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Hear the Kinks’ Previously Unreleased “Time Song” From Village Green Preservation Society 50th Anniversary Reissue

At this point, the members of the Kinks have spent nearly as much time feuding as they’ve spent being in a band together—longer, if you count the time they were feuding while they were in a band together. Earlier this summer, though, we got the almost unfathomable news that the Kinks might actually be reuniting, with Ray and Dave Davies putting aside their differences long enough to work on a new album. But before that happens—if it happens at all—we’re getting a new version of an old Kinks album.

The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society, the band’s landmark 1968 studio album, turns 50 years old in November. And to celebrate, they’re reissuing the record with a special 50th anniversary box set edition featuring extensive sleeve notes, interviews, photographs, and previously unreleased versions and demos of songs. It’ll also include the previously unreleased track “Time Song,” which the Kinks performed live at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in January 1973, to mark Britain’s entry into the Common Market.

“When we played a concert at Drury Lane in ’73 to ‘celebrate’ us about to join what was called the Common Market, I decided to use the song as a warning that time was running out for the old British Empire,” Ray Davies explains in a press release. “This song was recorded a few weeks later but never made the final cut on the Preservation Act I album. Oddly enough, the song seems quite poignant and appropriate to release at this time in British history, and like Europe itself the track is a rough mix which still has to be finessed.” Davies mixed “Time Song” himself earlier this year, and you can hear it below.

The 50th Anniversary Edition of The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society is out October 26 on BMG. Pre-order it here.

This post originally appeared on Stereogum.

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