Track Listing

1. Village Green Preservation Society - The Kinks, The Kinks
2. Do You Remember Walter? - The Kinks, The Kinks
3. Picture Book - The Kinks, The Kinks
4. Johnny Thunder - The Kinks, The Kinks
5. Monica
6. People Take Pictures of Each Other
7. Village Green
8. Mr. Songbird
9. Wicked Annabella
10. Starstruck - The Kinks, The Kinks
11. Phenominal Cat - The Kinks, The Kinks
12. Days
13. Wicked Annabella - The Kinks, The Kinks
14. Monica - The Kinks, The Kinks
15. People Take Pictures of Each Other - The Kinks, The Kinks

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5032 in Music
• Released on: 1990-05-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds

Amazon.com essential recording
Sensing that the Beatles, Stones, and Who were radically transforming rock music by turning it literate and conceptual, Ray Davies decided the Kinks should be his vehicle to explore his unusual longing for a simpler time when the English empire was not in decline. A reliance on English music hall tradition and sentiments indicated in titles such as "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," "Picture Book," and "Village Green" clearly show Davies's nostalgia streak. Davies's singing has always been rough and non-Kinks fans may have trouble getting past his sloppy pitch. But for those listening closely, the tales are one of a kind. --Rob O'Connor

Customer Reviews

Quiet and quirky.
Pop Kulcher Review: While the Kinks may be better known for their early string of singles ("All Day & All of the Night," etc.) and classic rock hits ("Lola," etc.), some of their most timeless music was the quiet, gentle, and lesser-known stuff from '68-'72, when Ray Davies did some truly original character-based songwriting, and the band traded in their simple riff-rockers for more melodic, moving music. On Village Green Preservation Society, the band nearly gave up rock completely, coming up with a primarily acoustic set of songs, each of which is a character sketch of an inhabitant in a fictional, pastoral English village (reminiscent of the poetry collection Spoon River Anthology). The album is sweet and charming, and hard to believe it came from the same guys as "You Really Got Me." Not that this isn't poppy -- the title song is pretty catchy, as are tracks like "Do You Remember Walter," "Picture Book," and "Johnny Thunder" -- but it's much more subtle, with Davies having enough faith in his lyrics to let them stand up without a fail-safe guitar crunch in the background.

One of the great concept albums of the late sixties
Following the release of SGT. PEPPER'S by the Beatles, it appears that almost every other band in the sixties and early seventies was inspired to do likewise. The Kinks's Ray Davies response in 1968 was seemingly to take Paul McCartney's "When I'm 64" and build an entire album around that song's nostalgia. Although the Kinks had been in one sense the first hard rock band due to the first use of distortion in any rock song in "You've Really Got Me" (whether the guitar was played by session guitarist Jimmy Page as many maintain or Dave Davies as Dave and Ray-not always Dave's most enthusiastic defender, which makes his insistence on this issue more believable-claim may never be definitively settled), but the truth is that they moved over the next few years more and more from the distortion and further and further towards a pop sound. A decidedly pop album with nostalgia as the driving concept would hardly seem to be the recipe for success. If one defines success exclusively in record sales, then THE KINKS ARE THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY was a decided failure, registering the poorest sales of any of their albums to date, but on critical grounds it is in the opinion of many the finest album they ever released.

The sales failure of VILLAGE GREEN partly lies in the fact that the Kinks could not for some undiscovered reason obtain visas to tour the United States during several years in the sixties. As a result, they could release albums in the U.S., but they couldn't tour to support them. VILLAGE GREEN was one of the last albums they released before the ban was lifted and the album's failure in the states definitely hurt. But it is also the most English of all of their albums (with the possible exception of ARTHUR). And with people singing songs about the dawning of the age of Aquarius, an album that sang of old fashioned steam engines and village greens and taking pictures at family outings did not feed into the political and social outrage in much contemporary music.

Today, one can't help but being struck how superb the set of songs on this album are. Ray Davies is a brilliant pop song writer, but the truth is that the Kinks always functioned better as a singles band than an album band. In fact, apart from SOMETHING ELSE, FACE TO FACE, and VILLAGE GREEN, I would recommend the people experience them as a whole through anthologies rather than original albums. But that aside, these are great songs. The title track, "Johnny Thunder," "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains," "Animal Farm," "Starstruck," and "Phenomenal Cat" are all pop masterpieces. The problem is that apart from "Starstruck" they all need the context of the rest of the album to make much sense. There are no ideal singles on the album. But when you put the disc on and listen to it from first to last, you can't help but be struck at how splendid it is as a whole. Furthermore, the album contains an amazingly wide range of instrumentation, Ray Davies, who also produced the album, employing strings and horns to great effect, throwing in the occasional harpsichord, tossing in a flute on "Phenomenal Cat."

This remains one of the great undiscovered rock masterpieces of the late sixties. Ray Davies, one of the great songwriters in the history of rock, was at his absolute best on this album, not only writing a group of stunning songs but creating some of the most unique arrangements of the era. Anyone who loves rock music has to have a few Kinks discs, and this definitely should be one of them.

Cohesive and unfourtunatly overlooked classic
This is not the punky, power-chording Kinks with simple repetative riffs and unimaginitive compostitions. True, they often resort to using the same key signature throughout (but only a musician would even notice), but the songwriting is superb and creative. The arrangements are lush and melodic, and completely lack the self-consious weirdness that plauged many contemporary British albums (Rolling Stones "Their Satanic Majesties Request" ,Traffic's "Mr. Fantasy", Small Faces "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" etc.). Many of Ray Davies' lyrics are are introspective ("Big Sky"), nostalgic ("Village Green"), and dispite the happy fascade, deal with the sadness inherent in change ("Do You Remeber Walter?"). Some of the songs are slight ("Starstruck", "Phenomenal Cat"), but do not detract from the album's concept or cohesion. Also, it is stylisticly diverse, with music hall ("All of My Friends Were There"), latin ("Monica") and blues ("Last of the Steam-Powered Trains"). Overall, a varied, yet cohesive album with a strong lyrical theme that can stand up to "Pet Sounds", "Seargent Pepper..." and any of the other great 60's classics. Unfourtunatly, it was just a little two British for widespread American appeal.