faviorte kinks album

[sugarandspice]

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

xoxooxo
suga

[Andreas]

Arthur is my "faviorte".

[I. Spaceman]

Something Else, with Arthur a close second.

[cabinessence]

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. 
   

[I. Spaceman]

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.

[sugarandspice]

 I can dig....

suga

[trumpet sounds]

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!

[al]

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.

[PapaNez22]

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).

[Music Machine]

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.

[cabinessence]

but lets not forget some fine post- Muswell Hillbillies work: Preservation Act I 

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.

[Andreas]

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

[Mitchell]

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

[b.dfzo]

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.)

[Jeff Mason]

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....

[Billy Bob 1984]

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.

[cabinessence]

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.

[Fantastico!]

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.

[Jeff Mason]

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.

[Mitchell]

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?

[monkee knutz]

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.

[mark goddard]

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

[andrew k]

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.

[Chris D.]

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).

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.

[Fantastico!]

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