Track Listing

Disc 1:

1. The Village Green Preservation Society
2. Do You Remember Walter
3. Picture Book
4. Johnny Thunder
5. Last Of The Steam Powered Trains
6. Big Sky
7. Sitting By The Riverside
8. Animal Farm
9. Village Green
10. Starstruck
11. Phenominal Cat
12. All Of My Friends Were There
13. Wicked Annabella
14. Monica
15. People Take Pictures Of Each Other
16. Mr Songbird (12 track Edition) (Bonus Track)
17. Days (12 track Edition) (single) (Bonus Track)
18. Do You Remember Walter (Orig Stereo Mix From 12 Track Edition) (Bonus Track)
19. Wicked Annabella (Orig Stereo Mix From 12 Track Edition) (Bonus Track)

Disc 2:

1. The Village Green Preservation Society (Mono)
2. Do You Remember Walter (Mono)
3. Picture Book (Mono)
4. Johnny Thunder (Mono)
5. Last Of The Steam Powered Trains (Mono)
6. Big Sky (Mono)
7. Sitting By The Riverside (Mono)
8. Animal Farm (Mono)
9. Village Green (Mono)
10. Starstruck (Mono)
11. Phenominal Cat (Mono)
12. All Of My Friends Were There (Mono)
13. Wicked Annabella (Mono)
14. Monica (Mono)
15. People Take Pictures Of Each Other (Mono)
16. The Village Green Preservation Society (No Strings Version) (Bonus Track)
17. She's Got Everything (Bonus Track)
18. Mr. Songbird (Bonus Track)
19. Polly (Bonus Track)
20. Berkley Mews (Bonus Track)
21. Did You See His Name (Bonus Track)

Disc 3:

1. Village Green (demo)
2. Village Green (Original version with double tracked vocals)
3. Village Green (orchestral overdub)
4. Mr Songbird
5. (stereo euro edition)
6. Days (stereo euro edition)
7. Misty Water (stereo from Four More Respected Gentlemen)
8. Pictures In The Sand (mono demo)
9. Do You Remember Walter (alternate stereo mix from euro edition)
10. Berkeley Mews (stereo from Four More Respected Gentlemen)
11. Easy Come, There You Went (instrumental)
12. Polly (stereo from Four More Respected Gentlemen)
13. She's Got Everthing (stereo from Four More Respected Gentlemen)
14. Phenomenal Cat (Instrumental)
15. There Is No Life Without Love (stereo from Four More Respected Gentlemen)
16. Johnny Thunder (stereo remix)
17. Mick Avory's Underpants (Instrumental)
18. Lavender Hill (demo)
19. Rosemary's Rose (demo)
20. Spotty Grotty Anna (Instrumental)
21. Til Death Us Do Part (from Pye EP)
22. Where Did My Spring Go (demo)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67136 in Music
• Released on: 2008-02-26
• Number of discs: 3
• Formats: Box set, Original recording remastered, Special Edition
• Dimensions: .38 pounds
• Running time: 164 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Sensing that the Beatles, Stones and Who were radically transforming rock music by turning it literate and conceptual, Ray Davies decided the Kinks should be his vehicle to explore his unusual longing for a simpler time when the English empire was not in decline. A reliance on English music hall tradition and sentiments indicated in titles such as "Last of the Steam- Powered Trains", "Picture Book" and "Village Green" clearly show Davies's nostalgic streak. Davies' singing has always been rough and non-Kinks fans may have trouble getting past his sloppy pitch. But for those listening closely, the tales are one of a kind. --Rob O'Connor

CD Description
It's easy to imagine the confusion with which this manifesto for the defence of the status quo was received on its release in 1968. The world was in turmoil and the pose of the Street Fighting Man, turned on, rebellious and politically aware, was far sexier than the quaint homebody image the Kinks present here. The title track finds Ray Davies proudly declaring himself a preservationist of custard pies, vaudeville, and such comic book characters as Desperate Dan. However, these slices of suburban life have weathered a lot better thanmost of their contemporaries.
The Kinks were working in their own homey little world, as evidenced by songs such as the album's title track, "Picture Book", about family snapshot albums, and "All of My Friends Were There" whose very un-rebellious subject is public embarrassment. To compound the weirdness there's also "Big Sky", a classic Kinks song aboutGod that's not remotely religious, and a rocker about a steam engine. The overarching theme of VILLAGE GREEN is that ofunalloyed nostalgia--it's only today, now that many of the things Davies feared would disappear have actually vanished,that the truth and clarity of his vision is apparent.

Customer Reviews

God save the Village Green...
It's nice to see Ray Davies and the rest of the Kinks finally getting some respect from the music-press & from the record buying public, who are, at long last, re-discovering albums like Arthur, the Muswell Hillbillies and this, The Village Green Preservation Society, as some of the very best examples of great British pop. Although severely neglected on it's initial release, the album has retained an important stature within the lexicon of 60's musical history, featuring as it does as one of the very first concept albums... with the Kink's addressing themes of nostalgia, national identity, cultural up-bringing and, of course, the overall decline of society during the hedonism of the decade in question... (whilst also progressing beyond their multi-selling peers to create a record that is far more daring and evocative than the hallowed likes of Pet Sounds & Sgt Pepper). Gasp, indeed!

The album sounds as great as it ever did, available here in both a mono-version (compete with it's definitive UK track sequencing) and also in a stereo-enhanced release created for US audiences, which was trimmed and re-shuffled and also included the hit-single Days. Both versions are of historical interest, though I'd imagine it's the UK version that will get the most play from fans, as it is this version that most closely resembles Ray Davies' initial creative vision. So, here we had classic single Waterloo Sunset (one of the very best English pop songs of all time, as I'm sure you'd agree) being used as the foundation, on top of which Ray and the Kinks employ elements of 60's chamber-pop (ala Scott & the Walker Bros) as well as Blues guitar rock, Beatles pop (think tracks like Here, There & Everywhere, Paper Back Writer, And Your Bird Can Sing and Eleanor Rigby), psychedelic dream pop (Syd Barrett style) and, of course, that classic Kinks sounds, circa Something Else.

It all comes together to create a great pop sound and a great sense of cohesion, brining to mind images of small villages, local post offices, tree-lined streets, fields, footpaths, china-shops, pubs and obviously, steam-powered trains. All these themes and evocations can be seen in the song titles and are ably set up in the opening title song, in which Ray opines "we are the skyscraper condemnation affiliate, god save Tudor houses, antique tables & billiards", and so on. It's a great introduction to the album, and was the track that really grabbed my attention when heard late one night on a BBC2 radio slot (I can't remember which one)... sounding timeless, retro and really, like nothing else imaginable. There's far too much to go into in the space of this review, with The Village Green Preservation Society being one of those albums that works best with repeat listening, ideally on sunny summer days with the window open and the sounds of nature swirling in. True, not every song is a masterwork, but the majority are, and others becomes stronger with time... with the band instrumentation taking on all manner of different styles and textures, from sea-side show-tunes, carnival harmonising, straight-pop, twee pop & vaudevillian buffoonery all merging with the already eclectic mix.

For me, the best songs are the ones that best capture that evocation of summery innocence undercut by stark melancholy and wayward romanticism. Do You Remember Walter has interweaving vocals from Ray and brother Dave, Picture Book is a close cousin to some-thing like Autumn Almanac, Sitting by the Riverside is gentle and ethereal Beatle pop, Phenomenal Cat pre-empts Belle & Sebastian songs like The Fox in the Snow and Judy & the Dream of Horses, the Village Green acts as a precursor to the kind of hermetically-sealed word-views expressed by Neil Hannon on his records Liberation and Promenade, whilst All of My Friends Were There remains, perhaps, the greatest thing Ray Davies has ever written. For me, each of these tracks could be included in the greatest British pop songs of all time list, as well as furthering the legacy of both the Kinks and this great piece of work. The other songs are all fine, though for me, they are less immediate. Like later records by Pink Floyd, or stuff like Astral Weeks, you really have to listen to this album from beginning to end. And when it's over... go back to the start & listen again.

However, it must be added, that although this new deluxe triple-disk box-set does offer great value, for the most part the extra tracks on disk three propose very little to anyone besides the most devoted of Kinks fans. True, there are some interesting versions of the track, Village Green, the composition that gave birth to this whole concept, but personally speaking, many of these demos and alternative takes pale in comparison to the versions features on the actual finished album. Still, at this price it's hardly anything to complain about and instead, should act as the icing, to a particularly delicious cake.

What More Could They Do?
If an album can afford to ditch a song like 'Days'just before it's release, it must be a pretty f*cking good album. And it is. It's the best album ever released as far as I am concerned.
TKATVGPS was released - unfortunately - on the same day that everyone was stampeding around buying the Beatles 'White Album' and the Stones' 'Beggars Banquet'. The Kinks' offering was rather unfairly ignored and may as well have been melted down to make more copies of The White Album for all most people evidently cared.
Ray Davies' songs for this album mainly concern the comfort of the past - or our rose-tinted version of the past - and as such were alarmingly out of step with the pop world of 1968, where the Stones sang of the Devil and fighting, and the Beatles sang of revolution and, er, chocolate boxes.
For the most part TKATVGPS exists in a half-imagined world of nostalgia, yearning for lost friends, old sweethearts, childhood, and the happy times captured forever in photographs. There are two rather more perculiar songs - Phenomenal Cat and Wicked Anabella - but as you listen to the album more, it isn't difficult to imagine them as tales told to children by the adults in this blissful Village Green. Or maybe the cat and the witch really DO live there?
For such a backwards-looking album it's also possible to see the future of rock music in here. Britpop owes it plenty, David Bowie and Damon Albarn seem to have stolen their singing voices from 'Picture Book' and 'Monica' respectively, Green Day evidently took the music for 'Picture Book' as their starting point for 'Warning'... and, of course, the album predates today's fascination with nostalgia as a pastime.
It is a fantastic album to lose yourself in, and the quality - and variety - of the music and lyrics ensure it always will be. What else to tell you? Big Sky includes bizzare spoken verses and is STILL the best song of the 60's, and later in the album you are offered the image of a cat eating itself up a tree. Magical.

Timeless Classic / Five Stars+
When heard about this release I was very thrilled. Finally all those great songs that never found their way onto the original album would see the light of day, in the right context on an official Kinks release.
The original album is here, both in the mono and stereo versions. These great songs have never sounded better;

Real excitement for me, though, comes with the extensive list of the bonus tracks and rarities.

Many of the well-known songs are in previously unreleased versions, and quite a few have never been released on CD or even vinyl before.

In early 1968 the Kinks had an album ready for the American market called "Four More Respected Gentlemen". The album was cancelled, and some of these songs were never released on an official Kinks album. Now they are here. Great songs like "Berkely Mews", "Mr Songbird", "Rosemary Rose", "Misty Water", "Did You See His Name" etc.

Some rarities come from TV-series, Dave Davies` unreleased album or singles; and a few are simply outtakes that have never been finished for release.

Most of these gems are of the same high standards as the original "Village Green" songs. It`s incredible how Ray Davies managed to write such an amount of great songs over such a short period of time, and that the Kinks managed to arrange and record them.

There is a fine informative booklet with recent interview-comments from the Kinks and notes to all the bonus tracks.

This is not meant as a negative comment, but there are still quite a few Kinks rarities that have not yet been released; some of them would have fitted in nicely on this release. Maybe some day there will be another Kinks deluxe edition, where songs like "Pictures in the Sand", "Till Death Do Us Part", "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light" and the unreleased Dave Davies songs would fit in.

Anyway, this is a timeless classic and a five star+ release!