Princes of Punk

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Classic rock ends – or begins, depending on your P.O.V. – in 1981, with the final masterpieces by one half of the British Invasion Big 4: Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Who. Lennon was dead, and so was Keith Moon, but the Stones released Tattoo You and the Kinks put out Give the People What They Want.

Jagger had heard Joe Strummer’s 1977 rally cry, “No Elvis, Beatles, or the Rolling Stones,” and though history now records both the Clash and Sex Pistols as fans of Keith Richards’ pirate crew, 1978’s Some Girls brought the whip down on both disco and punk. “Respectable” tempos were back down to Godfather speeds on Tattoo You three years later.

Ray and Dave Davies had been pissed off since 1964’s “You Really Got Me,” so by the late 1970s they were bemused by UK punks shoveling dirt on their coffins. Beginning in February 1977, on Sleepwalker, and continuing through Misfits (’78), Low Budget (’79), live laceration One For the Road (1980), and peaking perfectly on Give the People What They Want, the Kinks defined Ray Davies’ “Prince of the Punks.” Picture Book, the new 6-CD overview of the Muswell Hill(billy) quartet, isn’t quite perfect, but it sneers in all the right places and faces.

Though still import-only and ranging from $70-$90, the new box set plays out a musical arc for the ages. Quibbles abound, starting with the clunky configuration of six CD jewel cases (standard should be the mini book style of Ian McLagan’s supreme Faces comp, Five Guys Walk Into a Bar), and including a Ray-centric (but otherwise excellent) historical recounting, and finally crowned in contrarian fashion by the fact that the Kinks’ single biggest identifier – for better or worse – after “Lola” is included here in demo form only. Don't invite Picture Book compiler Ray Davies to “Come Dancing.”

Gloriously, rock & roll’s Lon Chaney wouldn’t be Ray Davies – Man of 1,000 Moods – without equal measures of theater’s laughing/crying masks and the emotional expanse between them. Rather than cramming 30 years of unparalleled songwriting and sibling chemistry into the usual 4-CD “greatest hits” format, Picture Book’s six discs ebb and flow with a much greater tidal pull, its final “volume” finally running out of gas only in its concluding songs as the Kinks ground to an unceremonious halt in 1996.

Disc one snaps and bangs on nearly three dozen two-minute pop firecrackers, beginning with the sewing needle piercing heard round the rock, “You Really Got Me.” Intimately tinny yet completely confident 1964 comrade, “Stop Your Sobbing,” backed by bopping blues cop “I Gotta Move” and outright “You Really Got Me” steal “Don’t Ever Let Me Go,” joins “All of the Day and All of the Night” and “Tired of Waiting For You” in the cavalcade of hits. Previously unissued overdubs on Dave Davies’ “Come On Now” make you giddy, as do Ray’s contrasting moods on the pensive “There’s a New World Opening for Me” and sunny “A Little Bit of Sunlight.” Indelibles “Set Me Free,” piano prank and U.S. rarity “I Go to Sleep,” plus “A Well Respected Man,” “Til the End of the Day,” and self-explanatory single “Sittin’ on My Sofa” go off one after the other.

Disc two divulges a cornucopia of Ray Davies pop lit, from pillow bash “She’s Got Everything” to the timelessly iconoclastic “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.” Three cuts from Something Else precursor Face to Face includes “Rosy Won’t You Please Come Home,” a natural building block to the former smash LP’s “Two Sisters,” “David Watts,” and eternal “Waterloo Sunset.” Brotherly co-write “Death of Clown” realizes a sibling potential otherwise filled by fisticuffs rather than collaboration. Singular pleasures such “Autumn Almanac” complement little-heard buoyancies by both Ray (“Rosemary Rose”) and Dave (“Lincoln County”). Conceptual run Village Green Preservation Society, Lola Vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, and Arthur (Or the Rise and Fall of the British Empire, 1969-1970, each get five tracks on volume three, which includes viral earwigs “Victoria” and “Ape Man,” plus the latter’s simian relative, “King Kong,” and pastoral proclivities such as “Shangri-La.”

Disc three segues deliciously rootsy 1971 sleeper Muswell Hillbilles into the fourth CD’s spin-off Everybody’s In Showbiz, pausing for bucolic cynicism on “Sitting in the Midday Sun” and genuine feeling with “Sweet Lady Genevieve.” Then it's a return to conceptual works in Preservation Act 1 and Preservation Act 2, which are offset by the “Purple Haze” riff of the former album’s title track, and its deliciously low-down live compliment with the latter’s “Slum Kids.” Soap Opera (“Holiday Romance”) and Schoolboys in Disgrace (“No More Looking Back”) finally cleanse the word “concept” from Davies’ vocabulary, leading to the Kinks’ rebirth on disc five – symbolically embodied in silky Sleepwalker period outtake “No Poseur.”

Word of Mouth (1984), inches shy of Give the People What They Want, finalizes the Kinks’ second great act after its 1964-1972 peak. Picture Book’s round-up of late-period firepower satisfies new acolyte values while sending Arista era fans rushing back into the catalog. Here, Misfits' emancipating title track still melts into its magic album mate, FM hit “Rock & Roll Fantasy.” Low Budget lowers the boom via “Attitude,” which still sounds best at the cocaine tempos of One for the Road, preserved in Picture Book by the former LP’s title track. Low Budget’s “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” the second greatest use of Bill Wyman’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” riff, zaps like Raid on roaches once Dave tosses off right speaker metallurgy in a crossfire hurricane of heavy piano and sax. A diamond cluster of six Budget outtakes includes the heavy, Spector-meets-the-Beach Boys-ish “Maybe I Love You.” Give the People What They Want cracks skulls on “Lola” rebound “Destroyer,” ball breaker “Yo-Yo,” and devastating Lolita moment, “Art Lover.”

I saw the Kinks in 1981, in an intimate outdoor stone amphitheater on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Joe Ely opened. If the Clash in San Francisco the following year remain the fiercest band I’ve ever witnessed, the Kinks on the Give the People What They Want tour beg to differ. A photo finish just turned into a personal Picture Book moment.