The Kinks - Blossom Music Center, Cuyahoga Falls, OH, 9-5-1985

It's been too long since I've posted anything by the Kinks, considering they're my second favorite band of all time (behind only the Beatles). I'm very delighted to post this concert, because I think it's one of their best bootleg concert recordings in terms of sound quality, yet it seems to be very little known, even by big Kinks fans. There were a few serious sound problems with it, but I've managed to fix them, so now I hope it'll get more of the attention it deserves.

In 1984, the Kinks released the studio album "Word of Mouth." It didn't sell that well, but it's always been a personal favorite of mine, helped by the fact that one of my first concert experiences was seeing the Kinks play live that year. So I have long wanted a concert recording from that time period. Unfortunately, all the bootlegs I heard didn't have the sound quality that met my listening standards. Just a few days ago, I came across this soundboard bootleg. I'm puzzled why it hasn't gotten more notice, since it's one of their best sounding concert recordings of the 1980s, if not of s their entire career.

Note that "Word of Mouth" came out in 1984, but this concert is from the latter half of 1985. The Kinks didn't release an album in 1985, but lead singer Ray Davies released his first "solo album," "Return to Waterloo." I put that title in quote marks, because in fact it was a Kinks album in all but name, featuring all of the Kinks on every song, except for his brother, lead guitarist Dave Davies. So I guess this tour was to help promote "Return to Waterloo," though the only song played from it was the title track. I suspect the lack of Dave Davies' involvement on the album limited what they played in concert from it. As a result, it seems the Kinks weren't strongly promoting any album in particular, and played songs from their last three albums in roughly equal measure, plus lots of songs from earlier in their long career.

That said, there is one great "Word of Mouth" song that wasn't played at this concert that really should have been. "Living on a Thin Line" is one of Dave Davies' best songs. I checked setlist.fm, and it was the band's fourth most played song in 1985, behind only "Lola," "Do It Again," and "Come Dancing." So I was bummed this was one of the rare nights it wasn't played. 

However, I got lucky. As I mentioned above, there aren't any other excellent live recordings from this time period. But I found a partial exception. The Kinks played a concert in Frankfurt, Germany, in December 1984 that was broadcast on the radio there. Most of it is available in middling quality, but I found a handful of songs in much better quality. Most of them were the usual suspects like "You Really Got Me," but one of them was "Living on a Thin Line." Another was another nice "Word of Mouth" song, "Good Day." So I took those two songs and stuck them into the middle this concert.

As I mentioned above, the recording had a few serious sound problems. The first was an accidental side effect of it being such a great soundboard, because while the band on stage was recorded very well, not much could be heard from the audience. Sometimes, it almost sounded like they were playing an empty arena. So I systemically boosted the volume for the audience applause at the end of each song. Luckily, there as enough of the audience on the recording to allow me to make those bits sound like normal audience reactions.

But more difficult was the fact that there was some audience participation in the middle of a couple of the songs. For "State of Confusion," "Lola," and "Lola (Reprise)" in particular, there were a few bits where Ray Davies let the audience take over singing the lead vocals. I had to very carefully amplify the volume of the audience so there wouldn't be nearly silent gaps. "Lola" was especially tricky, because there were parts where the drumming kept going over the audience vocals. Luckily, there was another section in that song with just the audience vocals and no drumming, so I patched that in and mixed it with the drumming. Hopefully, the end result is it sounds just like the audience had been recorded at a more typical level for concert albums.

Another major sound problem is that sections of three songs were missing. The very end of "Destroyer" was cut off, as well as the start of the next song, "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman." Unfortunately, since this bootleg is so superior to the others from the time period, I had trouble finding appropriate missing bits to patch in. For "Destroyer," I ended up using a section from a soundboard recording from 1988. But I managed to repeat a couple of vocal lines near the end of the song from earlier in the song, so the 1988 part only makes up the last 15 seconds or so. You'll probably notice the edit, since I couldn't find a close match, but at least it's better than an abrupt halt to the song.

For the start of "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman," I had an even more difficult time. During this tour, the band started that song with an instrumental snippet of the "Batman" theme song. The few other bootlegs with this sounded crappy, and they didn't match the key and tempo and so forth. Since it was just a short instrumental snippet, I instead decided to have the music fade in while the applause from the previous song faded out. Not much is missing, maybe 30 seconds.

A similar problem was that the second half of the last song, "Low Budget," also was missing. Again, I didn't have anything else from around that time period to fit it with. So once again I resorted to using part of a song from a 1988 soundboard. The section lasts about a minute, and goes from the start of the last verse to the end of the song. Also again, the edit is noticeable and far from ideal, but I figure it's better than nothing.

There's one more significant edit I made that wasn't the result of a sound flaw per se, but more of a personal choice. I was quite surprised to hear that "Guilty," a song written and sung by Dave Davies, began with Ray Davies saying, "And then we heard the chimes of midnight." This was followed by the clanging of bells, a loud explosion, and then about two minutes of indecipherable talking and war sounds, over a synth backing. I can only presume that while that was going on, some sort of anti-war video was played for the audience. (I'd never considered "Guilty" to be an anti-war song, more of a song railing against bad government leaders, but it does contain the line "Deaf to the cries of the innocent strangers you buried.") Anyway, this probably worked well if you were there and you saw it, but after the bells and the explosion, the rest was a frustrating listening experience, since on this recording one can't hear what was being said, or who was saying it, or why. So I edited most of that part out.

One more minor note. There's a song here called "Ohio Motorway." I don't know if you can call it a song. It's less than a minute long, and more like a snippet. I have absolutely no idea what this is called, if it had a name at all. I titled it "Ohio Motorway" to distinguish it from the famous CSNY song "Ohio."

Sorry for the rather long-winded explanation, but this concert needed some changes to bring it to its full potential. Now, with the two Frankfurt songs and missing sections added, it's an hour and 44 minutes long. If you're a Kinks fan and want just one concert of theirs from the 1980s, I recommend this one.

01 You Really Got Me Intro [Instrumental] (Kinks)
02 Do It Again (Kinks)
03 State of Confusion [Edit] (Kinks)
04 talk (Kinks)
05 Better Things (Kinks)
06 talk (Kinks)
07 The Hard Way (Kinks)
08 Don't Forget to Dance (Kinks)
09 talk (Kinks)
10 Come Dancing (Kinks)
11 Return to Waterloo (Kinks)
12 Catch Me Now, I'm Falling (Kinks)
13 Missing Persons (Kinks)
14 Destroyer [Edit] (Kinks)
15 [Wish I Could Fly Like] Superman [Edit] (Kinks)
16 Brother (Kinks)
17 Guilty [Edit] (Kinks)
18 A Gallon of Gas (Kinks)
19 Ohio Motorway (Kinks)
20 talk (Kinks)
21 Living on a Thin Line (Kinks)
22 Good Day (Kinks)
23 Lola [Edit] (Kinks)
24 talk (Kinks)
25 Lola [Reprise] [Edit] (Kinks)
26 All Day and All of the Night (Kinks)
27 I Gotta Move (Kinks)
28 Low Budget [Edit] (Kinks)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dJ5K5

alternate link:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/yQkSjvpY

The cover art photo of lead singer Ray Davies comes from a Kinks concert in Chicago in December 1984. I would have liked to use a photo showing the entire band, but I could only find a few good ones to choose from, and this was the best of the bunch.