Happy Birfday!

To Ray Davies who, besides being the only songwriter I'd put up against The Beatles, fucking OWNED England. Previous Xmastime:

I've long said that The Kinks are the most "English" band of all time (partly due to their being banned from touring in America during their peak), and here's an article to celebrate their hidden (?) masterpiece, The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society:

...Dave's brother Ray Davies, the band's principal songwriter and frontman, turned inward, seeking inspiration more than ever before from the people and places around him, and the not-so-distant British music hall past, delivering The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, a masterpiece that was completely out of step with Swinging London, while at the same time being utterly timeless...But in 1968, released the same day as the Beatles' self-titled White Album, Village Green disappeared without a trace..."It was obscure the week it came out," Dave Davies jokes of the album. "Something Else is probably my favorite Kinks album, but Village Green was just so good. We put those songs together in our front room, and we drew really heavily on our environment and our family, who had supported us, and I think that's why it has such a distinctive English flavor and why the songs are so intimate in a way. Ray has such a great way of drawing characters. The song 'Picture Book' is like sitting in the front room looking at old photographs with your mum."