Konfounding Kinks

Jaybo,

I think you meant inkredible.

Ray Davies wrote some great, classic, minimalist rock songs and some bizarre, mannered music hall numbers as well as the extended compositions/concept albums - the latter work produced decidely mixed results. The early stuff may be the most memorable, but a fair bit of great music can actually be found amidst the crap in his worst excesses.

BTW, I believe that Dave Davies is one of the really underrated guitars of his day. (Check out the solo in "I'm Not Like Everybody Else".)

The live shows ocassionally got surreal - elaborate sets and transvestite dancers turned up here and there. The band was a soap opera and I actually saw a (brief) fight between the brothers during a virtually no attendance show in the late Seventies (I believe it was the eminently forgetable "Schoolboys in Disgrace" tour).

IMHO, Ray's recent solo record contains his strongest tunes in some time.

Marty

PS I believe that "You Really Got Me" is the holy grail of ringtones!

I followed them live in concert through Arthur & Muswell Hillbillies to the theatrical nadir of Soap Opera & Schoolboys(ouch!)... resurfacing with Ray's fine Storyteller tour in the mid 90s and more recent tours with a well-chosen international pick-up band. It's all great even when it isn't. Dave's solo projects are interesting (his spiritual sensiblity in some ways analogous to George Harrison; check out Dave's "Kinked" collection). With Workingman's Cafe Ray is still on top, and as always, a keen observer of the decline and fall of empire.

The Kinks are one of the greatest groups in music, not just rock, history. Ray Davies is a brilliant lyricist and a great performer, I have seen them at least fifteen times in concert and have thoroughly enjoyed them every time. They have such a tremendous body of music and in my opinion are the most underrated group of all time.

A great thread (for a change) and, yes, these lads are the joint. Unfairly dismissed as not worthy of "top 5" status, I'd make the case that, excepting the Beatles, who were on another planet, The Kinks are more witty, erudite and varied than The Stones, Who, Zep, Dylan. So, at the very least, if not in the top 5, how about 6 and gaining fast.

i would agree kompletely, lindisfarne...'God bless the village green'