d.h. lawrence man. touching, i know.
anyway, it turns out there are 5 songs which are currently my favourite, having to do at least associatively with alcohol.
1. Harry Belafonte - “Will His Love Be Like His Rum?” yes it will! yes it will! which is to say, intoxicating all night long. mostly about marital bliss, this song is a toast to a happy couple with a happy future, or at least an experience that is invigorating and regrettable.
2. Nina Simone – “Lilac Wine” also associating love and drunkenness, in this case it is a particular love, a particular liquor, a particular drunk and particularly, almost world-sunderingly touching. “When i think more than i want to think, do things i would never do, i drink more than i want to think, because it brings me back you . . . Lilac wine, is sweet and heady, like my love. Lilac wine, i feel unsteady, like my love. Listen to me, why is everything so hazy?” i have this desire to try lilac wine sometime, assuming it will be thick and slow and altogether too sweet, presumably smelling of lilacs, and it will be the type of thing that can only end honourably in reeling oblivion.
3. Stick McGhee – “Drinkin’ Wine Spo Dee O Dee” usually attributed to, and better known by, Jerry Lee Lewis, i much prefer this version, from the Atlantic Rythm & Blues Collection, volume 1 (1947-1952). it’s less rip-roarin’, but i find the more leisurely pace resonates better with the usual experience of copious wine consumption. not that it’s a necessary association, but the story of folk getting drunk and raucous and fighting reminds me somehow of Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back In Town”. i guess just for it making me think of summer and getting riley, although i wouldn’t say it’s quite booze-themed enough for me to include it on this list. “Having A Good Time,” on the other hand (one of my all-time favourite drink-related, or in this case, drink fuelled, songs), easily qualifies, with its opening lines: “Me and my buddies, we’re gonna get drunk, we’re gonna go out on the town. We’ll be checking it out, slipping it in, and stepping out of line,” and the fact that for the last 2 minutes of the song Phil Lynott’s lyrics sound like he is legitimately drunk, frozen forever in time in the artificial spontaneity of the recording.
4. The Techniques – “Drink More Wine” i can’t seem to find the full lyrics anywhere online, and personally can’t make out half of them myself, but it’s a great little rocksteady jam by The Techniques, i believe during their period fronted by Slim Smith. the chorus is something to the effect of “you must drink a lot of wine, and you will get well cool,” maybe.
5. Paul McCartney – “Monkberry Moon Delight” when i was in grade 11 my best friend invented this drink at a party that he called “Mountain Moon Juice,” consisting of, if i remember correctly: Mountain Dew, vanilla ice cream, moonshine whiskey, orange juice, and blue food colouring, blended to a uniform slurry. there may have been other ingredients, but i don’t at the moment recall them. what i do recall is him drinking half of it, vomiting some green shit onto himself, partially disrobing and then continuing to rage, shirtless, blender in hand (for that was the only suitable vessel out of which to drink Mountain Moon Juice), against the dying of the light, until, as expected, the light failed and he passed out on the stairs. i may have gotten some of the sequence wrong there. maybe he lost his shirt, or vomited on it, borrowed my shirt, vomited on that, then went shirtless. i feel like my shirt got involved somehow. it’s hard to tell, really, what this nonsense-rife song is about, but when you listen to it, it sort of sounds like Mountain Moon Juice. not the words, but the spirit thereof. also like that time (with the same best friend) i was on four hits of acid and stumbled into a bar to encounter a seven-person folk-rock band in matching brown and orange tunics performing this very song.
happy belated birthday to mr. mike saturday.
Oh Nina! #2, merci, is the middle of the venn diagram of two obsessions of the week (I knew there had to be one): St.-Germain and Elkie Brooks. The latter covered this song (not a patch on Nina’s, nor on her own “Nothing Left to Do But Cry” – youtube it, oh man – but still admirable); the former is elderflower liqueur which I bought this weekend in a sentimental fit, $31 but worth it. $31 for 750mL of swoon in liquid form, in a pretty bottle that’s heavy enough to brain someone with, in case the booze itself – or the love, I suppose – doesn’t induce the proper state of unconsciousness. Mix with champagne and homemade Everclear limoncello and go bust somebody’s lip with your teeth.
Also: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques91.asp
And DH Lawrence never wrote a word that wasn’t dreadful and I dare you to prove me otherwise.
the Everclear isn’t homemade, is it? that sounds like such a narrow margin, flirting with death….
and the proof is in the vomit, woman. although i think i slightly misquoted.
possibly “to find that our vomit has staled in the meantime.” consider yourself defied. i know i do.
Elkie Brooks version of Lilac Wine is sublime. Great singer.
i actually read through most of your posts. i am incredibly bored you see. speaking of liquor, limoncello making soon? i’ve got the alcohol now.
y.
i passed out on the porched and fell backward into the bushes, as i recall (but why take my word on it given the past sentence), only to be rescued and carried into the house by joey arsenault or some other momentarily kind hearted meathead.
to make matters worse it was the yellow “towel shirt” which took to soaking and holding the green-blueness expertly.
[...] the topic of songs about food, that are or are not about food, i recently picked up She’s Your Cook, But She Burns My Bread Sometimes, volume 14 [...]
[...] to the sink behind the bar to thoroughly wash out his mouth (this, from the man who brought us Mountain Moon Juice) provided my first association with scotch as a [...]