They had Eire Apparent as support who were both tighter and louder. I saw them live the year after Village Green and they were lacklustre, and I thought very rough around the edges. They were trying to escape the clutches of Larry Page and Eddie Kassner, who were withholding their royalties. In Record Collector they admit their live shows were a mess. The Kinks only played four times between December 1967 and April 1968, cancelling many gigs. Producer Shel Talmy quit, followed by their booking agent, Arthur Howes. First they’d been banned from the USA, Ray had a 1966 breakdown, then Wonderboy was their first single to fail to chart. 1968 had been a bad year for The Kinks with an unsuitable package tour with The Herd, The Tremeloes and Gary Walker, ‘a trawl round Swedish funfairs’ and as they were completing Village Green they found themselves playing Northern Working Men’s Clubs, the nadir of life as an oldies group. Record Collector #485, November 2018 has the best ever write up of the album by Nick Hasted, with quotes from Ray Davies, Dave Davies and Mick Avory. It had already been a hit and Ray probably envisaged the white Marble Arch sleeve with “Days and Eleven Other Great Songs From The Kinks” (Marble Arch never exceeded 12 tracks) nine months down the line. Just as The Beatles did in withholding Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lanefrom Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Kinks withheld Days from the Village Green project. Ray Davies has admitted that the single Days was part of the same Village Green concept. Marble Arch was where Village Greenwas recorded. Marble Arch studios lacks the cachet of EMI’s Abbey Road, as it was also used for recording masses of cheap EPs with six covers of hit records on labels like Avenue. Marble Arch was named from the location of Pye Studios, in the ATV building at Marble Arch at the end of Oxford Street … ATV owned most of Pye. The Kinks LPs ended up on budget Marble Arch Marble Arch was never the fate of Village Green though. As a result, a lot of collectable Chess R&B which was first issued briefly on Pye International, remains collectable in its Golden Guinea or Marble Arch edition. An album needed a lead single, and Pye would shove an LP out then a few months later, re-issue it on their budget labels … first Golden Guinea (21 shillings, or £1.05 compared to 32 shillings, or £1.60 for a normal LP), then later at an even lower price Marble Arch (12 shillings and sixpence, or 62.5p) which is where Kinks compilations ended up. The Kinks were on the Pye label, and Pye never understood the 60s LP market. The Beatles sold two million. Both The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society and The Beatles were released on 22nd November 1968. Apparently, Something Else by The Kinks and The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society sold 25,000 copies between them. Village Green got lost at the time in the Christmas 1968 battle between the two albums with blank white covers (Did the Stones never tire of following The Beatles’ ideas?). The message was “don’t let’s get rid of everything – let’s try to integrate the new with the old.ĭave Davies, The Independent, 4 October 2018ĭave Davies? It sounds like Robbie Robertson talking about Music From Big Pink. Because there was an atmosphere in ’67 and ’68 of “get rid of everything that’s old and worn out” but certain things you can’t replace. The thing that I liked very much is that maybe some things are worth keeping. Just like Music From Big Pink it harked back lyrically and musically, while creating something new. It finally earned its gold disc for 100,000 British sales in November 2018. I would never have said this in 1968 or 1978 or 1998, but for me (now) the best of the British bunch is The Village Green Preservation Society. The greatest for me will always be Music From Big Pink, but the other four were all British releases, as Hendrix was still based here. 2018 saw Music From Big Pink from The Band, The Beatles (The White Album), Beggar’s Banquet from The Rolling Stones, Odgen’s Nut Gone Flake from The Small Faces, Electric Ladyland from Jimi Hendrix, The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society from The Kinks. The Box Set is taking up the high-end slack in the record industry, and now they’ve hit upon the 50 thAnniversary. People are screaming its praises now, but when it came out, people were scared of it.They didn’t get it. Village Green Recordings is a British independent label reshaping the landscape of minimalism, classical and electronic music.The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
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