The Kinks-Greatest Hits! (1966)
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Format: LP
Cat: RS 6217
Year of Release: 1966
Country and Year of Edition: US 1966 Yellow Boat Reprise
Sell Price: $8.93
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold: 12/12/23 G+/VG $4.00
Low: $1.00 P/Not Graded,
Median: $8.46
Average: $11.35
High: $45.00 NM/NM
Current low price: $2.91 G/G+, $10.50 VG/NM
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 53
Have/Want: 4286/230
Where Sold: Annapolis, MD
Time It Took To Sell: 8 years
Where and When Bought: early 80's Worcester Al Bums off the wall $15.00
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A+
Sad To See It Go: No
One of those albums that shocked me when it sold for a low price. I bought this off the wall behind the counter at Al Bums in Worcester in the early 80's for $15 in 80's money. In that time period, despite 5 stars from the Rolling Stone Record Guide and all of the early hits, the record went out of print in the pre-CD era. For most of the 80's this material issued in the 60's by Reprise was left to UK import labels like Marble Arch and Pye that made their way to the cutout bins before co-mingling in the Kinks bin with the hot selling Arista titles and the dwindling in print titles from RCA and Reprise. It wasn't until 1989, deep into the CD era, that Rhino finally issued a version of Greatest Hits that looked nothing like the vintage 1966 version.
Nowadays, Greatest Hits! last lost some of it's value, even original copies go under ten bucks although I think a store in NJ bought this to flip to a customer. I actually have a 70's "brown Reprise" copy I bought in a Facebook that I have up for around $15. I didn't know those pressings even existed and forgot that my original hadn't sold when I bought it for $4 or $5 bucks.
As for the music, well this is top line pre-Face To Face British Invasion Kinks, worthy of being uttered in the same breath as the Beatles, Stones and Who. Mostly true AOR "hits" that made the pre-66 cut. They had the aid of One For The Road and the resurgence of these songs as an arena player in the Arista years from the late 70's until 1984 or so after Van Halen blasted them once again for the masses. The two that were "album tracks" were "Something Better Beginning" and "Ev'rybody's Gonna Be Happy" although now that I think about it, I can't recall ever hearing "Who'll Be The Next In Line" on the radio. That one did make the 1989 Rhino Greatest Hits cut, but the other two didn't.
You'd think they'd be a little more faithful and simply expand the original, but only the Japanese bothered to do it. They waited until 2021 when a label called Oldays Records issued a CD including both Stereo and Mono versions 55 years after release. Considering that in the US the album charted higher than the 5 previous releases, peaking at #9 on Billboard besting the #13 Kinks Size, there is something to be said about the restoration of how American ears heard this music even through in the CD era the Beatles were the forerunner of the "UK release as originally intended" reissues on the CD market.
So that leaves us forever hits "All Day And All The Night," "Set Me Free," "Tired Of Waiting For You, "Till The End Of The Day," "Dedicated Follower of Fashion," "A Well Respected Man" and of course "You Really Got Me." You really can't argue with the overall greatness of these ten tracks on this release. The semantics of repackaging is eternal and often eclipsed into bloat in terms of sheer listenability. Better to "have it" than to hear it.
Sometimes it's better to keep it simple.
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