anglo-audiophile:The Reviews

There’s this neat little thing you can do in Microsoft word that’s called “autosummarize.” This nifty little gadget will take the seven-page research paper you’ve written on the Kinks and summarize the thing to your specifications. For instance you can ask the auto summarizer to summarize said paper to less than 500 words and it will do it. It’s really quite cool.
Here’s the 499 word summary of my Kinks research essay. I would post the whole thing, but it’s a bit long, even for me.

Why Kinks Matter:
A Look at the Impact of the Kinks on British Rock Music

In 1964 the band formerly known as the Kinks, and then the Ravens, and finally again as the Kinks, released a song titled “You Really Got Me” as their third single and third try at chart success. The song, which came from their self-titled debut album, became the band’s highest charting single up to that point, reaching #1 in the UK Singles Chart and #7 in the US Billboard Hot 100. The song, recorded at Regent Sound Studios for the Pye label and produced by Shel Talmy, also became the song the Kinks are best known for and proved to be the template for much of the band’s early success. The group played a mix of covers and original songs written by Ray Davies, along with the occasional song written by Dave Davies. The particular style of the Kinks, as noted earlier, was that of basic rock and roll fervor. The band, thanks to lead guitarist Dave Davies, specialized early on in fast, aggressive guitar lines punctuated by Ray Davies nasally intonation and London accent. Lyrically, once Ray came into his own as a song writer, the band’s songs focused on life as experienced by any British citizen, but from a very cynical point of view. Occasionally the band would slip into a more melodic and acoustic style, which can be heard in some of their best known and loved songs. In the late 1970’s however the band gained new attraction due to a handful of extremely popular bands covering some of their earlier hits. The most notable of these bands were the Jam, who covered “David Watts” (Marten, Hudson). Like the Kinks, the Jam focused in on everyday British life with a penchant for fast paced, heavy on the guitar, songs. Like most of the Kinks’ slower song, the Jam used an acoustic style to accent the irony of the tenderness found within the songs. Blur, Oasis, and Pulp all claimed the Kinks as a major influence in their music, with Blur being the most musically related to the Kinks, Oasis being the most related to the Kinks in band structure (specifically the fact that they had two warring brothers in the band), and Pulp being the most lyrically related to the band (Marten, Hudson).
However the band’s Kinksian influence can be heard particularly well in their 1994 album Parklife. Within the album the listener can hear the two distinct styles originated by the Kinks, namely that of the hard driven guitar style and the softer acoustic style.  lyricsmania.com).

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