Extreme Listening Mode!

What’s this? It can’t be! Has ELM gone mad? In our run-down of rubbish there appears to be a song by The Kinks! There must be some mistake! No, it is indeed Ray Davies’ ode to getting jiggy with a transvestite. Explain yourself!

Sacred cow – Something too highly regarded to be open to criticism or curtailment.

It’s fair to say received wisdom suggests that the Beatles are the most important band in the history of pop music. They are virtually inescapable, even today. Re-issues, books, magazine covers…they seem almost as of this time as they do their own. This doesn’t please everyone, of course. The Fabs sheer omnipresence makes many scream in frustration.

This frustration gave birth to a school of contrarian thought which said, ah, hold on a moment there, matey. The Beatles weren’t that important; they weren’t even the best British band. That honour goes to…well, it would have gone to the Rolling Stones, but their longevity as a going concern rather pissed on their cool factor. The Who? Townshend’s brooding presence always cast a dark shadow over his band’s undoubted genius. Pink Floyd? Well, yeah, but Syd left and they became the Nestlé of music; massive, unavoidable and universally disliked even though everybody had their products.

So a band was needed and lo, one was found. The Kinks are the de rigueur name to drop for people who want to suggest louché detachment from the herd but not go too far down the road of music snob that they end up being portrayed as a vinyl-shop bore (“have you seen that Rhino are re-issuing The Creation’s first album in a slightly different sleeve?”) And yet, an odd thing happened; the very tool to puncture the cliché became one itself. Now, that’s ironic Alanis.

What does everyone know about the Kinks? Well, ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’ are, unequivocally, wonderful. They did the Village Green Preservation Society, a decent album which isn’t half as clever as it thinks it is. They introduced Indian music to British pop before the Beatles with ‘See My Friends’ and they tell interviewers that like it’s a good thing. You don’t get credit for that, you get blame. There’s also ‘Days’, a dreary little pop number people seem to like. And finally, ‘Lola’, a really awful number which is a favourite of daytime radio programmers everywhere because of the sad fact that we still, four decades on, find it a tad risqué that she had a cock. I weep for our civilization.

Davies, for reasons best known to himself, sings the verses like he’s suffering from the effects of a nasty blow to the head, adding a winsome quality which recalls McCartney at his most ‘playful’ (i.e. toe-curlingly embarrassing.) The famous ‘cherry cola’ lyric is so laboured and clunky it actually feels like he gave birth to it, naturally and without anesthetic. It is a truly horrible song.

Yet it simply isn’t done to slag the Kinks. They remain mercurial, wonderful and chirpy. Ray Davies’ lyrics are on a par with Dylan, if you listen to some. They really aren’t. Listen to ‘Come Dancing’. Spoken of with reverence by people who wouldn’t piss on ‘Walk of Life’ by Dire Straits if it was on fire, despite it being essentially the same song.

Maybe it’s a Southern thing that Northerners don’t get? Perhaps. But the fact is The Kinks remain what they are and always have been; all right. This song is conclusive proof of their mortality.

Filed under: General Stuff Tagged: | bob dylan, lola, ray davies, the 60s, the beatles, The Kinks, the rolling stones, The Who