From time to time, Paul and I are invited to contribute posts to other blogs, mainly from USA. This week, as last, our good friend Max Gower who hosts the excellent PowerPop … an eclectic collection of pop culture paid tribute to one of his favourite bands, The Kinks.

The remit was to write about our best-loved song by the band. Had the request been about The Rolling Stones, I’d have been all over it. But, The Kinks?

I wasn’t the only blogger who didn’t realise they knew more songs and liked the band way more than they’d previously thought! 🙂

Should Andy Murray have been born ten years either side of when he was, he’d have been the best tennis player of his generation. As it was, despite two Olympic gold medals and three Grand Slam titles amongst goodness knows how many other achievements, he will be forever mentioned almost as an afterthought in any conversation of the greatest players of the 2000s – possibly all time.

Damn those Federer, Nadal and Djokovic fellas!

A similar fate befell The Kinks, and Ray Davies in particular. Maybe they wouldn’t have gone down in history as the best band ever, but they certainly would have benefitted from a greater appreciation.

Damn those Lennon and McCartney and Jagger and Richards fellas!

Then again, I suppose it could be argued that without the Beatles and Stones, The Kinks wouldn’t have capitalised on The British Invasion of America.

Whatever, throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s The Kinks were always playing catch-up in the popularity stakes, despite their critical acclaim and string of hits. Sticking within those two decades, the band had nineteen Top 40 hits here in the UK, including three Number 1s. Not bad on any level.

I must confess, though, that I too am guilty of overlooking them in favour of (most definitely) The Rolling Stones and (yes, probably even) The Beatles. Which is a terrible admission to make, when I take a proper look at the prolificacy of Davies’s writing.

I’d not long turned twelve years old when this single was released. My musical bias had not yet been shaped. I just liked what I liked. I had no idea of what was ‘cool’ or otherwise. It would be a year further down the line before I decided I was a fan of The Sweet and John Kongos … but there was something about ‘Apeman’ I found so appealing.

Perhaps it was the catchy hook. Or maybe it was the (now cringeworthy) faux Caribbean accent during the short, spoken word passage. Or maybe, most likely it was, the silly video of some geezer dressed up like a gorilla and following the band around a most ‘un-jungle-like’ wet and miserable (London?) park.

It certainly wouldn’t have been the lyrics – not at that age. In fact, as I’ve alluded in the past, I’m still a bit of a philistine when it comes to song lyrics.  However, even a very young ‘me’ was aware of the Cold War at that time, and the line about not wanting to die in a nuclear war did hit home.

Ray Davies had of course by this time already shown a great deal of social conscience and disdain for the forsaking of tradition. I’m sure others will cover these, but think of ‘Dead End Street,’ ‘Autumn Almanac’ and ‘The Village Green Preservation Society’ for starters. So, for him to display the utopian spirit of peace and freedom would have come as no surprise who already appreciated his work.

Davies had (has) a knack of making serious comment from entertaining, upbeat and melodic songs. Almost fifty-four years on from ‘Apeman’ peaking at #5 in the UK charts, sadly nothing much appears to have changed. Indeed, the words are perhaps even more pertinent today:

… So I’m no better than the animals sitting

In the cages in the zoo man

‘Cause compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees

I am an apeman

I think I’m so educated and I’m so civilized

‘Cause I’m a strict vegetarian

But with the over-population and inflation and starvation

And the crazy politicians

I don’t feel safe in this world no more

I don’t want to die in a nuclear war

I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman

________

(Post by Colin ‘Jackie’ Jackson from Glasgow – August 2024)