Great band, great album …

… The Kinks vs. the People in Grey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

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.