The Kink Kronikles" (1972)
The Kinks are my favorite group on a lot of days.I can remember vividly, precisely where I was, age 8, with an earplug and a red transistor radio, turning up the volume the first time I heard "You Really Got Me". I was tuned to 93 KHJ AM, sitting on a branch up in a tree, next to my elementary school, around the corner from one of the houses I grew up in, #4 to be exact.
The moment I heard my first electric guitar riff.
I had the VeeJay Beatles album, but there was nothing on it like this.
It was all about the guitars and drums.
I liked the next few, and "Sunny Afternoon", but then the Kinks disappeared from hit radio until "Lola" in 1970* Both those songs are on "The Kink Kronikles".
I bought my first copy in a Two Guys department store the year it came out. If I can't decide which album to play from their incredible 1966-70 run, I put this one on.
A desert island selection for sure.
I bought this copy at my local record store, Spin That! for $20 back in 2023. It's a perfect replacement for the one I lost.
Ray's brother Dave almost went solo over this one:
*The brothers had a fight onstage in New York, during their first US tour in 1965. They were banned from coming back until 1969.
-BBJ
11 comments:
This was actually the first Kinks album I bought after reading a review of it in Creem Magazine in the late 70s
Cliche alert: That album changed my life. And I was already a huge Kinks fan.
Shouldn't you have been in class? It took a long time for me to come around (I had a resistance to his vocals) but I finally appreciated the Kinks this year. It's been a wild ride, since I didn't expect their country/Americana album to be one of my favorites! That's just for starters.
Ha! I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Instead of this, I would recommend The Kinks are well respected men double LP compilation which was devised by Phil Smee and Brian Hogg of Bam Caruso records fame although it was a late 80's major label release (PRT Carrère). The general idea was to compile all songs not on European Pye albums. That includes the singles sides prior to You really got me (Long Tall Sally, You still want me, You do something to me), the EP tracks (Kinksize sessions & hits, Kwyet Kinks, Dedicated Kinks and Something else), all the singles B sides (It's all right, I gotta move, I need you, Never met a girl like you, Sitting on my sofa, I'm not like everybody else, etc.) and some A sides (All day and all of the night, A well respected man, Dedicated follower of fashion, Days, etc.). Of course some of that may be on US albums.
J from Europe.
Thanks for the heads up. I supplement my Kink Kronikles with "The Great Lost Kinks Album", released in 1973.
As part of our high school Music Appreciation class, the students would take turns bringing an album to class. We’d listen, comment, study time changes, tempos, lyrics, tunings, modulations and song structures. When it was Scott’s turn, he brought a lame-ass Judy Collins record from the early Sixties, Golden Apples of the Sun. It was super bogue and left little to discuss. I said, “Skippy, you’ve got to be kidding. Is this your mom’s record?” He defended the album and said it was his older brother’s. A couple of days later it was my turn and I brought the latest Kinks release, Kink Kronikles. The teacher gave me back-to-back days to play it since it was a double. Scott was floored by it. It was as if it opened a whole new vista to his limited musical knowledge. It’s the first time I’d ever seen him react in a spontaneous, uninhibited way. A couple of days later Kronikles became the first rock LP he ever purchased. He ended up requesting me to make tapes of songs I thought he’d like, or needed to hear. I became his trusted music guru. Eventually he grew his hair a little longer and started cruising the E with Highway Star blasting. He lightened up a little bit but he was still pretty uptight and serious. He was dead set on becoming a doctor. After going to UCLA Medical School, he became one. He’s been my OB/GYN for decades. And he’s so professional and serious. But he remembers the time I set him up with my friend, Debbie, who deflowered him like only she could do. What can I say? She was a sucker cherries.
VR
Kink Kronikles
Superb collection put together with much love and wisdom. Mendelsohn’s notes may be the most thorough he ever did. And he does what he does best, evangelize for the Kinks. Technically a compilation, but it has a wealth of tunes which were previously unavailable on LP at the time. So, it was kinda like a new album as well. It came just a couple of months after their first RCA LP, Muswell Hillbillies. Man, were they on a long roll artistically, if not commercially – Kontroversy, Greatest Hits! (should have included Where Have All the Good Times Gone), Face to Face, Something Else, Village Green, Arthur, Lola vs the Powerman, Muswell, and Kronikles.
I bought Kronikles, along with a bunch of other albums, at The Wherehouse in Pomona. I made a bunch of money off of tips at the Wildcat and wanted to splurge. The Wherehouse was just up the street from my Happy Hour gig. The manager of the store was a Dutch guy named Jan (pronounced Yawn). He had a fairly lucrative side gig going, selling bootlegs out of the store’s back room. We became friends of the musical kind. He had just gotten in some rather exotic bootlegs from Holland. There were about ten different titles from the same Dutch bootlegger. I picked out ones by the Flying Burrito Brothers (with Gram), Yes and Zappa. On the legit front, I got Machine Head, History of Eric Clapton, Bare Trees, Just Another Band from L.A. and Wild Turkey’s Battle Hymn. I had just seen Turkey open for Yes and Sabbath at the Swing and they made an impression. Thus, the purchase.
I know exactly what I bought that day because I have a really good memory and I kept a written record of purchases. This was because my side gig was making custom 8-Tracks and cassettes and I kept an inventory so that customers could page through it and make selections. I also kept a journal with fairly regular shorthand entries. Still do. And I have binders and binders of old ticket stubs. And tapes.
Here’s a related story
There was a guy who went to the same schools as me but we ran in separate packs. I first became aware of him in Second Grade Physical Education. The guy couldn’t skip to save his life. He just didn’t have the coordination to pull it off. He was the only kid in the class who couldn’t skip-step. His name was Scott and he had blonde hair and big ears that stuck out. But from that day forward I called him Skippy instead. We never became friends, ran in different cliques and often had different home room teachers. Sometimes I’d see him at recess when the boys were playing baseball. He was a smart kid but his baseball abilities were lacking. When the kids chose teams, he was always one of the last boys picked. He was a day dreamer and couldn’t focus on the game. He’d be in outer space.
Scott/Skippy’s dad was a psychiatrist. In Third Grade Scott’s dad thought it would be a good idea to bring a sliced up human brain to class. Each slice in its own baggie of formaldehyde. It was gross. Almost as gross as Scott picking his nose and eating his boogers all day long in class. The guy had no concept of how offensive that was. He ate his boogers as if they were caviar.
VR
Next memory I have about this guy was that we were in Sixth Grade Choir together. It was a large group and we didn’t hang out with each other at all. But then there was going to be a music festival competition between a bunch of different schools. The Choir director picked kids out of the choir to do solo, duet or ensemble acts. I wound up in a vocal sextet with Scott/Skippy. It was two guys and four girls. The guys were both sopranos. I was a contralto. We ended up winning our competition. I forget the name of the song we sang but it was some sort of old school Latin religious bullshit. We knew the notes but had no idea what the hell we were singing about.
Fast forward to high school and he’s in my Music Appreciation class during the second half of my Junior year. It was a small class, about a dozen of us. So I got to know him a little bit. He was fit and reasonably good looking but he was only about 5 five feet 5 inches tall. He looked and dressed like one of the Brady Bunch boys. Only with big sticky outty radar ears. That’s a fair description, not a putdown. I realized the guy couldn’t do a thing about his height or ears. And his mom was likely buying his clothes. But he took life far too seriously for my liking. For him, it was all about preparation and success. For me it was about throwing caution to the wind and grabbing life by the balls. He told me he wished he could be like me. I told him he was safer where he was and to be true to himself.
One thing I will say, though, is that his psychiatrist dad forked over the cash to buy Scott a really cool car on his 16th birthday. He had a yellow 1970 Challenger R/T with a .426 and 4-on-the-floor. His reward for a straight-A report card. He told me he’d been asking his dad for one since he saw the Barry Newman flick, Vanishing Point. So, the guy had some cool in him but he was too mannered and guarded. I asked him why he never cruised E street. He certainly had the wheels for it. He said it was because he’d miss his favorite TV programs. Really.
I finally convinced him to come one night. He met me at Sage’s parking lot where a lot of people hung out. Sage’s was an early grocery superstore chain in the Inland Empire that had coffee shops inside. The one on E and Baseline was a meeting place for cruisers. I was driving my dad’s black 1966 Pontiac 2+2, as I often did. When Scott arrived and awkwardly got out of his boss-ass car, I greeted him with a boisterous “Scotty Waddy Doo Doo you finally made it.” I gave him a huge hug and kiss to welcome him. It really caught him off guard. His face turned reddish-purple. How cute. I said “Let’s go” and I got in his Challenger and said I’d show him around. The guy was so reserved that I couldn’t tell if he was having a good time or not. But we did have some common interests. He liked to water ski and snow ski. So there was that. He wasn’t ugly, but I’d never seen him with a girl before. He was definitely a virgin. It was totally obvious.
VR
You probably sang Dona Nobis Pacem.
BBJ: It wasn't Dona Nobis Pacem. It was spookier than that. Like a Medieval liturgical chant set to music. But you got me thinking. So I went through my grade school stuff and dug up the pin, ribbon and plaque they gave each of the six of us for winning the vocal ensemble category. Plaque says it was Ave Verum Corpus by William Byrd. We did it acapella.
VR
VR
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