The Kings are Back
The Canadian party rockers are still on their game with "The Longest Story Ever Told"
Thank you for spending part of your day with Michael’s Record Collection. One of the great joys in life is becoming familiar with a terrific catalog of music from an artist that most other people either have never heard of or think of as a one-hit wonder. It feels like you belong to an exclusive club, in which only a chosen few have received the gift of understanding the greatness of that artist.
Canadian band The Kings fits this category. I have always thought of them as the Canadian Cheap Trick — not because of their sound, but because of their attitude. They produce great party-time rock and roll music that leans heavily on power pop sensibilities, catchy hooks, and fun lyrics. Many know their one hit — “This Beat Goes On / Switchin’ to Glide” from the band’s 1980 debut album, The Kings are Here.
The Kings are more than that one song. Their musical discography is an enjoyable listen, and they released their first album in 20 years in 2023, The Longest Story Ever Told. I recently spoke with Dave Diamond and Mister Zero — the band’s primary writers — about The Kings’ career and the new album.
Let’s get to that story.
Canadian rockers The Kings hit the ground running with their excellent debut, The Kings Are Here, back in 1980, finding some success with their hit song(s) “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide.” Their single went to No. 43 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart before stalling out, and the album peaked at No. 72 on the Billboard 200.
It was a curious thing that the infectious, power pop-infused party rock of The Kings didn’t gain them more widespread notoriety in the U.S., but the music business is often weird and can frequently fail those in its care — artists and fans. The Canadians fused the best elements of bands like Cheap Trick and the Cars together and created something interesting and, perhaps above all else, fun! It was rock and roll the way God intended, in that it either enhanced your already good mood, or it put you in one. I mean, how can you listen to a song like “Partyitis” and stay in a bad mood? You can’t.
Over the next four decades (plus a few years), The Kings went from almost-the-next-big-thing to a group of guys working regular jobs and doing music on the side, whenever possible, due to families and other obligations.
They dropped a new studio album out of nowhere in 2023 entitled The Longest Story in the World. It was the band’s first album in 20 years, dating back to 2003’s Because of You.
And it’s like The Kings never left. The Kings are most definitely still here.
The album is identifiably The Kings in all the right ways. The hooks are there, the riffs are there, and the good times are still there as well.
The lineup is close to the original band. Original members David Diamond (vocals, bass) and Mister Zero (guitar) are the primary songwriters, with Zero writing the bulk of the band’s lyrics. Peter Nunn and original keyboardist Sonny Keyes handle the keyboard duties, and Todd Reynolds is “the new guy” on drums, although he’s been in the band several years.
The Longest Story Ever Told took a lot longer to be told than intended. The band had reconvened to make a new album, only for the global COVID pandemic to delay things, which is a story I’ve told way too often in this forum over the last couple of years.
The bulk of Reynolds’ drum parts were recorded in a studio just prior to the pandemic lockdown, although the drum parts for “A Rose for Your Stone” were done in Hamilton, Ontario when the lockdown was being lifted. In between, the band worked in engineer Chris Snow’s basement studio.
The result is a great record that stands up alongside the band’s most popular release, which came out more than 40 years ago. The Kings have managed to avoid sounding stale making the same kind of music, and they still sound good. While many aging rockers show obvious signs of age either in their vocals or playing, The Kings do neither of those things. While Diamond’s voice may have matured a bit, it’s still recongnizably him behind the microphone and he still delivers.
The band produced The Longest Story in the World themselves, but got seven different people to mix the record. Harry Hess, the frontman for Canadian rockers Harem Scarem, then mastered the album and got all of the songs mixed by a variety of different contributors to sound cohesive.
One of the songs was mixed by the legendary Bob Ezrin, who had gotten The Kings their original U.S. deal with Elektra Records and also produced The Kings Are Here.
“We had seven different mixers on this album,” Zero said. “Because we’re quite capable of producing ourselves, with our good engineer, Chris Snow. But getting that mix done, that’s what makes it sound like a real record, and that’s what we needed to do. And the first one we did was ‘Circle of Friends’ and ‘Man That I Am.’ So we approached Bob Ezrin again after all these years. We sent it to him, and 10 minutes later he emailed back and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll do it.’”
“And then we went, ‘OK, we’ve got him in our pocket to do one song, now we can use that to see what else we can do,’” Diamond said.
“We used Bob’s mix as a template for comparing everything else as the sessions went along,” Zero added. “And we had different people mixing and we’d say, ‘It’s got to be at least this good.’”
Eddie Kramer was one of the producers The Kings approached to mix a song on the album, but Zero said the famous producer, who has worked with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, and David Bowie, was just outside the price range that The Kings could afford.
“He gave us a deal for two songs, but it was still too much money,” Zero said.
“This is an independent album here,” Diamond added. “We’re not signed with any big label, so we put this together on our own dime.”
Despite the budget and lack of big record company help, The Kings turned out yet another album of music worthy of being played by the world’s best bar band. Aside from a couple of ballads, this collection of song is equally perfect for making people move and/or drink beer.
The album kicks off with “Always Off the Deep End,” a mid-tempo power pop gem about overdoing it. Diamond is in fine voice and the opening riff pulls the listener in immediately. The chorus has a typical nice Kings hook to it and vintage keyboard sounds punctuate the song and give it the feel of a lost Cars classic.
“Nowhere to Go But Gone” has a bit of a boogie groove to it, with solid drumming and a great mix of guitar and organ. Lyrically it’s about road tripping west to Vancouver and then south to California. Like the opener, it’s got a vintage Kings chorus hook.
The album’s title track starts off with a guitar riff that leads into a raucous barroom piano pattern before settling into a nice drum groove and providing room for some of Diamond’s best vocals on the album. He still has the gift to sing smoothly or with more growl, depending on what the song calls for.
Lyrically, it’s literally the story of The Kings.
“It is the story of the band,” Diamond said. “We started off all fresh and young whippersnappers, and then we get some success, and then we cruised along for a while, and then we don’t have anything and we’re waiting for some satisfaction for a change. Then we write a new song, and it powers through and makes the story live and new, and it goes on and on. The story’s still going on. This beat goes on.”
Ironcially, “The Longest Story Ever Told” is the longest song on the record. There’s also a lyrical callback to “This Beat Goes On” in the track (“on and on and on and on and on”), adding depth to the song’s autobiographical nature.
“When Dreams Come True” is a beautiful ballad with a chorus worthy of a 1982 “couples-only” skate at the local rink. It features a lovely acoustic guitar performance and outstanding vocal work from Diamond. The song was mixed by famous Rush producer Terry Brown, who the band never spoke with in person.
“We never even met him because of COVID, it was all done over the internet,” Zero said.
Like the title track, it has an interesting lyrical callback, as it seems to refer to the preceeding song, “The Oldest Story Ever Told.”
Back to the story
But where does the story end
My friend
This wasn’t an intentional choice, according to Diamond and Zero. They wrote the ballad first, so “The Oldest Story Ever Told” didn’t even exist yet. The song was also not intentionally placed where it is in the album sequencing due to that passage. It’s an extremely happy coincidence that it ended up like that.
“I Know So” is a fun, throwback song with joyful horns, a bouncy beat, and a guitar solo that just walked in out of a Stray Cats album. It’s the shortest song on the record at just 2:52.
The Ezrin-mixed track, “Circle of Friends/Man That I Am,” was the first song the band completed when making the album. Even though it’s two songs stuck together, it’s still a few seconds shorter than the title track. As with “This Beat Goes On/Switchin’ to Glide,” the previous hit song stuck together on Ezrin’s watch, these two offerings fit together seamlessly. I particularly like the drumming in “Man That I Am,” while the guitar, bass, and keyboard fit together in lock step, leading up to a short, outro guitar solo.
One of the most interesting songs on the record is “A Rose for Your Stone.” It pays tribute to old country story-songs, such as “El Paso” by Marty Robbins. Diamond came up with the music it.
“I was thinking, ‘I haven’t heard a song like that for a while, you know, with that kind of spaghetti western sound, like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly sort of a way,” Diamond said. “And then we sort of worked on a storyline. Z came up with that idea of the antihero man.”
“And then it turned into this thing that was six-and-a-half, seven minutes long,” Zero added.
Faced with a lot of time to write during the pandemic, Zero had continued fleshing out the story and the idea until it grew into an epic. However, at the urging of their engineer, the band eventually cut the song in half for the final version.
The choice was a good one, as a much longer version could have become an unintentional lull in terms of the musical momentum of the album. As it turned out, it’s an enjoyable interlude between more uptempo songs. The capper on giving “A Rose for Your Stone” its western flavor is the inclusion of a Mexican-style trumpet bit that plays over the acoustic guitar strumming. Keyes came up with that part.
“We thought it would be neat to have a Tex-Mex kind of sound on that,” Zero said. “So, Sonny came up with a horn part he played on his keyboard with a trumpet sound. And we thought, ‘Well, that’s got some good stuff in it.’ But we thought it sounded too perfect.”
Zero went online and found a horn player based in Spain on the website Fiverr, which provides a virtual marketplace to provide or secure freelance services, including areas for musicians and other artists.
“I just looked up trumpet players and he agreed to do it, and we sent him the tracks, and he wrote it all out and played harmony for it, and did an amazing job,” said Zero. “It was like a hundred and sixty bucks.”
“Clean Shot” begins a run of three edgier rockers to close the album. It’s got a bit of a Deep Purple feel to it, but presented in a poppier way. The drum pattern reminds me a bit of “Four Sticks” by Led Zeppelin, but with a lighter touch. Diamond roars out the vocals.
The band launches into a galloping cross between their 1980 sound, fellow power-pop purveyors the Knack, and the Ramones on “She Don’t Fool Around.” The song has a massive organ sound and a catchy call-and-response chorus section. Reynolds and Diamond drive the song forward. Zero adds a pulsing riff and a great solo. But the keyboards are the star of the track for me.
“Triangle Blues” closes the trilogy of rockers that Zero called the most fun part of the album for him. The band again strays into Deep Purple heaviness, while maintaining their pop sensibilities. This is my favorite bass song on the album, and Zero’s verse riff has some nice crunch to it.
The Longest Story Ever Told is a terrific achievement by The Kings — not because it represents a leap forward or a sound evolution, but because the band can still make music of this quality more than four decades after their brand of pop-rock got them international airplay. As with a band like AC/DC, The Kings know who they are and what they can do well, and they still have the ability to deliver their goods at a high level. The music is still catchy and it’s still fun.
The 10 tracks are a quick listen, clocking in at just over 37 minutes. Most of the songs are under four minutes long, as the band specializes in getting to the point quickly and saying what they need to say. This is a bit ironic when you consider that they started out writing progressive rock epics prior to changing course before their first album.
You can learn more about the band and order physical copies of The Longest Story Ever Told at the band’s official website, thekingsarehere.com.
There’s also an excellent 43-minute documentary about the band on YouTube that I recommend.
Tracklist
Always Off the Deep End (3:15)
Nowhere to Go but Gone (3:47)
The Longest Story Ever Told (5:46)
When Dreams Come True (3:23)
I Know So (2:52)
Circle of Friends/Man That I Am (5:32)
A Rose for Your Stone (3:53)
Clean Shot (3:39)
She Don’t Fool Around (2:30)
Triangle Blues (2:53)
For my full interview with David Diamond and Mister Zero, check out the video below or download/stream Episode 131 of the Michael’s Record Collection podcast. In addition to discussing the new album, the veteran rockers talked about their musical beginnings, working with famed producer Bob Ezrin on their very first album (and how Ezrin got them to improve their songs), writing lyrics on the back of hotel stationery and a wrestling poster, and much more.
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