Song and Album Notes
In late summer of 1968, the Kinks had hoped to release the album as a two-record set with 20 tracks, but Pye Records rejected this plan. A twelve-track version of the album was released in September 1968 throughout certain European markets; these are now valuable collector's items. Production of this version was quickly halted at Ray Davies's insistence and the final revamped fifteen-track version was released in the UK in November 1968.
U.S. record label Reprise had intended to release many of album's tracks on a separate Kinks album titled Four More Respected Gentlemen sometime in mid-1968 to fulfil a contractual album obligation. This was in the final stages of pre-production when Reprise dropped all plans to issue it, based on the strength of the forthcoming Village Green album.
"Starstruck" was released as a single in Europe and the United States, and charted in The Netherlands, peaking at #13. This is the only appearance of any track from the album on the hit parade in any country. A promotional film shot was shot for "Starstruck" in late 1968 for the overseas promotion of the single, and has since been re-used in various Kinks bios. The only other surviving contemporary footage of the band performing Village Green songs is their January 1969 spot on the TV music programme "Once More with Felix", on which they were seen performing "Last Of the Steam-Powered Trains" and "Picture Book" in colour. This clip, long believed lost, came to light in 2007.
The photography used for the album art was shot in August 1968 on Parliament Hill, a part of Hampstead Heath, North London.
Out of print on vinyl for years, although consistently available on US Reprise CD since 1990, the album is reported to be the best-selling non-compilation album in the Kinks' catalogue. Ray Davies has recently referred to it as the "most successful flop of all time".
"Picture Book", although not one of the singles from the album, it became popular after it was used in a 2004 television commercial for Hewlett-Packard digital imaging products.
"The Village Green Preservation Society" and "Village Green" were used in the 2007 British comedy Hot Fuzz.
Read more about this topic: The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society
Famous quotes containing the words song and, song, album and/or notes:
“In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Turn back,
back
to the lake of Delos;
lest all the song notes
pause and break
across a blood-stained throat....”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“What a long strange trip it’s been.”
—Robert Hunter, U.S. rock lyricist. “Truckin’,” on the Grateful Dead album American Beauty (1971)
“My notes have a curious tendency, as I realize at last, to annihilate all they purport to record.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)