When I looked at the forum choices, I saw “Have you seen…” on the page. That made me think of Missing Persons on The Kinks ‘Word Of Mouth’ CD. Given my current condition, this song is particularly appropriate (Now I’m sitting at home, staring at the wall/Waiting for the missing person to call.)
So I popped the CD into the player. Living on a Thin Line is playing now. This CD reminds me of when I was happy. I remember tooling around in my little MGB or 924, having a little money in my pocket, having prospects for finding a girlfriend, and just being young in the '80s. When this album was released, I’d just gotten my pilot’s license, and learned how to SCUBA dive. I was making super-8 films with my friends. I went to parties, and I cruised Lancaster Blvd. I was just a couple of years away from moving to Los Angeles.
Lots of nice songs on this CD, and they’re full of New Wave energy just before New Wave became Pop Crap. Do It Again captured the smugness of someone (me) who hadn’t yet sold out, and mocked people who did. I really liked Living on a Thin Line. Fourteen years later Good Day would seem prescient with its lines apparently about Princess Diana: News of the world, tea and bisuits in bed/The headline said that Diana was dead/She didn’t talk much, but she put on a show/She always smiled, even when she was low/I used to fancy her a long time ago.
Generally I don’t like going back to the '80s. A lot of the music just doesn’t hold up. Maybe this album doesn’t either; but it reminds me of fun.
I haven’t heard this album. The Kinks generally impress me because their songs tend to take on a new, hip significance all over again 20 years after they’re released.
Ray Davies was scheduled to perform locally (DC area) a few years ago, but it was derailed by 9-11.
Dave Davies is apparently scheduling his first tour since his illness, probably this May, at least in and around the Home Counties in the UK 
Krokodil – I had tickets for that show, actually…he isn’t doing Storyteller anymore, but his latest shows still have an element of storytelling in them.
For what it’s worth, Word of Mouth has three songs in common with the Ray Davies film & soundtrack Return to Waterloo (credited as a Ray solo project, but the music is played by the Kinks minus Dave).
I’d heard Lola as a little kid, of course; but Word of Mouth is more ‘my time’. If you liked New Wave and you liked The Kinks, you’ll probably like this one.
The one at the State Theater in Falls Church? Cool!
I made a point, just a couple of years ago, to try to educate myself on the Kinks (too young to have watched the progression as it happened).
I still haven’t investigated them past the sixties. I’ve always been aware of how long spanning a career it was, but in my head they’re a sixties band.
I love each of the CDs I own*, but I haven’t been inspired to search further. I’ll take Johnny L.A.’s recommendation into consideration. Anyone else want to make any post-sixties recommendations?
The Kinks
Face to Face
Something Else
Village Green Preservation Society
Arthur
Yes, that’s the one! Have been there twice to see D Davies, but both times I had tickets to see R Davies there, was unable to.
bienville – I would give you a longer answer, but must dash off for a rather long day – including another rock ‘n’ roll guest lecturing stint! I lectured on the Kinks and the British Invasion about 2 weeks ago, and now he’s up to art rock and the 70s, which brings in the Kinks again because of Ray and all those stage shows and concept albums the Kinks wrote and performed throughout the 70s.
Briefly though, a lot of that stuff they did in the 70s is overlooked, but you might want to check out the Preservation Trilogy (Parts 1 & 2, and then Schoolboys) – argh – sorry so brief, but writing with one eye on the clock, but that can get you started!
I’ll throw in my two cents. From the '70s, try Muswell Hillbillies and from the '80s, definitely Give The People What They Want. The latter contains the song Better Things which is one of Ray’s very best songs.
Just picked up Word of Mouth myself recently. Geez but the Kinks stayed great for a long time.
Though I was an eighties teen, I missed a lot of good music during this period owing to my youthful obsession with the hairspray bands. I’m still catching up on Kinks from every era.
I’m still catching up on a lotta great bands, come to think of it.
A plague on thy house, Kip Winger!
For Kinks fans check out X-Ray by Ray Davies, an autobiography in which he plays an employee of an anonymous corporation investigating Ray Davies. Very readable.
Also good is Dave’s autobiography Kink. I recently read both back-to-back. It’s interesting to compare two versions of the same events, and also to see what get more attention and what gets omitted from each account (The phrase “Chrissie Hynde” never appears in Ray’s book).
To steer the hijack back into this thread, Dave’s book answers a question about this album which nagged at me for 2 decades; namely, why was Living on a Thin Line never released as a single. It was a huge huge hit on AOR format radio during the summer of 1985, and got an enormously favorable response from the audience both times I saw them play on the “Word of Mouth” tour. Dave’s answer (in one of several “Ray-screwed-me” laments to be found in his book): Ray had the contract with Arista specify that the first 3 singles from a Kinks album had to be Ray compositions. Do It Again just missed the US top 40, peaking at 41. Summer’s Gone flopped (until I read the discography in the back I didn’t know it had ever been released as a single), so the record company decided against another Ray single and couldn’t release Dave’s song.
Anyway, thanks for the nostalgia blast, Johnny LA. The cassette rarely left my Walkman my sophomore year at UCLA. Interesting that you describe it as “new wave”. Sure it has lots of keyboards and Ray’s production is kinda sparse. But I never thought of it as new wave. I thought “Low Budget” and “Give the People What They Want” were definitely influenced by punk, as if to say, “We can strip rock and roll back to the basics as well as any young whippersnappers, and we were doing it 15 years earlier too!”