Another in a continuing series on my top-ten favorite bands.

9. The Kinks

Oh yeah, the Kinks, the silly Kinks...

It should be said that of the many different "pop groups" that I now like, I started out actually disliking the Kinks quite a bit. Most of their music is not like their first hits "You Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night." The disparity between their "hits" and their recorded catalog certainly did not endear me to them. If I tried to find a popular point of reference for the Kinks, it might be fair to say that they do sound like "Tired of Waiting" on most of their recordings, except more British, a lot more British. I distinctly remember hearing "Autumn Almanac" for the first time and thinking that they were making music for people that only have bad teeth and rough, working-class accents (with the Kinks there is often a tendency toward hyperbole and sarcasm that tend to fit well into such stereotypes). What I know now is that Ray Davies could give two shits about who listens to his music, he just makes what he thinks is good for him, and throws the rest to the wind.

There was a time where the Kinks wouldn't have even shown up in my top twenty. I spent many years taking my music choices way too seriously and kind of missed out on being open to new things. I'm pretty sure I liked some of their stuff, but again, the Kinks are hard to describe in words that one might use to talk about music, or least words that rock critics use. What they do is just right there, out-front, like it or not. It's best that I just say what I like and not worry about it too much, and expect you to buy all of this music so that you can confirm that I'm crazy for holding out on liking them.

What always strikes me about the songwriting of Ray Davies is that it's so pedestrian, so basic and straight-forward, yet subversive and always on the verge of sorrow. A lot of people who like the Kinks point to Face the Face for this, but I like Something Else. If you think about all of the songs people write, and how much pop music informs and reflects real life, songs about looking through the employment section of a newspaper, doing chores and walking over a bridge should not a recipe make for glorious pop confection. Of course when it come to the Kinks, these subjects are deep and revealing, and the songs are more mature than many (read: every one) of Ray Davies contemporaries.

A lot of the time, the qualities that make a band universal are usually the grudging 10th and 11th reasons why we actually like a band. In other words, because we so often quantify our "enjoyment" by rating bands in a way that takes away from the intangible elements of music, we boil down discussions of bands to talking points. Simple things that don't in any way capture the true spirit of the music, and often minimize the artistic brilliance within. No matter what you actually feel about the music, if you choose to discuss music with an intensity that seeks to make one band better than another, all you are gonna be able to agree on is Sheryl Crow and Linda Ronstadt; artists who aren't "bad," but aren't really satisfying in any way.

I think to some degree this sort of logic prevented me from even listening to the Kinks, much less letting their art effect me. In a lot of ways, this resistance to the unknown allows me to this day to be surprised and delighted by any and all kinds of music. Which brings me to the real reason why the Kinks are number nine on the list. When I worked at Guitar Works, we would listen to all types of bands and performers, but unfortunately, I didn't always have control over the radio. There seemed to be a period of time where my manager was determined to make me like music that he liked and nobody else did. After many weeks of Lodger, Goodbye Cruel World and Face to Face, Geoff brought in a copy of The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society. Yes, this is a "classic" and a "undiscovered gem," certainly a cliched epiphany, but it was during the second song, "Do You Remember Walter" that I finally pulled my head out of my ass about this amazing band.

"Do You Remember Walter" isn't particularly special if you look at it on it's own, and although it stands out as one of the better recordings from this period, the tune itself is fairly simple. The thing that struck me was, as nostalgic as the lyrics were, they packed a universal message into something that on the surface seems so personal. With Davies and the Kinks, it's not the specific things that remind us of people that torture us, it's those things added up that make the past so sad and so universal for all of us. Just listen to the song and you might understand.