Project 11: The Kinks
Everyone covers The Kinks. Last day for song submissions will be Sunday, August 8th.
Mark Schumacher covers Party Line
Tom Stromsodt covers This Is Where I Belong
I opted for a rare optimistic Kinks song. I hope we honored their spirit with both the haphazard process and result.
-Tom
Randy “Devetron” Dever covers Apeman
I’ve always had a disproportionate fondness for this song. They would play it every now and then on the big FM Rock station in Fargo (Q-98). The themes resonate very strongly with me. I took 4 hours this afternoon on the last possible day to produce it. I had decided I wasn’t going to do one this round as I felt I didn’t have any worthwhile ideas. We had houseguests all weekend and they left at about 1:30 PM. I got a bug up my apeman behind. There was no time for any kind of perfection or polishing it.
I intended it to come out like a smooth T-Rex version of the song, but the vocals came out more like Alice Cooper at some of his more theatric moments (think “Steven”, if you know it). Hope you can stand it. Haha.
-Dtron
Jeff Kearns covers Something Better Beginning
So many great Kinks song. This one spoke to me. The conventional verse into the sweetest of choruses. Being drawn to things you can't fully control. Top shelf risk taking. Taking the skin for a spin as the kids say.
~J
Grant Eull covers
Well straight out - the KINKS were never really a thing for me. This project ultimately introduced me to so many great songs and now the KINKS are definitely “a thing for me”. Thanks to everyone on this group that voted them to the top for this project. Ultimately, after considering a number of songs and listening to so many albums I decided to just stick with songs from the only vinyl KINKS record I own. 1981’s Give The People What They Want came into my life when my former band PESTER back in 2002 or so decided to cover Destroyer. I had never heard the song before but fell in love with the lyrics and the nod it has to other more classic KINKS tunes.
Destroyer
It had been years since I thought about this song but I am grateful for the chance to give it another go and get a documentation of it with my hack vocal stylings. It was super fun to bring a portable mic out to my living room and record my slightly out of tune piano. The sloppy energy of this song was something I hope to have captured accurately and it was an absolute blast to revisit for this project.
Around The Dial
I just love this song. It has the pop punk sensibility that I believe influenced many midwest bands. This song was for sure a stretch for me to sing. So, I decided to just layer it in a number of harmonies. I layered the hell out of it to help hide my imperfections. It at times is way over the top, but it was fun to attempt and ultimately I believe it worked out pretty well. No digital harmonizes just my hack of a falsetto, and natural scratchy voice. I had to go back and layer more guitars just to blend it a bit more … so the final mix is pretty thick in comparison to the KINKS original song. In the spirit of sketching I decided to just have fun and do what I wanted.
- Grant
Bill Fricke covers
National Health
National Health is from the album Low Budget. It's a great new wavey kind of song about nervous tension and how exercise would help. I tried an 80's synth pop version and couldn't find the voice. I later decided that it might make a great "show tune", as Ray Davies loved story songs.
So, using GarageBand orchestral instruments, I came up with the background and then created three characters, Dr. Smythe (an eccentric British physician), Mr. Henley, (a stoic, grumbly British businessman) and Nurse Biddy (the nurse).
All the lyrics from the song are here, but put together to tell the story of Mr. Henley being "treated" by Dr. Smythe with an odd medical device he created to treat "Nervous Tension". It goes off the rails by the end.
I'm quite proud of it. It is something so completely different. And I owe it all to you guys for the opportunities to stretch out.
Don’t Forget to Dance
I love this song, it always makes me tear up a little every time hear the “you do the thing you love the best” part, both the music and lyrics.It lends itself well to a country treatment. I did two versions, but am submitting the slower one. It’s an homage to late 50’s/early 60’s country crooners like Jim Reeves. They didn’t have the twang, and they sang so earnestly. I’m proud of the twinkly piano, “pedal steel” and twangy guitars.
Fancy
I inherited one Kinks album from my sister, “Kinda Kinks” from 1964 or 65. Other than the hits, they were always under the radar for me. Doing a deep dive into their catalog, I came across the requisite 1960’s “Indian music” influenced song, “Fancy” on “Face to Face” from 1966. Given my penchant for this type of thing, I dove in and within about 2 hours it was mostly finished. Just went by intuition and happy accidents. Rather than keep producing it to death and piling on more and more instruments (which is one of my weaknesses), I decided to stop and move on. Note that there is a musical “nod” to “Love You To” by the Beatles that crops up here and there.
I have been listening to more “Ambient Americana” music by bands like SUSS lately, which has had an influence on this.
I plan on tackling other Kinks songs with more chords.
-Bill
Jacob Sharff covers Strangers
I've been meaning to contribute to the basement sketches for awhile now, and I guess it took a Kinks assignment to finally get my shit together and dust off some equipment to make it happen. I've always been intrigued by the Kinks, even though for the longest time all I knew or had heard were just the radio hits, like "You Really Got Me" and some of the cheesy 80's hits like "Come Dancing". It wasn't until much later that I took the time to actually listen to some albums in their entirety, starting with their earlier 60's records, and then of course eventually I discovered Village Green Preservation Society and Lola vs. Powerman, which both blew my mind, and to this day are probably 2 of my favorite albums of all time.
What has always fascinated me about the Kinks is how weird and unpredictable they are. It continually feels like you can keep peeling back layers to reveal something new and unexpected. I've also always been attracted to the way their songs can be so serious and dark on one hand, but also juxtaposed with such strange absurdity and humor.
Obviously, there are countless Kinks songs that would be fun to cover, but I definitely felt a strong pull from Lola vs. The Powerman. The song 'Strangers' is one that has always hit me really hard in the gut and has forever been one of my favorites. I consider Dave Davies to be kind of like the George Harrison of the Kinks, with the power to summon the occasional dark magic which produces songs that I think are just a bit more special than the bulk of the band's output. I think 'Strangers' is unquestionably one of his best.
While I certainly didn't attempt to re-invent the song, and wouldn't claim to have done it any major justice here, I am hoping that in the spirit of the Basement Sketches it works on some level. I started by sampling the drum outro and used that to construct the beat for the main body of the song, and then kinda went from there. My only goal was to try to hang on to, and maybe even accentuate the melancholy feeling of the song. I made a conscious effort to not overthink the process and to stick with first takes, even if they weren't perfect. Basically just tried to keep it fast, fun, loose, and "sketchy". So, here ya go...
-Jacob
Czahr covers Time Song
A few years ago I read something about a previously unreleased song resurfacing from the 1968 Kinks album, The Village Green Preservation Society, which is one of my favorite Kinks albums. I got kind of excited and when I heard it I fell in love with it and it has since become one of my favorite Kinks songs. It's a simple, slowish song about time and being positive set to a hummable melody in C and G. Basically the sort of thing that I usually aim for when I set out to write a song. When we picked the Kinks I knew immediately this was the song I'd probably cover. I had a bunch of weird ideas for it, and tried a bunch of different things (slower and distorted for one) but ended up going with a fairly straightforward cover: strumming an acoustic and trying to match Ray's lilting vocals as well as I could. I did toss in a little pitch pipe ran through a GB filter for a swirly spacey sound halfway through because I couldn't resist adding at least a little bit of my own seasoning. I cook much the same way.
As a fun little bit of Czahr history, the very first piece of music that I ever picked out for myself was a 7" record of Come Dancing. It was the first song I can remember hearing that I couldn't get enough of. I was 8 years old. I had never before even considered the fact that one could buy a song they liked, and one day while I was in a White Mart drug store in Alexandria with my mom and brother, I saw the record of the song I couldn't get enough of and asked mom if I had enough money to buy it. Luckily I did, and I went home with my very first piece of recorded music, which is still sitting next to me as I type this. I should have covered that song, right? No way, it's too sacred for me to touch!
-Czahr
Dale Flattum (Tooth) covers Come Dancing
Neil covers This Time Tomorrow
I had grandiose visions of covering Strangers. I tried different approaches in the early days of project 11. I tried changing the key. I tried different instrumentations. I struggled with the changes back and forth from 4/4 to 2/4 with my click track. I overthought the shit out of it.
Friday night I thought that the deadline was looming (and was clearly wrong), and I didn’t know what I was going to do. I went out to one of my favorite restaurants with my wife, a rare treat. During the dessert course of what had been an absolutely lovely meal, I suddenly felt light headed. The next thing I knew, I woke up with my wife talking to one of the restaurant staff members saying, “You can call off the paramedics. I can take him to the hospital.” I’d passed out or had a seizure, and I pissed myself. Great. This is just what you want to do at your favorite hip restaurant. We quickly paid and shuffled out the back as quickly and quietly as possible. I went home and cleaned up. Feeling fine, I decided to stay home and play things by ear. The next morning, I called a nurse line, and they insisted that I go to the ER. I did. Long story short, they don’t totally know what happened. Since I came back and was fine for the rest of the evening, they didn’t think it was a stroke or a seizure. All tests of my heart seemed good. Mysterious and humiliating.
Confused, embarrassed, and fearing for my general health, suddenly the details of a cover didn’t seem so important. I cracked out this version of This Time Tomorrow without overthinking it. This may not be my most complete cover, but at least I didn't fucking die.
-Neil