Arthur - The Kinks - Arthur (or Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - 1969

So where was I...oh yeah, the West Side of Berlin. After we left the bar we headed on for the Charlottenburg palace. As a history buff, I'm always happy to see old stuff, so this was quite enjoyable. We arrived a few minutes after 7 so the gates had already been shut, but even still the view was quite exquisite, again highlighted by the snow. The size of the palace was also impressive, a few of the wings were used as individual museums, and I was almost sorry that I wasn't able to check them out.

By this point the day was turning into evening and we needed to head back to the hotel to change out of our "walking across the city in the snow" clothes and into our "going out on a friday night clothes". We found the nearest Subway stop (Richard Wagner-platz actually) and hopped back to our room for some pregaming. It was the first time we'd really sat down all day.

After a brief stop at the hotel to change clothes and have a couple vodka sodas, we headed out to the northeast side of town to find some more of the bars my friends had recommended, but first we needed some curry wurst in a bad way...

The Kinks are always a bit of an odd figure among the pantheon of classic rock. They obviously aren't the Beatles. They lack the menace of The Stones, or the alienated weirdness of The Who. The hits that have remained in the pop culture consciousness (Lola, You Really Got Me, All Day And All of the Night, Come Dancing) don't really sound like what the band sounded like in it's artistic heyday, but much like the aphorism regarding The Velvet Underground ("Only 20 people heard them, but those 20 people all started bands") The Kinks, during this period, created music that others would popularize. And you can see those trademarks here, from the bouncy, almost country-ish guitar lick, to the hand-clapping, group sing-a-long of the chorus. Good stuff.