1 A `floating lyric' in the blues is a line that is used in many different songs, for example “don't the moon look lonesome shining through the trees/don't your heart feel lonesome when your baby packs up and leaves” or in the case of this song “don't that sun look good goin' down?/that old moon looks lonesome when my baby's not around”. [RETURN}
2 Mick Avory had had a falling out with the rest of the band, especially Dave Davies, and barely plays on the album. [RETURN]
3 This would also make the slight homophobic/transphobic tinge of some of the lyrics seem slightly less offputting - Ray Davies has always been publicly ambiguous about his sexuality, while his brother is openly bisexual. If these lines are aimed at Davies himself, that would take the sting out of the song somewhat. [RETURN]
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4 According to The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller, part of the 33 1/3 series of books [RETURN]
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5 It's very similar to Prelude No 2 in C minor from the Well Tempered Clavier, but it's not identical. [RETURN]
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6 In an interview at http://kastoffkinks.co.uk [RETURN]
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7 A World In Action documentary on bronchitis from 1965 opened with shots which look almost identical to some shots from the video – it would be very surprising if that documentary hadn't influenced both the Dead End Street video and the Monty Python sketches which are often pointed to as being similar to it. At the time of writing a clip from this documentary can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW6L9oqnr4M& . [RETURN]
8 “Nice and smooth” has taken on its own life in pop culture, becoming a catchphrase of King Mob in Grant Morrison's comic series The Invisibles . [RETURN]
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9 At least, that's my best guess as to what has been done to the guitar sound on the early part of the track. Other people have suggested that it's slowed down to half speed. [RETURN]
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10 A sort of primitive synthesiser, mellotrons were keyboard instruments that had a bank of tapes inside them, of di#erent instruments playing every note. If you put it on, say, the flute setting and pressed middle C, a tape of a flute playing middle C would be heard. Mellotrons were very popular with British bands around this period, and probably the most famous example is the introduction to Strawberry Fields Forever by the Beatles. [RETURN]
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11 Note that while Paul McCartney has claimed that the Beatles were named in part after the Beetles, one of the two gangs in this film, it would have been impossible for any of the Beatles to have seen it until many years after the band formed, as it was banned in the UK until late 1967,and first shown in the UK at a private screening in 1968. [RETURN]
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12 According to Miller [RETURN]
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13 An absolutely astonishing album by US pop group the Turtles, which manages to combine their witty LA pop sensibility with the gentle wistfulness of Village Green Preservation Society. Anyone who likes the Kinks' music must listen to it. [RETURN]
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14 And I am indebted to Gavin Burrows and Gavin Robinson, in the discussions for a blog post I wrote about that Doctor Who story, at http://mindlessones.com/2012/02/11/doctor-who-fifty-stories-for-fifty-years-1969/ for the slightly more nuanced view of that consensus I present here. [RETURN]
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15 Note for Americans – many houses in the UK are known by names,rather than numbers, and Shangri-La would be a typical example of such a name (the cliched example would be Dunroamin.) Merely stating that a house is named this would, for a British person, mean they would be willing to give near-certain odds that the owners are over 55, have a doorbell that plays a snatch of a sentimental tune, a sticker in their window saying “no cold callers”, some form of garden gnome, quite possibly holding a sign saying “gran lives here”, and own a small dog, probably a terrier of some kind. The point being that this is a detail which implies a great deal to Davies' intended audience. The song would be very different were the house named “Spunker's Squalor” like the house Mick Avory and Dave Davies had shared a couple of years previously. [RETURN]
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16 In the song it's not made clear whether Lola is transgendered or transvestite, or even if Davies was entirely aware of the difference between the two, so I shall be using the term 'trans' to cover both in this piece. [RETURN]
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17 This was reissued in 2011 on Bananastan Records, the label of Van Dyke Parks, the album's producer, and is essential listening [RETURN]
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18 A style of music that became briefly popular in the early 1970s, as the first marriages of a lot of the older baby boomers started failing, and musicians of that age started putting out albums of "sensitive" songs apologising to their wives. [RETURN]
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19 The Mike Cotton Sound started out as trad jazz group The Mike Cotton Jazzmen in the 1950s, before becoming a beat group and later a soul group in the 1960s (Jim Rodford, the bass player with this line-up, would become the Kinks' bass player from 1978 to 1996.) By this point, though, Cotton had dropped the rhythm section and vocalists from his band, becoming solely a horn section. [RETURN]
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20 The best, of course, being Watford Gap by Roy Harper [RETURN]
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21 For those with Spotify, my own attempt at doing this can be found at http://open.spotify.com/user/stealthmunchkin/playlist/0G58jzUnBPQfrigP0ztJuc [RETURN]