The Kinks - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, November 13, 1970

There's always more Kinks worth posting in my world, since I consider them the second greatest band of all time, behind only the Beatles.

Like most Kinks fans, I consider their best years to be the late 1960s, roughly from "Face to Face" in 1966 to "Muswell Hillbillies" in 1971. Unfortunately, there's very little in the way of good live recordings from that time, unless you could their performances for the BBC. For one thing, they simply didn't tour much until about 1970. That's especially true in the US, since they were banned for most of the time (apparently mainly due to pissing off a musician's union).

This bootleg concert is just about the only exception of a good, listenable show from those years, in terms of a full concert. There is a popular 1969 bootleg that claims to be a soundboard (from the Fillmore West in November 1969), but it most definitely is an audience recording, and only a middling one at that. This, on the other hand, actually is a soundboard. True, it's not a stellar soundboard. As concert recordings go, I'd rate it about an eight on a one-to-ten scale. But it is from the Kinks' golden era, so I'm willing to lower my standards a little bit.

One of the songs, "Sunny Afternoon," was missing the first minute. So I patched in that minute by using a version of the song from the live portion of the 1972 "Everybody's in Show-Biz" album, using one of the bonus tracks. I matched up the key and tempo, so hopefully you won't notice unless you carefully listen for it.

I also added four songs to the end from another concert in November 1970. The recording of this concert, in Woodland Hills, California, is an audience bootleg, but it's an unusually good one for the era. I took all the songs from that which sounded good and which weren't played at the Fillmore West concert.

By 1972, the Kinks in concert changed a lot. Front man Ray Davies took a much more theatrical and campy approach, playing odd covers like "Baby Face" or "The Banana Boat Song" and often being drunk or at least feigning it. But in this 1970 concert, the Kinks are still focused on the music. It might not have made for as entertaining a show in person, but it's a better listen at home.

01 Mr. Wonderful (Kinks)
02 talk (Kinks)
03 Till The End of the Day (Kinks)
04 Last of the Steam Powered Trains (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Big Sky (Kinks)
07 Brainwashed (Kinks)
08 talk (Kinks)
09 Strangers (Kinks)
10 talk (Kinks)
11 A Long Way from Home (Kinks)
12 Harry Rag (Kinks)
13 Act Nice and Gentle (Kinks)
14 Sunny Afternoon [Edit] (Kinks)
15 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
16 talk (Kinks)
17 Lola (Kinks)
18 Top of the Pops (Kinks)
19 See My Friends (Kinks)
20 talk (Kinks)
21 You're Looking Fine (Kinks)
22 talk (Kinks)
23 Arthur (Kinks)
24 Victoria (Kinks)

https://www.imagenetz.de/fyRB2

For the album cover, I used a photo that comes from some unspecified time in the early 1970s. It only shows three of the Kinks, but I think it gives off a better feeling of what it must have looked to be at this particular concert than other photos I considered.