Friday Night Videos

"To The Bone" was the final single put out by the Kinks prior to the band's... well, I can't call it a breakup, since they never officially stopped working together. Dissolution? Evaporation? Dispersal? In any event, the double-album of the same title was part of the wave of acoustic "unplugged" reinterpretations of artists' catalogs in the mid-90s. So, naturally, the Kinks defied that trend by electrifying some of the tracks. But still, if you are going to get only one Kinks album, "To The Bone" offers a great cross-section of their decades-long career, spanning from the early British Invasion days through the arena rock period, including as many great but obscure album tracks as big hits. Highly recommended.

But that's getting off-track. The single "To The Bone" (originally titled "12 Inches and Black" according to Ray Davies in a VH1 show) is one of two original songs on the album (the other being the quite good rocker "Animal"). To be blunt, "To The Bone" is a melancholy, bluesy piece of work that showcases some of Ray Davies' best songsmanship ever. For someone who's reputation in the music business is built upon his clever lyrics, that's saying a lot. I've always imagined the "old double-pack" album he refers to in the song is actually their mid-80s "best-of" collection, "Come Dancing with the Kinks" and although they don't go so far as to show this in the video, the fact that Ray himself is the cause of the relationship breakup echoes those self-referential vibes I pick up from the song. The video itself is odd, and Ray can't resist hamming it up in his post-hippie 1970s persona that he originally played in the "Predictable" video, but still. You'll just have to watch to understand.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers.

Now Playing: Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel I