This wasn't your ordinary rock-interview fare. But Muswell Hillbillies, which turns 50 on November 24, wasn't an ordinary rock record. A concept album about the evils of urban renewal programs, it barely even gestured toward the pop mainstream, delving instead into country, blues, early jazz, and the British music-hall tradition. (On one track, the horn section reportedly played their instruments in a bathroom, the better to recapture the sound of an ancient recording session.) The songs' topics weren't your standard Top 40 fodder either, ranging from a Dixieland ditty about paranoid schizophrenia to an ode to the curative powers of tea. Small wonder that its sole single failed to crack Billboard's charts.
Saturday, December 11, 2021
Great band, great album …
… The Kinks vs. the People in Grey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Good article. Those late 60s and early 70s Kinks albums are wonderful, better (in many respects) than anything the Beatles ever did. If you can believe it, I keep a framed photograph of the Kinks on my bookcase near Boswell's Life of Johnson and Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
ReplyDelete