30 Days Dry – Part 4: What Drinking Means To Me

When I taste that first sip of beer, I am reminded of how my mom first started going out with my dad because he liked how she enjoyed drinking beer. When I hear the rattle of ice against the side of my high ball glass full of whiskey, I'm transported back to my childhood bedroom. Listening in the dark as I lay in my bed, I would wait until I heard the sound of the ice in my dad’s whiskey glass as a signal that he was home from a late night at work. Only then would I feel relaxed and let myself slip into sleep. In the soft warmth that comes from a great drink I am reminded of the camaraderie and the joy of times with friends, sharing drinks, helping me learn to stop trying to be someone else and to love being myself.

Alcoholic beverages are as central to many cultures’ identity as fashion, cuisines, art and music. You can understand Italian culture without knowing great Italian operas, but you miss experiencing something profound about being Italian without knowing these great works of art. In the same way drinking an American lager will bring you an understanding of Midwestern working class roots in a way that few other experiences can.

Wines, beers, liquors and spirits are powerfully personal and culturally significant. My understanding of these beverages has connected me with my family and my cultural history. I have extended family members who barely speak English that only through drinking whiskey have we crossed cultural barriers and created meaningful memories.

As a second-generation immigrant, learning about American drinking culture in college and beyond has helped me make sense of a world that far too often, still feels foreign. Each new drink I tried and each new tradition I participated related to drinking brought me closer to what it meant to be American.

In each sip of an alcoholic drink I feel my culture and my family. I feel closer to the world around me, connecting with generations of artisans that contributed to the creation of what I am enjoying. I am also sharing an experience with people around the world and through time who have drank the same beverage that I am enjoying.

The process of distilling, brewing and fermenting has the potential to create unparalleled flavors with wonderful nuances and complexity. Like a great opera, knowing a great whiskey takes work, exposure and expertise to appreciate. And like with a masterpiece of an aria, after learning about a great whisky, the experience of drinking that great spirit can be an emotional and beautiful experience.

It's not all about high art. Like a hot dog on a Fourth of July cookout, even a mediocre beer with the right friends can help create unforgettable eating experiences.

On the same section in a store that you can find artfully crated spirits that reflect great human achievement built on years of study and innovation you can also find lower down on a bottom shelf, mass-produced beverages only drunk for escapism. It is in these extremes that we find the best and the worst of the human experience of drinking alcohol. In that top shelf you find the beauty of human expression through flavor and tradition and in the bottom shelf there is only a stale taste that reflects the burden of a pleasure turned into a darkness that clouds one's soul in regret.

To love alcohol is to know what it can bring to life and what it can take away. Alcohol can feel both essential and extraneous, inspiring and depressing. It is a force that has brought families together and torn families apart. Alcoholic beverages for some bring out the best in us but in others bring forth the worst parts of our humanity.

I really enjoy drinking but I've taken this break because it seems like far too often drinking was not a culturally meaningful experience. It was simply a way to escape. I have my stress and my difficulties but I have a blessed life and never did the escapism of drinking alcohol make me feel better about the challenges in my life.

My relationship with alcohol continues to evolve. If I find myself missing the meaningful experience of drinking, I will take a break, like a recently have to reevaluate. Someday, I will probably walk way from drinking for good. Will I miss it? I hope so, and for the right reasons. If I miss it for the wrong reasons than it'll be a confirmation that walking away truly is for the best.

30 Days Dry – Part 3: Drinking Like A Man

Don Draper drank “Old Fashioneds,” James Bond had his martinis, Wolverine drank beer like water, Frank Sinatra loved Jack Daniel’s whiskey, and Ron Swanson loves his scotch. The only manly man that I can think of who doesn’t have drinking as part of their mystique and identity is Batman, who in his Bruce Wayne persona would drink ginger ale pretending he was champagne.

In America to be a man, a real man, our culture tells you that you have to like sports, enjoy shopping for power tools and drink booze. I discussed what it means to drink like a man in this post 

As I’ve grown up as an adult, being able to drink “like a man,” has been one way that I’ve been able to bound with other man and feel more “manly” in conversations and in parties. I’m not a typical man’s man and wile I’ve come to terms with this, I’d be lying if I claimed that I was completely over feeling of masculine inferiority because of the fact that my identity and interest do not fit what most people typically consider as being “manly.”

Knowing the difference between scotch and bourbon, being able to understand the nuances of different hops in IPAs, and being able to not only drink my vodka straight but enjoy it this way made me feel more masculine. All of these actions connected me with the male heroes in our popular culture and provided an entry point into conversations with other guys.

Last week, at a holiday party, I realized that I was the only guy in the room of about 30 people who didn’t either have a beer or glass of wine in my hand (most of the guys had beers), while only about a third of the woman had a drink (only one woman had a beer). I saw for the first time that like make-up, hair care, nail care, whether a person was drinking and what they were drinking was an expression of gender. I’ve been going to these kinds of parties for years but I didn’t make this observation until I took a step away and wasn’t contributing to these trends.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with men or woman having a topic that they are more typically interested in that they discuss as a way of bonding. At the same time it’s important to think about these subjects and their implications.  A group of teenage girls who always talk about dieting and how to improve their bodies may be expressing some insecurities that need addressing and a group of boys who bond over making racist jokes need to understand the implications of their words.

Our view on alcohol in our culture is full of gender stereotypes. Masculine heroes often drink while feminine heroes often do not. There are girly drinks and manly drinks. Drinking for men is viewed as a rite of passage, while many people view drinking as not being lady-like.

In this month off, I've realized how much drinking is part of my masculine expression, which is one reason I've missed booze.  I don't understand why I need my masculinity affirmed, but I guess that's part of my biology.

Shouldn't something deeper, more lasting connect me with my feeling of being a man, like being a good father?  Maybe we've focused too much on the imagery and external things like booze to give us a feeling of strength that we really should be getting through our accomplishments and our achievements as loving family members.  I don't mind the idea of drinking beer as helping me feel more like a man, but the idea that alcohol could grow to define what it means for me to be a man is disturbing.

Maybe Don Draper drank to feel like a man because he was an inadequate husband.  James Bond's martini's maybe covered up his guilt for the deaths he caused, Wolverine had decades of pain and regret he tried to escape, and Frank Sinatra was an absent father.  And Ron Swanson, he's not really an example of man but a caricature of the worst stereotypes of masculinity, flaws and all.

And the sober one, Batman is even more messed up than all of these guys, but whatever. . .  

30 Days Dry - Part 2: Drunk History

I was never much for underage drinking.

I think I only had a drink one time when I was at a high school party. It was a wine cooler, didn’t taste very good and I didn’t get the appeal. The sneaking around just felt weird and I felt like I had better things to do with my time.

Did I have a superiority complex in high school? Oh yeah, you better believe it. I didn’t really see my time in high school as time to be messing around. I wanted to get into a good college and prove to my classmates that this music stuff I was doing wasn’t something that make me dorky, but something that made me special.

When my brother turned 21 (I’m three years younger), my parents would let me have a glass a wine with dinner, but I was apprehensive and didn’t really get into it. I’ve never developed a palette for wine. I respect the art and craft of creating wine and the complexities of the flavors, but the snobbery and overall sweetness of most wines didn’t appeal to me.

Then I went to college and joined a fraternity (read more about this in this series of posts). No, the floodgates did not open up. I was at Northwestern University. None of my friends wanted to waste their time being drunk all of the time. We understood and valued that freedom away from adult responsibilities afforded us time to do explore new experience and live life to the fullest. However, for my group of friends this meant join marching band, joining clubs and take extra classes.

Don’t get me wrong. I had my moments. There were emails sent when I was drunk that I regret sending, close encounters with university police and nights that left more of an impression than clear memories. While I had fun, I didn’t really enjoy drinking alcohol my first couple years at college. I just drank to party and to loosen up.

When I turned 21, I really felt like I grew up in my understanding and appreciation of the culture of drinking. I started to develop a taste for beer and drank mixed drinks that instead of hiding the taste of the alcohol, and eventuated the nuances. Drinking at bars legally was far more fun than standing in a crowded dorm room holding a red plastic cup filled with some mystery punch. That type of situation made me feel like a high school student playing pretend. Sitting in a bar made me feel like an adult.

Like most people I went through phases in my drinking. First it was Southern Comfort, than whiskey, than beer, vodka, than back to beer, a weird phase where I was all about Rieslings and lately I’ve been into craft beers.

When I was in high school and early college, I drank because I wanted to fit in. I enjoyed it on some level but I could live without it. It wasn’t until I got to my mid-twenties that I enjoyed drinking for what it meant culturally. There was the tradition, and the history but more anything else for a guy who felt like a sissy for most of his life, drinking made me feel like a man.

Lately, this fact has been bothering me.

30 Days Dry - Part 1: Why?

I’m writing at my computer at home, with a pint glass full of tonic water, just tonic water, no vodka or gin. Right now after 28 days without a drop of alcohol, I could really go a beer.

In mid-November I decided that between Thanksgiving and Christmas I wasn’t going to drink any alcohol. I saw that one of my co-workers was doing this and after some Internet browsing, it became clear that going dry for an extended period of time was something a lot of people were doing. Some people were doing it for their health, others as a social experiment and some were going dry because of the challenge.

I liked the idea that it would be good for my health. I tried to stick with only drinking on the weekends but sometimes I drank during the weekends, when after a tough day, I “deserved” it. Most of the time I felt fine but especially since entering my thirties it feels like a gamble when I drink. Some mornings I feel fine, and others I feel slightly hung over. My body just doesn’t process alcohol like it used to. I wanted to get my body cleaned up.

Every time I get back from winter break I feel like I need a week to get over all of the drinking that happens around the holiday season. Between rewarding myself for stressful workdays and all of the holiday events and parties, there’s a lot of drinking that happens.

I wanted to test myself. Thanksgiving to Christmas is one of the most stressful times of year for my work and in my personal life. All of the holiday performances are difficult to handle and especially now with a kid, the holiday season requires more active planning and participation from me as a parent. Did I really need booze to help me handle all of this stress or was I strong enough to handle this myself?

The main reason that I wanted to go dry for a month was Ollie. One of the unfortunate things about drinking especially at parties is that it sometimes it makes you less present. In awkward situations, drinking can pull you out of the discomfort and this is really helpful at times, but I’m not sure how this affects Ollie. I never feel like I get enough time with Ollie and the time that I spend with him, I really want to be there with him and for him, fully, even if that means I have to deal with more feelings of social awkwardness.

This last month has been hard. I miss the flavor of a good beer, the aroma great whiskey. I miss the ritual of drinking, pouring a beer into a glass, mixing up an old fashioned. I miss the warmth of relaxation and the feeling of freedom that comes when the first wave of alcohol makes the world seem more vibrant and accessible.

I don’t miss wondering how I’m going to feel the following morning after a night of drinking. I don’t miss the feeling of being drunk and I don’t miss the fear that somehow I will loose control.

In the past I’ve taken a couple weeks off to make sure that I can live without booze that I’m not somehow slipping into alcoholism. I irrationally fear this possibility, because taking time off drinking has never been a big issue. The challenge of this month off though really makes me wonder. Why do I miss alcohol? What does alcohol really mean to my life? To all of our lives?

I’m going explore all of this in the next couple posts from my first drink to being the only man at a party without a beer in his hand.

To Be A Man: Drinking Like A Man

A man understands the basics of food and wine pairings and chooses to ignore these conventions if he feels like it. A man knows the difference between scotch and bourbon. And a man has no shame drinking out of a tiki mug and doesn't mind a miniature parasol.

A man doesn't get black out drunk more times in is life than he can count on one hand. A man doesn't try to coerce people to drink alcoholic beverages. And a man doesn't use alcohol as an excuse for things he says or behaviors he regrets.

Men have a very challenging relationship with alcohol. On one hand alcoholic beverages are a beautiful expression of gastronomic creativity and cultural traditions. On the other hand alcoholic consumptions has become associated with masculinity through activities that sometimes focus on excessive drinking.

There is this idea that experiences with drinking are a rite of passage for guys. There are high school proms, fraternity initiations, 21st birthday bar crawls and bachelor parties. All of these moments in guy's lives that represent important life transitions are associated with drinking for many guys, not all, but many.

I’m not arguing that having moments in our lives when we indulge ourselves are bad. But indulgences are risky and sometimes have dire consequences. If we want to have alcohol be part of our lives, celebrations and rituals, that’s fine and if done responsibly, alcoholic beverages can enrich our lives.

We have to get away from this idea of that the ability to drink in excess as a defining characteristic of what it means to be a man. What we are as men are defined by choices we make about our lives and the way that we treat people, not by risky behaviors, which demonstrate a lack of care and good judgement.

I remember guys at parties when I was in college bragging about how much they had drunk and how wasted they were. This is not an expression of masculinity but rather an expression of insecurity. If your expression of confidence and self-worth is defined by drinking habits, there’s a lot of others things in your life that you have to figure out before you are "grown up." 

What separates men from boys isn’t necessarily how much they drink or what they drink, rather how they view drinking. For a man, drinking is about enjoying life even more, not escaping life. For a man, drinking is a choice made independently, not through peer pressure or to prove anything to anyone else.  For a man, a drink is simply a drink, nothing more, nothing less.

What’s in your cup is not a status symbol, it doesn’t define your personality and no one with any true insight into people really cares what you are drinking and how much you drink.

If you enjoy a good drink, awesome, if you don’t that doesn’t make you any less of a man. Don’t let something so minor as the alcohol you consume define you.  If you do drink, don’t let poor choices and insecurities allow your drinking habits to become destructive to the man your evolution as a man.

I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues by Elton John

In 1975, Elton John released Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy which became the first album ever to enter the charts at #1. Riding a huge wave a critical and commercial success, John seemed to do no wrong.

Two years later, John announced he was retiring from performing and his next album Single Man, had no top ten singles and was a critical and commercial disappointment. By the time he released Too Low For Zero, Elton John was a shadow of his pass self. Drug and alcohol abuse as well as personal challenges including negative reactions to a 1976 Rolling Stone Interview in which he admitted to be bisexual were taking its toll on not only Elton but also his music.

Instead of having five or six singles off of an album that were hits there were one or two and instead of toping the charts they merely broke the top 10. Amidst this, there were a few songs from this era endure quite like, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Featured on the album Two Low For Zero, “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” only reached #4 on the charts competing with monster hits like “Billy Jean” by Michael Jackson and “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. Once Elton John’s music was at the edge of popular music experiment with form and creating unique sonic landscapes like in the opening of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with the epic “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding.”



Now Elton sat squarely in the safe and adult contemporary sound of the early 1980s synthesized rock, but this couldn’t overshadow the warm nostalgia and emotional honesty of the “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues.”

Elton divided the beat into the three small parts giving “I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues,” a lilting, almost childlike quality. Elton’s voice contrasts from lines sung as manner of fact statements “don’t wish it away, don’t look at it like it’s forever,” to earnest expressions of support “before you and me run. . . ” at the end of the first verse.

At these moments and also during the chorus, “laughing like children . . ” John uses a rhythmic musical device called a hemiola. Instead of having note last over three small beats like 1-2-3 1-2-3, the notes hold over two small beats 1-2-3 1-2-3. This make the notes seem like they are lagging behind slightly creating drama by accenting the offbeats.

“I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” is about being away from the ones that you love. Reflecting on a relationship, John figures that this feeling of being away from each other must be “the blues.” However, the overwhelming feeling of this song is not “the blues” or sadness from being apart but instead is love, glowing out of soul like a warm memory.

While the most famous lines of this song “Laughing like children, living like lovers, rolling like thunder under the covers” are fun to sing along with juxtaposing child like joy with sensuality, it’s the end of the second verse that says it all: “I simply love you more than I love life itself.”

The 1980s didn’t last forever. In the early 1990s, Elton John wrote the music The Lion King and the release of Songs from the West Coast in 2001 a return to John's piano roots which many considered one of his best albums featuring songs like “America Triangle” (which I discussed in this earlier post). Whether it be shows in Las Vegas or his success on Broadway with Billy Elliot, it seems that Elton is back.

It seems that many things left Elton during the 1980s, his health, his commercial success and his creative drive, but "I Guess That’s Why They Call It The Blues” reminds us that he never lost his heart

Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffet

I have been to Margaritaville.

It is a magical place that teleports you to a tropical paradise. There is indeed a state of mind that you sense when you see not only half a pirate ship jutting out of the wall but also half of a small two-engine airplane hanging from the ceiling. There are indeed Margaritas at Margaritaville and the food captures the tropical culture with such dishes as buffalo wings, Caesar Salad, Chicken and Broccoli pasta and my choice for my visit, Steak Fajitas. There are ten different locations where Margaritaville lies and my adventure into this tropical state of mind was during my last visit to Las Vegas.

I cannot think of any other songs that have become a chain of restaurants except for maybe “Ruby Tuesday” (however, that restaurant does not have as strong a connection to the Rolling Stones as “Margaritaville” has to Jimmy Buffet). I enjoyed Margaritaville. It was a little gaudy but the food was a good value and I had a great time.

When I was researching songs that have alcohol as the subject “Margaritaville” showed up again and again on people lists of best song about drinking as well as lists of drinking songs. It’s hard to take seriously a song that is a restaurant chain and it’s a challenge to take seriously an artists whose second biggest hit behind “Margaritaville” is “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” I mean, seriously what’s next, “Side of fries in the Sand”?!?

I don’t judge the quality or worth of music on its popularity but if enough people love a song and it means a lot to them, I’m intrigued to find out why. “Margaritaville” is a song that seems to be merely a novelty song but has an interesting journey of self-realization linked directly to the way alcohol not only influences the way act, but the way we think.

There are three verses. The first sets the image of a tropical paradise, watching the sun on the back porch, playing guitar and watching tourist be silly. The second verse starts to paint a different picture. He doesn’t know why he’s been there all season and has nothing to show for being there except a tattoo he doesn’t remember getting. We get a funny drinking story but there is a slight edge of regret with getting a tattoo. The last verse is the end of the visit to paradise. He injures his foot when his flip-flop “blows out” and he has to go home, but what has to look forward to is alcohol, which he feels will comfort him. He gets no consolation in the memories of being in paradise or looking forward to coming back next year. He gets that from knowing that he can get drunk.

I’m not saying that going to a tropical place, getting drunk and having a good time is a bad thing, but I do agree with the song that having nothing to show for that experience except a tattoo that you don’t remember getting is a little sad. We do take vacations to escape, but if that escape is more in a bottle then in the actual environment that you are in, well then just do that at home and save some cash.

The three chorus have an interesting progression that mirrors the verses. The fist four lines of the choruses are the same each time.

Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville
Searching for my lost shaker of salt
Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame.

I picture a guy at bar, drunk crawling under a table looking for a shaker of salt that he thought he dropped that is actually on top of the table. Then he goes over to the bar tender and asks, “what am I doing here? How did I get to this point?” and bar tender tries to explain to this guy that there something that happened with a woman that drove him to this low in his life.

Each chorus ends differently:

End of 1st chorus: But I know its nobody fault.
End of 2nd chorus: Hell, it could be my fault.
End of 3rd chorus: And I know it’s my own damn fault.

He’s working through the stages of guilt. If you’ve ever tried to convince someone of something that you know is there fault at first they start not thinking it’s no one’s fault and hopefully, they get to admitting their role in the situation. It’s like he’s slowly sobering up throughout this song. His mind clears and we get a better sense of what is happening in his life.

Now if you look at this song that way, it’s really kind of depressing but if you watch that youtube.com performance at the top of the page, Jimmy Buffet doesn’t look sad and NO ONE in the audience is experiences a deep introspect reflection of the role of alcohol in their lives. What comes across in this songs is “wastin’ away again in Margaritaville.” There is something comforting in this idea of being in this place where you can go and drink, a place like the bar in Cheers where everyone knows your name.

As sad as this story is, because melody is so optimistic it has a feeling of “well, bad things, happen, it’s probably my fault, but y’know life goes one and we should enjoy ourselves and have a good time.” That feeling of moving on through bad things happening and looking forward pass tragedy to something that brings hope connects to people. It’s not that strange that the thing that this guy looks forward to is booze because well, I admit I’ve had days where I’ve had a hard day at work and I can’t wait to get home and have a beer.

When you have a relaxing drink the world floats away and you go to wonderful place like Margaritaville, but only for a moment. What this song reminds us, is that even though booze can take us there, reality is waiting for you unchanged since you started drinking as soon as you sober up.

Escapism hopefully gives us time, perspective and a renewed strength to face our lives as we all continue to work to make Margaritaville more about a feeling of joy that we face our day with, than a drink in a blender.

Alcohol by Brad Paisley

"Alcohol" music video

I attended a friend’s wedding that was at a hotel in downtown Chicago. I got a room in that hotel with a couple friends so we wouldn’t have to worry about driving in the evening. My good friend was gracious enough to have an open bar at his wedding and as a guest I felt that I should help my friend get his money’s worth out of that open bar. After all, weddings are not cheap, if you can’t lower the price, then you might as well get the best value that you can.

I don’t remember how many Gin and Tonics I drunk, but it became clear later that I had too many. I vaguely remember getting into bed and then waking up the next morning thinking “y’know I feel fine, I need to go to the bathroom badly, but I feel ok, dodged another hangover, awesome.” Then the instant I got up out of bed, I felt the headache, nausea and general of feeling wanting to die that is a hangover. So hung-over were my friends and I that we just laid in our beds and watched Bring It On Again (otherwise known as Bring It On Again 2) and at the time it didn’t seem that bad, which really shows how out of I we were.

Then there was that other time with my brother in law (not the high school senior but the one who is a senior in college) when we decided to do a whiskey tasting at my place and use shots Jagermeister to cleanse our palettes between drinks. Yeah, that next morning was um. . . yeah, not a good time.

When I think about these experiences, I can’t help be embarrassed. It’s completely my fault and it’s idiotic, but it’s also kind of funny. Why are the stupid things that people do when they are drunk that they wouldn’t do when they are sober often funny? Partially because it’s something that a person normally wouldn’t do but in some ways we laugh at these things to make ourselves and each other feel better about our mistakes.

As much as the consequences of drinking is our fault, alcohol has got to take part of the blame and Brad Paisley shows us that alcohol not only acknowledges it’s effect on our lives but that it finds the things we do when we drink it hilarious.

One of my friends in college, the same girl who taught me how to take shots with Southern Comfort, loved Brad Paisley. If you really care about someone, exploring what they love is a great way to get to know them better. Paisley’s music in this case gave me an interesting perspective in the way my friend viewed the world and introduced me to one of the most astounding artist in popular music.

Brad Paisley composes some of the most clever, interesting and overall fun music in pop music today. The concepts in his songs are unique and entertaining. His lyrics are witty and insightful and his catchy melodies and well-crafted songs reflect his optimistic viewpoint on relationships and the world. Paisley sings with a conversational quality that is both un-pretentious and honest. He is an unassuming artists who is an gracious and engaging performer who also happens to be one of the finest guitar players in music today.

Country music has a long history of writing songs about alcohol. There are songs about almost every imaginable human experience with alcohol including alcohol induced amnesia and drinking whiskey as a post-modern reinterpretations of the feminist identity (oh and you thought Toby Keith wasn’t culturally relevant? Well, he’s not the most influential mind in modern music but he does reflect an “interesting” way of thinking).

Paisley takes a unique perspective on the effect of alcohol itself as if it was a living entity. When you first listen to this song, it is not explicitly clear that this is how this song is set up. You get the idea that this is some kind of magical and wonderful being that can change our lives, but Brad puts little kickers every couple lines to clue us into what this song is really about.

When this thing says it “can make anyone pretty,” that sounds alright. “I can make you believe anyone lie,” wait that’s not good at all. “I can make you pick a fight with someone twice your size,” oh dear. Wow, this thing can help me make new friends and get me fired from work? Alcohol is like the worst best friend on the planet. It’s that family member who trouble always seems to follow but you just can’t turn you back on them for one reason or another.

Paisley’s jokes and rhymes are smooth and subtle. There is an effortless quality in the way that the lyrics work together and naturally fit with the melody. In the last part of the second verse he starts talking about alcohol influencing world leaders and Hemmingway and then flips to betting that alcohol can make you put a lampshade on your head. Paisley is able to work around these lines with not only the way he constructs the lyrics but also the understated way he sings. He makes observations, which are partially true and describes them to us in a different light that points out the ridiculousness of our behavior.

If you listen closely to the about 3 minutes in and the second part of second verse you can hear what makes Brad Paisley’s guitar playing amazing. He fills in space between the phrases to add to the momentum of the music. His guitar playing always have direction and interesting musical ideas which is enabled by his incredible technique. Like his lyrics, Paisley often underplays his guitar playing not bringing attention to itself but utilizing it as another ingredient to add to the overall song. Having an amazing guitar solo is great and Paisley often does have them in his songs but if they don’t fit the song itself and serve a musical purpose it can seems gratuitous and out of place.

“Alcohol” helps us laugh at ourselves. It really is a funny state of affairs to think about the fact alcohol really does kind of help not only white people but also all of us to dance. Getting hangovers and all the stupid things that come from booze really are more about ourselves and our silliness which makes life that much more entertaining.

We should be having fun at alcohol’s expense and not the other way around. The funny entertaining drinking stories will keep coming and we will continue to laugh at the stupidity in life. What Brad Paisley does and alcohol should do is enrich our lives and help us to not take ourselves too seriously.

Hopefully, at the end of it all, it is us not alcohol who gets the last laugh.

Alcohol by the Barenaked Ladies

Have you ever tried to imagine the first people who discovered alcoholic drinks? There’s some guy in a village who makes a soup out of grains or fruit and then decides, “hey this taste pretty good, why don’t let it sit in a pot and see if it tastes better?” Then a little while later this guy taste his fermented concoction and thinks “man this taste a little weird, but it makes me feel good” and like a mouse pressing a button to get food pellets our oh so smart ancestor probably keep drinking until the momentous event known as the first human pass-out followed by the world’s first hangover. The crazy thing is once he got over his hangover, must have thought “wow, that was bad, but I think I can do better with my new beverage” and proceeded to develop this early type of alcohol through trial and error. (I say “guy” to ease the flow of the writing, I’m sure a girl could have been responsible for this early experimentation though it seems more likely that a guy would be dumb enough to keep at this kind of self-abuse).

My parent when I was growing up would drink wine and beer and I never remember my parents getting wasted, there were some times when they would get silly after drinking but it was never anything negative. I never drank alcohol with my high school friends. I wasn’t really in the social circle that did drink and the idea of having to be secret about it, just kind of seemed silly to me.

College is a time of self-discovery. We find out our strengths, our weaknesses, what we truly care about, what it means to be an adult and just what kind of drunk we really are. People are taught how to drink and my instructors were a couple upperclassmen girls who I met through marching band. Through these ladies who took my under their collective wing, I learned how to take a shot (which was Southern Comfort), got introduced to White Zinfindel as a gateway beverage into the world of wine, explored the world of beer and learned various techniques to fight off the scourge known as the hang-over.

That’s just the thing, there is a specter of darkness that is present whenever alcohol is served. It’s more then just barfing in the bathroom or getting a hangover. It’s losing control, it’s drunk driving and it’s a devastating disease called alcoholism. It seems like a weird joke that something that can make us feel so good can bring out the worst in us. There is no song that I know that captures this sense of irony like “Alcohol” by the Barenaked Ladies.

The Barenaked Ladies sound in some ways like a typical mid-1990s college band. The sound of their music is not necessarily adventurous but their ability to mix catchy well-crafted melodies with clever and insightful lyrics has set them apart from other bands. Their songs tell interesting stories often hold a deeper meaning then the subject of the song initially implies. One of my favorite songs is off their album Maroon titled “Tonight is the Night I fell Asleep at the Wheel” in which the narrator describes getting in a car accident which reveals itself as being an expression of how important a loved one is in his life .

In “Alcohol” the narrator sings to alcohol and as he describes the role alcoholic drinks have had in his life. “Alcohol, my permanent accessory” that’s kind of funny, but also kind of sad, and then when first ends with “Alcohol, alternative to feeling like yourself” it becomes clear that though this song may sound like a joyous celebration of the glory that is booze, but it has a tinge of rather dark self-awareness.

We get the full chorus after the second verse in which we get another view of this conflicted relationship with alcohol.

I love you more than I did the week before
I discovered alcohol
O Alcohol, would you please forgive me?
For while I cannot love myself
I'll use something else.

The way that “I love you” is sung, it can casually be interpreted as the singer saying how much he loves alcohol but then you listen carefully and realize that maybe that’s the booze speaking as he talks to someone he is with. Then the most interesting turn occurs in the song when he asks for forgiveness from alcohol. He describes how he can’t deal with his current situation and uses alcohol as a way to escape.

I’ve been there. Hard day at work, get together with some friends and drink some beers to forget the day and relax. Alcohol is not the only thing people do to get away from themselves. There’s films, television, food, shopping, and in some ways most of what we do in our free can be utilizes as escapism and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What bothers us when alcohol is used this way is that it is slippery slope. If watching television is what you do to escape, you may become a couch potato which is not nearly as frightening as become as becoming an alcoholic.

In the bridge, the Barenaked Ladies explain it perfectly. I used to think that drinking just to get drunk was stupid, but there’s a time and a place for that. Within that activity as is explained in the song we walk a “fine line between self-control and self-abuse.” As the bridge starts, the music becomes a drunken haze. The tempo slows down, people scream in the background, and weird sounds whirl like circus music. Then the music locks back in with the words “self-abuse.”

This captures the joyous parts of drinking alcohol, that feeling of freedom but it also describes that fear inside of us about of what drinking really says about who we are. Drinking is self-abuse. If done responsibility drinking doesn’t really hurt us all that much but it does put our bodies under stress and it’s important that we really think about what alcohol means to us.

I love alcohol but I also fear it. I don’t know how much of this is propaganda and how much of it is based on reality. Would life be simpler (and well cheaper) if I never drank again? Yes, but I’ve had some crazy good times that involved booze and nothing really bad has happened because of my drinking.

Well, nothing really bad has happened . . . yet.

I’ll probably continue drinking in some capacity for the rest of my life but no matter what I do or how much I drink will I ever be free of the fear of what the darkness alcohol can bring. I don’t think that’s a bad thing and it’s a complicated feeling. If we don’t admit this to ourselves and deal with these feelings, we may end of it all begging for forgiveness like at the end of “Alcohol” not from alcohol itself, but from our friends and families, but mostly ourselves.