What are you streaming tonight?

The Kinks Village Green album (a long-time favorite of mine) is getting the deluxe/boxset reissue treatment in the very near future. The album was part of the group’s fantastic "middle period" Face To Face/Something Else By/Village Green trilogy. After Village Green, original bassist Pete Quaife left the group, and Ray Davies started thinking in terms of the dreaded concept album. Thanks, The Beatles ;-) . The Kinks next album was Arthur, and it was all downhill from there.

The Kinks remained a great live band (I saw them in 1969 and ’70, or was it ’70 and ’71?), but their albums became less and less interesting with every release (to me, anyway). By the time their Reprise contract expired, and they signed to RCA, they were almost out of gas. They had one pretty good album left in them, Muswell Hillbillies, after which it was pretty much over. They had a real good run there for quite a while.

Ray Davies is my favorite writer of all the British bands, including the Nerk Twins ;-) . He is SO British, capturing and invoking the soul of that country in the same way Brian Wilson does the U.S. A. To continue the comparison, he is, as is Brian, an excellent melodist; "Waterloo Sunset" is absolutely magnificent, and he has written many others of equal caliber.

It was therefore disappointing to me when he embarked on his concept period, where the songs were written to support the greater whole, rather than standing on their own. Some of the songs were good, but many just served the function of furthering the narrative, sounding, as songs---their chords, the chord structures and sequences, melodies, etc.---more like the filler songs that lesser bands always fill out their albums with.

Ray Davies was also a great entertainer---very charismatic and amusing. And The Kinks had that very unique, trademark band sound. Ray was a true rhythm guitarist, as was John Lennon. But my God was his Telecaster loud! Extremely piercing and bright, as Tele's can be. And Dave is an under-rated lead guitarist, very exciting in a pure Rock 'n' Roll way (very little real Blues influence, rare for a Brit). He also has written some great songs (sprinkled throughout the group's albums), and is himself an interesting singer. Mick Avory is a wonderful drummer, and perfect for The Kinks in the way Ringo was for The Beatles. Very musical---a song player, not just a drummer. I think The Kinks may be my favorite British group of them all! Snappy dressers, too ;-) .

@uberwaltz and @reubent, I got to see Robben live many times when he was living in San Jose in the early 70’s. He and his brothers (Pat on drums, Mark on mouth harp) had moved down from upstate California, and were living in a house right by the corner of Stevens Creek Blvd. and Saratoga/Sunnyvale Road., about a mile from the house I grew up in. The guy who played bass in the band I was in my senior year of high school (Lou Bottini) was in the Ford band for a while, as was the singer/harp player I was in a band with a year after graduating (Gary Smith; his Up The Line album is great Chicago Blues).

When Robben started playing around San Jose, all the local guitar players got their first up-close look at world-class talent, and realized they didn’t have it, a sobering realization. Robben eventually left for L.A., and was soon working with George Harrison, Joni Mitchell, and Miles Davis!

@reubent, music as good as David Balls’ "Thinkin’ Problem" is what I hope to hear every time I listen to a new supposedly-Country artist. Guys like him don’t show up very often.

@gosta, Rodney Crowell has made a number of great albums in addition to Diamonds & Dirt. I’m partial to his autobiographical The Houston Kid album, and his new Christmas Everywhere album is on its way to me directly from his current label New West Records (home to other superior artists including John Hiatt, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, and the great Buddy Miller).