Loud Music in Bars Linked to Increased Drinking: Health Files from the Drawer Marked 'Obvious'
The presence of a bunch of clipboard wielding scientists blocking access to the bar, is apparently not enough to dissuade people from drinking, according to a new study in which it was determined after much scrutiny of the data (and noting that the sky above is a shade of blue) that people tend to drink more where the music is louder.
Over the course of three weekends French researchers were able to marry work and pleasure by frittering away grant money on what is patently obvious to anyone who's ever sidled up to a bar and thought to themselves, 'you know what? this place would be a hell of a lot more fun if there was a live band, or at the very least, a stereo'. According to researchers at the University of Southern Brittany, 'environmental music played in a bar is associated with an increase in drinking', and while we're not sure what this means exactly, it might refer to Al Gore sitting in with the house band playing a carbon negative stand up bass.
Now, we've done comparable research ourselves, but had to fund it out of pocket and call it a tab when we came up with our Top 10 Bar Songs of All Time, a list which we highly recommend. And if you're ever in a bar where a bunch of eggheads are trying to spoil your good time, buy 'em a round and crank these to oblivion.
Sleeping it off in Seattle: Drunk Attacks Cafe Manager with Fireworks and Headbutt
Having not ever set foot in the place, we've familiarized ourselves with Seattle through Conan O'Brien, who had two guys in tower costumes, one representing the Space Needle and the other the larger CN Tower (both since dwarfed by a monolith in Dubai, leaving our fair cities feeling hopelessly inadequate) duke it out.
We've also learned quite a bit from the sitcom Frasier and though it was filmed in its entirety at a Paramount Studios sound stage, we feel that it's given us a pretty good idea as to what the city is all about. Besides, there was one episode, season 5 we believe, that was filmed there and though we didn't see it, it was probably a solid one.
[Editor's aside: It's a little known fact that Shelly Long did not care much for the Frasier character, and initially wanted him ousted from the show---Cheers that is, she wasn't holding a long-term grudge against him on his own show as her career took a nosedive from Space Needle-like heights] Seattle, to the best of our knowledge is a lovely place. So lovely, in fact, that we've even agreed to promote our book The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death and Other True Tales of Drunken Debauchery on one of their radio stations, marking our very first public appearance in the US of A!
[Editor's second aside: Special thanks to the posterior-kicking KISW, 99.9 FM, the very same station that, according to some random drunk warbling Livin' on Tulsa Time in a local karaoke bar, helped launch Nirvana and since we have no way whatsoever to confirm whether this is true, have to take him at his word]
Seattle, fortuitously, has come across our radar this week, as one of our parade of ornery, staggering pisstanks calls the Emerald City home.
According to the Seattle PI, which sounds like a failed Magnum PI spin-off without the glamorous Italian automobiles, reports that a man was refused entry to Cafe Amore recently. Not getting any 'love' at this cafe 'when the world seemed to shine like he'd had too much wine' the guy made several failed attempts to sneak by. When these attempts failed miserably, the guy returned with a Roman candle [Editor's third and final aside: Did you hear about the happy Roman? He was glad he ate her] and struggled with the manager, who tried to wrest the firework from his hand, during which point the drunk head-butted him.
Next time make a reservation, and if the calamari are rubbery, THEN resort to head-butting.
See you soon Pacific Northwest!!!
Tune into KISW Thursday, July 17th at 4:30 PT, 7:30 EST. [Those left coasters are so laid back, they're 3 hours behind us]
Those of us who grew up watching professional wrestling had, at one point or another, to come to terms with the fact that the stereotypes represented in the rasslin’ ring were a few metal folding-chair head-shots apart from reality. So when the wrestling world told us that Australia was comprised of a mix of people that were halfway between Outback Jack – a “Let’s capitalize on Crocodile Dundee’s popularity” 80s wrestler who lost more matches than he was in – and the Bushwackers, two toothless stereotypes, who marched around the ring, swinging their arms above their heads (see below -- it's a bit like power-walking, but with a lot more arm-swinging and cretinous head bobbing) in a fashion not encountered since one of us observed it replicated by a very drunk English football fan on the streets of Amsterdam.
(The Bushwackers, it should be noted for the sake of people who would lose sleep tonight if this correction were not made, were actually from New Zealand. The best way to upset a Kiwi? Tell them, “I love New Zealand. They filmed the Lord of the Rings movies there. It really is the most scenic part of Australia.” Australia is to New Zealand as the United States is to Canada and such jibes do not go down well as an American telling a Canadian in a foreign land, “Ah, what a relief to hear an American accent.”)
But surely this was all stuff and nonsense and actual life in Australia does not bear any actual resemblance to a bunch of people living out in the bush and making lasting friendships with the koala bears? Well, actually, no, the Bushwackers or their like might actually have been holding fort in the bar where the following took place.
Drinkers were enjoying an afternoon’s tipple at the Noonamah Tavern, located 25 miles (40 km) from the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, basically a point on the map marked with the label “Middle of Nowhere.”, when a baby salt-water crocodile, or “salty” in the local parlance, walked into a bar. No it wasn’t accompanied by a nun and a circus dwarf. Rather than being frightened by the site of this creature, that likes to when it’s full grown sink its chompers into anything from water buffaloes to humans, the drinkers taped its jaws shut and brought it inside for a photos.
The woman who tends bar said that having the wild kingdom stroll in for a jar of the good stuff wasn’t an unusual occurrence. “We've had a lot of horses pop up. We've had cane toads, which are yukky," she said. "We have had a big buffalo come in, wander around. There's a photo of him with a beer."
Since the creature is at home in saltwater and would have had to travel pretty far to reach the pub from such a habitat, the bartender reckons it was either dropped off there accidentally by a fisherman or as a practical joke. Regardless, the carousing croc escaped his brush with bush-country pub life and is now among his fellows at a local crocodile farm. (Full story here). (For more on crocs and the boozers who love them, check out this story from our archives).
Bars and booze companies have all sorts of ways to facilitate that all important transition between bottle and gut. Liquor companies quite often engage the services of good looking people stuck in that gray middle world between legitimate modeling work and chrome pole duty at the local Gawk and Whistle to hand out samples of their product, while refusing requests for phone numbers as politely as they can. For some reason, these sorts of promotions don’t make headline news or inspire the wrath of politicians, but you put just one muscular dwarf in a tophat and…
A pub in MelbourneAustralia called “The Saint” caused a hubbub recently when it hired a dwarf to walk up and down the length of the bar with a bottle of Jagermeister from which he'd pour shots into the expectant gobs of pub-goers. Two possible causes of concern with this would be, first the lawsuit that would likely result if the unnamed dwarf in the photos slipped on the bar and injured himself. (Editor's On-A-Tangent Note: For an excellent film in which a drunken dwarf stands up on a bar and curses out an entire pub full of backwoods hicks, we recommend The Station Agent, starring Peter Dinklage). That said, the man in the photos appears to be having a good time, and we can assume that he was paid damn well to don a top-hat and march along a bar half-naked. Had someone fell asleep drunk at the bar earlier and awoke to the site of a bare-chested dwarf in a tophat proffering a bottle of booze, this might have had a disquieting on the person, but that didn't happen as far as we know.
But of course in the world of the nanny state this bizarre method of getting people to drink the sickening-when-served-warm concoction that is Jagermeister – which is not, to our shock and surprise made from the blood of the newly dead – became a matter of such national import that Australian lawmakers were going on the record about it, and comment was even sought from Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (though he has yet to issue a public statement on the matter, presumably weighing the significance of the top hat with his key advisers).
Nanny-state politicos were up in arms about the promotion, with the Victorian Minister for Consumer Affairs (the Victorian being a reference to the Australian province of Victoria not the time period, though he would have fit in well then) going as far as to say that "Patrons accepting these free drinks will have no idea how much alcohol they have consumed."
While patronizing government officials believe that a promotion like this will somehow bring bar patrons to ruin -- it's not like the dwarf was forcefeeding them the Jag, even though he does appear to be doing so in the second photo here -- the drinkers themselves have a clear message for politicos: Get lost. "It's just a bit of fun," said one patron. "Why politicise it?"
A common complaint leveled against soccer is that it's boring. Meanwhile, nobody bothers issuing the same critique about baseball, where the guys hawking Amstel get more of a workout running up and down the aisles plying semi-conscious onlookers with cheap suds than the various mesomorphs manning the field and where the play -- which is about as frenetic as a Van Gogh still life -- is interrupted so that a pitcher can practice.
No other sport we're aware of, save for highly competitive mobster bocce ball, allows the flow of action to grind to a halt so that one of the participants can get in a proper warm up while eyelids flutter. Basketball players don't stand around while play stops as a guy who previously temperature-controlled the bench with his arse hoists a few shots at the hoop and soccer players don't lounge about so a substitute, who's just finished wowing middle-aged housewives with sideline calisthenics, can come onto the pitch and take a few practice kicks.
[Editor's note: baseball is also one of the few sports where the manager, even though he's older than fossil fuel, suits up like the players as if a septuagenarian is going to be called in to pinch hit. It's also one of the few outdoor sports in which play is suspended for an amount of rainfall that would not put a halt to the average wedding]
One thing for certain is that for soccer or baseball, whether it's the heaps of abuse screamed at the mascot, impromptu cheap seat 'bat day' beatings, or flares resembling a Hezbollah missile attack fired off in the stands, the real action is either in the crowd, or in the case of British football, the 18 hours prior to kick-off when the heavy drinking commences.
Dutch fans have been known to whiz on automobiles with German plates, fans of some Italian squads to do fascist salutes, Argentinian fans to knife one another pre-match, however these supporters show Salvation Army-like gentility compared with their British counterparts.
That being said, British fans gave a better than usual accounting of themselves recently, when according to the Daily Star, the 80,000 yobs who descended on Moscow for the Champions league final between Man U and Chelsea, didn't kill or maim anyone, but instead, completely depleted the local beer supply.
A United fan noted, “We were all on good form and the drinks were flowing in this little place we had found near the Kremlin. “But suddenly the barmaid threw up her hands and said: ‘No more!’ Fans complained bitterly as the lager ran out and they were told, 'no beer, just vodka'.
For more on beer shortages of a more serious, global nature, click here.
If your job description includes being able to thrash someone within an inch of their miserable lives and doing so with impunity while enjoying the odd drink on the job, you're either a cop or a bouncer.
Recently, we shone the spotlight on everyone's favorite enablers, bartenders, in our Top 10 Coolest Bartenders of All Time, but what of the guys whose job it is to look menacing and keep raging, violent drunks on the other side of the velvet rope (so they can beat up random strangers, instead of the good folks who patronize your pub)?
Bouncers, like cops, are there to maintain the status quo: ensuring that the good-looking, monied classes get preferential treatment and aren't made to shuffle their feet with the rest of the lumpenproles in line, however this isn't their sole responsibility: they're also called upon to do the kind of math long forgotten since the 5th grade: being able to calculate how old someone is, simply by looking at the date of birth on their authentic, state of Hawaii Driver's License.
Bouncers face occupational hazards that the average cop doesn't have to deal with, the "I could take that guy" delusion that drunks with superhuman Popeye strength brought on by cheap bourbon rather than leafy greens think they possess. A cop faced with a similar notion could, say, have you quickly chalk outlined on the street, whereas a bouncer has to put aside their headset and determine whether a disorderly patron can be talked down, or separated from both their dental work/teary girlfriend and sent a-packing.
You'd think a profession where there's a near constant threat of having a pinot bottle slammed off the side of your noggin like a newly christened cruise ship would land bouncers more film and TV gigs beyond the usual "Sorry sir, I don't see a 'Lindonhoffer', party of two, anywhere on the list?" roles. Generally though, it's their biceps that are called upon to wring the neck of the depressed, drunk protagonist, ignoring pleas of the leading lady as they toss them out of their favorite watering hole.
The doormen we've focused on here however, have accomplished more than simply folding burly arms and wearing suits three sizes too small, they've become pop culture icons.
So, for those who get paid to kick some gluteus max outside the confines of a ring or the auspices of an Athletic Commission, and who'd rather hold out for bribes than slave for tips, we honor the humble bouncer, with our Top Bouncers of All Time!
9) Pat Roach, "A Clockwork Orange": Roach, a Judo black-belt and former wrestler, played a red-bearded bouncer in the Stanley Kubrick classic (below), and though he didn't actually utter any lines, he impressed the director so much that he was cast in "Barry Lyndon" and then famously, as the guy who gets his ass beat twice in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", and is dispatched by propeller (right). The mute Clockwork role eventually led to parts in "Never Say Never Again", "Willow" and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves". For making the most of being menacing, and doing security detail for one of the coolest bars around, the Korova, which serves up narcotics-laced milk rather than the use with which we're more familiar---as a tasty dairy adjunct to Kahlua, Roach lands a spot here.
8) Michael Clarke Duncan, "A Night at the Roxbury":SNL, for the better part of a decade, has brought us mirth-free Saturday nights, but prior to this, they were known to broaden eight-minute sketches into gray matter-atrophying, feature-length forgettables. "A Night at the Roxbury" bucked this trend somewhat, and did its best to derive Toyota Prius-like comic mileage from heads bopping along to the beat of What is Love? (baby don't hurt me). Michael Clarke Duncan, the hulking gawk who later starred alongside Tom Hanks in the Green Mile, is no stranger to holding onto a clipboard having held down bouncer roles in both Bulworth and Married with Children for the doorman trifecta.
7) Craig Robinson, "Knocked Up": In most movies, bouncers get about as much dialogue and have as much on-screen presence as a large cactus, but "Knocked Up" bucked that trend with its hilarious exchange betweenCraig Robinson, of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" and "The Office" fame and Lesley Mann. Striking a blow on behalf of anyone ever deemed too ugly or old to enter a club, the Mann character lays into the bouncer, "What the fuck is your problem? I'm not going anywhere, you're just some roided out freak with a fucking clipboard!" Robinson, showing that, although all appearances may at times point otherwise, bouncers are human after all admits that the system is unfair, "It's not cause you're not hot, I would love to tap that ass. I would tear that ass up. I can't let you in cause you're old as fuck. For this club, you know, not for the earth."
6) Max Baer, "The Prizefighter and the Lady": Boxer Baer famously got Hitler's mustache in a twist by dispatching Max Schmeling at Yankee stadium, while sporting Star of David trunks. "Madcap Maxie" also laid out 6'6 Italian strongman Primo "The Ambling Alp" Carnera, who, along with former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey make appearances in the 1933 flick, "The Prizefighter and the Lady", about a bouncer-turned boxer who tries to not let fame, fortune and loose women get to his punching bag rattled head. Baer also famously killed a man in the ring, an achievement he appears to relish if we're to take the Ron Howard movie "Cinderella Man" at its word. With that kind of resume, he's the exact kind of guy you'd want to be standing at your door if you're a bar owner to pound a hippy into the dust if need be.
5) Steve Collins and Lenny 'Gov-nor' Mclean, "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels": More former boxers to add to the list, same flick: one legit (well, as 'legit' as the current state of boxing could ever be), The "Celtic Warrior" Steve Collins, who once said of pound-for-pound champ Roy Jones after a deal fell through that he'd "fight him in a phone box in front of two men and a dog". The other bouncer pugilist, famous in the less than legit London East End bare-knuckle scene, was a 500 lb bench-presser, who tossed enough toothless yobs out the front door of enough taverns to be crowed 'King of Bouncers' in the city's pub scene. Though technically not portraying a bouncer in this film, The Guv-nor gets kudos here for his Barry the Baptist portrayal as well as for his scene stealing appearance in Bounce: Behind the Velvet Rope
"No one in here but card-players tonight and I do mean no one!'
4) Ray Winstone, "Bouncer". The “Don’t forget to carry a big fuck off stick” and "This is the biggest irony. The ones that like you the least, normally those who have a degree in philosophy under their pacifist belts, and absolutely no fuckin' idea about the reality of life outside the college campus, they are the ones that need you most when shit and fan meet." bits of counsel, lands Winstone a spot here. Another former boxer, but more interestingly, another Indiana Jones connection here in that Winstone is to appear in the forthcoming flick Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, alongside Hollywood A-listers John Hurt, Cate Blanchett and the increasingly creaky piece of archeology that is Harrison Ford. Winstone, the actor, is a fan of the east London soccer team West Ham United, which neatly segues into our third position.
3) Ricki Harnett, "Rise of the Footsoldier" This Brit flick chronicles the rise of Carlton Leach, a West Ham soccer hooligan whose exploits randomly beating the crap out of opposing team supporters, were exactly the tools of the trade required to bounce in some of east London's dive bars before becoming an enforcer for the local neighborhood heroin dealers. "Everybody got what they came for. If you came in looking for a drink and a couple of birds, that’s what you got. But if you came in for anything else, you’d end up with my fist in your face. And if you came back with your little army wrapped around ya, well, I’d just have to get my metal bar out."
2. Chow Yun Fat in "Full Contact" Chow Yun Fat plays a club bouncer in the seedy back streets of Bangkok, Thailand, where instead of laying the smack down on pudgy middle aged Dutch pedophiles, runs afoul of a sleazy underworld boss and has to flee with his dancer girlfriend, a fellow bouncer, and his best buddy. Shown here in full on switchblade, ass-beating glory, here's some 'Fat' camp.
Hillary Clinton Takes Shots, Not at Rival Obama but of Whiskey
Based on the dismal two-term bargain basement presidency of George W, we can make this blanket statement: tipplers make better presidents than teetotalers as anyone up to this point, including notorious booze-hound Dick Nixon, has been a better president.
Dubya, who was a lot more fun back when his nose was more full of the white stuff than a face-planting Picabo Street or when he indulged in the occasional brew, hasn't enjoyed a drop in nearly a decade (he was photographed at a 2007 summit in Germany, swilling a piss-poor non alcoholic 'near beer', a nearly punishable offense in that country, not to mention a product brewed by mediocre foreign rival Heineken that luckily didn't result in an international incident)
The current crop of Oval Office aspirants, though, are no strangers to the odd bevvie, and currently reaching out to voters, by reaching for the occasional pint.
Automaton former first lady Hillary has been urged to 'loosen up a bit' and is taking this to heart as she compounded her populist rhetoric recently by pounding back a few on the campaign trail at a Fort Wayne, Indiana watering hole. [Editor's note: forced banter with someone sporting a 'DAD' sweatshirt and prominent under-bite, in a state more backward than the Hebrew alphabet is best undertaken with a few dollops of liquid courage] According to a local wine-and-spirits representative with no vested interest whatsoever, "I think she'd loosen up better" [if she had a few]
In terms of jump starting the economy and decreasing income inequality, her campaign platform would be well served to include the following bit of wobbly, booze-friendly research (correlation not implying causation here, unless the profs are springing for the tab). According to a study out of San Jose State U, where you can major in advanced beachcombing, "drinkers earn 10 to 14 percent more than those who refrain from drinking", with females representing the higher end of the spectrum.
Also, and this will provide a built-in pretext for browbeaten hubbies to have a few hours' respite from the missus--men who go to a bar at least once a month earn an additional 7 percent on top of the 10 percentdrinking premium. Of course, we'd expect diminishing returns if this figure were to include more than ____(insert double digit figure deemed appropriate here)
Here's rival Obama gingerly sipping on a pint in PA, perhaps aiming to close the gap between beer drinkers and wine drinkers, the former predominantly GOP voters according to the latest CNN Lou Dobbs book-ending filler poll.
Barring getting lost on the way back from an after-hours bar and popping into one to grab a nap on the way home, it is unlikely that you will see either of the Shark Guys occupying church pew space on a Sunday morning. That said, this story did nearly cause a religious conversion of Paul on the Road to Damascus-like power. It was later determined that the bright lights we thought we saw and errantly attributed to a beacon from a celestial lighthouse were caused by a combination of dehydration and standing up too fast.
Pope Benedict XVI (Return of the Robed One) is currently on his first visit to the US, which has the third-largest Catholic population in the world – this is a fact made most clear in Mafia movies in which gangsters, despite being pimps, killers and thieves of the worst order, can still be counted on to put on a clean shirt for little Antoinette’s baptism. The pope’s goal this time round is to inject a little enthusiasm into a faith knocked sideways by the scandals of various touchy-feely fathers (of the spurned “Russian hands and Roman fingers” sect) and the fact that even Mother Teresa was recently found to have been a closet atheist.
We wish him all the best, but really if he wants to see those collection plates filling up like they did in the good old days when the church owned everything and had the business end of a bayonet ready for naysayers, we suggest he pay attention to the moves made recently by a reverend in Sidney, Ohio. The senior pastor of SidneyFirstUnitedMethodistChurch decided to move his ministry, saying, “We want to minister to them where they are”. If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you’ll know exactly where they are: at the bar. Thus the reverend has decided to open the CountryRockChurch in the Pub Lounge, a typical bar located off the interstate.
The worship sessions will feature “food, fun, and faith”, and those lacking in the third category might just end up converted if the integral fourth “F” – free-flowing booze – is also on offer.
Some songs have become bar anthems. You hear “Born in the USA” or “You Shook Me all Night Long” anywhere other than a bar and you wonder why you’re not in some reeking dive, clutching a glass of draft, while chatting up a thoroughly disinterested party and eating from a plate of peanuts containing more germs than the handles on the urinals. We recognize that these songs make an important contribution to one’s elbow-tilting atmosphere, however we reckon that enough attention has been paid to every one of them (and that they each have almost reached their limit when it comes to Internet derision). What we’d like to focus on instead are songs that are actually set in bars. The writers of these songs, for the most part, were the sort who followed the advice of “Write what you know”; they looked around, saw that they were in a bar and wrote the following classic tunes. All of these songs are either set in a bar, or make heavy reference to pub life. To actually sit down and pen a song about a bar, rather than one that you hope drunk people will sway to and later remember when sobering up at Wal-mart, is commendable, and we would like to pay tribute to these efforts here with our Top 10 'Bar' Songs of All Time!
10)Girls, Girls, Girlsby Motley Crue: The members of the always dangerous band were in danger of finding themselves forgotten in hair-band oblivion until the sensational book The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band” came out and made a whole new generation of indie rockers take a good look at themselves in their mirrors and realize that more lines should be snorted off them.
This song is the only one on our list that specifically celebrates that chrome bar palace -- the place where, to quote Al Bundy “The cops are at the door, and there's a Kennedy on the floor": the nudie bar.
And how's this for a man who means business when it comes to his night at the peeler's?:“Friday night and I need a fight/My motorcycle and a switchblade knife/Handful of grease in my hair feels right/But what I need to make me tight are…” Why, girls, girls, girls of course!
It’s unlikely that Tommy Lee or any of the Crue ever went switchblade crazy in a strip club, which are almost exclusively the domain of the mafia and biker gangs throughout North America. Had they done so, it's unlikely that they would have gone on to do things like star in cinema verite with Pam Anderson, be featured alongside a dwarf in a reality television show and the assorted other accomplishments that have distinguished their post-band days.
Choice Lush Lyrics:Girls, Girls, Girls/At the Dollhouse in Ft. Lauderdale/Girls, Girls. Girls/Rocking in Atlanta at Tattletails/Girls, Girls, Girls/Raising Hell at the 7th Veil
9) "At The Bar" by T.I.: The self-proclaimed Rubberband Man, Atlantic rapper TI's rhymes are certainly elastic like a spastic and couplets fire out of his mouth like a pill-popping Truman Capote giving the keynote address at an auctioneer's convention. The "King of the South's" "At the Bar" gets kudos here. Choice Lush Lyrics: "I got cash money. I got 5 bottles of Hennessy. You mean I can just hit the club and everything's for free?"
8) "Alabama Song" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill: The Doors, a band that hasn't aged well (and not just because one of them is helping to make the fleur grow in France), helped repopularize this one when they covered it. Most will be pretty familiar with the refrain “Well, show me the way to the next whiskey bar/Oh don’t ask why/Oh’ don’t ask why”… as well as its creepy follow-up “Well show me the way to the next little girl, oh don’t ask why…” That second bit started out in the Brecht-written original as “Show me the way to the next pretty boy”, which was appropriate given that it was meant to be sung by a female prostitute in the Brecht/Weill opera “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny”.
When the “Lizard King” and his associates chose to cover it though, they realized that asking mainstream America to show them the way to the next “pretty boy” might not go over so well, and they changed the lyric to “little girl”. It still sounds like a theme song for some pervert in a van with tinted windows, but it managed to find mainstream acceptance and remains one of their most recognizable songs. We salute this song for the uncomfortable ambiguity surrounding that one line and for speaking to the universal need that we've all felt at one time or another to be shown the way to the "next whiskey bar", without having to explain why.
Choice Lush Lyrics: Oh, moon of Alabama/We now must say say good-bye/We've lost our good old mamma/And must have whisky/Oh, you know why.
7) "Thrown Out of the Bar" by Hank Williams III: It seems to be a genetic rule that musical talent skips a generation. Think Jacob Dylan, Alex Orbison, Wolfgang Van Halen, Sean Lennon, Frank Sinatra Jr., Tal Bachman, and of course, Hank Williams Jr. In the case of the latter though, there's some hope offered by the fact that talent may well skip a generation as it did in the case of Hank Williams III, who has foregone the old man's cornball style of country for something that ole grandpa could raise the moonshine jug too.
These days you can get tossed out of a bar for lighting up a cigarette, but we’re guessing the kind of drunk that Hank III is writing about in “Thrown Out of the Bar” has done far worse. As overzealous as some bouncers might be, getting the crap kicked out of you regularly at every bar in town points to the possibility that you might be a "problem drinker".
Choice Lush Lyrics: I been beat up bad, I been kicked around,/I been thrown out of every damn bar in this old town, /In this old town./I guess you don't like the way we like to have our fun/'Cause I'm always out there an' I'm on the run
6)Sally MacLennaneby The Pogues: If you've ever wondered what you might look and sound like if you drank heavily during every waking hour of the day and abandoned all matters of dental hygiene, may we recommend "If I Should Fall From Grace: The Shane MacGowan Story.” Shane MacGowan, the Pogues main songwriter and lead singer, wrote what he knew very, very well, but surprisingly few of these were about pubs or bar life. One exception to that is this fine song, which starts "Well Jimmy played harmonica in the pub where I was born". In the pub where he was born! The prize for greatest drunk ever goes to this guy.
As with many of The Pogues best songs ("Fairytale of New York" for example) this one tells a story, specifically a young man's life growing up in a pub, eventually become the barman of "the greatest little boozer", home of Sally MacLennane. This is the sort of song so immersed in bar culture that you could get beer breath just listening to it.
Choice Lush Lyrics: I played the pump and took the hump and watered whiskey down/I talked of whores and horses to the men who drank the brown/I heard them say that jimmys making money far away/And some people left for heaven without warning
The presence of a bunch of clipboard wielding scientists blocking access to the bar, is apparently not enough to dissuade people from drinking, according to a new study in which it was determined after much scrutiny of the data (and noting that the sky above is a shade of blue) that people tend to drink more where the music is louder.
