The Great Lost Kinks Album by The Kinks

The Great Lost Kinks Album is a 1973 LP of mostly unreleased material issued by Reprise Records after The Kinks had moved to RCA. The tracks were recorded between 1966 and 1970 and master tapes were shipped to the US Reprise Label in the early 1970s to fulfil contractual obligations with that label. Kinks leader and songwriter, Ray Davies, intended most of the songs to remain unreleased "collateral" tracks for Reprise. Several other songs from these "collateral" recordings had been released on the 1972 Reprise compilation The Kink Kronikles. Davies and the Kinks management first learned of the album's existence from the US Billboard record chart. Davies instituted legal action against Reprise, which resulted in Reprise discontinuing the album in 1975. It became an immediate collector's item as most of the songs remained officially unreleased until the 1998 reissue of Kinks albums with bonus tracks. All of the tracks received legitimate release as bonus tracks on these UK Sanctuary reissue CDs, the 2001 BBC Sessions 1964–1977, the 2004 3-CD deluxe edition of Village Green, and 2014's The Anthology 1964–1971. The name is a reference to an album that was set to be released by Reprise in 1969 but was held back, eventually morphing into The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. The songs include a number of unused album tracks, a British single ("Plastic Man"), a B-side ("I'm Not Like Everybody Else"), a film theme ("Till Death Do Us Part"), songs written exclusively for British television ("Where Did the Spring Go?", "When I Turn Off the Living Room Light"). The Great Lost Kinks Album also included several Dave Davies recordings intended for his ill-fated solo album ("Groovy Movies", "There Is No Life Without Love", "This Man He Weeps Tonight"). The liner notes for the album were written by John Mendelsohn.