Shangri-la

Dear James,

We haven't had any Kinks on this blog yet, and we still haven't as technically this is just one of them with a whole load of other people, including lots of middle-aged choirboys. This is another one of those songs where I can't work out whether it's a fine performance true to the majesty of the original or just some old people rehashing great songs they're no longer capable of writing. I'll leave our readers to work out that one, just as soon as we get some readers.

I have before me an album titled "Golden Hour Kinks Lola, Percy & The Apeman come Face to Face with the Village Green Preservation Society... Something Else". I thought Shangri-la might be on it, but it isn't. I really should fix my record player. And here's a list of chords for all the Kinks' songs ever. This is another one of those songs it took me for ever to get into. I think I first heard it through you and ignored it. Then I heard it in the bar la Cigale and asked the barman who it was. "The Kinks", he said. Damn, I thought. I'm Enlgish, I should be telling them about The Kinks. And it turns out their best album ever is Arthur, not Village Green. And I don't even own that! This is all wrong, James.

The phrase Shangri-La originated in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon by James Hilton, which in turn was made into a film by Frank Capra, then remade in the Bacharch musical Lost Horizon, which was kind of where this blog started.

There used to be a beach resort near Montevideo, Uruguay, called Shangrilá, named after the place in the novel. True story.

Dear Daniel,

I rather like it, but then I think it's a great song. Two things about this version get my back up, however. Firstly, why anybody in music who ages enough to be re-visited in BBCtv retrospectives like the Electric Proms, or to appear on Jools Holland's show simultaneously peddling their ropey new albums and trading on former glories decides to use that horrible mushy "electronic" acoustic guitar sound.

Secondly, "professional" musicians often ruin music. See how the a member of the choir-for-hire beams radiantly through the line about a "mortgage hanging over his head", because she's on the telly. Suddenly, the song ceases to be a singular heartfelt take on 60s British suburbia and splits and withers, becoming a bunch of words and notes played and sung by idiots.

I think that's why Jean Luc Picard joins in (at 4'28"), trying to save them from themselves.