In a remarkable career that spans more than three decades, The Kinks have built a beloved and honored body of work as
impressive as anything else in the annals of popular music. Since riding the first wave of the British Invasion to chart
success in 1964, the group - led by singer/songwriter Ray Davies and his guitarist brother Dave - has withstood its own
internal struggles and the fickle whims of the pop marketplace to emerge as one of rock's most durable institutions.
In the process, The Kinks - who were inducted into the Rock'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1990 - have exercised a seminal
influence on several generations of rock 'n' rollers, first with the raw power-chorded energy of their early hits, then with the
bittersweet and often deeply personal songcraft of the band's late-'60s work, and later with the ambitious theatrical
direction of their'70s concept albums. In the'80s, The Kinks came full circle with the straightforward, stripped-down rock'n'
roll that returned them to the top of the charts and helped seal the group's current status as an honest-to-goodness living
legend.
Beginning in July 1998, Velvel Records restores a large and crucial chunk of The Kinks' musical legacy to print, with
upgraded reissues of the albums the band originally released on the RCA and Arista labels between 1971 and 1986. These newly remastered editions will
include previously unreleased bonus tracks, as well as expanded artwork, new liner notes and archival photos. Among the Kinks album titles scheduled for
reissue are Muswell Hillbillies, Everybody's In Showbiz, Preservation Act 1, Preservation Act 2, A Soap Opera, Schoolboys In Disgrace, Celluloid Heroes:
The Kinks' Greatest, Sleepwalker, Misfits, Low budget, One For The Road, Give The People What They Want, State Of Confusion, Word Of Mouth and
Come Dancing With The Kinks.
The reappearance of these classic albums - many of them largely unavailable on CD in recent years - is particularly timely since The Kinks' visibility and
influence is currently more pervasive than ever. Ray Davies has toured widely with his show "20th Century Man," which movingly blends performances of
some of his favorite compositions with wry reminiscences of the often surreal ups and downs of The Kinks' career. Retitling his show "The Storyteller," Ray
launched the critically-acclaimed VH-1 series of the same name, for which he receives credit at the end of each program. Dave Davies recently returned to
his roots with a back-to-basics club tour, fronting a rough-and-ready band and playing a selection of Kinks classics and beloved obscurities. The Davies
brothers' solo tours coincided with the publication of not one but two autobiographies, Ray's quirkily revealing X-Ray and Dave's unabashedly forthright Kink.
Meanwhile, a new generation of British pop combos like Oasis, Blur and Pulp have publicly acknowledged The Kinks' influence on their sound and attitude.
Ray Davies was 19 and Dave 16 when their scrappy combo The Ravens, which also included bassist Pete Quaife and drummer Mick Avory, was
rechristened The Kinks in late 1963. Having honed their musical chops playing modest London club gigs and grueling one-nighters on the English ballroom
circuit, the band scored a three-single deal with Pye Records, Their first two releases, "Long Tall Sally" and "You Still Want Me," were unsuccessful, but the
third was the seminal classic "You Really Got Me," which became a #1 hit in the U.K. and reached the Top 10 in America. It's said by many that Dave's
distinctively distorted guitar sound - achieved by defacing his amplifier with a knitting needle - marked the birth of heavy metal. At the time, The Kinks'
raw-nerved rock'n' roll set the group apart from its British Invasion contemporaries, while the band's ironically foppish image further enhanced their reputation
for unpredictability.
The Kinks followed "You Really Got Me" with another Top 10 single, "All Day and All of the Night," a raver in the hard-rocking mode of its predecessor, but
subsequent hits demonstrated a level of musical and lyrical ambition that separated the quintet from its beat-group peers. "Tired of Waiting for You" and
"See My Friends" revealed a knack for offbeat song structures and exotic sonic textures, while "A Well Respected Man," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion"
and "Sunny Afternoon" demonstrated Ray's budding flair for witty social commentary and his affinity for music-hall-style arrangements.
The Kinks' 1966 albums The Kink Kontroversy and Face to Face manifested a distinctly more personal turn to Ray's songwriting, and subsequent LPs like
Something Else by the Kinks, (The Kinks Are) The Village Green Preservation Society and Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire (which also
introduced new bassist John Dalton) underlined the group's propensity for playing by its own rules. As the rest of the rock world was going psychedelic and
getting "progressive," Ray - described by one journalist as "a genuine and brilliant neurotic in a landscape full of sham psychotics" - wrote understated,
bittersweet songs embracing lost values and basking in simple pleasures while chronicling the tribulations of English middle-class life. Meanwhile, Dave
Davies was coming into his own as a songwriter and vocalist, contributing several memorable items to the band's repertoire. His poignant "Death of A Clown"
(recorded by The Kinks but released under Dave's name) was a #3 hit in the U.K.
Still, The Kinks' unfashionably wistful late-60's output generally had a hard time finding an audience, and the situation wasn't helped by a musicians' union
ban that had kept the band from performing in the United States during the crucial period between 1966 and 1969.
The Kinks' commercial fortunes took an upward turn - in characteristically eccentric style - in 1970 with the Top 10 hit "Lola," on which Ray somehow
managed to turn the tale of his encounter with a transvestite into an upbeat singalong smash. The success of that song and the album Lola Versus
Powerman And The Moneygoround coincided with the end of the band's contractual commitment to Warner/Reprise in the U.S. and Pye in the U.K.
With much fanfare, The Kinks (by now a quintet thanks to the addition of keyboardist John Gosling) signed with RCA worldwide and in 1971 released the
much-loved Muswell Hillbillies. That album launched a series of ambitious conceptual works that once again marked The Kinks as one of rock's most
adventurous and creatively fearless bands, and Ray as one of pop music's most innovative and distinctive songwriters. The band followed it with Everybody's
In Showbiz, Preservation Act 1, Preservation Act 2, A Soap Opera and Schoolboys In Disgrace, on which Ray wrestled with issues of social conditioning
and media manipulation, while the band produced some of the most distinctive music of its career. The band supported these albums with elaborately
mounted stage shows with the band members often decked out in flamboyant costumes.
The Kinks moved from RCA to Arista with 1977's Sleepwalker, which traded the conceptual approach for a more basic, hard-rocking style. The subsequent
Sleepwalker, Misfits, Low Budget and Give The People What They Want expanded the band's audience significantly, and the live One For The Road
captured the energy of the band's live concerts. 1983's State Of Confusion introduced The Kinks to a generation of fans raised on MTV with the poignantly
nostalgic "Come Dancing" (the group's first Top 10 U.S. hit since "Lola") and its follow-up hit "Don't Forget To Dance." After one more Arista album, Word Of
Mouth, Ray finally got the chance to fulfill his longstanding cinematic ambitions, writing and directing the acclaimed feature Return To Waterloo, whose
soundtrack became the only Kinks album recorded without Dave Davies. Earlier in the decade, Dave had relaunched his solo career in 1980 with AFL1-3603,
which was followed by Glamour and Chosen People.
In 1986 The Kinks moved to MCA, where they released three albums, Think Visual, the live The Road and U.K. Jive. A brief association with Sony yielded
the five-song EP Did Ya and the 1993 album Phobia; the latter included "Hatred (A Duet)," which humorously addressed the Davies brothers' legendarily
tempestuous relationship. The Kinks capped this phase of their career with the partially unplugged live retrospective To The Bone - released in radically
different forms in Britain and America. It featured classic Kinks material reinterpreted by the band's current lineup, which in addition to Ray and Dave
includes bassist Jim Rodford, a Kink since 1978 and drummer Bob Henrit, who replaced Mick Avory in 1984.
The Kinks' next move is always open to speculation, but the band's unique and long-lasting contributions to rock'n' roll history are undisputable. "I don't think
much about our place in history, I'm just interested in getting on with it," says Dave Davies. "I don't have any reasons or excuses for why we're still doing it.
I'm just glad that we still are."
"Music is becoming more and more important to me the older I get," Ray concludes. "The Kinks have got this tremendous catalogue now, but it still feels
like a work-in-progress. I'll sit back and listen to it and recognize the connections and get the feeling that it isn't quite finished yet."
