Journal

Kinks Valentine

watch the video here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaausLlHG6Q

We all love The Kinks. We feel like we could be in that band. Deceptively simple, primal riffs, never too serious—all the meat & potatoes of rock & roll. Then there are the lyrics of Ray Davies. He’s the only English songwriter that paints a picture which describes the dreary side of British life better than any Paul McCartney tune. Eleanor Rigby wears “her face that she keeps in a jar by the door,” which is quite good, but for me it’s no “Oklahoma, USA,” which sings of the wistful escapism of a middle aged English woman trapped in a dead end life. Her only respite is through Broadway musicals or Hollywood.

“All life we work but work is a bore, if life’s for livin’ what’s livin’ for?”

Here’s a song that is so very lovely & beautiful yet sad and quixotic in the melancholy way that it flips the American dream right on its head. The poignant observational skills remain a strong lesson for songwriters on how they can write about someone else’s experiences as well as their own.

  The song is from the Muswell Hillbilly’s LP that came out in 1971 but I first was magnetized by it as a cover on Yo La Tengo’s “Fakebook” LP from 1990 when I was first starting to write songs. I also recall Jeff Tweedy playing this at a Wilco after show party in Lexington, Kentucky during the “Being There” tour.

All subscribers to my Patreon page got this full track as an MP3 delivered to their inboxes today.   I deliver a lot of music to that page, covers here and there, at least one brand new song every month, full albums. I thank all of you who support me there, and I appreciate you considering it now.  Google PATREON TIM EASTON and you will find it.  Cheers from Tim E. in Tennessee