What are you streaming tonight?

The Kinks Village Green album (a long-time favorite of mine) is getting the deluxe/boxset reissue treatment in the very near future. The album was part of the group’s fantastic "middle period" Face To Face/Something Else By/Village Green trilogy. After Village Green, original bassist Pete Quaife left the group, and Ray Davies started thinking in terms of the dreaded concept album. Thanks, The Beatles ;-) . The Kinks next album was Arthur, and it was all downhill from there.

The Kinks remained a great live band (I saw them in 1969 and ’70, or was it ’70 and ’71?), but their albums became less and less interesting with every release (to me, anyway). By the time their Reprise contract expired, and they signed to RCA, they were almost out of gas. They had one pretty good album left in them, Muswell Hillbillies, after which it was pretty much over. They had a real good run there for quite a while.

Ray Davies is my favorite writer of all the British bands, including the Nerk Twins ;-) . He is SO British, capturing and invoking the soul of that country in the same way Brian Wilson does the U.S. A. To continue the comparison, he is, as is Brian, an excellent melodist; "Waterloo Sunset" is absolutely magnificent, and he has written many others of equal caliber.

It was therefore disappointing to me when he embarked on his concept period, where the songs were written to support the greater whole, rather than standing on their own. Some of the songs were good, but many just served the function of furthering the narrative, sounding, as songs---their chords, the chord structures and sequences, melodies, etc.---more like the filler songs that lesser bands always fill out their albums with.

Ray Davies was also a great entertainer---very charismatic and amusing. And The Kinks had that very unique, trademark band sound. Ray was a true rhythm guitarist, as was John Lennon. But my God was his Telecaster loud! Extremely piercing and bright, as Tele's can be. And Dave is an under-rated lead guitarist, very exciting in a pure Rock 'n' Roll way (very little real Blues influence, rare for a Brit). He also has written some great songs (sprinkled throughout the group's albums), and is himself an interesting singer. Mick Avory is a wonderful drummer, and perfect for The Kinks in the way Ringo was for The Beatles. Very musical---a song player, not just a drummer. I think The Kinks may be my favorite British group of them all! Snappy dressers, too ;-) .

@uberwaltz and @reubent, I got to see Robben live many times when he was living in San Jose in the early 70’s. He and his brothers (Pat on drums, Mark on mouth harp) had moved down from upstate California, and were living in a house right by the corner of Stevens Creek Blvd. and Saratoga/Sunnyvale Road., about a mile from the house I grew up in. The guy who played bass in the band I was in my senior year of high school (Lou Bottini) was in the Ford band for a while, as was the singer/harp player I was in a band with a year after graduating (Gary Smith; his Up The Line album is great Chicago Blues).

When Robben started playing around San Jose, all the local guitar players got their first up-close look at world-class talent, and realized they didn’t have it, a sobering realization. Robben eventually left for L.A., and was soon working with George Harrison, Joni Mitchell, and Miles Davis!

@reubent, music as good as David Balls’ "Thinkin’ Problem" is what I hope to hear every time I listen to a new supposedly-Country artist. Guys like him don’t show up very often.

@gosta, Rodney Crowell has made a number of great albums in addition to Diamonds & Dirt. I’m partial to his autobiographical The Houston Kid album, and his new Christmas Everywhere album is on its way to me directly from his current label New West Records (home to other superior artists including John Hiatt, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, and the great Buddy Miller).

Small world, @uberwaltz; it is in Vancouver that I live! Give me a buzz, we’ll meet for some Becks. Maybe folkfreak will have us over to hear his system (VTL, Magico) in Northwest Portland.

There are two drummers I knew in L.A. who had already moved to Portland before I did. One is Jose Medeles, who has been a member of The Breeders and Kim Deal’s solo band. He opened a good drum shop in Portland (Revival Drum Shop) about ten years ago (not too far from Music Millennium, a pretty good record store), and leads a local band doing Tom Waits songs (tribute bands are huge up here. I had a woman take me on a date to see a Zeppelin band, not knowing how much I "don’t care" for them. I played along ;-) ---Eric.

@n80, God I love Little Walter! I have a copy of the Chess LP containing "Hate To See You Go", haven’t heard The Stones version. There’s a really good harp player living in San Jose by the name of Gary Smith whose album Up The Line (CD only) is super fine; I highly recommend it. Gary is very much influenced by Walter (as is Charlie Musselwhite, a mentor of Gary’s).

Gary and I were in a band together in ’69, right after he switched over from drums. He’s been at it for 50 years now, and has gotten REALLY good. He plays around the Bay Area, and a has good little band the locals refer to as The Blues Mafia. Its members include a real good piano player by the name of Sid Morris, with whom I last gigged in ’08. Gary and Sid shared the stage at the very first San Francisco Blues Festival, in 1973!

Ha! I would argue that NRBQ---in their classic line-up with Al Anderson playing guitar and singing, Joey Spampinato playing bass and singing, and both contributing songs---were not just the world’s greatest Bar band, but perhaps the greatest Rock ’n Roll band (Dave Edmunds, Nick Lowe, and Elvis Costello agree with me).

Rockpile could be too (I won’t mention yet again The Band ;-), but they lasted for only one album. Some may feel that honour belongs to The Stones, or The Who, or The Dead, or Led Zeppelin, but none of those bands are what I consider Rock ’n’ Roll. Many will disagree with that sentiment.

When Bill Wyman left The Stones, Keith Richards offered Spampinato a job in the band. Joey elected to stay in NRBQ. Gotta admire integrity, ay?

Along with Falkner, also in The Grays was a soon-to-be hot young producer, Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Fiona Apple, Rufus Wainwright). When my woman and I went to see Jill Sobule at Largo, she didn't have a band, but Jon got up on stage and played a coupla songs with her.

If you guys are into checking out obscure Pop, the two guys in The Rembrandts were formerly in a band called Great Buildings (one album on Columbia, which flopped. I saw them live once, and wasn't too impressed. They had just signed their deal papers that day, and may have been drinking ;-) .

@tomic601, after The Knack hit it big in 1979 with "My Sharona", everybody and his brother was moving to L.A. to get a record deal. There were so many bands in town, it was like after the British Invasion, when there was a group on every block in San Jose and Cupertino, practicing Kinks, Rolling Stones, and Animals songs in suburban garages and living rooms. Nobody could sing well enough to pull off Beatles songs ;-) .

With all those groups flooding into L.A., and an audience eager to see and hear them, all kinds of non-music venues were putting on live music shows. One such place was a little boutique woman's clothing store in Westwood Village, where on a sunny afternoon in late '79 or early '80 I saw a singer and band named Toni & The Movers perform a set on the floor of the store. The band members were all dressed in matching white mover's overalls, and singer Toni was, you may have already guessed, a young Tori Amos. I don't remember what she and they sounded like.

As if often the case with a combo containing a good looking and/or talented (in that order ;-) female singer, she got the record deal as a solo artist.

Joan Osborne is at the top of my list of living female (or not) singers. Watch her YouTube live-in-the-studio (radio station) rendering of Slim Harpo’s "Shake Your Hips". Smokin’ hot! So is the band accompanying her, really good. And her performance of "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted" in the Standing In The Shadows Of Motown film is absolutely devastating. After the song ends, the band bows to her!

I’ve seen her live twice at The Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon (a cool converted old deco-style movie theater with great acoustics), accompanied by her regular guitarist and pianist. With all the fake singers around, it’s a pleasure to hear the real deal.

Her album of Dylan songs didn’t work for me: she seems to have a more natural affinity for Soul-type material. But then again, she does a great job on the Country material on her Pretty Little Stranger album. Her new album seems like a must-have.