The Kinks
The Village Green Preservation Society

THE REVIEW

And Ray, or the wisest of them all, and, who knows, perhaps even the most talented, said: “Am I the only one who thinks they're all crazy?”

But what had happened? What? Oh nothing, only that English pop had turned into a kindergarten and a showcase of oddities and eccentricities presented by door-to-door salesmen dressed in the latest fashion.

Some then, starting with the most famous ones, had shown evident signs of imbalance. Syd's eyes had dimmed... and John, John had been stopped just in time before issuing a mad press release.

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And Ray?

One of his close friends spoke for him: “Nothing can beat going to the cinema, a couple of pints, and a smoke. We all agree that the Sunday lunch is the greatest achievement of paradise.”

And anyway, Ray had recently come back from a nervous breakdown.

“I woke up and asked: when are we leaving for Belgium?”

“It’s all right Ray, you just had a crisis, you’ll get better soon.”

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A few years later Ray wrote the songs of the green village, a bright/dusty collection of figurines set in a reassuring and provincial inner Shangri-La.

Again the Sunday lunch, then. But also, in no particular order: “strawberry jam, little shops, porcelain cups, music hall, Mrs. Mopp, the church, the bell tower, the family photo album.”

The opposite of psychedelia, one would say, and at the same time, the ultimate example of it. Those songs, in fact, were nothing more than a refuge in a suspended world, outside of time, existing only in the mind of its author.

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Psychedelia, despite itself. Or, even, without its knowledge.

Or maybe just the old refuge in the dear things of bad taste. Which makes one almost wonder what good old Gozzano would have thought of it.

Gozzano? Yes, Gozzano... and maybe let's throw in the barrel organ too.

And anyway, not the psychedelia of cosmic flights, but the purely English one that smells of old attics, marches, and the like.

And it's not just the words...

It takes just a little one/two/three among the tracks on the album to understand that those slightly funny sounds must have surely passed through a dusty contraption, something like a Victorian music box which is, in fact, the (very very English) counterpart of our barrel organ.

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If then you want to know what the good Ray put in that fabulous magic box, well, let’s say the list is long and you can find it in any review of this album.

From my side, I'll just tell you that he put in everything needed to write songs wonderfully swaying between liveliness, lightness, and depression.

Depression? Oh yes, depression.

It wasn't just the others, dear Ray, you weren't all there either.

Furthermore, I don’t feel all there either, and I imagine neither do you reading this.

Really? You’re all there? Really?

Really?

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And anyway, Ray and Dave have said everything about this record...

“For Ray, the project was imbued with a therapeutic intent” Dave Davies

“I retreated into my small, simple world of little shops and black and white English films; perhaps it was my form of psychedelia” Ray Davies

Clearer than that...

Aloha....