Monday, August 20, 2007

The Great Lost Kinks Album (and Bonus Track)

Those doggone Kinks, before discovering them, I didn't use to care about having every song by an artist. The Kinks are one of those rare bands that make such consistently great music. I find myself needing to own their entire recorded output. The Great Lost Kinks Album is an album I have owned since childhood, and have found it very hard to acquire all of these songs on CD. I own about 50 separate Kinks CDs, yet some of these songs are still proving to be quite elusive to find. There is another blog called Blues Town, that offers a link to the pure vinyl version exactly as it sounded in 1973. I recommend this link to the vinyl purists out there. For those like myself who want to hear how it might sound if Warner or Castle would ever issue it on CD, I am offering a link to a remastered edition. Only 3 songs on this version are taken from vinyl copies, the rest come from various Castle & Rhino CDs of expanded Kinks albums. A few songs are now in true stereo for the first time with this album. A portion of these tracks were intended to be released on an album to be named "Four More Respected Gentlemen" which was never released. Many of the other tracks were probably intended to be on "The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society", which Ray Davies Supposedly originally intended to make into a double LP. Many of these songs only appeared officially as b-sides to import singles. As an album it is not exceptionally strong, and differs greatly from the harder rock that The Kinks were usually known for. It does serve as a nice companion piece to The Kink Kronikles collection. Ray Davies was outraged at Warner/Reprise issuing this LP without his consent, and that is probably why it is such a rare album to this day. But for those of us that appreciate even The Kinks weaker songs, this is a must have LP. "Animals In The Zoo" has been offered as a bonus track, to hopefully make the LP stronger as a whole. It is from the same soundtrack as "The Way Love Used To Be", so it fits in conceptually as well. the album art shown here has been retouched by me so that the album title will be visible at jewel case size. To Ray or Dave and license holder, if you disapprove of this link, I will remove it immediately.

1 Till Death Do Us Part
2. There Is No Life Without Love
3. Lavender Hill
4. Groovy Movies
5. Rosemary Rose
6. Misty Water
7. Mister Songbird
8. When I Turn off the Living Room Light
9. The Way Love Used to Be
10. I'm Not Like Everybody Else
11. Plastic Man
12. This Man He Weeps Tonight
13. Pictures in the Sand
14. Where Did My Spring Go?
15. Animals In The Zoo (Bonus Track)

The Great Lost Kinks Album (LAME VBR mp3s)

10 comments:

Monsieur Personne said...

Hello !
I am myself an amateur of the Kink's Music,french amateur should I add, who tries to acquire their whole discography ( although, thankfully, I'm just a purist of their CDs releases so far!...and still, their LPs are quite difficult to find here in France...). I wondered if you knew where I could find the song "I'm Crying", written by the brother Dave? I thought it was on the Great Lost album but it seems to be nowhere...and I've already got all these songs...Thank you^^

Steve Engler said...

That song appears to be on a bootleg version of "Great Lost Kinks Album" as well as "Good Luck Charm".

Bill.Bo said...

just 1 word: GREAT!!! your blog as well as the music you present.

I´ve heard of that great lost album but never listened to it - thank you for presenting it here.

may your days be sunny : Bill.Bo

Anonymous said...

god bless you for posting this. I couldn't believe it. I have the record, but no way to make it mp3 files. I asked on Facebook last month if anyone had the cd an could make me a copy, but no lick You've made me VERY happy being to play this again. My TT doesn't work!

Steve Engler said...

Glad to be of help.

Anonymous said...

Is there any chance this is still available? I tried to download but it just goes to a site called 'BearShare' (or something similar)

Steve Engler said...

I just checked the file is still there. When the link takes you to the next page click on continue, then it should take you to the Megaupload link.

Unknown said...

I'll give it a try, someone asked me if i could post it on my Blog, and when i went to the wikipedia page the allmusic guide gave it 4 and a half stars, so this might sound interesting. Thanks for posting :)

Anonymous said...

I've been a Kinks fanatic since the early seventies. This album was always rare, expensive and hard to find, even at record shows. About 15 years ago I found a still shrink wrapped copy in a Baltimore pawn shop for a quarter! Made my day, but it is no longer shrink wrapped, I played it!

Anonymous said...

To Mons. Personne - 'I'm Crying' and several other Dave tracks are included on a 25-track reissue of this album...