Fri. Feb. 25

  "Growing up," e-mails guitarist-singer Adam Ritchie, of the Boston pop band the Lights Out, "Sunday morning always found my dad at the breakfast table, reading the paper, eating his Cheerios and cranking the stereo – usually with a British Invasion band. One morning, when I was about 10, he put on the Kinks' “Arthur,” and I really liked it. With the cartoon cover and the voices Ray Davies uses when he sings from different characters’ perspectives, it’s a very kid-friendly album. Ten years later, I was going to school in London and bought a Kinks compilation at Camden Market. It was part of the soundtrack to my time over there. By the time I joined The Lights Out and saw The Kinks on the band’s list of influences, I knew I’d come to the right place."

   On Friday, Feb. 25 the quartet will be playing the Cover Ups series at the Lizard Lounge, the ingenious series where band adopt the personas and songbooks of groups they admire. This night's theme: The British invasion. You'll have Gilded Splinters as The Who and Paul Melancon as the Beatles. But the Lights Out Kinks are on top of the bill.

   With the Kinks, there's a huge catalog and a wide range of styles. "Our set," says Ritchie, "will pull from The Kinks’ seven-year run of classic albums, beginning with 1964: "Kinks" (1964), "Kinda Kinks" (1965), "Face To Face" (1966), "Something Else by The Kinks" (1967), "The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society" (1968), "Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)" (1969) and “Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One” (1970), plus a few singles."

    JSInk note: A great call. I grew up mostly missing the Kinks in the '60s - I was just a kid - found them around "Lola" time and then worked backwards on the catalog when I got to college. The mid-late '60s Kinks - when they were banned from touring the US due to a Musicians Union dispute - was when they produced some of their best, and most English-oriented, music. When I was Music Director at WMEB, in Maine (college, mid-late '70s) I used to sign off the playlists I sent out to record companies with "God Save the Kinks," which Kinks fans world-over used to signifty their a) Britishness and b) fragililty. You never knew when they might implode, and, of course, they did more than a few times and are currently ... not together, with Ray and Dave on the outs once again. Reunion? Not likely. Could happen.

   The Kinks music fits his band, says Ritchie, because "stylistically, The Kinks helped lay the groundwork for the style of music The Lights Out makes. "You Really Got Me” is a blueprint for power pop. We probably couldn’t have had “Gottagetouttahere” if that song never existed. As we’ve been learning their material, we’re realizing how many interesting things they did in songs that are deceptively simple. And their layering of background harmonies is right up our alley."

   "Thematically, we have a few things in common. They wrote about the guy who finds pleasure and anxiety in his success on paper and the lifestyle it affords him (“Shangri-la”), and we just wrote a song where that same person might have taken the other fork in the road and abandoned all that to chase a life less ordinary (“Can’t Buy a Hero”). Ray Davies is the master of the character song. He’s very clear about it, too: “I’m an ape man.” “I’m an art lover.” “We are strictly second class.” “We are the Village Green Preservation Society.” There’s a lot we’re learning from his ability to step into someone else’s shoes."

    Of course, meaning and context are important. It gives the Kinks music the resonanace it still has. But there's also the sound itself." Sonically, The Kinks can be a house party in full swing," says. who'll be playing the Dave Davies part. "I read the Davies family was known for its big, loud, Saturday night house parties, where everyone would break out their instruments – and how Ray and Dave would recreate that atmosphere on their records. Listen for the laughing, whoops and hollers in the background of a song like “Victoria.” The Kinks are the best fit for The Lights Out personality-wise."

"Everyone knows and loves The Beatles, Stones and Who. And those bands are worthy of their recognition. The Kinks are always in the shadows. Maybe it’s because they were banned from playing in the U.S. during the height of the British Invasion. All I know is I reach for The Kinks more than any of their contemporaries. Their stuff is just as good, and has the benefit of not being overplayed. Anyone at this British Invasion Cover-Up who never went to Kinks Kollege is going to walk out of there going, “Damn, those guys had some great songs. I can’t believe I never heard that one before.”

You can hear a preview of the the Lights Out Kinks Feb. 20 2/20, on 107.3 WAAF’s Bay State Rock at midnight.

Starts at 9. Cover: $12.

1667 Massachusetts Ave., Cambrdige, 617-547-0759 www.lizardloungeclub.com