Listen: Day's / The Kinks
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How do you pick a Kinks single to write about, yet avoid the guilt of the dozens you’re not mentioning? Not possible. But listening back to this week’s PICK OF THE POPS program, on BBC’s Radio 2, where Dale Winton counts down selected Top 20’s from years gone by, (spanning the 60’s forward – with much accuracy, old style chart excitement and a generous sprinkle of camp thereby typifying a Sunday afternoon in England, all the guys in the pub just a pint away from slipping on their wives high heels fueled by a bit of POTP), I heard ‘Days’. It was in the 1968 chart that Dale was featuring. ‘Days’ has always been one of my most cherished records, and I have listened to it undoubtably thousands of times. I had a memorable life moment last November in London, walking from my hotel in Primrose Hill in the cold drizzling rain on a very grey Sunday to have late afternoon tea at my friend Tony King’s apartment, when I heard it in the headphones, following Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something In The Air’, played back to back on Radio 2. Being able to listen to the radio is a fascinating privilege not well known here in the States. This, my friends, was heaven. As much as I loved it when released in summer ‘68, and buying it at King Karol’s in NY (see US stock above, as well as a Ray Davies filled-out jukebox tab AND the UK promo copy/release sheet I got off John Peel, a true sweetheart)on a summer excursion to see some bands (Jethro Tull & The Jeff Beck Group at the Fillmore East then Terry Reid at The Scene, to be exact) – and of course buy records, I could never 100% enjoy it. I always felt so bitter and unsettled that it got no airplay anywhere in the States – and what a criminal shame it was that America again was being cheated by radio out of such great musical culture – a cancer that worsened year after year. No wonder we have what we have in our charts. But some justice has been served, Ray Davies still plays and his great songs, like ‘Days’, get used in films etc – and covered. What would have happened if singles like this, and bands like The Small Faces or The Pretty Things had been given a chance back then. No question, things would have been very different here.
