The Kinks - Where Was Spring? (1969)

 

Side A: 
1. Till Death Do Us Part
2. Lavender Hill
3. Rosemary Rose
4. Pictures in the Sand
5. Where Did My Spring Go?
6. When I Turn Off My Living Room Light
7. Creeping Jean

Side B:
8. Plastic Man
9. Groovy Movies
10. King Kong
11. This Man He Weeps Tonight
12. Mindless Child of Motherhood
13. Mr. Shoemaker's Daughter
14. Hold My Hand

As mentioned in my last post about The Kinks, they planned to release an album alongside Village Green Preservation Society in 1968 called Four More Respected Gentlemen but chose not to, so the songs would later be released across two compilations, The Kinks Kronikles and The Great Lost Kinks Album. The title of the latter has been described as misleading cause only two songs from Gentlemen made it onto Great Lost. It turns out that most of these tracks actually came from an album they planned to release alongside Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) in 1969 called Where Was Spring?

The Kinks - Four More Respected Gentlemen (1968)

 

Side A:
1. She's Got Everything
2. Mr. Songbird
3. Polly
4. Days
5. Berkeley Mews
6. Misty Water
7. Did You See His Name?
8. Autumn Almanac

Side B:
9. Susannah's Still Alive
10. Act Nice and Gentle
11. This is Where I Belong
12. Dead End Street
13. Wonderboy
14. Mr. Pleasant
15. Big Black Smoke

Four More Respected Gentlemen was originally an album that was supposed to be released in November 1968, but about a month beforehand, the label dropped the project and released the album The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society instead. The album was submitted as a 15 track album but the label planned on releasing an 11 track version of it cutting out the last 4 tracks. Village Green Preservation Society included 5 of the songs but had 15 tracks in it. The European version of it included 2 exclusive tracks but had 12 tracks on it. Following the album's cancellation, Reprise released all of the tracks on two compilation albums, The Kink Kronikles and The Great Lost Kinks Album. 

Reprise began assembling an early version of the latter compilation in 1969 or 1970 which they planned to call Four More Respected Gentlemen. The eventual title The Great Lost Kinks Album references Gentlemen, though it's been described as misleading since there are only two songs in common between the albums. So the idea is to see if I can take the exclusive songs from the original version and combine it with other songs to make a complementary album out of it. Taking a look at the rest of the Kinks Kronikles track listing, it has 7 non-album songs to choose from but two of them are from 1969. This gives us an even 5 tracks to include. But then I also took out There's No Life Without Love and replaced it with Act Nice and Gentle which didn't get included.

The left cover is what was planned to originally be the cover. The right cover is an alternate European version of the cover to VGPS that I've seen used in some reconstructions of the album. The cover I use is one I just found on the internet. I take no credit for these covers.