A “live” Kinks album! What a wonderful respite from the whining megalosonic hodads and synchrono-psycho-tech-a-delic sycophants seeking comfort and escape through incessant time-warping. And from the funkalimpoid hipster teenoldsters squeezing ’n’ wheezing out rock’n’roll by the numbers, and obviously radioactively enhanced nubilettes doin’ frazzled hooter-stomps nightly on MyTV. A “live” Kinks LP--it’s like meeting an old friend after a long separation. It has its own special comfort.
While certainly not as combative as ’72’s Everybody’s In Showbiz, nor as frantically exhilarating as One For The Road (which was released with one of rock’s first full-length videos, by the way), this “live” LP does manage somehow to insinuate itself into your head with such subtlety you hardly even notice that you’ve played it about five...ooopps, make that six times in a row already.
It all begins with a patented Kinks studio opus (produced to the hilt by Ray Davies, as is the rest of the “live” material) called, not surprisingly, “The Road.” A kronicle which proudly takes up Ray’s banner of the road being the only “pure” environment for working out rock’s demons (and waxes nostalgic over his 25 years on said road), it’s also a diary of bittersweet memories that refreshingly tells us the road has to remain rocky in order for it to remain vital. Or even remain at all.
Just as Ray’s voice has trapped us in this lyrical, introspective skein, it pauses for the briefest of moments and launches into mid-frenzy at a “live” show...the song “Destroyer,” and the mood from that point on is pure, undiluted rock’n’roll. The band is tight, Ray’s voice grinding, Dave’s guitar staccato and mean, the rhythm section working hard. Inspired versions of “Apeman,” “Come Dancing,” the infamous “Art Lover,” and the pointed “Clichés Of The World (B Movie)” follow. It’s pure, unadulterated Kinksmania, and it smokes.
Onto page two with a flippant “Think Visual,” Dave Davies’ stunning “Living On A Thin Line” (which gives new meaning to the concept of metaphor), the hard-edged romance of “Lost And Found” and the most hauntingly bizarre leap into the psyche of the housewife that’s ever been attempted: “It.” Quintessentially Ray Davies and quintessentially the Kinks, it’s my fave of the whole bunch. It does a lot to expand my understanding that which is not understandable from my gender point of view...more so than, say, Annie Lennox’s latest “Diary Of A Mad Housewife” video. I mean, it gets scary. This LP just doesn’t want to throw in a bad song.
The Road winds down with “Give The People What They Want,” which is apparently what Ray and the boys have been doing, and doing well. After all, they’re still making records and touring. By the way, whatever happened to the Knack, Badfinger, Crabby Appleton, Grand Funk Railroad, the...Beatles...the Stones? Guess the road just doesn’t go on forever for everybody.
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