The Kinks - (Could It Be) You're Getting Old (Edited Song) (1968)

In my opinion, what the Kinks did from about 1966 to 1971 is one of the greatest bodies of music ever. Just about every single song they did in that time period was top notch, even the most obscure unreleased stuff. The only songs I'm not that keen on are are a couple of instrumentals, and even those probably would be great if they had words added to them.

Unfortunately, this time period has been thoroughly picked over over the years by all sorts of deluxe album versions, box sets, and the like, leaving few to no previously unreleased songs to be uncovered. I'm kind of disappointed in the new "super deluxe version " of "The Village Green Preservation Society" in that there were a bunch of unreleased songs known to have existed (for instance some songs Ray Davies wrote for some BBC shows), but they weren't included, apparently because recordings of them haven't survived. Only one all new song has been touted, "Time Song," and it's a nice song, but it actually is from 1973 (at a time when Ray Davies briefly revived his interest in VGPS, which resulted in him doing the "Preservation" concept albums).

So I was pleasantly surprised when I got the super deluxe version and played a track called "Home Demos Medley." It's nine minutes long, and contains Ray Davies solo with just piano or guitar playing edited snippets of demos of nine of his songs from that era. Buried in this medley actually are two previously unreleased songs: "(Could It Be) You're Getting Old" and "Happy Lena." The "Happy Lena" snippet is less than a minute long and doesn't sound to be that great of a song in the first place. But the "(Could It Be) You're Getting Old" snippet is longer, a minute and a half, and it's quite a nice song, in my opinion.

I'm not sure if the snippet of it is the whole song or not - it does seem to contain a proper beginning and an end, but at only a minute and a half it sounds incomplete, especially because the chorus is only played once, after the first verse. So I've made an edit where I've squeezed in a repeat of the chorus (mostly consisting of lots of wordless "ba ba ba" singing) after the second verse and before the outro. This results in the song still being on the short side - only a few seconds longer than two minutes - but it feels like a complete song now.

I also fixed a flub at the end of the first verse, where Davies hits the wrong chord on the piano at the end of the first verse. (It sounds off, and he does it right in the second verse).

I updated my "Where Was Spring" stray tracks collection to include this song:

https://albumsthatshouldexist.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-kinks-where-was-spring-1969.html

If you want "Happy Lena," you should get the super deluxe edition. That also contains a nice, previously unknown instrumental called "Egg Stained Pyjamas" that might be the best of the instrumentals from this time period. And of course there are plenty of great alternate versions of other Kinks songs.

Let's hope that someday Ray Davies will allow the release of more of his demos, and not just as snippets in a medley! It sounds like there's a Kinks version of the Beatles' "White Album" Esher acoustic demos waiting to be heard someday. But at least this one intriguing song slipped out.

Due to a request, I've included all of the nine minute demo, but broken up into individual tracks. That includes "Happy Lena." It's a pity that's only 40 seconds long, and most of the other snippets are similarly short.