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The Kinks Album: “Pye Album Collection”
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Pye Album Collection |
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Release Date:2008-09-16
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Type:Unknown
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Genre:Classic Rock, Hard Rock, Mainstream Rock
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Label:Castle
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Explicit Lyrics:Yes
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UPC:5050749411259
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Review - :
This box set delivers both a little more and a little less than it promises -- though the packaging is so cryptic that it's difficult to say precisely what it does promise. Billed as {^The Pye Album Collection}, it contains ten nicely packaged mini-LP sleeves (each with an appropriate inner sleeve to protect the CD -- are you listening, {@Sony Classical}, {@Rhino Handmade}, and {@Hip-O Select}?) representing the group's ten original albums for {@Pye Records}. Not that these haven't been available before in various incarnations on both sides of the Atlantic (including some extant audiophile editions) and loaded up with bonus tracks -- but the producers have correctly reckoned that for the fans, on some level, {$the Kinks} are like {$the Beatles}, {$the Rolling Stones}, and {$the Who}, in that their albums carry some serious significance for a lot of people, standing up well on their own and also evoking a specific time and place in listeners' respective pasts. There are no bonus tracks anywhere here, and onlookers should also be reminded that {$the Kinks} released a ton of important singles early in their history -- including {&"All Day and All of the Night,"} {&"A Well Respected Man,"} {&"Dedicated Follower of Fashion,"} and {&"Till the End of the Day"} -- that were never part of any official LPs (except greatest-hits compilations) and, thus, are not represented here in any form. But that said, on the original {@Pye} albums themselves, the spot-on, state-of-the-art, up-to-date mastering is so close that you feel like the {$Davies} brothers' guitars are in the room with you on {&"So Mystifying"} and {&"Just Can't Go to Sleep"} (from their self-titled debut LP), and everything on the disc sounds that way. On the other hand, the makers have opened that album with {&"You Really Got Me,"} which was track number seven on the original LP, and also moved {&"Too Much Monkey Business"} from its spot at track number 11, and everything except for {&"You Really Got Me"} is in stereo, which is OK because they got the sound right (in fact, better than it was on the original LP). And the cover is a kind of hybrid, re-creating a Japanese cover for the album (with all songs listed in Japanese), and using the title "{^Kinks}" on the spine but {^Kinks-Size} on the front cover. {^Kinda Kinks}, by contrast, contains only 12 songs (no singles) and a French {@Vogue Records} cover (which uses the title "The Kinks" on its front and back jackets). {^Kink Kontroversy} is present with the art from the Italian version (cover title "United Kinksdom") and the basic 12 songs. {^Face to Face} is offered with its familiar U.K. cover art missing, replaced by a really cool photo of the band from the Greek version of the album. And {^Live at Kelvin Hall} uses a cheerful shot of the bandmembers, all holding clocks, from the French issue. The real treat, however, is the Japanese version of {^Something Else}, with its shot of the bandmembers staring out in full color, while the foreground presents as pretty a {\psychedelic} array of flowers as anyone saw in 1967. {^Village Green Preservation Society} appears in its ornate Italian jacket, with its cheerful shot of the band on a grassy field, and {^Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)}, in its Dutch sleeve, has the black-and-white profiles of the bandmembers flanked by visual Victoriana, including the old girl herself. {^Lola vs. the Powerman & the Money-Go-Round, Pt. 1} features the familiar U.K. and U.S. art, and {^Percy} -- which is really an afterthought as an album -- offers the U.K. sleeve art. The total running time seems skimpy for a ten-CD set, but the price is right and the packaging is fun. ~ Bruce Eder, All Music Guide
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