The Kinks - Village Green Preservation Society

[Matt]

MUSWELL HILLBILLIES is my favorite. It just feels to me like the Kinks' most successful marriage of concept and songs. VILLAGE GREEN and ARTHUR are always fighting it out for second place.

VILLAGE GREEN, though it has some of the best pop songs ever written, kinda falls apart near the end for me. Replace "Monica" and "People Take Pictures Of Each Other" with "Lavender Hill" and "Days," and you'd have a perfect album, IMO.

ARTHUR, though it rocks and I love the suite-like quality of its best songs ("Shangri-La" is THE Kinks song), suffers from being the first of the Kinks' "theatrical" albums. Ray's singing in wacky "character" voices, the music hall influence really starts to shine through, etc. All this is counterbalanced with some pretty fierce rockin' ("Brainwashed," "Mr. Churchill Says"), but this album is essentially the Kinks planting the seeds of their own destruction.

But yeah, best band ever.

[JonFromMaplewood]

Saw them on that tour in an arena. 

Dave was on fire.

My first concert was the Kinks on the "Give The People What They Want" tour.  New Haven Coliseum! 1982? 1983?

Anyway, I bought VGPS last year and heard it then for the first time.  Up until then I had only owned super-early and late-arena-rock Kinks. VGPS is currently my favorite Kinks album, but that may change as I start buying the 70's-era Kinks albums.

Someone also put Waterloo Sunset on a mix for me once. That remains my favorite (or should that be "favourite"?) Kinks song. 

[Lee Harvey Osmond]

Perfect pop song = Waterloo Sunset

And I'll third the calls of Muswell Hillbillies as an overlooked classic, probably my favorite at the moment.

[DennisFromHalifax]

Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS?  Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.

[masterofsparks]

Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS?  Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.

Big Sky is the obvious high point for me, but I really love Johnny Thunder as well.

[Matt]

Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS?  Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.

Right now, "Sitting By The Riverside."

[Crusherkc]

Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS?  Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.

I can't pick a single track but "Do You Remember Walter", "Picture Book", and "Johnny Walter" coming 2, 3, and 4 after opening with title song sealed the deal.

[Crusherkc]

"Johnny THUNDER"

Damn my typo.

[Gilly]

Village Green, Something Else and Arthur are three good albums with classic tracks, but I think they are the only band that I can call one of my favorites, probably top 10 for me, without having a classic 5 star album.

It shocks me that there hasn't been a movie made about the Kinks. The band could have been as big as The Beatles but they were banned from touring the US right when the British Invasion was happening.

[Key Loser]

Big Sky for me. Its a high mark for psychdelic rock, almost Who-esque in its drum guitar attack. Then the spoken word verses just take it to a different realm. What they were doing at the time was on a totally different level. Top tier British psych (if you can call it psych)

[JonFromMaplewood]

Whats everyones favorite song off of VGPS?  Mine right now is Steam Powered Trains, but i could pick pretty much any of them.

"Animal Farm" puts me in a very good mood.

[JonFromMaplewood]

"Starstruck" is a close second.

[nec13]

"People Take Pictures of Each Other" or "Village Green"

[break]

"Animal Farm" 

[cutout]

"Picture Book". Always thought "Wicked Annabella" was ahead of its time, too.