Whiskey, Berlin, and Jim Morrison

It is difficult to connect the three but the point hinges on Kurt Weill.

Weill is for the most part an obscure artist. His life story can be found here: Wikipedia.

As a German Jew, he was forced to run from the Nazis - he went on to work in Paris and New York, even composing the score for a Fritz Lang movie.

He gave communism the finger when after some collaboration with Betrolt Brecht, a Marxist playwright and East German ass-kisser, Weill found the tune to the communist party an unmanageable bore.

Before breaking away from Brecht, Weill composed his most popular song, "Die Mortitat von Mackie Messer." For those lacking in the German department, this song is the original "Mack the Knife."

Now don't worry, the best part is coming up, Frank Sinatra covers aside...

If you're privy to any copies of live Doors shows (imeem), you might notice a strange little intro to Alabama Song...an intro that sounds a lot like, wait, it is, lyrics to Mack the Knife.

Oh he shows his pearly whites, yes he does, that sailor Mack the Knife, and Morrison moves like a shark through the red waters of Weill covers from Mackie Messer to Alabama Song, another Weill cover.

One of the most beautiful and succinct Doors songs, with those timeless lyrics:

Show me the way to the next whiskey bar,
oh don't ask why, oh don't ask why
because if we can't find the next whiskey bar,
tell you we must die...

That is pure Weill. Listen closely, and you can feel the wet counter of the Berlin whiskey bar, hear the creaking wooden floor below your feet. That deep, bassy sound, almost bavarian om pa pa, a longing for Weimar, for the loose women....

Show me the way to the next little girl....

For the cheap liquor of pre-Hitler Germany, the con-men and social deviants come alive from Berlin Alexanderplatz...

Morrison sings of losing his mother, and oh, he must have that whiskey tonight...
but imagine Weill, who lost all of Berlin to blood-suckers and mother-killers, to the brown-shirts all to quick to raid the Whiskey bars of the Deutschland Stadt and throw everyone who looked funny into prison and camps...

Oh moon of Alabama.... wir mussen whiskey jetzt trinken!