and further warns her about the risks of the big city. Miller suggests the song's warning about city life is similar thematically to "Village Green", and Rayes writes its comparison helps contrast "rural with urban, spirituality with materialism, and the natural with the manufactured". "Phenomenal Cat" "Phenomenal Cat" tells the story of a flying cat who has visited exotic places like Katmandu and Hong Kong. After discovering "the secret of life", he decides to spend the rest of his life eating. Rogan compares its "vaguely Victorian flavour" to the work of English 19th-century authors Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll, while Miller instead describes it as a blend of contemporary children's music and psychedelia. Miller suggests Ray intended the song to satirise the contemporary psychedelic scene, and Rogan similarly thinks it satirises the late-1960s trend of searching for spiritual enlightenment. Ray's lead vocal is double tracked while Dave sings as the cat, his voice altered by recording the master tape slowly and then playing it sped-up. "All of My Friends Were There" "All of My Friends Were There" was inspired by a Kinks concert at Rectory Field in Blackheath, London on 1 July 1967. Ray later recalled falling ill with a fever, but the event organisers persuaded him to perform due to the agreed contract. In the song, the singer describes his embarrassment after his friends attend his missed performance. After struggling during his next show, he goes to a café he frequented during happier times in his life, only to find all of his friends there as well. Rayes describes the ending "another typical [Ray] Davies twist", where "in the end, the presence of the singer's friends both deepens his embarrassment and strengthens his stability and sense of companionship". Played in the style of music hall, the song employs an organ and a jerky rhythm, shifting between what Miller terms a "music-hall gallop" in the verses and a "lilting, wistful waltz" during the choruses. "Wicked Annabella" "Wicked Annabella" features Dave's only lead vocal contribution on the album; his voice is double tracked and ranges from frightened whispers to raging screams. The lyrics recount the deeds of a local witch as a warning to children to stay in their beds and avoid the woods. In his November1968 interview with Melody Maker, Ray suggested the recording was his attempt at getting a song "to sound as horrible as it could", resulting in