only heard it on vinyl though as that's the only copy I have of it (thanks to my Dad who was a big Kinks fan in the 60's).

I got Golden Hour of the Kinks last week and I've been loving it. It's got all the great 60's period stuff.

I'll start here (saving Muswell for another time, relistening to Schoolboys, preparing to mount a Lola Vs. Poweman Revival, choosing not to remember Preservation Part II except for the tracks Second-Hand Car Spiv, Mirror of Love, Oh Where, Oh Where is Love?, Nothing Lasts Forever, and Slagheap City, all equal to original Village Green standard (and most of them shared with a winningly off key former Dan Hicks Hot Lick, I believe), but way too infrequently mixed into a bad concept double-record, and even more trashily thrown away than usual as instant-productions, the band's/Ray's career-long greatest indifferent and lazy mortal sin! an endearing one, but the road to hell is teeming with charming Davies-like cheats and losers and secondhand 'I really got you' spivs.

Part I is a  more focused throwback to the original Village concept and sound, has exactly or nearly as many really good ones to recommend it, and much in the same styles. The very sameness is the only potential strike against it, sequel-itis, repetition, but that doesn't wash for me. Village Green Preservation Society  looked back with nostalgia and looked forward with distrust from earliest middle age (age 24!?), youthful reactionary-ism. but this is the real middle of the journey thing with generational angst genuinely engaged,  lost-love-of-one's-life, and lost lifestyles and folkways so recently current and seemingly never to change, and an uncertain journey ahead built on mistakes, disappontments and the wisdom gained; nostalgic regrets and 'might have been's, and defiant 'foda it all!' attitude interlaced throughout. The sense of betrayal of young dreams expressed here, the way we expected to live forever based on what was sung  to us in the cradle  is as vital a source of sweet-sad outrage as ever. We do live in slagheap city!

That's how the best non-programmatic-part-of-a-musical-presentation numbers work for me: Sweet Lady Genevieve, Where Are They Now?, One of the Survivors [Johnny Thunder redux], Sitting in the Midday Sun. This is all Klassik Kinks, and at the same LP ratio of great to not-so-great as was their norm. All the songs I've mentioned on it deserve to be preserved.

If we stretch the concept "album" a bit, my favorite Kinks CD is the following:

The Kinks: Greatest Hits
CDKINK 7251
(c) 1985 Precision Records & Tapes Ltd.
(PRT Records)
ugly pink cover without a picture

Track Listing:
1. You Really Got Me
2. All Day And All Of The Night
3. Tired of Waiting For You
4. Everybody's Gonna be Happy
5. Set Me Free
6. See My Friends
7. Till The End Of The Day
8. Dedicated Follower Of Fashion
9. Sunny Afternoon
10. Dead End Street
11. Waterloo Sunset
12. Autumn Almanac
13. Wonderboy
14. Days
15. Plastic Man
16. Victoria
17. Lola
18. Apeman

Village Green Preservation Society, though Something Else and Arthur are right there with it. Face to Face is fourth.

The Village Green 3-CD set rocks. Period.  Also good:

Something Else (David Watts, Death Of A Clown, Waterloo Sunset, Autumn Almanac, Wonderboy, etc.)

Arthur (Victoria, Some Mother's Son, Drivin', Brainwashed, She's Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina, etc.)

Muswell Hillbillies (20th Century Man, Acute Schizophrenia Paranoia Blues, Skin and Bone, Oklahoma, U.S.A., etc.)

Lola Vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One (The Contenders, Lola, A Long Way from Home, Apeman, etc.)

I'm with Cabinessence -- those four magnificent albums are hard to pick between.  I will go ahead and say Village Green, cause I wrote an essay on that one for the Smile Shop.

Also agree with Cabin on Schoolboys In Disgrace, that one should be in the Underrated thread.  Great guitar sound by Dave, great songs musically by Ray with some fun stylistic exercises.

Muswell is obvious as is the underrated Lola album.  Dang, these guys made some good stuff.

One shout to two latter days albums:  State of Confusion has some great songs and UK Jive is criminally unknown.  A throwback to the mid-60's Kinks in so many ways.  Also love the production sound on Give the People What They Want.

Can you tell I love the Kinks?  It took so long because all you hear in America is the early rock stuff, and that actually is not among my biggest favs for me.  For me, it takes off in 1966....

Though maybe not my favorite album by The Kinks, I'd like to put a good word in for The Kink Kontroversy.  It encapsulates a lot of what I love about this band; first, the raw abandon of their cover of Milk Cow Blues to kick it off.  But there's also a lot of subtle lyrical gems by Ray like "The World Keeps Going Round" (a personal favorite), "I'm on an Island," and "Ring the Bells."  And the better known tracks are energetic, well-written, and enduring: "Till the End of the Day," "Where Have All the Good Times Gone."  Damn, now I'm going to have to go pull this album out.

Can't take credit for the Muswell shoutout. That was Trumpet Sounds. Good record, though.

I like their Kwiet Kinks mini-album E.P. too, along with Kontroversy a transitional deal featuring Well Respected Man, Don't You Fret, Wait till the Summer Comes Along, Such a Shame (maybe not in that order, however)

That's hard to find, but don't you fret. The material's all included on the excellent reissue of Kinda Kinks (but see note below). The supplementary 11 tracks (among them the essential See My Friends, Who'll Be the Next in Line, Set Me Free, the demo for I Go To Sleep) really sweetens the original release, a ragbag of tracks with much filler, a couple hits, and a precious hidden gem or two, notably Something Better Beginning, so timeless and mature a Ray Davies anthem that it boggles the mind that the same guy was wasting our time and his with bad blues covers like Naggin' Woman

Note:the Kinda Kinks cd I have has 23 tracks total. The 'supplemented' one Amazon seems to be selling lists a mere 16. Is my math off? Buyer be wary.

If I could only play one, I would grab Preservation Act I.
"Sitting in the Midday Sun" "Sweet Lady Genevieve" and "Morning Song" just have a perfectly beautiful vibe.

There are two versions of Kinda Kinks.  The UK version has the 23 tracks and the US version has 16 tracks.  Don't ask me why; it must be royalties rates or something.  Stay away from US versions of early Kinks stuff; the only one worth your time is the old Rhino GH set.  The UK versions are better set up.

Somehow I got the UK Kinda Kinks for $2.99 NEW at a CD store. They had two copies, so I bought one for me and the other for a friend. Why not?

VGPS, Something Else, Face To Face. I like Lola vs Powerman, & some, but not all of Arthur. Not too familiar with the Kinks mid 70's stuff as a whole.

Village Green followed very closely by Arthur.......

well, as far as the total musical package, Arthur wins. its a big story, grand music, and contains at least 3 mini-operas, "Mr. Churchill Says" "Shangri-La" and "Australia" - amongst a solid set of perfect pop numbers. personaly, i love the production as well - for me it sounds so much better thatn VGPS (fidelity, the mix).

but Lola is my favorite, as far as being the record i can relate to on a more intimate level. It's really a beautful album, and it evokes alot of feelings when i put it on. "get back in the line" and "this time tommorow" are perfect pop songs with the very honest and simple messages.

preservation act 1, vgps, something else, and others folks have mentioned are also very high up on my list. however i want to give a shout out to Everybody's In Showbiz. this is really a great record - somewhere in between muswell and lola, with a little more of a slight message, but a kinks record all the way. of course, the bonus of the second live disc is nice too.  don't be afraid of this album the next time you see it in the rack.

Arthur does sound better.  I think they're pretty close, but maybe like Village Green a little more.  I think they both beat the sh*t out of Something Else and Face to Face, though, or anything earlier that I've heard.  No weak tracks on Arthur or Village Green.

stopping with Arthur is like stopping with 20/20 for the Beach Boys.

What about stopping with Muswell Hillbillies?

Muswell is their Carl and the Passions I suppose.
Preservation Act I is the close of their "Classic Era" == it's their Holland.

Oh, I forgot that I have that, too, on vinyl. I have Soap Opera as well, but I never really listened to either.

Not true!  It completely ignores VILLAGE GREEN.

Disagree -- you gotta love Schoolboys in Disgrace.

The Arista period isn't bad but it isn't quite the Kinks as we know them either.  AOR music with a brain, I call it.

My favourite Kinks song is "Lavender Hill", why Ray didn't put that on Village Green is one of the worst choices in music history.

That song is absolute bliss.

Soap Opera.  i should heave mentioned it. its one of those albums i avoided for a long time, until i found a 1 dollar vinyl.  gotta say, i went out and bought the cd a few weeks later.  should i be ashamed to admit i really like this record?  there are admitedly a few week spots, and you have to get past some of the dumb dialogue bewteen songs ( ithink kinks invented the Rap skit record, way before prince paul ;)

i kind of agree with the Preservation being the end of their classic era. soap opera and schoolboys are good, but out side of that.  im just waiting patiently now for hte bootleg dvd of all the bcc concerts and tv spots from sweden....

i stop at lola vs powerman :)
everything after is ughhhhhhhh not my cup of tea :lol
when i first listened to village green i was completely blown away ..it was so bizarre hearing this beautiful british sound coming from the same guys who did "you really got me" it's like day & night.

This thread is over 6 years old, chill out.

i'mma bit late :] why should i chill out?

f*** it I have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning then respond to 6 year old posts from people that don't visit this site anymore.  ;D

The first two Kinks albums are very patchy. They kept their best material from this period for their many singles and EPs.
Kontroversy is much better. Face to Face is my favourite album from 1966. Something Else has many great tracks but some filler (mainly from Dave).
Village Green is their masterpiece.
Arthur is a close second, let down only by Australia.
Lola - Preservation Act 1 are all very good but the overblown concepts are starting to bog the group down.
Preservation Act 2 is rubbish! Only three or four good songs on the whole thing.
Soap Opera is a camp classic.
Schoolboys is most dreck. After that I sorta lose interest.

I lose interest after Preservation Act 1. Sadly. Again certainly a parallel with 'Holland' being the last noteworthy BB's album.

Face To Face is the first real classic Kinks LP. It's almost on a par with 'Revolver' but with 'Pet Sounds' coming from 1966 it can only come in third for that year.

'Something Else' is a classic, not really a lot of filler.

'Village Green' is certainly the one though. A wonderful record. The parallel BB's record is 'Friends' - they're in some ways not that different.

'Arthur' is another five star masterpiece, even including 'Australia' which is wickedly funny IMHO.

'Lavender Hill' is a 1967 track, I believe it was in competition with 'Autumn Almanac' as the Autumn 1967 UK 45, and didn't win, remaining unreleased until the US only, and swiftly deleted 'The Great Lost Kinks Album' in 1973. Same goes for the unspeakably beautiful 'Rosemary Rose' of the same era.

VGPS could easily have been a superb double album (and Ray did try to get Pye to release it as such, the compromise reached being the single LP 15 track version of VGPS we know and love). There was more stuff in the can of the same quality ('Misty Water', 'Pictures In The Sand', the unbelievably rocking 'Berkeley Mews' etc.)

don't forget "Mr. Songbird"

another splendid tune that should have been on the Village Green album.

i'm actually listening to mr. songbird right now :]

Muswell  Hillbillies

It's good, but IMHO a bit of a lift from the S&G '59th Street Bridge Song'.

Preservation 1 is my personal fave!

C'mon: Sweet Lady Genevieve, One Of The Survivors, Where Are They All Now, Sitting In The Midday Sun, Daylight!

Those are all fantastic songs/performances.

I've always liked "Sleepwalker" from the mid-70's but I also like Face To Face, S.E.,and Arthur.

Anybody have a top 5 kinks songs :)?

Everything from Something Else to Everybody's in Show Biz is solid gold. Preservation Acts 1 and 2 have their moments and for some reason I love Give the People What They Want. Ray's solo albums are pretty damned good too.

Something Else

I go all the way to the end with this band. Love the albums everyone else loves, the often cited Face to Face, Arthur, VGPS, Something Else, Lola, but also love Misfits, State of Confusion, Word of Mouth, even their finale, Phobia.

Yeh Misfits is excellent, unfortunately by Word of Mouth and State of Confusion Ray's production had become of it's time and renders those albums difficult listening, mind you the songs on WoM are great. If they had trimmed Phobia down to 10-12 songs it would have been brilliant. The 2 new songs on To the Bone were better produced and Animal in particular is a favourite of mine.

Something Else is very good, I stop at Everybody's In Show Biz. Heard later albums but didn't like any of it.

I don't have any problem with the production on those albums. I do think UK Jive and Think Visual were just a tad overproduced in spots, but for the most part, I really like the Kinks 80's work. I can't think of any act with similar longevity who were still producing high quality work right to the end. Certainly not the Beach Boys  :o

What do you think of Ray's solo albums, there's a couple of classic Davies songs on them, Thanksgiving Day and Imaginary Man spring to mind.

Yeah, some good songs on Ray's albums - Vietnam Cowboys, The Getaway (Lonesome Train), Next Door Neighbor, Over My Head. Really enjoyed seeing him back in 2006 at the Moore Theater, he did about half of the Other People's Lives album plus of course some of the back catalog. Had a really good band that knew how to play the stuff, enjoyed the girl singer Karin that joined him on some numbers. Kind of thought of Karin as the Taylor Mills of the show :)

Yeh, I've seen Ray several times and the 2006 band was brilliant, saw them in Glasgow. Played Word of Mouth this afternoon, now got UK Jive on, which I bought the same day as I got the Pet Sounds cd back in 1990. Summers Gone is a brilliant song the bridge lyrics always choke me up "Dad looked at us then he looked at his wife, he must've wondered where we all came from. Then mum said Dad, you know it won't last long, before you know it summers gone" I love that reminicense of childhood family life, very Ray.
UK Jive sounds better than I remember, oh well I feel a Kinks phase coming on.

That line you quoted from Summer's Gone always gives me an image of Ray, Dave, and their sisters in the car with mom and dad...sweet :) Word of Mouth is one of my favorite Kinks albums, it's got a good variety on it - some hard rockers, some acoustic ballads, a couple songs from Dave. I was playing Guilty on the guitar a couple weeks ago, love the chord changes and the lyrics. Good Day is one of those songs that only Ray could write.."hey, baby, if you'd come back home it would be a good day today....they could drop a small atom bomb on this city today, but if you'd walk through that door it'd be a good day". I've felt that way a few times.

Love the Kinks.  I like the older material as well as anyone but the later stuff has some really great moments.
The Come Dancing comp gets a lot of play here.  Low Budget, Superman etc.

What studio lp contained Wilsden Green?

The 'Percy' soundtrack. Sung by John 'Nobby' Dalton...

Indeed - I did say I lose interest after this album.  :-D

'Sweet Lady Genevieve' is almost certainly about Ray's first wife Rasa, who had left him at this point, so it's poignant as well.

'Sitting In The Mid-Day Sun' is just so effortlessly tuneful and cheery. Seeing as Ray was going through hell at that point, that was quite a feat.

To me, 'Village Green Preservation Society', 'Arthur' and 'Muswell Hillbillies' are their three masterpieces. Though very different, they are all incredible pieces of music that I could listen forever to.

'Face To Face', 'Something Else' and 'Lola' are very good, too, but, IMO, not in the same league as the three mentioned above.

I'm still working on their other albums. Is anyone familiar with their post 'Sleepwalker' work? Is there something worth checking?

I love Misfits and all their 80's stuff (though I struggle with Think Visual)!

Their initial 80's run is awesome, to my ears, and there are so many serious gems (Art Lover, National Health etc etc) to be found!

Best = Something Else (UK mono mix)
Sentimental favourite = Face To Face (US stereo mix)

Yup Misfits is even better than Sleepwalker. Give the People What they want is a great rock record.

The Kinks Katalogue (sorry) is phenomenal.  Reading these posts you see many LPs listed as favorites or "best", and different eras cited -- a testament to their continued inspiration and productivity.  I tend to go with the general trend of their greatest work being roughly "Face to Face"/"Something Else" through "Lola"/"Muswell Hillbillies".  I am a lover of "Village Green" and "Arthur", but the quality of work in this period as amazing -- see the singles and outtakes included on "Kinks Kronikles" or the reissues.

Having said that, you can make a case for "Kronikles"; though it is not an LP proper it holds up as a great piece of work in and of itself -- revealing the brilliance of the Kinks' "lost" period (parallel to the Beach Boys roughly "Pet Sounds through "Sunflower").  Also the first Kinks' "Greatest Hits" was a watermark record for me -- the first non-Beach Boy album to connect with me as a young listener.

Finally, a good word for the later Kinks' years -- "Schoolboys in Disgrace" I consider a lost masterpiece and probably the Kinks album I have listed to most (that or "Village Green").  "Preservation Act One" is half brilliant, and "Sleepwalker" is consistently good.  Thing is that there is music of high quality on every record through "UK Jive" (and probably "Phobia" if I listened to it -- "To the Bone" has some great rearrangement of "Klassics" -- again sorry).  I'd argue that the Kinks were producing at least a few songs on par with their greatest work all through the 80s, something I could not say for the other "major" 60s bands including the BBs (other than BW '88).

I see many fans list Sleepwalker as a favorite (for some, the last Kinks album they liked), but I have always preferred Misfits. Give the People What They Want took me a few spins to warm up to - it was just so freakin' LOUD! But I quickly came to love it. These guys really need to follow the Beach Boys lead and get back together. Ray keeps touring, playing the old songs, not doing anything new; a group of former band members tour as the Kast Off Kinks; Dave hasn't toured since his stroke back in 2004, don't know if he could do it now.

Arthur for me, but I love most of their stuff.

For the past couple of weeks, I've gone through and listened to all the Kinks albums in order. Nothing beats the stretch from FACE TO FACE through LOLA VS. POWERMAN AND THE MONEY-GO-ROUND, but agree that there are strong cuts throughout their career.

SCHOOLBOYS IN DISGRACE is fantastic and probably the best of the conceptual albums. I'm also of the opinion that MISFITS is better than SLEEPWALKER. I find STATE OF CONFUSION and THINK VISUAL to be very strong throughout, almost on par with SCHOOLBOYS.

UK JIVE is a real disappointment, however. Ray is not only recycling his own material (with poor results), but his "lifts" from other performers' songs are especially blatant (the opening track "Aggravation" is obviously based on Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall" with a bit of Blondie's "Rapture" thrown in). "Now and Then" and the title track are the only decent songs on there.

PHOBIA is three-fourths of a strong album and a decent finale to the Kinks, I suppose. I like Ray's OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES better than WORKINGMAN'S CAFE, but I have no interest in his current fixation with continually re-recording his older songs.

OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES is a strong album. I got to see Ray in concert just after the album was released, he did 6-8 of the songs that night. His band played great, really brought the new songs and old songs to life. WORKINGMAN'S CAFE is alright, but just never grew on me the way OPL did. I think he needs his brother to push him creatively, but Dave has no interest in working with Ray at this stage. Sad.

their music is english and sophisticated :)

Basically with the Kinks, like the Beach Boys, Macca, Townshend, Stones -- the best you are going to get on a new release is a "that's pretty good," a la a "TLOS" or "That's Why God Created Radio."  Good, well crafted music to be certain, but still pales alongside the masterpieces.  And that's no crime.  The only one who seems to avoid this is Dylan, but musicality is not at the forefront.

Face to Face is my favorite.

Thought I'd bump this thread after getting Arthur today after stupidly giving it away years ago. What a fantastic album!! Even the daft overlong jam at the end of Australia can't dull this masterpiece. A strong case could be made that, at his peak, Ray Davies was the best songwriter England has ever produced.

Loved, love and will always love The Kinks. It's hard to cherry-pick one album tho if forced to choose I'd say Kontroversy.