1. Muddy Waters “Champagne and Reefer” – Over the last couple of weeks in this column, we’ve gotten funky and sweaty, had the summertime blues, been tempted by Satan, and we’ve even been in outer space. So we’ve come back from partying and from space, only to see that the economy is terrible, our pay sucks, our taxes are going up, the MTA has already cut service and is threatening to raise fares again – and we’re in a rather dark mood. We’re kind of ready for any sort of escape possible so prepare your ears for this week’s playlist – songs about alcohol and drugs. And where else should we start but with the great Muddy Waters tune, “Champagne and Reefer.” I’ve written about Muddy Waters before for this column. After all the blues is the primordial ooze from which all the music we know and love comes from and was inspired by but what makes this song so memorable and so funny is that Muddy Waters is that this song openly advocates smoking weed – by extolling its virtues: “It’s good for your body” and it “relaxes your mind,” Waters sings. So give us some champagne when we’re thirsty and some reefer when we want to get high!
2. George Thorogood and the Destroyers “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”— The Delaware-based George Thorogood and the Destroyers do a loving cover of a great Bo Diddley song, expanding the song Diddley’s song by a full five or six minutes. But the story told within the song is something that anyone suffering in a tough economy will be familiar with: the narrator loses his woman and his job. Without a job, without money, he loses his place so he tries to crash with his friend and his friend’s wife. Unfortunately, his friend’s wife hates him and he has no place to stay – so what does our song’s wayward hero do: he goes to his favorite bar and gets drunk, drinking one bourbon, one scotch and one beer in that order night. Sometimes things can seem so fucked that the only reasonable solution is to get hopelessly drunk and forget. That seems to be a worthwhile lesson these days.
3. Howlin’ Wolf “Wang Dang Doodle” – Chess Records, the blues label run by the Chess Brothers had a multi-talented guy by the name of Willie Dixon, who was a songwriter, arranger producer, musician and a host of other things. It should be no surprise that Dixon along with Muddy Waters were the preeminent forces shaping the sound of Chicago blues, and in turn the rock music that quickly followed its influence. Willie Dixon wrote this song and it was performed by another great Chicago bluesman Howlin’ Wolf. At 6’6” and about 300 pounds, the physically imposing Howlin’ Wolf played a muscular and riff heavy, sleazy blues that will make listeners think of sweaty, alcohol soaked bars, fights and murderous thoughts. And his voice is by far one of the most unique voices in music history – it sounds equally battered by hundreds of years of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs and god knows what else. A critic once described the man’s voice as sounding like “heavy machinery being operated on a gravel road.” This stuff ain’t pretty and that’s okay because it’s lovably sleazy. The song is pretty simple as it details partying, drinking, carrying on, busting stuff up and fighting. That’s just about par for any Friday or Saturday night in New York City – and probably right up our alley! (If you’re curious, check out P.J. Harvey’s cover which ads a sexual tension to the song, which creates an entirely new context and interpretation to the song.)
4. The Velvet Underground “Waiting for the Man” – It may seem clichéd but we can’t talk about drugs and alcohol without discussing the quintessential New York-based art rock band – the Velvet Underground. Sure, the Velvet Underground was never a huge commercial act like somewhat contemporary bands such as the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, but almost 40 years after their breakup, critics and musicians consider them among a group of the most interesting and influential bands of the 60s and early 70s. But what Lou Reed, John Cale, and Moe Tucker were best known for was for their provocative lyrics describing heroin use, domination, masochism and more. My drugs of choice have always been alcohol, caffeine and occasionally nicotine but I do know a few drugs users and the description of the desperate user waiting for their connect to come through so they could get their fix seems entirely apt. The song is also a bit of a historical piece as it describes parts of town which are rapidly changing, thanks to gentrification.
5. Steely Dan “Hey Nineteen” – Steely Dan is one of those bands that I’m honestly kind of strangely ambivalent about. Their slick, heavily jazz-influenced and polished sound of their 70s material hasn’t exactly lived up to the test of time. I sometimes wonder if the cult following they somehow built up during their pretty lengthy hiatus had more to do with some phony sense of nostalgia more than anything else. But what I will say is what I’ve always managed to admire about Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s work was that they penned lyrics that concerned themselves with unusually dark themes for that era – many of their songs openly discussed drugs, alcohol, illicit sex, affairs and even crime. Lyrically, this is the stuff of gangsta rap songs and they managed to slide this in music that could readily be acceptable at a BBQ hosted by your parents. What makes this particular song interesting is that the narrator openly discusses drinking alcohol and snorting coke with a naïve 19 year old. Whoa, talk about decadently fucked up.
6. Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel “White Lines” – Grandmaster Flash, Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Kool Herc, and several others were among hip-hop’s earliest, most respected and most legendary figures. Sadly, these days popular culture is increasingly fickle and there’s a sense that there’s a general ignorance musical and artistic history. Occasionally, I’ll catch the “Throwback Hour” on my local conglomerate radio station, mall and drug mart, and I find myself astounded by the fact that “Old School” has now inched into 2003. Since when is anything released in 2003 “Old School”? And worse off, is how there are musical listeners don’t seem to know that punk and hip-hop share so much philosophically and spiritually! If people knew this, then they wouldn’t be surprised to know that Grandmaster Flash and Fab Five Freddy were not only shouted out by Debbie Harry in Blondie’s “Rapture” but that they were both hanging out with Jean-Michel Basquiat and Madonna. But I’m ranting a bit. This song unlike the others on the playlist is much more of a cautionary tale – here it describes the disastrous effects of cocaine in terms that were pretty damn frightening in the 1980s. As an odd note, Duran Duran had a really strange and fairly faithful cover of this one back in the early 1990s.
7. Guns ‘N Roses “Mr. Brownstone” – Appetite for Destruction, Guns ‘N Roses debut was an amazing album on several levels – the first and most important being that Appetite destroyed hair metal acts such as Winger, Poison, Whitesnake, Skid Row, Lita Ford, Bon Jovi and several other hopelessly terrible acts with their unique brand of sleazy rock that threatened America’s “moral fiber” by showing how cool it was to be sleazy. Rock ‘n Roll was always supposed to inspire listeners to follow their base instincts – and Appetite for Destruction for the most part does just that. This song about heroin is a bit of a cautionary tale as our narrator starts doing dope for fun but when he realizes that the dope is fucking up his entire life, he can’t quit and the urge to use won’t go away. The description throughout the song manages to be wildly comical, pathetic and kind of scary in that way that Axl Rose perfected.
8. The Velvet Underground “Heroin” – This song is probably the most infamous and most-well known song about heroin recorded in modern history. The song starts off with a slow, drowsy feel and gradually speeds up, simulating both a rapidly increasing heartbeat and the experience of getting high before gradually slowing down and fading out. Like a lot of Lou Reed’s best songs, there’s a hauntingly ominous and nihilistic feel – as though this could be a fix that could lead to your death. I play this song from time to time and it always leaves me in a very weird, dark place.
9. Cypress Hill “Stoned is the Way of the Walk” – When we’re talking about drugs and alcohol, we can’t possibly forget about Cypress Hill. A fair portion of their songs discuss weed smoking so often and in such detail that listeners can seemingly get a contact high from hearing B. Real and Sen Dog’s rhymes. Some critics will tell you that Cypress Hill is pretty much the Cheech and Chong of hip hop – stoner rap that only makes sense if you’re stoned and seems ridiculous when you’re sober – especially after an infamous Saturday Night Live appearance where DJ Muggs smoked a joint on air. But on a certain level that’s a bit unfair. Not only were these dudes the first major Latin hip-hop act of any note, in 1993 their second album Black Sunday appeared as number 1 on the Billboard 200 with the highest Soundscan numbers of any hip-hop record of the time, and with their debut album still selling, they were the first hip-hop act to have two records on the Billboard 200. “How I Could Just Kill a Man,” one of their greatest hits, can still get crowds going and has some of the most hilarious lyrics about murder and gratuitous violence you’ll hear. This song from their self-titled debut album accurately depicts being fucked up with its somnambulant horn sample looped repeatedly over a slowed down Latin beat. B. Real and Sen Dog also sound like a half-step off, adding to the stoned out their mind vibe.
10. AC/DC “Love Hungry Man” – This song isn’t exactly about drinking or drugs although AC/DC’s original lead singer Bon Scott was known as an unrepentant and prodigious drunk who was known as much for his wild parties as he was for his fights and bad behavior. Sonically, AC/DC probably shares as much in common with many of the old time blues artists I’ve shouted out this week. AC/DC manages to be full of sleazy braggadocio, juvenile humor and power riffs. Certainly for me, hours of AC/DC have inspired many terrible late night ideas that have become amazingly embarrassing stories – and I’m sure that many other people can say the same. Now what this particular song does describe – and fairly accurately, too – is the mindset of the single man: constantly on the prowl for loving.
*Bonus*Special*Bonus* The Who “Who Are You” – This quintessential classic rock song has a famous lyric about passing out drunk in a doorway and having a cop wake the narrator up and letting our lucky narrator make an attempt home on the tube, no less! Interestingly, the Who Are You album was Pete Townsend’s attempt to fuse both punk rock and progressive rock together. Many of these songs are among Townsend’s most complicated – there’s some significant use of early synthesizers, layers of strings, as well as the typical rock instrumentation. Commercially, the album was a big hit on both sides of the pond although critically from what I understand, the album received some mixed reviews. Granted on a couple of songs, the sound seems garish and overly melodramatic but when it works there’s this cathartic rush of emotion and sound that’s overwhelming. I’ve had a few nights like the one the narrator in “Who Are You” describes and it gives this song a deeply personal feel for me – but why not end our playlist with a classic tribute to debauchery and madness, right?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZSjSSazgjQ
