266. COME DANCING WITH THE KINKS: THE BEST OF 1977-1986 by The Kinks

I've made it a rule not to cover compilations, best of's, greatest hits, etc. as I'd rather introduce you to records released as discrete snapshots of a band or musician at a particular point in time. However, I'm making an exception to that rule today. But, as you can imagine, since this is a collection of tracks that are already considered great, it's gonna to be difficult to pick just a few to recommend.

When Baby Boomers and Gen Xers think of The Kinks, the songs that are most likely to come to mind are those from their 1960's albums...songs like 'Lola' (technically a 1970 release), 'You Really Got Me,' 'All Day And All Of The Night' and, of course, 'Waterloo Sunset.' However, if that's all you know of The Kinks, you're missing out on their second coming - that's what this 1986 double album compilation covers, specifically the seven records they put out during the nine years spanning 1977 to 1986.

One difficulty in making this today's Daily Record is that the version I know and love and grew up to is not the version currently available on streaming services. I'll just refer you to the Wikipedia entry if you feel inclined to dig into the nitty gritty details. So, a few of the tracks below are not on the streaming version of this record that is linked to above, but if you'd like to listen to them they're added to my Apple Music and Spotify playlists - culled directly from the records they were originally on.

So, here goes: 'Destroyer' (in which the lyrics pay homage to 'Lola' and the riff to 'All Day And All Of The Night'), 'Don't Forget To Dance,' 'Long Distance,' 'A Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy' and the live version of 'Celluloid Heroes' (though the original studio version came out in 1972).

Turns out that 'Long Distance' is not on either AM or Spotify, so I'm including it below