Everybody Else", which is credited to Shel Talmy. Release and commercial performance Reprise released The Great Lost Kinks Album in the US on 25 January 1973. The album's cover features the painting Proliferation by Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon, while the rear sleeve includes a picture of Davies taken by American photographer Bob Gruen. Musician John Mendelsohn, who had assembled the track listing to The Kink Kronikles, wrote liner notes for The Great Lost Kinks Album which extensively derided Davies' contemporary songwriting when compared his 1966–69 period. For example, Mendelsohn writes that the Kinks' 1972 album Everybody's in Show-Biz features "a bitchy, egocentric Davies... whose primary interest is making clear to his listener the agony he must endure to stay on the road entertaining us." The album's liner notes do not include writing credits for several songs, something Kitts ascribes to sloppiness in the LP's manufacturing. There are additionally discrepancies between song titles, which sometimes vary between the album's sleeve and central label, the lyrics as sung and the spelling used by later authors. The album's sales were driven by fans of the Kinks' 1960s work who were excited over the rarity of its contents. It debuted at on Billboard Top LP's & Tape chart on 24 February 1973. It remained on the chart for five weeks, peaking at , and additionally reached and on Cash Box and Record World charts, respectively. Davies remained unaware of the album until after its release; Hinman writes Davies first read about it in Billboard magazine, while author Thomas M. Kitts writes an American fan brought it to his attention after mailing him a copy of the LP. Davies initiated legal action against Reprise over its release, resulting in its 1975 deletion from the label's catalogue. Despite the album's 1975 deletion and lack of a subsequent official CD release, it has remained popular among Kinks fans for its inclusion of rare and otherwise unobtainable tracks. The album received multiple bootleg releases in Japan in the 1990s. Into the early 2000s, the LP remained the only way of hearing several of its songs without resorting to bootlegging, before many were made available as bonus tracks on the 2004 CD reissue of The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society. Critical reception Contemporary reviews Contemporary reviewers generally found the compilation uneven. A reviewer in Crawdaddy! magazine wrote it consisted of both "barrel-scraping" material and songs that would