# 169 The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached w/ Mark Doyle
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 27 April 2020
⏱️ 60 minutes
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Summary
The Kinks are one of the great rock bands of the 20th century, and like all artists, they reflect the times and places they've inhabited. In this episode, we speak with Mark Doyle about his excellent new book The Kinks: Songs of the Semi-Detached (Reaktion Books, 2020) and how the band, their origins, and Ray Davies' lyrics can teach us a lot about both the real and imagined spaces of mid-20th Century England.
Dr. Mark Doyle is Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, where he specializes in the history of the British Empire. His research and teaching have won him numerous awards including the Stansky Book Prize (co-winner, 2017) and MTSU's Outstanding Teacher Award (2014-15). Ben once described him as "the Patton Oswalt of academic twitter," so we recommend you follow him there at @DrMarkDoyle.
The Road to Now is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everybody, I'm Brian Saxon. |
| 0:11.8 | And I'm Michael Shields, and we are the host of Welcome to the Party Pal, the mind-bending |
| 0:16.3 | film and television podcast you didn't know you needed. |
| 0:19.5 | Welcome to the Party Pal is a celebration of |
| 0:21.3 | the art of cinema and filmmaking, where movies and television shows are deconstructed and |
| 0:25.7 | analyzed to evaluate their grander. Guests will include the filmmakers and industry |
| 0:30.3 | insiders that craft the works of art that we celebrate here when you join the party. Welcome to the |
| 0:35.4 | Party Pal is part of the Osiris Podcast Network. |
| 0:47.1 | I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. |
| 0:51.4 | Today's episode is an interview with Mark Doyle on his new book, The Kinks, Songs of the |
| 0:57.6 | Semi-Degattached, which just came out about a month ago from Reaction Books. I've known that Mark |
| 1:02.8 | was working on this book for a while, and I know Mark is brilliant, so I knew it was going to be |
| 1:08.7 | good. Just to put this in context, Mark has won awards |
| 1:12.5 | for his research and writing. He's won teaching awards at MTSU. So what he does, he does well. |
| 1:20.3 | This was a departure from his previous work, and I'm really glad he did it. And right now you might be thinking, I don't really like |
| 1:30.6 | the kinks or the kinks who are they? This interview and the book is about so much more than just the |
| 1:37.3 | band. The way that Mark puts them in their time and place, really it's one of these great |
| 1:43.1 | examples of how if you find a |
| 1:46.0 | good protagonist, or you find someone good to anchor your story to, you can see history in a different |
| 1:51.9 | way. And I got to say, this is a fantastic book. And I think you'll enjoy this interview. And if you |
| 2:00.0 | enjoy it, I'll say, go check out the book. It is not expensive at all. Although it is sold out at a couple of stores. I think it's doing pretty well. The Wall Street Journal just reviewed it. It's been getting a lot of good press. So I highly recommend it. If you like this, go pick up the book. It is one of the more affordable history books out there right now. |
| 2:17.9 | And let's face it, we've all got some time to read, don't we? Maybe? I don't know. |
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