Despite the title of this three-CD box set, the Marble Arch Years , Ray Davies and his "kohorts" were never residents of Marble Arch. The Kinks are--and shall...... more
Despite the title of this three-CD box set, the Marble Arch Years , Ray Davies and his "kohorts" were never residents of Marble Arch. The Kinks are--and shall always remain--the Muswell Hillbillies. Marble Arch was a subsidiary label of Pye Records in the1960s and was formed to target budget-priced compilation albums at teen audiences whose spending budget couldn't stretch much beyond buying singles. Not that the artists themselves thoroughly endorsed such initiatives. While one of the
CDs here, "Kinda Kinks", is a straight 1969 reissue of The Kinks second album (albeit one with a more recent cover photo) the other two are pick & mix assortments of hits and fillers. Happily, on "Well Respected Kinks", the emphasis is thoroughly on the hits. Reaching Number 5 in the UK in 1966 and commercially outperforming The Kinks "album proper" Face to Face, "Well Respected Kinks" clocks in at 24 nifty, quibble-free minutes of timelessly classic Kinks, including such butter-finger guitar solo and granite chord stompers as "You've Really Got Me" and "All Day and All of the Night". "Sunny Afternoon", meanwhile, is loaded in favour of such famously sardonic vignettes as "Dedicated Follower of Fashion", even if, ironically, the fabulous sleevework finds the decidedly un-psychedelic foursome posing in a rainbow-coloured Buick. Each CD is housed in a miniature cardboard sleeve replicating the album's original artwork. And the sound quality outstrips most of those
TV-
advertised-style Kinks compilations. --Kevin Maidment
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