Ignored by virtually everyone upon its release in November 1968, The
Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society is now seen as one of
the best British albums ever recorded. Here, Andy Miller traces the
perilous circumstances surrounding its creation, and celebrates the
timeless, perfectly crafted songs pieced together by a band who were on
the verge of disintegration and who refused to follow fashion.
Andy Miller is a writer living in London. His first book, Tilting at
Windmills, was published in the UK by Viking in 2002.
33 1/3 is a new series of short books about critically acclaimed and
much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather
than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard
biographical background that fans know already, and cut to the heart of
the music on each album. The authors provide fresh, original
perspectives - often through their access to and relationships with the
key figures involved in the recording of these albums. By turns
obsessive, passionate, creative, and informed, the books in this series
demonstrate many different ways of writing about music. (A task which
can be, as Elvis Costello famously observed, as tricky as dancing about
architecture.) What binds this series together, and what brings it to
life, is that all of the authors - musicians, scholars, and writers -
are deeply in love with the album they have chosen.
