Face To Face by The Kinks

Face to Face by The Kinks

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Face To Face by The KinksAfter quickly rising to pop acclaim, Ray Davies and The Kinks morphed towards concept albums in the late 1960s. Face to Face, the group’s fourth studio album released in October 1966, featured a fine collections of short pop-oriented songs that were loosely affiliated thematically with observations of society. Musically, the 14 tracks explored many new and diverse styles ranging from traditional English music hall to the emerging psychedelic sound.

The group toured the world in early 1965 but, after their shows in the United States, the American Federation of Musicians would refuse permits for the group to appear in concerts for the next four years due to their rowdy behavior on stage. 1965 saw the group record and release two albums, Kinda Kinks and The Kink Kontroversy, which each saw the group branch out stylistically, with the latter album including session musician Nicky Hopkins on keyboards.

The lead single from Face to Face, “Sunny Afternoon”, became a blockbuster hit in the summer of 1966. The most indelible and popular song on the album, it is built on descending riffs over calmly strummed acoustic guitar and a nice changeup to seventh chords in the choruses which excellently portray the easiness illuminated in the lyrics. Although not included on the album, he single’s B-side “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” was a unique and intense song with an unambiguous message that builds in intensity on the delivery of that title message when guitarist Dave Davies takes over lead vocals. With great momentum from both sides of this single, the group headed to the studio with producer Shel Talmy to make the ret of the album.

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Face to Face by The Kinks
Released: October 23, 1966 (Pye)
Produced by: Shel Talmy
Recorded: Pye Studios, London, October 1965–June, 1966
Side One Side Two
Party Line
Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home
Dandy
Too Much on My Mind
Session Man
Rainy Day in June
A House in the Country
Holiday in Waikiki
Most Exclusive Residence for Sale
Fancy
Little Miss Queen of Darkness
You’re Lookin’ Fine
Sunny Afternoon
I’ll Remember
Primary Musicians
Ray Davies – Lead Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards
Dave Davies – Guitars, Vocals
Nicky Hopkins – Piano, Keyboards
Pete Quaife – Bass, Vocals
Mick Avory – Drums, Percussion

The opening track “Party Line”, co-written by both Davies brothers, is straight forward pop/folk/rocker with consistent drumming by Mick Avory throughout, while the following “Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home” leans more towards psychedelic rock, with Hopkins’ ever-present harpsichord and its overall melancholy feel. This second song was directed towards Rosy Davies, the sister of Ray and Dave Davies who had moved to Australia in 1964, an event which would later be the subject of the 1969 concept album, Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire).

The upbeat folk track “Dandy” became a hit throughout Europe and it would later be covered by several subsequent acts like Herman’s Hermits and The Rockin’ Vickers. On “Too Much on My Mind” there is good interplay between the bass guitar of Pete Quaife and the acoustic with harpsichord coming in and adding much color, ll making it the best song on the album thus far. Slightly lesser quality but still entertaining are the three songs that round off side one, “Session Man”, “Rainy Day in June” and “A House in the Country”.

The Kinks, 1966

The album’s second side begins with the Hawaiian-flavored “Holiday in Waikiki” followed by the folksy “Most Exclusive Residence for Sale”. Perhaps the most interesting stretch of the album begins with the acoustic “Fancy” followed by the jazzy “Little Miss Queen of Darkness”, which features John Dalton on bass as it was recorded during a short period in July 1966 when Quaife temporarily quit The Kinks. “You’re Lookin’ Fine” is a riff driven rocker, played in an understated manner which doesn’t quite realize its full potential, as demonstrated by Syndicate Of Sound’s 1969 cover of the song. The original album concluded with the fine pop/rocker “I’ll Remember”, featuring great guitar tones and an animated boogie piano beneath a deliberative, George Harrison-like melody. The song was the earliest track on the album, having originally been recorded during sessions for The Kink Kontroversy in 1965.

Less than a month after the release of Face to Face, the group released the non-album single “Dead End Street” / “Big Black Smoke”, which further enhanced the group’s sound. The Kinks’ music in 1966 commenced a five-year period that Ray Davies would later refer to as their “golden age”.

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1966 Images

Part of Classic Rock Review’s celebration of 1966 albums.

The Monkees 1966 debut

The Monkees

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The Monkees 1966 debutIn October 1966, The Monkees released their self-titled debut record, which would become the first of four consecutive number one albums in the US. The album debuted one month after The Monkees television series first aired. While the group was visually portrayed as a traditional four-piece rock band on TV, on this debut record the four members provided nothing but vocals on all but two of the twelve album tracks and no tracks featured all four members of the Monkees.

The initial concept for the Monkees dates back to 1962 and and an unsuccessful attempt to sell the series by filmmaker Bob Rafelson. Two years later Rafelson and Bert Schneider formed Raybert Productions and that year’s success of the Beatles’ debut film A Hard Day’s Night inspired the team to revive the idea for The Monkees. In April 1965, Raybert sold the show to Screen Gems Television with the original idea of casting the New York folk rock group, The Lovin’ Spoonful. After that initial plan fell through Davy Jones, a then-current actor at Screen Gems, was cast as the first member of a new fabricated group, with a call for the remainder of the band/cast members put out in September 1965. Out of more than 400 applicants, Micky Dolenz, Mike Nesmith and Peter Tork were signed on to The Monkees. All three had previously worked as musicians at differing levels and, once The Monkees was picked up as a series, development of the musical side of the project accelerated.

Producers Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart were enlisted as chief songwriters for the project and Columbia and Screen Gems entered into a joint venture called Colgems Records as a label and distributor of Monkees records. While the newly formed group did practice playing as a group, Boyce and Hart decided to use top session players for the recording of two albums that were the soundtrack of the TV show’s first season. Music for the debut album was recorded over several sessions in Los Angeles during the summer of 1966.

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The Monkees by The Monkees
Released: October 10, 1966 (Colgems)
Produced by: Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Jack Keller & Michael Nesmith
Recorded: Los Angeles, June-July 1966
Side One Side Two
(Theme From) The Monkees
Saturday’s Child
I Wanna Be Free
Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day
Papa Gene’s Blues
Take a Giant Step
Last Train to Clarksville
This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day
Let’s Dance On
I’ll Be True to You
Sweet Young Thing
Gonna Buy Me a Dog
Group Members
Micky Dolenz
Davy Jones
Mike Nesmith
Peter Tork

Beginning with the signature television opening “(Theme From) The Monkees”, the debut record features Dolenz on lead vocals for most tracks, including the rather hard rock turn on the Davis Gates-penned “Saturday’s Child”. “I Wanna Be Free” is the first of a trio to features Jones on lead vocals with Nesmith taking lead on the pair of tracks he composed, “Papa Gene’s Blues” and “Sweet Young Thing”. While Tork does not sing lead on any tracks, he is the only Monkee to play an instrument anywhere on the album, providing guitar on the two aforementioned Nesmith tracks.

“Last Train to Clarksville” was the album’s biggest hit as it topped the US pop charts and was subsequently featured in seven episodes of the TV series. This jangly folk/rock tune was musically inspired by the Beatles’ recent hit “Paperback Writer”, with lyrics of a man phoning the woman he loves and urging her to meet him at a train station before he must leave, possibly on his way to war.

The Monkees

The Monkees was a worldwide success, topping the charts in several countries, including the US where it remained at number one for a quarter of a year. The album only lost it’s top spot when the group’s follow-up album More of the Monkees, recorded it late 1966 and released in January 1967, took over the number one spot, Combined, the Monkees held the number one album spot in the US for over 30 consecutive weeks.

As swiftly as this success was obtained, the group’s television and recording popularity did not last all that long. After just two successful seasons, the Monkees’ television series was canceled in 1968 as the group members wanted to take a more personal stake in their music and film output. Head, their one and only feature film, was a commercial disaster as it directly challenged the Monkees’ curious stardom but this only served to disconcert their strongest fan base.

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1966 Images

Part of Classic Rock Review’s celebration of 1966 albums.