Dreaming of Future Nostalgia

Album: The Kinks, Greatest Hits, 1968

Best Track: "A Dedicated Follower of Fashion"

Lasting Memory: By my best recollection, I recorded my cassette copy of this 1968 Kinks greatest hits collection off my mother's copy of the album pictured at left during the summer of 1985.

Looking back, it's kind of remarkable that my Mom owned this album. It would have come out when she was raising two 2-year-old girls and pregnant with two more girls. Also, my Dad would have been on deployment with the Navy for most of the year. She had more important things to do 40 years ago than run out to the record store. Maybe she received the album as a gift.

However she got it, she still had the Kinks Greatest Hits when I was ready to hear it and fall in love with it in the mid-1980s. She had probably 300 other records, too, ranging from the original cast recordings of Man of La Mancha and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum ... to an autographed copy of Meet the Beatles and a sealed copy of Charlie Parker's One Night in Birdland.

My siblings and I never got around to appreciating most of those disks, a majority of which Mom picked up while working at Capitol Records in New York City. The ones we did play, we routinely destroyed. (What would that Beatles album sleeve be worth now? Damn.)

A handful of the records, we had the foresight to preserve on cassette, like I did with this Kinks compilation.

I hadn't listened to my tape for probably 20 years. What would be the point, since classic rock and oldies radio stations still have the Kinks in heavy rotation?

Here's the point: The Kinks kick ass. They kick so much ass, my neighbor is probably rubbing her butt right now. You're probably sore in the hindquarters just from reading about the Kinks, they kick so much ass.

And what is truly amazing to me is that "You Really Got Me" was recorded in 1964. 1964! Did anything on the radio -- or anywhere in the world, for that matter -- sound like the riff to "You Really Got Me" in 1964? Where did that come from, and what must it have been like to hear the song for the first time in 1964 or 1965?

The first question's answer is part of rock 'n' roll histo-mythology: Dave Davies got mad at his brother Ray, got drunk, and carved up his guitar amp with a straight razor. The fuzztone was born. Marry that to the power chord, which surf guitarist had appropriated from Chicago bluesmen about a decade earlier, and you've got the perfect two-plus minutes of rock nirvana that is "You Really Got Me."

The second question's answer is probably, "It felt like hearing a good song for the first time." History doesn't happen in the moment. By definition, and with a deeper truth than any tautology should have, history is made by time. And, boy, have the singles the Kinks released between 1964 and 1968 stood the test of time and proved themselves to be historically significant.

I have a theory that every great rock band has wanted to be the Kinks. I'll expand on that a couple of posts from now. For the time being, just take a look at the track list on the cover of the album picture above. For the second time in this mini essay, permit me to type, damn (Read: Da-DAMN!).

Also, to amuse yourself, click on the following links and start building your own band genealogies that start with the Kinks at the root of the tree:

"A Well Respected Man"

"A Dedicated Follower of Fashion"

"Something Better Beginning"

"All Day and All of the Night"

Up Next: Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman, 1988 (missed this one earlier)