The Kinks – Kinksize – Non-Album Tracks (1963-1964)

The Kinks are my second favorite group of all time, behind only the Beatles. They’re way underappreciated, due to them usually being the opposite of fashionable. Their 1960s stuff in particular blows me away. I feel that most of their b-sides and outtakes are better than most groups’ top material!

The Kinks also have a very scattered recorded output in the 60s. I’d estimate about half of all their stuff never made it only any of their proper albums at the time, and a good portion of that is better than the stuff that did make the albums, especially since the A and B sides of singles rarely went onto albums in those days (at least in Britain, and I’m basing this on the British albums). If you want to enjoy all their good 60s songs, you have to scour through all sorts of anthologies and deluxe editions and such.

The Kinks released seven albums in their 60s heyday: "Kinks," "Kinda Kinks," "The Kink Kontroversy," "Face to Face," "Something Else," "Village Green Preservation Society," and "Arthur." What I’ve done is taken all their remaining songs that are of the same quality and made five more albums of similar lengths to their released ones. In this way, I have 12 classic Kinks albums from the 60s to listen to, instead of seven!

Here’s the first of the five. Note that, to achieve the highest repeat listenability, I’ve avoided all songs that are on any of the previously mentioned seven albums, and I’ve only included one version of each. (So, for instance, I only included the version of Ray Davies singing "Mr. Reporter," even though his brother Dave sings it equally well in another version.)

This first album gathers up all their stray tracks from 1963 to 1964. The songs are generally ordered by when they were released. I’ve included just about every Kinks song from that time period, except for "Louie, Louie." The Kinks’ version of that song is no better or different than 10,000 other versions.

I picked the title “Kinksize” because the Kinks had an EP in this time period called “Kinksize Sessions.”

This makes a 38-minute long album. That’s actually long for them and many other groups at the time – "Kinda Kinks" is only 28 minutes long! The last two songs were actually released in early 1965, but recorded in late 1964. I stuck them on here instead of my next Kinks album to better balance out the album lengths.

A couple of the songs I probably wouldn’t have included (who needs another beat group cover of "Long Tall Sally," for instance) except for historical importance. For instance, "Long Tall Sally" was their very first A-Side.

And by the way, how is it "I Gotta Move" was an obscure B-Side instead of a big hit?!

UPDATE: On March 14, 2023, I updated the mp3 download file. I found an obscure release of the song "Ooba Diooba." This dates back to the time when the Kinks were known as the Ravens.

01 Ooba Diooba (Kinks)
02 I'm a Hog for You (Kinks)
03 I Believed You (Kinks)
04 I Don't Need You Anymore (Kinks)
05 Long Tall Sally (Kinks)
06 You Still Want Me (Kinks)
07 You Do Something to Me (Kinks)
08 It's Alright (Kinks)
09 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
10 I Gotta Move (Kinks)
11 I've Got that Feeling (Kinks)
12 I Gotta Go Now (Kinks)
13 Things Are Getting Better (Kinks)
14 Don't Ever Let Go (Kinks)
15 Little Queenie (Kinks)
16 Everybody's Gonna Be Happy (Kinks)
17 Who'll Be the Next in Line (Kinks)

https://www.imagenetz.de/hHLPT

I made the cover by using the cover of the Kinks' "Kinksize Session" EP, then removing the word "Session" from the bottom, moving the rest of the image down, and then stretching the word "Kinksize" to cover the difference.