The Musical Box

the kinks: something else by the kinks (released september 1967)

What better way to bid adieu to summer as we know it than with Waterloo Sunset, Ray Davies’ epic love letter to London and the worldly finale to Something Else by the Kinks. As always was the case with The Kinks, Something Else - which also featured the spry Brit-pop of David Watts and brother Dave Davies’ bittersweet Death of a Clown - was eclipsed by, well, something else - namely the release of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band three months earlier. If there was justice in the pop world, The Kinks would have been as big as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. Still, the fading vision of a day’s - or a summer’s - tranquility on Waterloo Sunset remains unequalled in any rock pantheon. It reigns on as a perfect pop song.

With Something Else, we conclude our Summer Album of the Week series. Here is a recap of the picks than have run in The Musical Box every Saturday since Memorial Day weekend.

5/23 - Roxy Music: Avalon (released May 1982)

5/30 - Jeff Beck: Wired (released May 1976)

6/06 - Bruce Springsteen: Darkness on the Edge of Town (released June 1978)

6/13 - Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (released June 1998)

6/20 - Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps (released June 1979)

6/27 - The Rolling Stones: Some Girls (released June 1978)

7/04 - Creedence Clearwater Revival: Cosmo’s Factory (released July 1970)

7/11 - The Who: Who’s Next (released July 1971)

7/18 - Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Imperial Bedroom (released July 1982)

7/25 - Fairport Convention: Unhalfbricking (released July 1969)

8/01 - Talking Heads: Fear of Music (released August 1979)

8/08 - Santana: Santana (released August 1969)

8/15 - The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced? (released August 1967)

8/22 - The Beatles: Revolver (released August 1966)

8/29 - The Beach Boys: Surf’s Up (released August 1971)

9/05 - The Kinks: Something Else by the Kinks (released September 1967)