This concert was played over the radio in Britain as part of the BBC's "In Concert" series. Since it was the BBC, most of this concert has been officially released as part of a box set of the Kinks' BBC recordings. I've made my own series of albums for the Kinks at the BBC, I've add this to that series, but I've given it its own volume, since I figure it should be listened to on its own.
I'm glad to say I've made what I consider two important improvements over the officially released recordings of this show. First off, those recordings sound fantastic, except for one thing: the volume of Ray Davies' talking between songs was way too low. So I've moved all those bits to separate tracks, and increased the volume for them.
Secondly, and more importantly, I've found three songs that didn't get officially released. My theory on this is that the "In Concert" BBC program was an hour long, so if a band played more than an hour, those extra songs didn't get played on the radio, and generally got forgotten. The officially released songs make up an hour's show. I'm not sure how it happened, but I found three more songs on a bootleg that clearly come from the same show: "Alcohol," "Waterloo Sunset," and "Slum Kids." I know for sure they're from the same show, because all the other songs on that bootleg are from that show (though in jumbled up order), the sound quality is the same, and some of the between song banter for these three songs are EXACTLY the same as on the official recording, down to every last vocal inflection.
The only problem I've had is where these three extra songs go in the song order. It's quite possible that the songs chosen by the BBC to be played on the radio aren't in the exact same order as what was actually played in concert that day. It's also possible that there are still other songs that were played and didn't make it on that bootleg with the three extra songs either. One clue supporting this is that at one point, Davies tells the audience that he's going to play a couple of hits from the band's early days, and then only plays one, "Dedicated Follower of Fashion." The only setlists I've found merely include the songs that were played for the "In Concert" program, so they don't help. In fact, I think even the widely accepted date of the concert is off, because at one point, Davies says that the album "Preservation Act 2" is being released "tomorrow." But that album was released on May 7, 1974, and this concert supposedly took place on July 14, 1974. I suspect the concert was recorded on May 6th, then the BBC took some time to edit the tapes and played them on the radio on July 14th. But I can't be sure. If anyone can get to the bottom of this mystery, that would be nice. There must be some news articles from the time, though they would be very tough to track down.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I can made some educated guesses on where the three extra songs went in the setlist, based on overlapping between song chatter. But just to be on the safe side, I've put those three at the end of the concert. It works well to have the concert end with an all-time classic like "Waterloo Sunset" anyway.
I'm especially happy to have found the pristine version of "Slum Kids" that is one of the three extra songs. Apparently, the Kinks never recorded that song in the studio. The version that has been included as a bonus track for "Preservation Act 2" as well as for the box set "Picture Book" actually dates to 1979, if you examine the liner notes for the box set closely. So it's nice to have a version that actually dates from 1974, the year it should have been recorded and released.
Regarding the music, I'm not a big fan of the "Preservation Act 2" album. But it does have some good songs that are up to the typical Kinks high standards, and this concert features most of them (especially if you include "Slum Kids"). Many of the other songs are from early 1970s albums, which is a nice change from the setlists up through 1972, which were dominated by overplayed 1960s hits.
I have a serious gripe with the way the Kinks played snippets of hoary old "music hall" songs in the early 1970s. The "In Concert" show featured one of these, "Mr. Wonderful." I've kept it off, and I'm not even including it as a bonus track, sorry. In this case, less is more. Thankfully, 1974 was the last year the Kinks played that type of song in concert. In 1972 and 1973 especially, they actually played bits of "My Way," "Hava Nagilah," "Mammy," "Baby Face," and more of that ilk. I don't know what the heck they were thinking.
By the way, there are very few Kinks bootlegs from 1973. But that isn't a big loss, since the setlists were virtually the same as 1972, with almost no songs played from the album they released that year, "Preservation Act 1." But there's an excellent concert from 1975, so I'll be posting that too.
01 Victoria (Kinks)
02 Here Comes Yet Another Day (Kinks)
03 talk (Kinks)
04 Money Talks (Kinks)
05 talk (Kinks)
06 Dedicated Follower of Fashion (Kinks)
07 talk (Kinks)
08 Mirror of Love (Kinks)
09 talk (Kinks)
10 Celluloid Heroes (Kinks)
11 talk (Kinks)
12 You Really Got Me - All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
13 talk (Kinks)
14 Daylight (Kinks)
15 talk (Kinks)
16 Here Comes Flash (Kinks)
17 talk (Kinks)
18 Demolition (Kinks)
19 talk (Kinks)
20 He's Evil (Kinks)
21 talk (Kinks)
22 Lola (Kinks)
23 talk (Kinks)
24 Skin and Bone - Dry Bones (Kinks)
25 Alcohol (Kinks)
26 talk (Kinks)
27 Slum Kids (Kinks)
28 Waterloo Sunset (Kinks)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16127788/TKNKS1974_BBSessonsVolum4InCncrtHippdrmeTheatrLondnBrtain__7-14-1974_atse.zip.html
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any good color photos of the band in concert in 1974. But I did find one featuring singer Ray Davies, with keyboardist John Gosling in the background. So that'll have to do, unless someone else can come up with something better. When I updated the album in February 2021, I kept the same cover photo as before, but I removed the black background behind Ray Davies and replaced that with the same kind of background as all the other albums in the BBC Sessions series.
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