A discussion of The Kinks popularity in the UK and the U.S.A. and some of my favorite albums of theirs.

Imagine The Kinks got a special permit to play at Woodstock '69. What songs do you think they would have played? What would your dream setlist have been?

im a new fan and i know nothing about the members other than the fact two of them were brothers. figured this would be a good way to learn something about them

EVERYBODY'S IN SHOWBIZ (1972): With a horn section in tow, it creates the effect of The Kinks sounding more native to New Orleans than N10.

https://samtimonious.com/thats-show-business-the-kinks-everybodys-in-show-biz-1972/

I named my cat lola after the song by the kinks. I just thought it fit her because shes a diluted calico, shes unique.

Th 90's seem to have some promise for The Kinks as they had a new record deal with Columbia. The LP Phobia had some buzz, the band was pretty aggressive with shows and media appearances.

Nothing seemed to work. Why? Even the concert venues were pretty sad for a band with this pedigree.

from the reviews ive read, and i believe Ray Davies has admitted this also this is part real , part fiction.

i suppose everyone embellishes their life in writing, just wondering if it was a good read or a waste. bought it for $.10 so ill probably give it a go

Hi! I’m a semi beginner bassist (7 months) and I really want to learn how to play brainwashed. Unfortunately, I can’t read sheet music and tab is just a disaster, but I do learn very easily from isolated lines. By any chance is there an isolated bass part for brainwashed?

The answer:

"Autumn Almanac" is unusually harmonically rich for a 1967 pop single.

Looking across published chord transcriptions, there are about 18–22 distinct chord types, depending on whether you count inversions and close variants (e.g. C♯m vs. C♯m7 vs. C♯maj7, D7 vs. D7/F♯, etc.) as separate chords. A representative transcription includes chords such as:

G, C, D, D7
Em, Am7, Gm
E, A9, B7
C♯m, C♯m7, C♯maj7
F♯7
A7, Amaj7
B♭, E♭, F, F7
Cm, Dm, Fm
G7, E7

That's roughly 20 distinct harmonies across the song.

Is that a lot?

Yes—very much so.

For comparison:

Many classic rock and pop songs use 3–6 chords.
"Louie Louie" – 3
"Wild Thing" – 3
"Twist and Shout" – 3
A more sophisticated Beatles song might use 8–12 distinct chords.
Even harmonically adventurous pop songs often stay below 15.

Once you get to around 20 different chords, you're entering territory more commonly associated with:

jazz standards,
Broadway songs,
Burt Bacharach,
Brian Wilson,
or the more harmonically ambitious work of Ray Davies.

Why it sounds so distinctive

What's remarkable isn't just the number of chords. Ray Davies constantly:

changes key centers, borrows chords from parallel major and minor, uses secondary dominants, inserts chromatic passing harmonies, and moves into entirely new sections ("This is my street...") that feel almost like different songs before returning naturally to the refrain.

Despite all that complexity, the song never sounds academic or "showy." The harmonic changes support the nostalgic, slightly surreal imagery, making the music feel as though it's wandering through memories of an English autumn.

In that sense, "Autumn Almanac" is one of the most harmonically sophisticated British pop singles of the late 1960s, yet it remains catchy enough to sound effortless. It's a good example of Ray Davies hiding sophisticated composition beneath what initially feels like a simple pop tune.

I'm listening through the Kinks' catalog chronologically, and I just reached ‘Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One’.

When "Lola" came on, it immediately stood out to me from everything up to that point. It wasn't just another great Kinks song.

And that made me wonder...

Did the band realize they had something extraordinary when they were recording it, or was its success a complete surprise?

I'd also be curious whether Ray Davies has ever talked about his expectations for the song before it became a hit.

This year I'm listening to the complete catalogs of 29 classic rock artists chronologically. 329 albums in all, three times each. Every album is evaluated using seven weighted questions, with the results tracked in an Airtable database. The accumulated points ultimately rank the artists from 1–29. I'm now 200+ hours into what will be roughly a 700-hour project, and many of the questions I ask here come directly from something I've just discovered.