KINKS ORDINAIRE

Back around the time of Waterloo Sunset and Sunny Afternoon when the Kinks were one of my favorite cult groups, one of my favorite cult things about them was the literary/theatrical quality of their songs. Lots of which had characters and plots with the singer taking one role in the drama or standing outside it as the third person narrator.

Others might sing of people outside themselves who were a part of their scene. And of course there was always the technique of putting down outsiders to develop one's own identity. But the Kinks also included "ordinary" characters in their repertoire who seemed to be there just because thej Kinks found them interesting, that's all.® Effortlessly, it seemed, broadening the rock and roll aesthetic to include the J mundane back when more divisive elitist concepts like Counter-Culture and Generation-Gap still had a lot of power.