The Kinks - Live in '65 - Selected Live Tracks (1965)

Unlike most major rock acts that were famous in the 1960s, the Kinks don't have a good live album from the 1960s. One could technically point to the 1967 live album "Live at Kelvin Hall," but I strongly dislike that album due to the fact that after it was recorded a loop of a screaming audience was overdubbed on top of all the songs, ruining the album for me.

Luckily, there are lots of recordings of the Kinks playing at the BBC in the 1960s. I've already posted a series of albums of their BBC recordings. But all but a couple of those songs were played in a studio, with no audience. Thus, I've put together this album, to try to capture the excitement of the Kinks playing in front of an audience, but one that doesn't drown them out.

The Kinks were a very popular live act from 1964 to 1966, and that's the era I'm focusing on here. Unfortunately, there's no single well recorded concert from that time period (at least that I know of). But there are some decent recordings of a few songs here and there. Funnily enough, all of them happen to be from 1965. Adding them all together, it makes for a nice 42 minute long album.

There are virtually no known bootlegs of Kinks concerts from this time period. But what does survive are TV appearances, and we can extract that audio from those. That's the case for all but two of the songs here ("Come On Now" and "Beautiful Delilah"). For the rest, you can find videos of all the other performances on YouTube. None of these performances have been officially released on album as far as I know.

I have to admit the sound quality isn't fantastic, generally speaking. But we're lucky to have any live recordings from the Kinks from their early years, and the sound was good enough for the TV shows of the time. It definitely captures more of the live energy than the BBC performances do.

One interesting thing to note is how many of the songs are sung mainly by Dave Davies, instead of the band's main singer and songwriter, his brother Ray Davies. Also, about half of the songs are covers.

By chance, virtually none of the songs I found were duplicates. One exception was that "You Really Got Me" was played at the first show here, an NME Poll Winners concert. (The songs are in chronological order of the days they were performed.) But it wasn't a very good version, and it's an overplayed song to begin with, so I left that off. But you can find that on YouTube as well.

01 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
02 I Gotta Move (Kinks)
03 Bye Bye Johnny (Kinks)
04 Louie, Louie (Kinks)
05 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
06 Got Love If You Want It (Kinks)
07 Long Tall Shorty (Kinks)
08 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
09 Hide and Seek (Kinks)
10 Come On Now (Kinks)
11 Beautiful Delilah (Kinks)
12 A Well Respected Man (Kinks)
13 Milk Cow Blues (Kinks)
14 Till the End of the Day (Kinks)
15 I'm a Lover Not a Fighter (Kinks)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15256415/TKnks_1965_Lvein65_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a photo I found on the Internet. When I first posted this I didn't know when or where it was from exactly. But I have since been told that ti's from a January1965 appearance on the British TV show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars' where the Kinks performed "Tired of Waiting for You." So I'm glad (and lucky) it's from 1965.