[The odd thing about the Kinks] is that despite their frequent inability to remain vertical on stage, and despite the fact that they've been known to give performances in which they sounded like, in John Mendelsohn's phrase, "the first rehearsal of an inept teenage garage band," they've managed to create a body of recorded work that is quite clearly in the Beatles/Stones/Dylan class. Yet they've never really achieved the commensurate superstardom….

Discussions of the Kinks have invariably centered around Ray Davies…. But in the beginning it was the Kinks as a band that knocked people out. And, strangely enough, they made their initial reputation as avant-gardists. But there really is no rock avant-garde anymore, John Lennon's protestations to the contrary, and the style of amphetamine raving pioneered on their early singles is by now—eight brief years later—totally absorbed into the mainstream. But avant-gardists they...