Preservation, Act 1 (The Kinks, 1973)

If anybody needed a reminder by 1973 that the Kinks had moved a long way from "You Really Got Me" and all of those early hits, the ambitious two-part "Preservation" should have served that purpose quite well. In 1966, between a well-documented nervous breakdown by Ray Davies and a US performance ban, the band veered into quaint tea and tobacco territory, while their peers (The Who, the Rolling Stones, etc.) embraced LSD, pot, and flower power. In spite of producing some of the finest work in their extensive career during the following three years, the band nearly vanished from the public stage altogether. During these "kwyet" times, Ray Davies wrote a little song called "Village Green", which failed to make the cut for 1966's "Face to Face" or 1967's "Something Else". However the idea went into full blossom in 1968 with the release of their first concept album, "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society" (a full year before "Tommy", mistakenly called the first rock concept album). Like its two predecessors, the album basically went nowhere, and to add insult to injury, bassist Pete Quaife permanently left the group after its release. 1969's "Arthur" would continue the early concept album era of the band's history, but with a little more heft that "Village Green". In 1970, the group finally nailed their first big hit in years with "Lola" and was finally freed from the performance ban. The "Lola" album was somewhat of a concept album, but like the following two albums, it was more rooted in individual songs. In 1973, however, the "Village Green" idea came back more powerful than ever, launching four grandiose concept albums that largely wiped out their British fan base, but set the stage for a surprising resurgence Stateside.

Unlike many rock concept albums ("Tommy", "The Wall", "S.F. Sorrow"), Ray Davies' writing tend to explore issues we would normally consider kind of dull, at least in a musical context: imminent domain, corporate greed, unions and government takeovers, and so forth and so on. And unlike some albums of the period ("Thick As A Brick"), Ray was deadly serious about all of it! Although he may look at individuals in the community setting, the concept is not really about a single individual's story. If any individual dominates "Preservation", it's the evil Mr. Flash (corporate greed) and his death struggle with the yet-to-be-named and not-so-great-himself Mr. Black (socialist forces), with the villagers (the "sheep") being tossed about like pawns. This album gets heavily panned by the critics, but there are some really good tracks on here. You need to dig a bit through the schmaltz to find them, but a number of them hold up in their own right. As an album listening experience it is fairly enjoyable as well. I cannot speak for Part 2 (yet), but I know it was a different album than a mere continuation of Part 1, which left a lot of people confused. I will have to listen for myself, but it's high time I continue boldly into the wild world of 1970's Kinks concept albums. This remains the last Kinks album I got, and that was quite some time ago!