2 Gems of ’68 Still Shine After All These Years

A favorite pastime in the late ‘80s is rehashing the music and pop culture of the late ‘60s.

It all started last year with the 20th anniversary of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the most overrated rock album ever released (it’s a good album, but not good enough to justify all the hype . . . call it the “Rattle and Hum” of its time). The album’s opening phrase, “It was 20 years ago today. . . . “ proved too alluring for most pop commentators to resist. Rolling Stone magazine didn’t even try, citing its own 20th anniversary in ’87 as a reason to devote lakes of ink--and a TV special--to the ‘60s.

Looking backward has gone forward in ‘88, the double-decade year for the Martin Luther King Jr.-Robert F. Kennedy assassinations and the 25th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death. The publication of Albert Goldman’s book about John Lennon further fueled the recollection of dead ‘60s heroes. Next year you can look forward to exhaustive 20th-anniversary discussions of Woodstock and Altamont. But I promise not to be a part of it. My resolution for ’89 is to avoid reminiscing about ’69 (unless, God forbid, some retrogressive editor commands it).

In exchange, I’ll be content to reminisce about ’68 before the opportunity offered by our cultural habit of thinking in 10s slips away. Actually, I just want to talk about “Beggars Banquet” by the Rolling Stones and “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” by the Kinks--two rock albums from 1968 that I think stand as the two best ever released (I’ve never been able to choose between them for a clear No. 1. If you’re curious about what places third, it’s “The Band”). Neither of these albums sounds the least bit dated today.

What the two albums have in common, besides their year of release, is a profound disillusionment with the world, an acute awareness of how painful and disappointing and downright horrifying life can be. Yet both albums contain some howlingly funny songs, and both steadfastly reject nihilism and cynicism.

In “Beggars Banquet,” the refuge from nihilism lies in devotion to honored musical traditions--blues, folk and country--that the Stones cling to like a branch hanging over an abyss. And “Beggars Banquet” is about looking into the abyss. Brian Jones was self-destructing before the rest of the band’s eyes while it was recorded. The group also was smarting from the 1967 failure of “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” a trend-hopping trip into cotton-headed hippy psychedelia in which the Stones tried to be something they were not. On “Beggars Banquet” they resolved to be themselves.

The album opens with “Sympathy for the Devil,” a rock classic that doesn’t celebrate evil but holds up a mirror to a world where evil runs rampant. The lean, brittle meanness of Keith Richards’ incomparable guitar breaks, the mockery in the hooting backing chorus, Mick Jagger’s portrayal of a gloating Lucifer--it’s supreme rock music, and it isn’t even the best song on the album (nor is another certifiable classic, “Street Fighting Man”).

That honor goes to “Stray Cat Blues,” a frightening but alluring evocation of morals shattering that, in 4 1/2 minutes, speaks volumes about the century of Auschwitz. Jagger plays a swaggering corrupter, enticing and seducing a 15-year-old girl, then cackling with glee when he breaks through to a place inside her that relishes corruption too. “It’s no hanging matter,” he drawls as purity gets blotted. “It’s no capital crime.” The crunching march at the end of the song sounds uncannily like an invasion of storm troopers, a procession of brutish, fascist power on the loose.

In the album’s final song, “Salt of the Earth,” the Stones look out on teeming humanity and see no reason for hope, no chance even to find comfort in a community of sufferers: “They don’t look real to me, somehow they look so strange.”

But the album also holds the shimmering, dejected beauty of “No Expectations,” and it glimpses moments of decency and laughter in such songs as “Prodigal Son,” “Dear Doctor” and “Factory Girl”--though always with a twinge of hard-headed irony.

On the Kinks’ “Village Green Preservation Society” album, singer-songwriter Ray Davies tries to deal with pain without the benefit of the Stones’ flinty front. Davies doesn’t so much ask what life’s harsh realities are--he knows them by rote--as try to find a way to live in the face of them. The result is an album swaddled in warmth, sympathy and humor, all of which are not, in the end, enough to keep out the chill.

Davies briefly finds refuge in memory, in make-believe, in myth-weaving and in whimsy, in trying to laugh even when it hurts. The whimsy results in songs such as the delightfully scary bedtime story, “Wicked Annabella,” and “Phenomenal Cat,” a song that no cat fancier should die without hearing.

Instead of addressing big questions and broad issues, the Kinks stick to their characteristic approach of painting life in finely detailed miniatures. But in “Big Sky,” an aching Davies does ask the ultimate question: If there’s a just God in heaven, how can He let life go on like this on Earth? Instead of raging at divine indifference, Davies concludes that “the Big Sky” would like to help us, and feels bad about our travail but that for some reason He can’t. Instead of raging, he tries to offer comfort both to this powerless God, and to suffering humanity as well.

Someday we’ll be free, we won’t care, just you see.

‘Til that day can be, don’t let it get you down.

He knows it’s an illusion, a false hope. But he also knows that sometimes we need illusion in the face of truths that can lead only to despair.

Musically, the Kinks follow their own idiosyncratic path on “Village Green Preservation Society,” emphasizing the heritage of the British music hall while trotting out harpsichords and strings. This, remember, was the year of Hendrix and “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Maybe that’s why sales for “Village Green” were less than a pittance (it’s now out of print). But in its subtle way, the album rocks with authority, and the song arrangements hold a degree of inventiveness and imagination that rivals the Beatles or Brian Wilson at their peak.

Without grandstanding, each song offers wonderful sonic twists and surprises. Good luck finding it--sometimes a Canadian pressing will turn up in the bargain bins. This one is worth the search. And if you can’t find it, pick up “The Kink Kronikles,” a double album that documents this venerable but underrated band’s most extraordinary years.

ROLL OUT THE BARREL: After withdrawing a previous request for permission to sell beer, Club Postnuclear in Laguna Beach is going ahead with plans to end its no-alcohol policy. A hearing on the club’s request for a beer permit is set for Jan. 5 before the Laguna Beach Board of Adjustment. If city officials approve, the club can seek final permission from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control.

Owner Max Nee said that about half of the club’s customers have indicated they would like to be able to have a beer at Postnuclear. “It’s an added service,” Nee said. “I’m not turning this thing into a keg party, a ‘party ‘til you drop’ beer place.” Postnuclear will continue its no-smoking policy.