Hear the Kinks’ Previously Unreleased Song From 1968

Quirky

August 16, 2018

byItsNotYouItsMe

Our psychedelic trippy rebel hearts are palpitating with excitement!

“The Kinks meditate on lazy days and mortality in “Time Song,” an unreleased track that’s on the band’s upcoming 50th-anniversary edition of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, out October 26th via BMG.

“Time lives our lives with us, walks side by side with us/ Time is so far from us, but time is among us,” frontman Ray Davies croons on the song over a slow, hazy waltz of acoustic guitar and piano. “Time is ahead of us, above and below us/ Is standing beside us and looking down on us.”

Though the British band never included “Time Song” on a studio album, they performed the track live in January 1973 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London, England, celebrating Britain’s inclusion in the Common Market.

“When we played a concert at Drury Lane in ’73 to ‘celebrate’ us about to join what was called the Common Market, I decided to use the song as a warning that time was running out for the old British Empire,” Davies said in a statement. “This song was recorded a few weeks later but never made the final cut on the Preservation Act I album. Oddly enough, the song seems quite poignant and appropriate to release at this time in British history, and like Europe itself the track its a rough mix which still has to be finessed.”

The song, which Davies mixed in early 2018, will be issued digitally and as part of the deluxe box set and deluxe 2-CD versions of the reissue. It will also appear a limited-edition seven-inch with pre-orders of the box set via the Kinks’ official Music Glue store.

The box will also include five CDs featuring the remastered original album, B-sides, live cuts, other unreleased tracks and alternate versions, mixes and backing tracks; three seven-inch singles, a gatefold double-LP, various memorabilia and a 52-page hardback photo book featuring sleeve notes, interviews, photography and essays from the Who’s Pete Townshend and journalist Kate Mossman. Full details of the package are available at the band’s site.

Davies also reflected about the legacy of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, the band’s sixth LP.

“I think The Village Green Preservation Society is about the ending of a time personally for me in my life,” he said. “In my imaginary village. It’s the end of our innocence, our youth. Some people are quite old, but in the Village Green, you’re never allowed to grow up. I feel the project itself as part of a life cycle.”

The Kings are the Village Green Preservation Society Original LP Track List.” – Rollingstone.com

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. “Phenomenal Cat”
12. “All of My Friends Were There”
13. “Wicked Annabella”
14. “Monica”
15. “People Take Pictures of Each Other”