“Millionaires are things of the past
We’re in a low-budget film where nothing can last
Money’s rare, there’s none to be found
So don’t think I’m tight if I don’t buy a round.”—“Low Budget,” written by Ray Davies, performed by The Kinks on their Low Budget LP (1979)
There are certain men—Andy Rooney among them—who claim they keep their old ties for years with the expectation that they’ll eventually come back in fashion. So it is for baby-boom fans of The Kinks, who suddenly find, 30 years to the day upon its U.S. release, that Low Budget has become more relevant than ever.
The original LP was issued immediately after the British electorate had turned the Labour Party’s James Callaghan out of office, and just as their American counterparts were about to turn irretrievably away from Jimmy Carter. (In another five days, the American President would deliver his much-discussed—and, in the end, disastrous—“Malaise” speech.) High gas prices and long lines at the pump were the order of the day.
Though “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” became the hit single, much of the rest of the album reflected the changed political and economic climate, with titles such as “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” “Pressure,” “National Health,” “Misery,” and, inevitably, “A Gallon of Gas.”
Running like a thread through it all were the fiendishly clever lyrics of Ray Davies, lifting the group back to the commercial highs it had last known during the English Invasion of the Sixties. “Low Budget” is a good example why. Not only did the song have a near-irresistible hook (the kind, it seems to me, functioning best as a chorus in an English pubs), but, as the lyrics I’ve quoted demonstrate, I think, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
In the transatlantic stripped-down regulatory environment that held sway not only under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan but even under their more liberal successors, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, many people acted as if the boom-and-bust cycle had been suspended for the duration. For them, “Low Budget” must have seemed at points like a nostalgia piece from the late Seventies, like disco and mood rings.
They should have known better that Ray Davies and his crew would have the last laugh—not only because you can’t disregard the laws of economics, but because the brilliance of The Kinks at their best remains undimmed, to help us through get through the current recession, as they did the last one, with some much-needed humor.
There are certain men—Andy Rooney among them—who claim they keep their old ties for years with the expectation that they’ll eventually come back in fashion. So it is for baby-boom fans of The Kinks, who suddenly find, 30 years to the day upon its U.S. release, that Low Budget has become more relevant than ever.
The original LP was issued immediately after the British electorate had turned the Labour Party’s James Callaghan out of office, and just as their American counterparts were about to turn irretrievably away from Jimmy Carter. (In another five days, the American President would deliver his much-discussed—and, in the end, disastrous—“Malaise” speech.) High gas prices and long lines at the pump were the order of the day.
Though “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman” became the hit single, much of the rest of the album reflected the changed political and economic climate, with titles such as “Catch Me Now I’m Falling,” “Pressure,” “National Health,” “Misery,” and, inevitably, “A Gallon of Gas.”
Running like a thread through it all were the fiendishly clever lyrics of Ray Davies, lifting the group back to the commercial highs it had last known during the English Invasion of the Sixties. “Low Budget” is a good example why. Not only did the song have a near-irresistible hook (the kind, it seems to me, functioning best as a chorus in an English pubs), but, as the lyrics I’ve quoted demonstrate, I think, it’s laugh-out-loud funny.
In the transatlantic stripped-down regulatory environment that held sway not only under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan but even under their more liberal successors, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, many people acted as if the boom-and-bust cycle had been suspended for the duration. For them, “Low Budget” must have seemed at points like a nostalgia piece from the late Seventies, like disco and mood rings.
They should have known better that Ray Davies and his crew would have the last laugh—not only because you can’t disregard the laws of economics, but because the brilliance of The Kinks at their best remains undimmed, to help us through get through the current recession, as they did the last one, with some much-needed humor.
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