Album: The Kinks, Live at Kelvin Hall, 1983 (Spanish cassette reissue of the 1967 album)

Best Track: "Sunny Afternoon"

Lasting Memory: The first time I saw The Smithereens play live, way back in 1986 or 1987, they closed their second encore with a cover of The Kinks' "Milk Cow Blues (Batman)." That is the final track on the brief concert album Live at Kelvin Hall.

This indicated nothing more than that The Smithereens had excellent taste in semiobscure covers.But it probably planted the subliminal seed that evolved into my pet theory that all good-to-great rock bands really want to be The Kinks.

I can't prove the theory, but I can list you any number of bands that owe some or all of their approach to music to the influence of brothers Ray and Dave Davies and the other Kinksters. Early Van Halen was pretty much a Kinks cover band judging by the sound of things, if not all the content of VH's discography.

A writer for The Onion A.V. Club further noted that "Madness, of course, was just one of the many exciting new groups of the late '70s and early '80s that had strong roots in The Kinks' music. The Jam was The Kinks' clearest heir, and the young band honored its ancestor with a tightly wound version of 'David Watts,' Ray's class-conscious stomper from 1967; meanwhile, everyone from The Fall and Mission Of Burma to The Pretenders ... was also covering The Kinks in the studio and onstage." The writer failed to mention that even Def Leppard -- freakin' Def Leppard -- recorded a Kinks song, sticking a much-lamer-than-the-original version of "Waterloo Sunset" on their official greatest hits collection.

I'll take all of that as strong support for my theory about bands wanting to be The Kinks. After all, as everyone knows imitation is the sincerest form of emulation.

To miss the meaning of the song's lyrics, but to end with a line I probably should have resisted typing, The Kinks may not be the fount of all that is still good and true about rock 'n' roll, but they can certainly hang their hat on being a "Well Respected Man" of rock.

Up Next: Kevn Kinney, Down Outlaw, 1994