I'd always been perplexed by Wes Anderson's original plan to score Rushmore entirely from Kinks songs, but after becoming obsessed with their cataloge over the last few weeks I'm convinced it actually could have worked.

This won't be Kinks Week — probably — but my newfound Kinks evangelicism insists that I give you the track listing and some YouTube links for the extremely excellent Not Necessarily the Best of the Kinks compilation I've generated. For the benefit of those people uninterested in awesomeness, I'll hide it behind a [+/-].

1. "The Village Green Preservation Society" (The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, 1968). Characteristically fantastic lyrics here:

We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium / God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded them / We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular / Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula

In live and original varieties at YouTube.

2. "Come Dancing" (State of Confusion, 1983). Vaguely Springsteenesque in terms of its wonderful sense of nostalgic melancholy. Here's the classic MTV video.

3. "Lola" (Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, 1968). What else needs to be said? Here it is live.

4. "Sweet Lady Genevieve" (Preservation, Act 1, 1978). No YouTube love at all, sadly.

5. "Susannah's Still Alive." (Something Else by the Kinks, 1967). Doesn't matter what she does, she knows that she can't win... Oh, Susannah's still alive. Here's Dave Davies on TV in 1968.

6. "You Really Got Me" (The Kinks, 1964). The original hit and probably still their most famous song. YouTube's really got us.

7. "Plastic" Man (Arthur, Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1969). Another fun, great song, with a nicely prescient satiric eye on suburbia. YouTube. No relation.

8. "I'm Not Like Everybody Else" (single, 1966). The first of two transplants from my glorious mix of Sopranos awesomeness, YouTube still offers just a taste.

9. "Destoyer" (Give the People What They Want, 1981). A nicely self-referential song with lyrical references to "Lola" and the main guitar progression constantly teasing "All Day and All of the Night." YouTube.

10. "Victoria" (Arthur, Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1969). I wish I'd had this .mp3 to play for my Victorian ghost story class. The main theme for the Kinks' little-known rock opera. God save YouTube.

11. "Waterloo Sunset." (Something Else by the Kinks, 1967). Live.

12. "All Day and All of the Night." (The Kinks, 1964). If their most famous song isn't "Lola" or "You Really Got Me," it's surely this. Girl, I want to be with YouTube.

13. "Supersonic Rocket Ship" (Everybody's in Show-Biz, 1972). Enjoy this well-made and oddly appropriate Firefly fan video using the song.

14. "A Well Respected Man" (single, 1965). Makers of fan videos apparently really love the Kinks. (Everyone should.) Here's a Homer Simpson tribute video.

15. "Dedicated Follower of Fashion" (single, 1966). Jaimee loves this one. Take a listen, live from 1973.

16. "David Watts" (Something Else, 1967). The best YouTube could do was a cover recorded in a dive bar, seemingly by a cell phone. Despite this evidence, it's another really good song.

17. "Do You Remember Walter?" (The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society, 1968). Something about this one really gets stuck in my head. In the best possible way. YouTube demurs.

18. "Living on a Thin Line." (Word of Mouth, 1984). Another song lifted from my Sopranos mix. Tell me now, what are we supposed to do?

19. "Apeman" (Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, 1968). More lyrics I'm compelled to quote:

But with the overpopulation and inflation and starvation and the crazy politicians / I don't feel safe in this world no more / I don't want to die in a nuclear war / I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman.

Here's a sort of lame fan video with the right audio track, at least. Just close your ape eyes and listen.

20. "Nothing in This World Can Stop Me Worrying 'bout That Girl" (Kinda Kinks, 1965). The only Kinks song to actually make it onto the Rushmore soundtrack, it plays during the classic underwater shot with Bill Murray in the pool in his Budweiser shorts. Amazingly, neither this scene nor the song itself is on YouTube.

21. "This Time Tomorrow." (Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One, 1968). Another one poached by Wes Anderson, this time for the trailer for The Darjeeling Limited. This may be my favorite.

22. "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy" (Kinda Kinks, 1965). I got this off the High Fidelity soundtrack. This may be my favorite, too. But this video gives me cancer.

23. "Better Things" (Give the People What They Want, 1981). The end of the album and the end of this post. Your reward for reading this far is one last superkitschy fan video, this one for Xena: Warrior Princess, which from the looks of things is far more ridiculous than I'd ever allowed myself to dream.

Band of this arbitrary amount of time: The Kinks.

Playlist available to people I know in Durham upon request.