Father Christmas

Occupy Xmas! First holiday song that's been in my head this season that I haven't actually heard in the Ethers yet.

Artist: The Kinks
Year: 1977
Rating: Luke Hot

People Take Pictures of Each Other

The Kinks, ever the formative existential rock band, present to you a problem in experiential living:

People take pictures of the Summer,
Just in case someone thought they had missed it,
Just to proved that it really existed.

It's one of our essential human dilemmas: how do we live in the moment without an excess of reflecting on the moment, or attempting to preserve or prolong the moment while we're living it, only then to return forever after to the moment once it's gone?

People Take Pictures of Each Other bookends an album that, earlier on in the track listing, has presented a similar meditation on the capturing of experience, Picture Book, which popped into my head back in February. I wonder if there's been something occurring in my life betwixt February and now that I'm trying to trap, as an insect in Amber, for all time.

Artist: The Kinks
Year: 1968
Rating: Luke Hot

Picture Book by the Kinks

From the Kinks' great album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, which provides an earnest-and-critical look into bygone genteel English society (an era that arguably never existed in the first place).

"Picture book/Of people with each other/To prove they love each other/A long time ago."

With this indicting lyric, laid over lighthearted "Scooby-doobie-doo" refrains, Picture Book exemplifies the tone of the whole record.

Artist: The Kinks
Year: 1968
Rating: Luke Hot