Keeping up the bucolic, even idyllic, associations with
“Greenman” and springiness, let’s turn to those bastions of all things Brit,
The Kinks. Today’s song is from 1968, in the wake of all that Sgt. Pepperized
costuming and Magical Mystery Touring The Beatles got up to the previous year,
to say nothing of the Stones’ satanic psychedelia and other flights of
trippiness galore. The Kinks threw a spanner into the works. A song celebrating
the verities of British life, making “hip” claims for some pretty stodgy
things.
Mind you, the ditties of McCartney, always a music hall
maven, borrowed freely from the idioms of days gone by, and songs like “When
I’m 64” and “Your Mother Should Know” gave one a jolly good feeling about the
benefits of twee over tedium. But Ray Davies herein fashioned an
anthem for the aging, a bravo for the bygone, a salvo for the soon-to-be-senescent.
In its knowing post-war purview, “The Village Green Preservation Society” could
sound like the call-to-arms for all those a bit put-out by the modish fabness
of the times. Having skewered Carnaby Street legions with “Dedicated Follower of
Fashion” and the upper class twit with “Well Respected Man,” and having not yet
undertaken his magnum opus on the fate of the average British blighter since
the glory of Victoria, Arthur, or the
Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1969), Davies here casts a fond eye on
the land where he was born and bred.
 |
| Ray Davies, Pete Quaife, Dave Davies, Mick Avory |
And it’s not all tongue-in-cheek. God Save Our King or God
Save Our Queen are words spoken a bit automatically, true, but they can also be
said with great “land that I love” feeling. How can you smirk at “God save Fu
Manchu, Moriarty, and Dracula”? Well, you could point out that Fu Manchu is a
stereotype and very un-PC, you could indicate that Dracula is sort of satanic, and
that Moriarty is a dastardly nemesis, but then you’d be kind of a prig,
wouldn’t you? And what about “little shops, china cups, and virginity”? What
red-blooded defender of the faith could look askance at such quaint symbols of
propriety? Particularly when promulgated by the Office Block Condemnation
Affiliate.
Davies’ wit is shown in what each “society” wants to protect
and also in what it wants to condemn—office blocks and skyscrapers, bad;
village greens and Tudor houses, good. We might say they are retrograde and we might
say their views are less than democratic, but . . . aren't they right? Ditto the “Sherlock Holmes English Speaking
Vernacular,” though the stalwarts we might imagine primping for
pro-nun-see-ay-shee-un are the very types complained of in Davies’ later “Muswell
Hillbillies” (“they’re going to make me study elocution / Because they say my
accent isn’t right”). An undercurrent of “Village Green” is not only the praise
of all things British, since time immemorial, but the distrust of things not,
shall we say, cricket.
Perhaps the best rhyme of all is “We are the Custard Pie
Appreciation Consortium / God save the George Cross and all those who were
awarded them.” Hear, hear. And how about
“God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties.” No, stodgy old
purist here, there’s more than one jam I’d die for, certainly. But what about
marmalade?
The refrain is something swiped, it seems, straight from the
“literature” of any grand old conservationist rag: “Preserving the old ways from being abused / Protecting the new
ways for me and for you / What more can we do” and it's delivered in chipper, infectious sing-along fashion, with the air of a parade on a bank holiday. It’s a
perfect introduction to the wit and wisdom of Ray Davies as it is so incredibly
knowing about the people whereof it speaks—like so many great old novelists of
yore—as well as ably aimed at the audience of his contemporaries. It’s a
send-up of the hip and a send-off to the square. It’s catchy and curmudgeonly
and utterly charming.
God Save The Kinks!
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