The Kinks

Melody Maker, November 26, 1966

I finally got to read some liner notes from Kinks' records a few days ago (I had some time to spend at a shop, so I took the time to look at what they had), and I literally can't stop thinking about The Kink Kontroversy's liner notes.

wrong answers only guys ill go first: dave davies fucked the president’s wife 

Peter Quaife / The Kinks

calling all kinks fans: is this fandom alive?

also can any of you throw in some fan facts about ray davies that may be of value to me?

So my current musical fixation are the Kinks. Past couple of weeks, I've been going through and listening to basically their entire oeuvre. Here, in no particular order, are my recommended tracks (that AREN'T "Lola", "You Really Got Me", "Waterloo Sunset", etc)

"Village Green Preservation Society" - God save Donald Duck, indeed. I wholeheartedly endorse the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium and the Skyscraper Condemnation Affiliate.

"State of Confusion" - Honestly, this whole album is a banger (gotta love "Young Conservatives", a 'get-off-my-lawn' song about young Thatcherites). 'I don't know whether I'm coming or going / Can't cover up 'cause it's obviously showing... Am I overdrawn, am I going in debt? / It gets worse, the older that you get.' Rock and roll is such a young person's genre, there are a paucity of good songs about the problems of middle age. The music video for this is also great - Ray Davies' facial expressions are delightful.

"The Way Love Used to Be" - UGH SO BEAUTIFUL

"Have a Cuppa Tea" - 'Whatever the situation, whatever the race or creed, / Tea knows no segregation, no class nor pedigree / It knows no motivations, no sect or organisation, / It knows no one religion, / Nor political belief.'

"Shangri-La" - probably the saddest song I've ever heard about upward mobility.

"Lavender Lane" - best song about gentrification EVER. So good. Especially like the musical quotes from "Waterloo Sunset". ("Demolition" off Preservation Act I is also excellent on this topic.)

"Alcohol" - sounds almost like it was influenced by Cab Calloway, very speakeasy. "Holiday" is also good for this.

"This Time Tomorrow" - 'On a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea...' Just beautiful - perfectly combines 'life-on-the-road' loss with 'the-old-ways-are-vanishing' loss.

"Autumn Almanac" - COTTAGECORE ANTHEM

"Celluloid Heroes" - a million times better than Elton John's "Candle in the Wind" any fucking day of the week.

"Some Mother's Son" - heartbreaking anti-war song - the words should be engraved on a memorial.

"Sweet Lady Genevieve" - I understand why Preservation is so polarizing amongst Kinks fans, but I probably fall more on the love than hate side. This song reminds me a little of Stan Rogers' "Witch of the Westmoreland", although much more overproduced.

"Dedicated Follower of Fashion" - I know this is very top 10, but how could I not include a song that starts with a quote from Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel, and includes the phrase "Carnabetian Army"??

"Better Things" - 'Hoping all the verses rhyme / And the very best of choruses, too.' This is one of my go-to cheer-up songs. It's really good to see you rocking out and having fun!

Anyway, I should probably stop while I still can (Honestly, I could effuse about Kinks songs for days. And have. My poor husband.). But I have really been loving the Kinks lately.

The Kinks (Dave Davies; Ray Davies; Mick Avory; Pete Quaife) by Peter Rand - 1968.

“We’d already toured with the Dave Clark Five in late 1964 and often, to my ears, we blew them off the stage,” said Graham Nash of the Hollies. “I didn’t hang out with Dave – and I didn’t particularly like him. He was aloof and condescending, just a mediocre drummer … They thought they were the Beatles – and they weren’t. Their songs just didn’t cut it … On the last night of the tour, the Dave Clark Five were in the middle of their big number ‘Bits and Pieces’ when Eric Haydock and Peter Quaife, the Kinks’ bass player, took a huge bolt cutter to the stage power and cut those fuckers dead. Served ‘em right.”

Peter Alexander Greenlaw Quaife passed 12 years ago today and he’s still being fawned over <3 Rest easy Pete 🫶

The Kinks

peter quaife!!! this man could honestly qualify as being the first man i was ever truly insane about. i bought so many books about the kinks JUST SO i could read any information about pete. and i mean anything. i once got so offended because i thought a book didn't have enough information about pete! as if he contributed anything to the kinks i have no idea why i was so butthurt about it.

anyway i got into the kinks when i was around??? 14???? and i thought pete was just the cutest little button in the whole world!! i have no idea what attracted me to him but there was something so gosh darn charming about him that made him so appealing to my fourteen year old heart!! i joked about it before but he practically raised me better than my own parents and he wasn't even physically there. that's the power that man has. i get my personality from him. i would draw little love hearts in my notebooks with pete's name in it and pretty much on any surface that would allow me to put pete's name on it. everyone thought he was my boyfriend which in some way he was. i was literally so far up his ass that i REFUSED to listen to any kinks song after he left the band in 1969. there's even one song that the kinks did in 1966 on their face to face album, and it was recorded while pete was on a break after a car accident, and still to this day i have NO IDEA what it sounds like because i haven't heard it. now i know i could break this by being normal and listening to it but i can't do that. it just would be morally wrong, you know???? also i just feel like he's such a nice guy, like i have yet to find a bad word about him,,, and again i'd find a way to make him seem like the victim, he's already got me under the halo effect. literally on my old blog he was tagged as #my baby ♥ - he just gets me so excited. looking back he really did start it all. we should all kill him for it.

The Kinks: How the Slice of an Amp Birthed a New Genre

by Corinna Boeck

When The Kinks– whose lineup at the time included brothers Ray and Dave Davies, Mick Avory, and Peter Quaife– recorded “You Really Got Me” in 1964, no one knew they would be releasing a record that would forever change the trajectory of rock music. 

In a time of Beatlemania in the UK, record companies were keen on emulating their sound with new acts. One such act was The Kinks. The band’s chief songwriter, Ray Davies, originally wanted to create R&B music, but this would change within the band’s first three singles. The development of The Kinks’ sound was something of a microcosm of the development of rock music in general, as the genre originated as a contemporary extension of R&B. 

Ray Davies originally wrote “You Really Got Me” on the piano as an R&B track. Initially, the record company they were signed to, Pye Records, refused to let them record the song, because their producers didn’t see it becoming a hit. After a number of successful performances of the song in the months that followed, the label finally let them record it. According to “The Kinks: All Day and All of the Night" by Doug Hinman, Ray recalled, “They said, ‘You’re going to go in the studio and they’re going to let you do ‘You Really Got Me’. You’re happy now, are you?’” (Hinman 2004) The original recording from their session at Pye was much slower and bluesier. Ray was unimpressed with the results, and opposed its release. After much dispute, Pye agreed to let them re-record the song, as long as they paid for the session time. It was during this session that Dave Davies made the seemingly destructive but effectively revolutionary decision to slice part of the speaker of his amp with a razor, creating a distorted sound. This decision, however, came from anger rather than an attempt to reshape rock music. Davies told The Guardian in 2013, “I was full of rage… I was very depressed and fooling around with a razor blade. I could easily have slashed my wrists, but I had a little green amplifier, an Elpico, that was sounding crap. I thought, "I'll teach it" – and slashed the speaker cone.” The result, when hooked up to another louder amp, was a raw, gritty, compelling sound that became the final released recording of “You Really Got Me” in July 1964. The song’s quick, punchy guitar had an undeniable energy that kept people wanting more. The sound was revolutionary for the time, and led to their immediate rise and landed them a number one spot on the NME charts later that month.

The lyrics consist mainly of a few lines repeated several times over throughout the song, including “Girl, you really got me goin'/You got me so I don't know what I'm doin'” and “Girl, you really got me now/You got me so I can't sleep at night”, and, of course, just “You really got me/You really got me/You really got me” This simplicity conveys the point of the song, which Ray Davies says was about being “so overwhelmed by the presence of another person and you can’t put two words together.”

From the beginning, The Kinks went against attempts to perfectly groom them for commercial success, from attempts to keep their sound consistent with what was popular or fixing their physical appearances, such as trying to hide the gap in Ray’s front teeth. The band kept their instinct of self-expression, leading to their experimental sound that captivated listeners– after conventional production failed to produce them a hit. Some call The Kinks the first punk band, but there really isn’t a way to pin down just one. The Kinks weren’t intentionally “punk”, though their name certainly makes them sound like a punk group– punk rock had yet to really exist, and even when the genre and the culture surrounding it took off, it would still be years before the biggest acts in the scene would embrace the word or even take kindly to it. Nonetheless, the origins of The Kinks’ success has an undeniable punk ethos in that they just fought to do things their own way, and it was with “You Really Got Me” that their insistence on getting the sound right over creating something designed for commercial popularity proved not only successful, but crucial. But sound wasn’t the only way “You Really Got Me” embodied the spirit of what would be punk. Dave Davies said “When we started recording we couldn’t argue with the record company. But this time we insisted on doing what we wanted. Well, what could we lose?… the song came out of a working-class environment, people fighting for something.” Particularly in the UK, the Punk movement, which grew in the 70s, was at its core a working-class movement, born of young people dissatisfied with the economy and with suburban culture. 

But the true results of “You Really Got Me”’s influence would continue to unfold over the next two decades. Numerous metal and rock bands, from The Ramones to The Clash to Oasis have named The Kinks as an influence, and this sound started with that song. Pete Townshend of The Who called Ray Davies’ lyrics “"a new kind of poetry and a new kind of language for pop writing that influenced [him] from the very, very, very beginning.”

That gritty sound that they used, not just on “You Really Got Me” but on various other tracks, from other songs on their debut album including “All Day and All of the Night” and “Revenge” to later hits like “Lola”, set their sound apart from other groups. The combination of Ray’s striking, poetic lyrics with Dave’s pioneer guitar riffs (the group has been called “predecessors of the whole three-chord genre”) made them one of the most influential bands of the British invasion, and the genesis of heavy metal and punk rock.

some guy, Pete Quaife, Dave Davies

December 1965

Calico Blainview, Part 1: Connivance

by beatle_san

This first part deals with the school coexistence between the characters in a boarding school.

Words: 583, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 1 of Calico Blainview, The Series

Fandoms: The Beatles (Band), The Doors (Band), The Rolling Stones, The Who (Band), Cream (Band), The Byrds (Band), Pink Floyd, Monty Python RPF, 1960s Music Scene RPF, Ace Ventura (Movies), Karate Kid (Movies), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), A Clockwork Orange (1971), Manfred Mann (Band), Creedence Clearwater Revival (Band), The Small Faces (Band), Led Zeppelin, Humble Pie (Band), The Animals (Band), The Lovin' Spoonful (Band), The Beach Boys (Band), The Monkees (Band)

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: Gen

Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney, George Harrison/Ringo Starr, Klaus Voormann/Manfred Mann, Ray Manzarek/Jim Morrison, Pamela Courson/Jim Morrison, John Densmore/Robby Krieger, Mick Jagger/Keith Richards, Charlie Watts/Bill Wyman, Brian Jones/Desiree Ryu (My OC), John Entwistle/Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey/Pete Townshend, Peter "Ginger" Baker/Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton/Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton/Ginger Baker, David Crosby/Roger McGuinn, Michael Clarke/Roger McGuinn, Desiree Ryu/Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman/Gram Parsons, David Crosby/Graham Nash, Syd Barrett/Roger Waters, Nick Mason/Richard Wright, David Gilmour/Richard Wright, David Gilmour/Roger Waters, Graham Chapman/John Cleese, Michael Palin/Eric Idle, Eric Burdon/Alan Price, John Sebastian/Zal Yanovsky, Davy Jones/Peter Tork, Micky Dolenz/Mike Nesmith, Mike Nesmith/Peter Tork, Ronnie Lane/Steve Marriott, Dave Davies/Pete Quaife, Jimmy Page/Robert Plant, John Bonham/John Paul Jones, Art Garfunkel/Paul Simon, Donovan (Musician)/Bob Dylan, Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence, Ferris Bueller/Cameron Frye, Stephen Stills/Neil Young (Musician)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Dirty Jokes, Friendship, Best Friends, Polyamory, Love Triangles, Desiree Ryu (My OC) Isn't me, Love Confessions, Anal Sex, Vaginal Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Sexual Humor, Sexual Tension, Minor Violence

source https://archiveofourown.org/works/45384052

Peter Quaife — The Kinks

Album # 678 The Kinks: Greatest Hits (1971)

Released In Canada

Marble Arch Records