Thank you for the Days, Mr. Davies

YouTube reminds me of a toy chest: the deeper you go, the further back you go, you initially wonder, "What was so charming about this?" But then you remember.

I've talked a little about the Kinks before. Like most British groups of the Sixties, they matured and evolved rapidly. The songwriting abilities of Ray Davies, and later his brother Dave, were remarkable, considering they started out as a three-chord rock group--probably the best three-chord rockers in history. Here's a clip of them doing "All the Day and All of the Night" live on Shindig, ABC's weekly rock show. (You know it's live because Dave flubs a bar chord just before the guitar solo, then grins ruefully.)



One of the canards at the time was that on the recording of this song, Jimmy Page did the guitar solo in the studio. This pretty much proves it was Dave.

Then Ray's songwriting abilities blossomed. Perhaps no British rock songwriter of the Sixties was so influenced by the British music hall tradition. Albums like The Kinks Kontroversy, Face to Face, and especially Something Else were far ahead of the Beatles, the Stones, and the Who in seeking out song material in the everyday lives of ordinary people. "Situation Vacant," about a young married guy looking for a new job; "David Watts," about class envy; and the sublime "Waterloo Sunset," about watching the Thames from the title bridge. And then came the two albums that the Kinks never surpassed: The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire.

The latter was the soundtrack for a British TV drama that was never made, but its songs encapsulated British history during the 20th century until that point. The first song, "Victoria," was a rocker with typically witty and arch lyrics:

Long ago, life was clean,
Sex was bad, called obscene,
And the rich were so mean,
Stately homes for the lords,
Croquet lawns, village greens,
Victoria was my queen.

The songs follow the title character through the First ("Yes Sir No Sir") and Second World Wars ("Mr. Churchill Says") to emigration ("Australia"). The previous album, Village Green, was less of a concept album, but on its way to being one, charged with an ironic nostalgia, like so much of Sixties British rock. The title song has some of the most clever lyrics in all of rock--or at least rhymes that lock the lines and make listeners wryly shake their heads. Here's a performance from 1973, much more of which used to be available on YouTube, and its removal is a shame, because it's one of the best live Kinks performances I've seen.



We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium
God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded 'em.

We are the Sherlock Holmes English-Speaking Vernacular
God save Fu Manchu, Moriarty, and Dracula.

The Kinks later got bogged down in a series of self-conscious concept albums that contained few good songs, if any: the two Preservation albums, Schoolboys in Disgrace, Soap Opera. But those two earlier albums live on.

Thank you for the days,
Those endless days,
Those sacred days you gave me.
I'm thinking of the days
I won't forget a single day believe me.