My first artist series of 2014 is THE KINKS. For reasons you'll see in my first post, I'm very excited about revisiting their catalog, and I hope some of my fellow IMWANers (many of whom I know are Kinks fanatics) will stop by & let me know what they think (and probably berate me for my opinions & tell me all about the bootlegs that I need to get to really appreciate their music ). This is also my first post since I changed the layout of the blog, and I'd really appreciate any feedback regarding the new look. I like it a lot and I hope you'll agree. Here's a link to post #1, in which I discuss their first few releases (Kinks & Kinda Kinks in the UK; You Really Got Me, Kinda Kinks & Kinks-Size Kinkdom in the US):

http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/201 ... beginning/

[For those of you who don't know me, I'm revisiting the complete catalogs of artists in my music collection, and posting my thoughts on a few albums at a time. Instead of focusing on my favorites, I've been choosing artists whose catalogs I own but haven't played as frequently as I'd like. So far I've covered Van Morrison, Talking Heads, The Band, Roxy Music, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Television, David Bowie, Nick Drake, Black Sabbath, Big Star, Tom Waits, The Beach Boys, Foo Fighters, Uncle Tupelo, PJ Harvey, Neil Young, Alice Cooper, XTC, Metallica & The Jayhawks (plus "Compilation Or Catalog?" posts on The Commodores, Montrose, Jimmy Buffett, Echo & The Bunnymen and The Cure). If you'd like to know more about me and the reasons for starting the blog, check out the "About" page here]:
http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/about/

Thanks as always for indulging me in a little self-promotion.

Edit: For anyone checking out this thread for the first time, here's a link to shortcuts for all 9 parts of this series.
http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/category/the-kinks/

This should be good!

Thanks, Charles. At the very least this will be an enlightening series for me. Not only will I get reacquainted with the albums I used to play a lot, but I'll finally get to spend time with the ones I never really got to know that well (essentially their early- to mid-'70s releases). There's a lot of great music for me to play over the next couple of months.

Great job with the 1st album, Rich. You Really Got Me is the first album I ever bought, and I love it still.

Thanks, Kid Bailey. Glad you enjoyed this post. It seems like a lot of people overlook their first couple of albums, assuming they're mostly filler, but they're a lot better than that. Maybe not classics, but better than their reputations.

I think the next one - Kink Kontroversy - is one of their most underrated. Most lump it with the first 2, but it shows big advances in songwriting while still being the last of their "garage" albums.

I've listened to the next three albums today for the first of numerous listens this week. I still need to become more familiar with many of the songs, but I agree with your assessment of Kink Kontroversy. I feel the same way about Stevie Wonder's Where I'm Coming From, which is where I think his run of '70s brilliance began even though most discussions about Stevie usually start with Music Of My Mind. I think The Stones' Between The Buttons could also be described as one of those in-between albums.

Rich, this is one of those series I'll be reading but not commenting on. I know the Village Green album and most of the hits, but otherwise I'm way behind the curve on my Kinks knowledge. I hope to learn some things.

Hi Glenn. I appreciate you checking in with a series on an artist you're not that into. Hopefully something I post about them will inspire you to explore their catalog a little further. It's nice to know you're lurking in the background. Haha. Hope 2014 is treating you well.

In my second Kinks post, I talk about three albums released between 1965 & 1967: The Kink Kontroversy, Face To Face and Something Else By The Kinks. For me they got progressively better over the course of these records, and I'm curious to see if other fans agree. Please stop by & let me know what you think, either here or in the Comments section at the blog. Thanks.

http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/201 ... o-sunsets/

I like Kontroversey and Face To Face alot more than you........but still great objective reviews.

Charles, I like both of those albums a lot, but I thought each album in this batch exceeded the one that came before it. Just based on the number of tracks I chose to highlight, they're all excellent albums. I just think that "Something Else" is the best of the three. Do you have a particular favorite from this batch?

Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed my appraisals, even if you don't completely agree with them.

In my 3rd post in this series, I discuss three great studio albums from 1968-1970 with very long titles: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur (Or The Decline And Fall Of The British Empire) and Lola Versus Powerman And The Moneygoround, Part One, as well as the disappointing concert recording, Live At Kelvin Hall aka The Live Kinks. Here's the link:

http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/201 ... -powermen/

Looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks of these, since this is the era that's generally considered their creative peak. Thanks for checking it out.

In part 4 of this series, I talk about four excellent releases from 1971-72: Percy, Muswell Hillbillies, Everybody's In Show-Biz and The Kink Kronikles.

http://kamertunesblog.wordpress.com/201 ... nd-heroes/

This is the beginning of an overlooked portion of their discography, but there are a number of great songs to be found on these albums. Let me know if you agree. Thanks.

Good stuff Rich. As I've posted before elsewhere, I grew up on The Kinks while living in England 65-68, but as a kid never had spending money for records. Years later back in the States when I finally got summer jobs and spending money, all The Kinks' Reprise era albums were out of print, ugh, except for their first Greatest Hits LP which had been reissued, which I quickly snapped up.

So I was most thankful in securing The Kink Kronikles on LP when it came out, containing 5 more singles I had grown up with in England, plus Lola and King Kong. King Kong was released as a single in 1972 to promote Kronikles, and it got good airplay in my hometown but never did anything nationally. Kronikles is a 5 star comp no doubt about it (5 outta 5, 11 outta 10), kicking off with Victoria, which might be my favorite Kink kut of all (tough to decide). But the extremely long article / liner notes by John Mendelssohn are simply hilarious, as well as being most informative. I bust a gut every time I read them, ha...

Looking forward to more of your Kink reviews, I hope you're going to include The Great Lost Kinks Album in the mix as well...

Great writeups in part 3 (I guess you won't be 1st in line for the deluxe Kelvin Hall later this year ). I'll read part 4 after work.

I'm realy looking forward to part 5, since the 4 story concept albums are the ones people are more disagreeable on.....(I like all 4 - love Soap Opera)

Thanks for checking out these posts. Glad you're enjoying them. Oh man, I can't imagine how frustrating that must have been when those albums were out of print (and you couldn't download them to hold you over until they were reissued). Kronikles is so well-constructed that it's worth owning even if you have the songs as bonus tracks on other releases. Had no idea that "King Kong" was newly recorded specifically to promote that compilation, so thanks for shedding light on that.

And yes...I will include The Great Lost Kinks Album in this series. It'll be part of my next post. In fact, I'm listening to it as I type this. I burned a copy a few years ago from a friend's CD. I may have to get it on CD on of these days.

Thanks, Charles. I assume you're joking about a deluxe version of Live At Kelvin Hall, right? If that's actually happening & they've somehow cleaned up the recording (and beefed up the track listing), I would probably buy it.

FYI, I'll be splitting up the "theatrical years" across two posts. The next one will focus on Preservation, Parts 1 & 2 and The Great Lost Kinks Album, since that's nearly 3 hours of music and I want to give them the time they deserve. I'll save Soap Opera, Schoolboys In Disgrace, etc for the following post. Good to know you're a fan of that era (why am I not surprised?). Other than Schoolboys, which I remember liking 20+ years ago, I remember very little from these albums. That won't be the case in a couple of weeks.

Actually, King Kong wasn't newly recorded, it had been a UK b-side in 1969. Then in the US they put it on Kronikles, then released it on a 45 to promote it. Great stuff, it rocks !!

gotta hear it again today...

I do too!

Getting a quality edition of the "Great Lost" tracks on CD was a great day in my music-collecting life. I think "Until Death Us Do Part" and "Pictures in the Sand" are two of the all-time greatest Kinks songs. Ridiculous that they are both still officially unreleased.