If you’ve never heard of the band The Kinks, well, you probably have heard their music but just don’t associate the band with the song. Brothers Ray and Dave Davies formed the band back in 1963. They had their musical roots in the 1960s with bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, but never quite reached those bands’ epic proportions of popularity.

What I expected from The Kinks 1964-1978 was the usual collection of live performances and more recent videos. Instead, these two discs have musicians, producers, music historians, and critics weighing in on the band and their impact on the rock music scene over the years. They don’t talk about the infighting between the brothers.

They start with the first hit single by The Kinks, You Really Got Me. Listening to it now, and thinking about it being released back in 1964, it just doesn’t seem to fit in that time with its hard-driving guitar riffs. That’s how revolutionary the band was; You Really Got Me sounds more like something out of the post-Zeppelin era, and it was released five years before a Led Zeppelin recording was. The sound of Dave Davies’ guitar was actually an accident, but it sounded so cool that they kept it. The song gets 5 out of 5 stars from the panel.

And this is how it goes all the way through the two DVDs. Many of the songs the band recorded are brought up to the panel, and they discuss the history behind the song, analyze the songs, and give their rating. If this sounds a bit pretentious, it is at times. All Day and All of the Night is one of the strongest songs ever written by all accounts. It also gets 5 stars. I can’t imagine anyone judging that any less, and I guess that’s why I have a problem with it. Why would fans of the band care what this bunch thinks of The Kinks’ music? We all have our favorites, and does it really matter?

My personal favorite, Destroyer, isn’t even included on the discs since it only goes to 1978. I don’t know why they felt the need to stop or how they justified putting it on two DVDs. The first part is short, only lasting about an hour. This covered from 1964 to 1970. The second disc covers the period from 1971 to 1978.

It did give some good history of the band and shows how their music managed to transcend the time from the 1960s to the punk era. The DVD covers how they were thought of as “the grandfathers of punk” and how they adjusted as punk rock emerged in the middle to latter part of the decade.

Even if you don’t think you know the band, chances are there is at least one song presented here that you will recognize, and that is Lola. The problem is that there’s not one song or performance presented in its entirety. It’s consistently interrupted by the “critics” who tell us what made a song good or not. Thanks, but I don’t need someone to tell me how to think about music.

The Kinks 1964-1978 fails on so many levels. It doesn’t encompass all of their music, and it doesn’t showcase any performances or songs in their entirety. Instead, it’s a bunch of people who talk about the band’s music. It’s not a complete biography of the band because they don’t talk about the band’s history of infighting. I don’t think people who don’t really know the work of The Kinks will come away with any great knowledge of the band, however interesting the analysis of the songs is. The Kinks 1964-1978 is something I would have expected to watch in my History of Rock Music class that I took in college (got an A). It’s also not something I would feel the need to have in a DVD collection. I wouldn’t sit down and watch it with friends.

I just wonder why it was made and how it was sold to those who produced it. Realistically, it‘s something that someone would do for themselves to indulge their own ego, but why market it?


Available in Dolby Digital, Dolby Surround, and Digital DTS Surround audio.

DVD includes and Image Gallery