Kinks, The - Last Of The Steam-Powered Trains Lyrics

I'm liking the energy and mastering of the songs off of these albums, but they sound too Beatles-y. I think something that has the sound of this album mixed with the songwriting of Misfits would be perfect.

Respect to Ray.

I like the bluesy vibe of this song.

Tune of the century

What a groovy fucking song.

Sounds kinda like Smokestack Lightning.

19 people are gay...

you sound like an incredibly foolish and ignorant child.

No conocía la canción, pero me gusta. Gracias (i know the song. Thanks por publish).

Me encanta la canción. Gracias por publicarla.

Saw them do a 25 minute version of this live. The whole place was bouncing. Great live band.

Excellent....

https://youtu.be/RNq_T9EsIhE

Papel secante
Jabón
Zafacón
Agua Calientr

Who ever dislikes this should be shoved infront of a stream powered train

bloodline??

My favorite Kinks album

Fantastic!

i love you ray davies

Take home message from youtube comments on this album: untalented Green Day malicioulsy "ripped off" The Kinks' Picture Book with Live Without Warning, yet brilliant Kinks pull off masterstroke in their creative adaptation of Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightnin'. Yet, for sure Kinks knew about Smokestack Lightnin' but less clear whether Green Day knew about Picture Book.

Mark Everett dude what are you even trying to say here?

Such a catchy tune ...

howlin wolf!!

Reminds,Groupies
" Primitive",a song two years before this,and ofcourse "Smokestack lighting"by Howlinwolf on late 50's

The first three lines of the song were played in the movie Flashback from 1990 in the train car scene near the beginning. The bass line caught my ear and I found the whole song here. very cool.

Oasis and the Gallaghers? The Kinks were the original fighting brothers band.

Everly brothers, Dorsey brothers...

Brilliant 👍

At Kinky volume-!

Afeeta D' Feeti brought me here.

Best song on this album IMO!

I remember jumping out the hueys into the rice fields with this song.

not Fortunate Son? lol

The Kinks and the Beatles, just never lost sight of their English Roots..One could call it English Roots Music, which encorporated English Folk , Music Hall and all the vunacular.

Smokestack lightnin'!?!? that seriously caught me off guard! Think my respect for the kinks just went up a notch! Glad to see the spirt of the great Howlin' Wolf lives on...

Words: 'Like the last of the good old puffer trains, I am the last of the blood & sweat brigade, and I don't know where I'm going, or where I came......  I am the last of the good old renegades....  All my friends are middle class and grey....but I am in a museum, so I am ok.... I am the last of the good old-fashioned steam-powered trains.... ' - Maybe like the Magic Roundabout it is about something completely different to the actual subject? Maybe?

a long forgotten track, still fresh

More proof that Ray Davies STARTED at about the White Album... Just took a while for Lennon-McCartney to catch up. Probably why when asked they said the best band out there was the Kinks

I never knew they said that about the Kinks, though it's music to my ears to hear about it. Any idea where I can see or hear the Beatles saying this? I do know that John Lennon was at a discotheque one night and asked the DJ to keep playing one of the Kinks's singles over and over again all evening, also that he was resentful that the Kinks had recorded See My Friend before the Beatles got into Indian music. These two groups were definitely two of the main driving forces of sixties innovation in pop music. They were originators. The Stones and Led Zeppelin were copyists and plagiarists. Groups as diverse as the Who and Alice Cooper admitted being heavily influenced by the Kinks, and so were many others.

Song is about mortality: uses blues train motif to show the end of the days of said train, looking as good as ever, but embalmed in museum. Genius Ray Davies lyric. 1968's greatest lyricist in the world.

choo choo

I can just imagine Thomas the tank engine singing this. What a start that would be to a kids show :-)

Wow, neat that a rock band would write a song like this, as steam seems so disconnected from the "sixties" culture.

Jackson Van Ness The culture. The main concept of the Village Green album is remembering the past, and Ray was enamored with it.

@Geoffrey Gentry Exactly. Do you remember Walter? Big sky looked down on all the people

The Kinks have always been the first and the greatest outsider band. That's the thing.

There was a lot of nostalgia for earlier times in the '60s, nothing unusual about this.

Well steam engines lasted until 1968 in Britain

My favourite song of the album!

Brilliant lyrics expanding a blues riff into a rock ballad about the end of the UK's steam train service with Ray singing in the first person identifying himself as the train itself. This guy's creative imagination was seemingly limitless.

Ray is on record as Fan of A Canterbury Tale. As for me, have lived with, thought and read about, these songs for years and wouldn't want to turn into "The Boy Who Turned Yellow" on reading dissenting opinion.

"A Matter of Life & Death" is my cup of tea. 'Reading dissenting opinion' is preferable to meal-time arguing when "The Battle of the River Plate" might turn into 'the battle of the dinner plates.'

It is surely just an analogy for anything that is the last of its kind, based on the recent (then) conversion of British trains from Steam powered to Diesel and Electric powered.

It's almost like a song can be about two different things at once.

Intro sounds like Doors or is my imagination.

Both garage bands. However The Kinks were on the scene a good few years before The Doors.

Like "Roadhouse Blues"?

Like Hello I Love You?

Smokestack Lightnin' by Howlin' Wolf seems to be the inspiration; lots of 60s rock bands were influenced by Howlin' Wolf.

Similar to 'been down so long'

Always loved this song. Its like Ray Davies took a train from the cottonfields of 1920s Louisiana and put it into the rolling hills of Surrey in the 1960s, with lots of chaps inside enjoying tea and biscuits and discussing the cricket. So terribly, awfully English...

Song is about mortality: uses blues train motif to show the end of the days of said train, looking as good as ever, but embalmed in museum.

"Folk song was the sound of trains. The Kinks were the sound of war. We are the sound of jet planes and of all automated things around us"

-- Jim McGuinn (Byrds, featuring David Crosby), interview in the Melody Maker, 1965.

You are a bigot? I wasn't looking for that. I would edit your post fast if I were you. The Islam references paint you as a disgusting bigot. I hope you are not. Back to the music:
1. Quote "is a fact". AND?? You keep saying that. So what?
2. Yes, the quote belongs to that time and so can bear no relation to a quote of worth on the Kinks: from when Ray was the genius he became.
3. A quote in 2017 allows hindsight to come into play. A critic will always give a more informed view of a film than the filmmaker himself: check any DVD commentary. A critic of any artform doesn't have to BE a celebrity. That is dumb.

Powell Pressburger i forgot to underline that what i said is about his style :D that muslim references shows how his brain work and that was funny lol

I think all "god" beliefs are as stupid as one another, but bigotry is to be despised.

Powell Pressburger yeah dude i'm agree with you, i just find the attitudes of bigots funny.

Paganel75 (I know it's a bit late,but) that Powell Pressburger twit is a real pain in the arse, eh? Also, an obnoxious twerp, and probably a pansy - suffering eff! The Kinks, by 1965, had done Where Have All The Good Times Gone, not to mention Well Respected Man, See My Friends, Set Me Free, and loads of others. McGuinn had insight and could see what bands were about and where they were going. I love that quote of his you quoted. McGuinn was a visionary (and so were The Kinks).

I've always loved this song

Variation on the tune Smokestack Lightnin'

About as bluesy as the kinks got really. Fits the narrative of the album well though

Main riff is a variation on the tune of CC rider with the animals too

But a year earlier than "Green River."

I always thought of this song as the Kinks doing their version of "Suzie-Q". Love the speeded-up part in the middle. The closest thing to a rocker from their Village Green album, which is a wonderful album nonetheless.

+Bruce Beatlefan Very Creedence-y, yeah.

+multiplesifl I agree with both of you here. Also has a resemblance to green river.

I listened to this album for the first time today (sacrilege, I know) and my first thought when this song opened was “Huh, they did a Creedence Cover? Wait - was Creedence before or after this?”

CCR's version of "Suzie Q" was released in July of '68 and this was released on November of '68...but "Suzie Q" was originally recorded by Dale Hawkins in 1957 (and also by the Stones in '65). But that riff is also very similar to Howlin Wolf's "Smokestack Lightin" which came out in 1956, so you could say that Howlin Wolf beat em all. (But then, "Smokestack Lightnin" is similar to other older blues songs, so who knows.)

Here's "Smokestack Lightnin" because it kicks much ass.
https://youtu.be/9Ri7TcukAJ8

did Pete Waterman produce this record?

+davidgwr lol,
thankfully, NO

Wow Bloodline brought me here too!

Bloodline brought me here.

Bloodline brought me here too!

Ben fucking Mendelsohn

Wait when was this on bloodline?

JJ B season 1 episode 4, 44 minutes in!

+Richard Pepper
Me, too !

I'm the last of the good old steam powered trains!

Only RD can make a tune about steam trains and make it sound the bollix!!

Locomotive Breath, by Jethro Tull.

@Michael Greenwood "Smokestack Lightnin'" by Howlin' Wolf

Top Top Tune :)