The Kinks-THE GREAT LOST KINKS ALBUM (1973)

Re-up, better rip. I don’t really know the exact lineage of this material, it seems to be a combination of a couple different GREAT LOST KINKS repackagings. Great stuff! -Ian!

For as long as there have been rarities-starved Kinks fans, The Great Lost Kinks Album has been a Holy Grail of sorts. Originally released by Reprise for a matter of nanoseconds back in 1973, this collection of 1967-1968 era outtakes was withdrawn at Ray Davies’ indignant insistence and has barely been heard of since. On the collectors market, original copies go for up to 50 dollars at a time, but even the Kinks archive programs of the late ’90s/early 2000s saw fit to salvage only a handful of its contents. If any record cried out for a bootleg revival, it was this one. Of course, there’s another secret locked away in the Kink vaults as well, the Great Lost Dave Davies solo album. Only this time, there isn’t even a swiftly deleted official version to chase — just a few tentative tapes made up by fans, a handful of circulating outtakes (including a few which made it onto Lost itself), and a lot of dreams of what might have been. Enter the ever-enterprising Goldtone CD-R label, with a two-for-one which cannot be beat. Tracks one through 14 reprise the original Reprise album, mastered from almost criminally clean vinyl (what kind of Kinks fans are these anyway, not to have worn out their copy with love?); 15 through 20 reprise Dave’s three solo singles; 21 through 25 round up the odds. And if you overlook the fact that the latter are so poorly preserved that they may as well not be present (play them once, then drop a few aspirin), what you get is what you’ve always dreamed of: a couple of legends which deserve to be legendary. Some of Ray’s (and all of Dave’s) finest compositions are here: the poignant “Til Death Us Do Part,” the bitter “Living Room Light” (since repackaged on the official At the BBC album) and the despairing “Where Did My Spring Go,” the national anthem for everyone who’ll never see 25 again. And so effortlessly do the songs hang together that it is impossible to believe that The Great Lost Kinks Album was simply some record company guy’s idea of cashing in quick on whatever flash of fame the Kinks were enjoying elsewhere in 1973. Rather, this is the album which should have followed Village Green; indeed, add the best bits of Arthur (“Shangri-La” included), and it might even have surpassed that album.

by Dave Thompson, allmusic.com

DOWNLOAD:
The Kinks-THE GREAT LOST KINKS ALBUM (1973)
320kbps