For the longest time, this 1966 greatest hits collection comprised my entire early Kinks, other than a live album we’ll talk about next and an odd Portuguese compilation. It seems that I was not alone in that, as this was the only Kinks album to crack the US Top 10. As iconic as most of these songs are today, only three of the 10 songs on this album made the top 10 in the US. The other problems that kept the Kinks out of the US are well-documented; time has proven that American listeners were really missing out.
I bought this probably in 1979 at Desert Shore Records, a really nice copy in great shape – not something I can necessarily say about a lot of my $2 and $3 acquisitions from way back when. Nearly every song on this found its way onto a mix tape of the time. If you just wanted to get to know The Kinks, this is your record. But for many, many years, that was the extent of my early Kinks. Extraordinary songs, and yet I got no further into them. As I said last time, the “concept album” aspect of some of their records put me off at the time. I saw copies of “Lola Versus Powerman” or “Village Green Preservation Society,” but never picked them up because I just wasn’t into the concept of the concept at the time. I am correcting that now.
