The Kinks released their fifth studio album, Something Else by the Kinks, in September 1967 through Pye Records in the UK. It was also released in the US by Reprise Records, failing to go beyond #89 in the Album charts and seeing its main single "Waterloo Sunset" failing to chart entirely. However, with their commercial and critical success at an all-time high in the UK, The Kinks carried on recording, finding time to record and release the "Autumn Almanac" and "Susannah's Still Alive" singles before the end of the year. Once 1968 rolled along, a new idea became the main focus of chief songwriter Ray Davies: the Village Green project. Using Something Else outtake "Village Green" as a starting point, Ray began to record a collection of songs that dealt with nostalgic and pastoral subjects, childhood memories, and idyllic visions of the English countryside. The band spent the best part of early 1968 stockpiling songs for the project, before Pye selected "Wonderboy" out of their most recent sessions and released it as a single. A song Davies didn't consider good enough for a single, the record-buying public in the UK seemed to agree with him, with the song being the band's worst commercial showing since 1964. Unphased, the band carry on recording, with brother Dave Davies recording and releasing his solo "Lincoln County" single backed by the Kinks, and the band regained their hit-making footing with the fantastic "Days" single becoming a moderate hit that June.
That same month, the Kinks are told that due to differences in their contract with Reprise, they were contractually obligated to deliver an album's worth of songs to them by June. Complying with this, Ray assembled a fifteen-song collection consisting of some of the songs they had recorded for the Village Green project so far, plus some of their more recent single A and B-sides. Given the title Four More Respected Gentlemen, this compilation featured the "Days", "Susannah's Still Alive" and "Autumn Almanac" singles, plus songs that would eventually make the Village Green album and other songs that would remain unreleased for the time being. Reprise went as far as designating it with a production number and scheduling a November 1968 release date, shortening the album from the planned fifteen songs to a more concise (and American) 11 songs. The album was announced, promoted, and hyped, only to end up being canceled when the band, who had already turned their September expected release date for the UK album to a November one, took the opposite route and expanded the record from 12 to 15 songs, making Four More Respected Gentlemen mostly redundant. With that, The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society was released with the exact same tracklisting and album cover in both the US and the UK, making sure Ray Davies' masterpiece and one of the greatest British albums of all time was identical in both sides of the Atlantic.
However, the idea of a complementary album to The Village Green Preservation Society is still way too good to be wasted that way. So what if we put together a 15-track album that serves as a companion piece to TVGPS, expanding on its themes and giving its many high-quality outtakes a home? We scrap the original tracklisting and concept for the album, and instead take the many songs that were meant for the original Village Green album or released/recorded between it and Something Else by the Kinks, and put them under the same roof, giving them the context and conceptual continuity they so deserve. For our purposes, anything recorded from September 1967 to October 1968 is fair game, including non-album singles. Since the original Village Green album allowed for earlier outtakes, we will be allowing for some too, provided they fit well into the general themes of the album and weren't released in singles or whatever form before September 1967. Since the Village Green album doesn't feature any Dave Davies writing credits, Four More Respected Gentlemen provides the perfect outlet to allow his 1968-era songwriting a home, meaning all of his solo singles backed by the group can be included. Songs recorded after the Four More Respected Men master tape was sent overseas are also fair game, as long as they were recorded before October. With all of that out of the way, here's what our re-conceptualized Four More Respected Gentlemen album looks like:
Till Death Us Do Part (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
There is No Life Without Love (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
Lavender Hill (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
Pictures in the Sand (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
Rosemary Rose (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
Misty Water (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
Mr. Songbird (The Great Lost Kinks Album)
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Lincoln County (Hidden Treasures)Wonderboy (The Kink Kronikles)
Polly (The Kink Kronikles)
Berkeley Mews (The Kink Kronikles)
Autumn Almanac (The Kink Kronikles)
Susannah's Still Alive (The Kink Kronikles)
Did You See His Name? (The Kink Kronikles)Days (The Kink Kronikles)
Bonus track:
Mr. Pleasant (The Kink Kronikles)
She's Got Everything (The Kink Kronikles)
Good Luck Charm (Hidden Treasures)
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| Quaife, Ray Davies, Dave Davies, and Avory, somewhere in the countryside in 1968. |
Side one of our reconstruction is a first, being lifted almost entirely out of The Great Lost Kinks Album compilation from 1973. I grew up listening to this album and hearing these songs in this format, so this particular sequencing of the songs is very intuitive to me. All I had to do was replace the song "Groovy Movies", which didn't conform to the rules, with "Pictures in the Sand" from side two, and I had essentially lifted side one of the Great Lost Kinks album for myself. Of these tracks, Dave's "There's No Life Without Love", "Mr. Songbird" and "Misty Water" were part of the original Four More Respected Gentlemen, while "Pictures in the Sand" was part of those pre-June 1968 sessions it was culled from, but wasn't included for some reason. "Till Death Us Do Part" was recorded in September 1968 as the theme for the film of the same name, before being rejected and left unreleased for the next five years. Since it was recorded during the same timeframe as the Village Green album, it's fair game for inclusion. As for the pair of "Lavender Hill" and "Rosemary Rose", they were recorded late in the sessions for Something Else in mid-1967, and although fantastic, weren't even considered for the album they were recorded for. However, since the band had already used one 1967 outtake in the form of "Village Green" in the original album, I find it's only fair we use these two on Four More Respected Gentlemen, considering how well they fit in with the whole concept.
Unfortunately for me, side two isn't just lifted from some random compilation album, even though all but one of the songs are sourced from The Kink Kronikles. Looks like I'll actually have to do my job and sequence them! Six out of the eight songs on this side actually come from the original master tape for Four More Respected Gentlemen: "Polly", "Berkeley Mews", "Autumn Almanac", "Susannah's Still Alive", "Did You See His Name?" and "Days". The only two songs not from FMRG are Dave Davies' "Lincoln County", which fits in remarkably well with his brother's Village Green concept despite quite obviously not being written with it in mind, and the flopped single "Wonderboy", which despite its considerably weak commercial showing is a very interesting and well-written song. It's just not a hit! Its non-inclusion is even more confusing when we factor in that its b-side, "Polly", made it, and "Wonderboy" didn't. Oh well, it's a mistake but one we've just corrected. As for songs that didn't make it, we have one that made the original 15-song list, "She's Got Everything", which is just too early, from the 1966 Face to Face sessions, and doesn't fit in at all with our concept, and the many instrumental outtakes from the VGPS deluxe set, which are all way too unfinished. "Mr. Pleasant" was released as a single in April '67 and so is disqualified, and "Good Luck Charm" is another Dave song that had to be set aside as four Dave songs are much more than he'd ever get on a Kinks album.
I've taken the liberty of adding "The Kinks Are" to the album's title, in order to bring it even closer conceptually to the Village Green album. It is a 40-minute, 15-track album just like its companion, with side two being slightly longer than side one by about three minutes, which is honestly nothing to worry about. The album cover is another VGPS connection, being the cover of the 12-track European version of the album with the Four More Respected Gentlemen title superimposed over it. A simple cover but a good one nonetheless, it fits this collection of songs pretty well and works alongside the eventual album cover. When compared to the album that birthed it, it's certainly not as consistent, with the highs being as high as on Village Green (see the delightful "Autumn Almanac" or "Days"), but the lows being a bit lower, not managing to hit the same quality song after song. But that's to be expected on a collection of outtakes, isn't it? I found when listening to one straight after the other, that this works remarkably well as some sort of sequel or extended version of Village Green, expanding on its themes and giving the album a much-needed depth, making the two truly one-of-a-kind. It's a shame many of these songs were left on the cutting room floor, and even when they were released, didn't get the kind of attention they deserved, like other material that did make it into an album did. I'm glad to have finally given them a home, creating a very respectable album in the process.
Sources:
- The Kinks - The Kink Kronikles
- The Kinks - The Great Lost Kinks Album
- Dave Davies - Hidden Treasures
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