THE KINKS - ARE THE VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY

So it totally isn't July 8th anymore. It is I think the 21st, possibly the 22nd. I put the Kinks LP sleeve up as a reminder to re-appraise the above on returning from my holidays. I returned from my holidays... prematurely as a matter of fact. It seems that a European lake based vacation loses its appeal when the weather goes bad and when insects attack!

I managed to leave it a whole three hours before heading into town to trawl the 'just in' section of my local and increasingly crappy (yet also as a paradox increasingly friendly) used record store. Anyway, not a thing. Not a single thing, which means that somebody has either bought or stashed the spastically over priced Embryo albums which also, also means that next time they come in they will go out for more - This is after all how the aft-retarded mind of said owner works. I shouldn't call names, he's not alone, it is I am sure common practice in many parts of the world. It's just in times like these: Jobless IT project managers eating bankers, former freelance journalists becoming bare knuckle boxers and ultimate fighters just to pay their rent and estate agents selling their legs for food, well, it all just seems a little cuntish.

Anyway, as always, I digress. There's a story behind The Kinks 'Are the Village Green Preservation Society', unfortunately I can't remember it. I know that Dave and Ray Davis had wanted it to be a double album and Pye records had said no, I also recall that their are two different versions of this available, the US/UK one and the European pressings (alternate tracks) I just can't remember why...

For me this album will always be second place to what is in my mind the far superior 'Arthur and the Decline and Fall of the British Empire', the album that proceeded it. Not to say this isn't a great record, it's just that they (be it the label or the band) fucked it in a very similar way that they fucked everything else they did from this point onwards, whether it was abandoned concepts albums or soundtracks for TV plays. The idea is there and in fairness so are the songs, it's just that in order to get the full picture you need to nit-pick a triple CD version in order to get 'Days', 'Suzannas Still Alive' and all of the other songs that should have been included in the original.

Anyway, enough of the 'playa hatin'. 'Are the Village Preservation Society' succeeds in taking me to a place that my kids will never see, reminds me of holidays of the past, dead grandparents and a way of living that was always going to have to give way to wider roads and supermarkets with chest freezers....Cover's shit though, looks like somebody had left a coffee mug on it.

NB: I just read that large amounts of drugs, specifically halluconagens were consumed by said Kinks during the recording of this album. Try as I might, I can't hear them.