Lords in Disgrace

Schoolboys in Disgrace or The Kinks Present Schoolboys in Disgrace is a 1975 album by the Kinks. According to the back cover liner notes, the story which the album presents is as follows: Once upon a time there was a naughty little schoolboy. He and his gang were always playing tricks on the teachers and bullying other children in the school…

Ray Davies had indulged himself one time too often with Soap Opera, and his bandmates, namely brother Dave and founding member Mick Avory, revolted, insisting that their sixth RCA album sound more like a Kinks album (certainly, that's something RCA wanted too). So, Davies designed their next album as a return to a simpler, band-oriented sound…

The Kinks' concise, typically bittersweet 1975 reflection on the trials and tribulations of the English school system would foreshadow Pink Floyd's similarly themed, if gratuitously unfocused The Wall by half a decade. It would also close out the band's oft-misunderstood "concept" period. Following on the heels of Preservation, Acts 1 and 2, and Soap Opera, albums whose sprawling, Floydian narratives were pointedly deflated by Ray Davies' lovable, Vaudevillian loopiness. Schoolboys has long seemed the red-headed stepchild in that ancestry. But, it's precisely the album's scaled-back ambitions and breezy delivery (typified by the 50's vamping "Jack the Idiot Dunce") that have preserved its charm. Dave Davies' chunky guitar progressions gratifyingly return to the fore on "In Disgrace" and "The Hard Way," while brother Ray's sharp-eyed observations wax alternately cynical ("Education") and wistful ("The First Time We Fall in Love"). This remastered new SACD edition is compatible with regular CD players.
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Ray Davies had indulged himself one time too often with Soap Opera, and his bandmates, namely brother Dave and founding member Mick Avory, revolted, insisting that their sixth RCA album sound more like a Kinks album (certainly, that's something RCA wanted too). So, Davies designed their next album as a return to a simpler, band-oriented sound. Of course, he didn't jettison his love for conceptual works, so Schoolboys in Disgrace was born. Working under the presumption that a return to simple rock demanded a simple theme, Davies constructed the album as a nostalgic trip through childhood, reviving '50s rock & roll (including the occasional doo wop harmony) for the album's foundation, then turning the amps up high…