Muswell Hillbillies

Product Information

Larkin, Colin (2007). Encyclopedia of Popular Music (4thed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0195313734.

Original artwork for the Muswell Hillbillies album is included in a deluxe release (Image: Marketing Mix/BMG Rights Management) The Muswell Hillbilly festival is Saturday, September 10, Noon-8pm, with Fortis Green Road closed to traffic. A deluxe box set of Muswell Hillbillies and Everybody's In Showbiz, Everybody's A Star including photos, remixes, remastered original songs and a Kinks north London 'roots map' of key locations, is released on September 9. Visit thekinks.info/latest/muswell-showbiz/Though generally appreciative of the record’s songs, Rolling Stone complained about its muddied, live sound, which often finds Ray Davies’ vocals buried in the mix. The overall impression is that the record was a missed opportunity. It is also entirely understandable that music listeners in the late 1960s couldn’t understand what Davies was doing, politically speaking, during this period either. Where seemingly everyone else was basking in the liberatory potential of the moment, Ray Davies was longing for a reset. The Kinks at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark on June 30, 1972. Left to Right: John Dalton, Ray Davies, Dave Davies, John Gosling (Image: 1972 Jorgen Angel)

Saunders, Mike (3 February 1972). "The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies". Rolling Stone. No.RS 101. Straight Arrow. ISSN 0035-791X. Archived from the original on 24 January 2008. But my only concern is, do two albums combined justify this? I’ll let you decide. Still, well put together and lots to enjoy. On the 50th anniversary of the Kinks’ classic album Muswell Hillbillies, the time has come to appreciate the unique genius of Ray Davies’ political vision. Think about the upheaval we’ve seen worldwide in the last five years. The phenomenon of two-time Obama voters casting ballots for Trump indicates a massive political re-alignment, which is the tip of an iceberg of chaos. In some ways, Muswell Hillbillies is more right for our time than that in which it was produced. Yes, its politics are non-conformist, and one listener might make the Kinks as reactionaries while another will dismiss them as radicals. The album opens with the nightmarish “20th Century Man”, which could just as easily be called “21st Century Man”. The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the album while also giving the record a unique timeliness: “This is the age of machinery / A mechanical nightmare.” Like Kafka did 50 years before him, Ray Davies locates the primary threat to liberty not in a particular political ideology but in the mechanization of life, transforming people into cogs for the machinery.The original LP was a double, disc 1 new studio material, the second a live set from Carnegie Hall, New York, 1972. a b c d e Stephen Thomas Erlewine. "The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies> Review" at AllMusic. Retrieved 9 November 2011.

Dave Davies commented on the song, "There's that love and fondness for Americana and for country music because I had quite a big family, and all the great films like South Pacific and Oklahoma! – all these influences from the States – were embedded in our culture when growing up. It was kind of like a London version of The Beverly Hillbillies in a humorous way." [2] Release [ edit ]Not all of the songs on Muswell Hillbillies are so bleak. Many are hilarious, in fact, such as “Have a Cuppa Tea”, which sends up the, yes, tradition of English reliance on the caffeinated beverage as a coping mechanism. But each song revolves around a central theme about the dehumanizing machinery of modernity. Whatever the trends and changes in direction, these are two excellent albums with excellently crafted songs, overlooked criminally at the time. Dave Davies (Ray’s younger brother) takes issue with such understandings of the band’s politics. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Davies rejects the label “conservative” (used by Pete Townshend in a reflection on Village Green). In response to the word “conservatism”, Davies says, “I think it was ‘values’ more than conservatism. My father was a socialist — very left — and I was brought up to be that way. You can still be far-left and have values.” Now with a new record company and a new image, I could bring some of the old wild western spirit into my music." Concluding that records like Muswell Hillbillies are conservative because they map to some vague notion of Andy Griffith Show“family values” is reductive. Even a cursory glance at the Kinks’ discography dispels any serious ideological conservatism in the band. 1970’s “Lola”, one of the group’s biggest and most beloved singles is stunningly trans-positive for its time. 1983’s “Young Conservatives” openly lampoons its subject, referencing older Kinks songs along the way as if to make a statement about the bands’ historical positions on such matters.

Album Review: After “Lola” and its accompanying album (1970’s Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One,), The Kinks had a good deal of bargaining power: the single took the world by storm and became one of their best-known songs, and while the album wasn’t quite as successful, it performed well enough that the band signed a new record deal on RCA. The Kinks first album for their new label, Muswell Hillbillies, is often cited as one of their strongest LPs, and was also the beginning of their musical shift away from the “Englishness” of their classic era ( Something Else, The Village Green Preservation Society, Arthur, etc.) to a more eclectic range of influences. Universal’s new deluxe edition adds a whole second disc worth of bonus material, and while it may not be essential for the casual fan, Kinks konnoisseurs will find plenty to get excited about. Josephes, Jason (24 August 2004). "The Kinks: Muswell Hillbillies". Pitchfork Media . Retrieved 9 November 2011.My eldest sister, Rosie, brought me up. It’s a song about her going to work in a factory, and her way of escaping was the movies. No Nintendo. No PlayStation. No apps in those days. Rosie’s escape was the movies. I used her as a springboard and then I drifted off into my own world. As she walks to the corner shop, she’s “walking on the surrey with the fringe on top”. “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top” is a song from Oklahoma!. It’s the song that my other sister, Rene, was dancing to [at the Lyceum in 1957] when she died. A lot of inner messages are linked into the words. Only people who know me would fully understand them. Stolder, Steven. "Muswell Hillbillies". MusicVIP.com. Archived from the original on 15 July 2011 . Retrieved 5 December 2009. Muswell Hillbillies’ 2014 gatefold deluxe 2LP remastered from newly discovered Ray Davies original master tapes, colour vinyl. The album’s penultimate song, “Uncle Son”, captures the true political concern of the record: the unexceptional person just trying to live an authentic life amid political, economic, and social machinery. “Liberals dream of equal rights / Conservatives live in a world gone by / Socialists preach of a promised land / But old Uncle Son was an ordinary man.” Muswell Hillbillies laments the toll our struggle forward has on the liberty of individuals along the way.