The Kinks – Kwyet Kinks - Non-Album Tracks (1965)

Next up for dealing with the Kinks’ stray tracks is "Kwyet Kinks," covering 1965. All the songs put together make for a very good and cohesive album that in my opinion is better than the official Kinda Kinks album that year – as well as 10 minutes longer. It’s surprising how many good songs were never released at the time, and often only exist in demo form.

Once again, I generally put the songs  in the order they came out, or were recorded (since so many weren’t released). Virtually all of them were recorded in April and May of 1965. I did move "Hide and Seek," which was done a few months later, so it wouldn’t disturb the mellow run of the last bunch of songs.

Like the last Kinks album I made, I picked the title from an EP title during that year.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the song "She’s My Girl," a song written and sung by Dave Davies during the "Kink Kontroversy" sessions. It’s never been officially released, and it’s so obscure that I couldn’t even find it on YouTube. Based on the version appearing on various bootlegs, there’s good reason for that, due to the sound quality. The overall sound actually isn’t that bad, but it was taken from an acetate, which is a test run made out of poor material, so it would degrade to the point of being ruined after just a small number of listens. And apparently this copy was listened to too many times!  The first ten seconds especially sounded terrible, with so much crackling and hissing that it makes me cringe. The rest was fairly okay, though one hears some loud pops and crackles at times.  So what I did was simply lopped off the first ten seconds of the song.

I’ve included that edited version as a bonus track here for you to use or discard. I think it’s a pretty decent song for the time, if one can get over the remaining sound quality issues. Probably, it wasn’t developed or released because it was written by Dave, and Ray was dominating the songwriting.

Trust me, you’re not missing anything in those first ten seconds, unless you like lots of loud crackling. Plus, luckily, the song takes a while to get going, so I think it works quite well with those seconds removed. If I didn’t tell you, you’d probably never notice.

There’s another early Kinks era song called “Listen to Me” that I didn’t include. It also has sound issues, but they’re much worse. It sounds like it was recorded a few rooms away. Plus, it’s either a terrible song that’s a total rip off of “You Really Got Me” or it’s an early and far inferior version of that song.

On a different note, whomever decided which songs to record and release at this time should have been fired! For instance, "I Go to Sleep" later became a classic Pretenders tune, and the Kinks only ever made a demo of it. And Dave Berry’s version of "This Strange Effect" actually was a number one hit in some countries, but the Kinks only ever did it once for the BBC, and never in the studio. Sigh!

 

In 2021, a musical friend named MZ sent me a previously unbootlegged Kinks demo from December 1965 called "Never Say Yes." Incredibly, it was intended for Elvis Presley to sing in a movie of the same name. But that didn't work out, probably because the name of the movie was changed to "Spinout." The version I had had a radio DJ talking over the intro and ending. Luckily, he only talked over instrumental sections that were repeated elsewhere in the song, so I was able to edit his voice out.

This album is 38 minutes long.

 

01 Wait Till the Summer Comes Along (Kinks)
02 Such a Shame (Kinks)
03 A Well Respected Man (Kinks)
04 Don't You Fret (Kinks)
05 Set Me Free (Kinks)
06 I Need You (Kinks)
07 Hide and Seek (Kinks)
08 Time Will Tell (Kinks)
09 See My Friends (Kinks)
10 Never Met a Girl like You Before (Kinks)
11 I Go to Sleep (Kinks)
12 Tell Me Now So I’ll Know (Kinks)
13 A Little Bit of Sunlight (Kinks)
14 This I Know (Kinks)
15 There's a New World Just Opening for Me (Kinks)
16 This Strange Effect (Kinks)
17 Never Say Yes [Edit] (Kinks)

 

She’s My Girl (Kinks)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15482300/TKnks_1965_KwytKnks_atse.zip.html

 

The cover art shown here is from the EP of the same name with no changes.