Belly Up, Pint Down

"Warm beer and cold women, I just don't fit in
every joint I stumbled into tonight
that's just how it's been"
--Tom Waits, "Warm Beer and Cold Women" from Nighthawks at the Diner

drinking at the bar: an activity involving pints of beer and conversation.

There's a great bar in downtown Greensboro called McCoul's Irish Pub. It's on the opposite side of Elm Street from Natty Greene's, the brewery that anchors nightlife in Greensboro's fabled Hamburger Square. The mood at McCoul's is just right for a pub (or for what passes as one here in good old North Carolina). It's dark and cool. The décor consists of lots of lacquered wood and green, and there's lots of good beer on tap. What I especially like is that they serve beer in real pint glasses—not those American pint glasses that hold 16 oz. (or less) of beer, but the English 20 oz. pint. They also serve more than one beer on nitrous. Guinness. Boddingtons. Mmm…

Do not mistake me. This blog is not about chicks. It's not about live music, or watching the game, whatever game that might be. This isn't about high drama low tolerance booty clubbing. And this certainly is not about getting drunk on cheap beer.

This is about the magically mundane experience of sitting at a bar, drinking pints of beer, and shooting the shit.

Good beer. Good conversation.

Beer is good.

Interestingly enough, my journey to beer lover and beer maker started badly.

My first beer ever was can of Busch Lite. This first tasting was followed later by a can of Bud Dry, prompting a remark, "This isn't as bad!" O my misspent youth!

I did not drink alcohol prior to college, and I didn’t really develop a knack for drinking until I was out of college. Sure I did the rounds, and bespattered many a porcelain throne, but there was no love there. That came later. Early on, though, I realized that a) beer is an acquired taste and b) I needed to acquire taste.

This last point is one that, interestingly enough, my wife and I were discussing the other night. Taste. Taste is not something that can be manufactured for you. You cannot simply buy "Taste for Idiots" and hope for immediate connoisseurship. There is no Costco Crash Course for taste.

Taste is something that has to grow with experience and exposure. Had I taken a slug of Guinness instead of Bush Lite that first time, I would likely have had the same reaction: Ugh. It wasn't until I had made an effort to taste lots of different beers that I began to like them. And, even after I became a beer lover, I still didn't truly appreciate its complexity until I started brewing it. Standing over a pot of wort, smelling the grains, the malt, and the hops, I understood where all those flavors in good beer come from.

Back to the beginning: I knew I didn't like it, so I thought, "If I'm going to have to acquire a taste for beer, then I might as well try everything I can get my hands on!" This led to my roommate buying me a different brand six pack each beer run. Blackened Voodoo was my first dark beer. I distinctly remember pouring it into a glass, holding it up to the light, and marveling at the fact that I couldn't see through it. That's the kind of beer I need to drink, I thought. From that point on, I only drank dark beer. Heineken Dark. Beck's Dark. Negra Modelo. I was still too scared of Guinness…

It should come as no surprise, then, that I still lean toward the dark end of the beer spectrum (Sierra Nevada Porter is one of my all time favorites. As is Anchor Steam Porter. My all-time favorite homebrew: Snow Day Porter. Someday soon, I hope to repeat it…).

All of this early tasting didn't lead to love, though. I developed my drinking chops, but I would have still preferred a can of Coca-Cola to a bottle of beer.

And then it happened. I graduated from college, moved up to Connecticut, and became a bartender. I worked for a couple of years in a fine dining restaurant and began to live the life of a barfly. I worked nights and slept until noon. What else was there to do but go to the bar after work? And that's where I fell in love.

I don’t remember the specific night that it happened, but I do remember taking a sip of ice cold Bass in a frosty pint glass and melting right there on the spot. All the tension and exhaustion from work oozed out of me (Eric Clapton blaring from the juke).

I asked that pint of beer to marry me.

Seriously, though, it was there in Connecticut that I became a professional beer drinker. Yeah, later, in graduate school, I developed a taste for scotch (and discovered that brown liquor makes me mean), and spent more time bar hopping than reading Dickens and Thackary. But there was a mania in my grad school drinking that didn't mirror my Connecticut beer enthusiasm.

Now, as a responsible adult (I've only been one of those for a few years…), I enjoy beer. I don't drink it because it's cheap, or because I'm a "dude." Yeah, I get sloppy now and then, but I always start with the thought, "I love beer." There is something deeply satisfying about a good, cold beer. And, though I consider myself to be an intermediate oenophile, I always default to beer. I can sip scotch, appreciate it, even enjoy it, but beer is my passion.

And brewing really has amplified my taste. The last batch of beer I brewed (named Gaius Pale Ale after Gaius Baltar from Battlestar Galactica— I wanted to make a beer that was pretty but evil, light and very, very bitter), I invited a friend (Gerald from Virtual Bourgeois) to join me in the brewing process. I love to brew and, extrapolating on the fine art of home brewing (propane turkey cooker boiling five gallons of wort on a tilting cement patio) while consuming the last of my previous batch, I hoped that Gerald would see why I loved it. He did. I also hoped he might enjoy brewing, too. He didn't.

I believe his words were, "I now have a deeper appreciation for beer."

When asked if he would start brewing, too: "Nope."

It's a labor of love.

And I guess that's part of my overall love for beer: My acquiring of the taste was like a hero's journey. I set out on my quest in search of drunkenness but found so much more. I'd also say that my beer journey is symbolic of my coming of age. It is an integral part of my adult life (both the creation of it and the consuming of it).

My wife reminded me of the sagely words of Ben Franklin:

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."

Bar is good.

Okay, so I briefly mentioned my grad school binging. My dear friend and grad school compatriot, Jon, refers to the summer between our first and second years as "The Summer That Time Forgot." When we weren't in class, or performing meager research assistantship tasks, we were drinking. Darts, pinball, and booze held court with Flannery O'Connor and Robert Frost. We drank through every cent of our research assistantship money. Hell, we probably drank more than that. This summer long tribute to Bukowski had its moments, but it was, more or less, an exercise in self destruction. It wasn't about the beer. It was about the drunk.

I mention this because my love of the bar springs, too, from the time I spent in Connecticut drinking after work. The goal there was to wind down, have a good time with my colleagues, shoot a little pool, and kill time until our next shift.

This is the love of the bar.

It's hard to explain that love, especially to someone who hasn't really saddled up to one and committed to the experience. I go back to my opening comments: Going to the bar isn't like going to the club. It isn't a pretense. It isn't about socializing with strangers, or the anxiety of hooking up (for me, hooking up was always precluded by anxiety).

Don't get me wrong, I spent many a night wishing I had the chops to chat up the chicks, but I didn't do that—and what resulted instead was an ongoing conversation about humanity. In the end (and happily married to a woman I did not meet at a bar), I am thankful for my lack of hook ups because it allowed me to spend time, with my beverage of choice, doing something I love: shooting the shit.

Shooting the shit. Let's unpack that phrase. In my career (responsible man), I've often thought of writing a piece for my students entitled, "The Fine Art of Bullshitting." For college freshmen learning to write decent essays that's what everything I assign them boils down to: B.S. That's what they think development is. To them, it's enough to say "I don't like it," "I don't know," and "I don't care." Beyond these simple "don’ts" is a space reserved for bullshit. Explanation, details, developed and well-thought out opinions? Naw, bullshit.

But in the heart of that shit is communication. It's like the swimmer practicing his strokes. It may seem tedious and like a waste of time to outside observers, but with each lap, something happens, however miniscule, to improve the stroke. Conversation breeds deeper conversation.

And so, for me, conversation is the cornerstone of life.

Shooting the shit brings me closer to god.

Sure, some might argue that it's better to live life than talk about it, but to me this is counter-intuitive. One can shoot forward into experience without contemplation, haphazardly dashing into life like a witless Labrador retriever. And yes, biting down on that soggy stick, like tasting the fruit of eternity, and swimming back to the shore with it might seem life's sweet reward.

But I've never liked labs…

William Wordsworth wrote, “poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” This phrase is often misread—primarily because we want to believe that our instincts, ungirded by reason and reflection, are true and right.

Thoughts spontaneously flowing onto the page are always the best!

But that colon changes everything: poetry "takes its origin" from recollection "in tranquility." Spontaneity, then, cannot exist without "emotion recollected in tranquility."

I am, of course, making the observation that, yes, life is poetry, and we have to reflect upon it in order to open ourselves up to the power of experience. Otherwise experience has no meaning. It simply satiates the pleasure principle.

What does any of this have to do with drinking at the bar?

Let me give some simple equations:

Going to the Booty Club = Exercising the pleasure principle

Drinking at the Bar = Emotion recollected in tranquility

Okay, so I'm full of shit. We know that. But my point is that conversation guides experience, and without it, we might as well be animals. And, frankly, many of us are. But we must not mistake the experience of drinking beer from a pint glass at a bar for something detrimental to human progress. It is, rather, a meditative experience.

That's what the bar does for me: It allows me to connect to the bigger picture. It allows me to reflect, collectively with my partners in pints, upon the spaces between action and inaction. The bar is a pause. It's a slowing down of time (with the help of alcohol, of course). Here, in these moments, I can misstep, mistake, misbehave (in an intellectual sense), and come to a better understanding of the universe and my place in it.

Did I mention that I love beer?

Not Just A Drunk

That last bit reminds me of what many of us know: Most "great" writers were/are/will be drunks. Is there a connection here? Certainly. It harkens back to Wordsworth's comments.

Only, we must replace "reflected in tranquility" with "getting drunk."

I used to think that my inspiration for writing came from a combination of magical elements: cigar, black coffee, jazz, the hours between two and four a.m. What I later discovered (I can be a bit slow) was that none of these "magical" factors were really necessary in and of themselves. Rather, it was the quiet of those hours—the uninterrupted time (no phone, nothing good on TV, etc.).

This was my time of tranquility.

How do we get from tranquility to being drunk? Let's call it a loosening of the belt. And there's truth in this. The restrictions of civil society impinge upon creativity, upon the creative act (I started this blog more than a month ago…). This is why we move from teaching children to enjoy the creative act to scolding them for coloring outside the lines. And, as a people, we have developed a complicated system of checks and balances to keep us from careening off course (stay on target…).

As we grow up, those checks and balances become so automatic that we turn to social lubricants to help us slip out of our boot cut jeans.

Writers (artists) rely on the energies outside the lines (call it channeling radio signals from outer space; we sneak out at night to catch the faeries, then pin them to the page), and must suffer the consequences of too many out-of-body experiences. I might argue that writing is too reliant on a pre/post-linguistic state—ever seeking to capture thoughts that strive to break through the limitations of language, only to be lost again. Writers go mad in the blurring of lines.

Said more plainly: Drinking loosens us up enough to make connections otherwise imperceptible. Addiction (and destruction) is simply a matter of too much course. If you spend too much time searching for tranquility at the bottom of a pint glass, you move from a freer state of mind to an unraveling of the mind.

I liken it to any thing or act that is positive in moderation but destructive in superfluity. As Milton said, "knowledge is as food and needs no less her temperance over appetite." The search for tranquility ends, when sought too often, in perturbation.

But as long as one moderates the pints, the words flow.

The bullshit, too.

A Day With The Hatchers

I.

I'll start with this:

1. Almost ten years ago, I had surgery to remove my tonsils, adenoids, and deviated septum.
2. This was not the first time I was a patient at a hospital.
3. A dear friend of mine has now had three instances of cancer in three different parts of his body (eyes, leg, lung).
4. This dear friend had surgery last Thursday to remove a spot on his lung (instance number 3).
5. My father died a couple years ago of cancer, after having spent more than a month in the hospital.
6. Despite all of this, I do not fear, nor do I have great distaste, for hospitals.

When I was not quite a year old, I had a run in with a bathroom faucet. I've told this story so many times, even though I don't remember the events. Apparently, I decided to climb up into my parents' bathroom sink, plunk my feet—in footed pajamas—in the sink, and turn on the hot water faucet. The result was a month long stay in the hospital with both feet in casts. The skin graft scars on my feet are still clearly visible.

Then there was the lung infection. I spent two weeks in the hospital that time. I remember some of that one—the constant blood drawing, the I.V. in my wrist, the Jell-O, and the get well cards from my classmates.

Oh, then there's the ear operation. Can't forget about that one. Some yahoo of a doctor decided to put tubes in my ears because I was having ear and sinus problems. One of those tubes eventually fell out. The other one? Punctured my right ear drum. Several doctors and hospitals later, I had a new ear drum and fifteen percent hearing loss in that ear.

It's no wonder my mother has a deep distrust for doctors.

As for me, I recognize that, despite our hopes and delusions, medicine isn't an exact science. And its practitioners are, after all, fallible humans. There's something terribly frightening—and terribly beautiful—about the human body's capacity to surprise us. I'm probably not the first to suggest this, but I think it's likely that we have as good a chance of discovering the secret of the universe (that last equation to peg string theory?) right about the same time that we figure out exactly how to read every cause/effect of human physiology. Actually, that seems about right to me: the human body is, after all, the microcosm of the universe.

And so, a good doctor is simply a good problem solver. A human repository of medical knowledge with solid critical thinking skills and a touch of empathy. Interestingly enough, that's where House gets it right. But I'll say no more about that.

It's possible that my general ambivalence to hospitals is a result of my early exposure to them—in the way that being exposed to large bodies of water (pools and the ocean) at an early age resulted in respect instead of fear of water. It's also possible that I don't hate hospitals because I was a kid. It's almost humanly impossible to be mean to a sick kid. Jell-O and ice cream cups, watching t.v. in bed. A few nurses who were really good at drawing blood without hurting me. Yeah, I was in pain, but the hospital staff did their best to help. I was spared the adult drama of poor hospital care. Plus, I was oblivious to the fears and anxieties floating around me. It was kind of like a weird vacation.

I'll never forget the nausea of that anesthesia, though.

I remember coming out of it for that last surgery (in 1998) and being surprised that it didn't make me nauseous. That last time when I was a kid, I couldn't stop retching for hours…

Yeah. Hospitals.

II.

So last year, my friend went in for surgery on his leg. It was supposed to be a routine mole removal, but the mole turned out to be a sarcoma. They cut so much out of his leg (muscle tissue) that he was not only miserable from the pain, but he had trouble walking and had to wear a drain (little tube and bag to catch, well, drainage) for a while. As if that wasn’t enough, he had to go through weeks worth of harsh radiation treatment that resulted in some serious leg burns. He made it through all of this like a champ (never missed any work). He wasn't the only one who was happy when he got his first survival pin; he was the happiest, though.

All the stuff with the leg happened late last summer and stretched well into the fall. Last spring really was like a new awakening for him—for all of us.

It should come as no surprise, then, that I was a little less than jovial when I got the call from him a couple months ago saying they'd found a spot on his lung. That was a bad day.

So here we are.

A somewhat more extreme repeat of last fall's trials. We all knew this could (and likely would) happen, but that didn't make it any easier to handle.

It's interesting. When my father was in the hospital, it didn't make much sense. My father was a good man—the best of men. An outwardly healthy man. In those months of his illness and in the period around his death, countless friends of the family, friends of my father, remarked that they were so surprised because my father was always so healthy. Even now, my mother claims that my father never really got sick in all the time they were together (over forty years). He was a Polish work horse. How could this happen to such a healthy man?

But… I'm not going to say it was all a lie, because my father was one of the healthiest, strongest men I've ever known. And it really was shocking to discover that something fatal had been growing inside of him. But he wasn't impervious to illness. He had high blood pressure. He had one of the worst cases of eczema I've ever seen. Out of the shower, he looked like a white and red leopard. He also had the worst eyesight of anyone I've ever known. And, after a really good friend of his died of prostate cancer, he routinely had himself checked for prostate and colon cancer. Is it wrong of me to say, "Maybe they should have checked further up the line?"

Again, I'm not saying that he was a sickly man. Rather, I guess I'm trying to loosely tie this back to my earlier comments: The human body has an infinite capacity for surprise. And, no matter how vigilant we are, well, surprise!

All of this is made even more poignant for me given that I've spent the last few days homebound with acute bronchitis—the first semi-serious illness I've had in years. I've had the thought that my bronchitis is a psychosomatic response to my friend's surgery—a kind of sympathy sickness. Not likely, but…

III.

Last Thursday, my wife and I got up, grabbed some Starbucks, and headed to the hospital. We knew that Dana was told to be at the hospital by six a.m. and that he would go into surgery at seven. We got there at about eight. He didn't actually go into surgery until about a quarter after nine. The surgery lasted about an hour and was, by the surgeon's account, very successful. The surgeon informed us that he found the spot, removed it (cutting a wide swatch, much like the previous surgeon had done with Dana's leg), checked the rest of the lung for any other possible spots or tumors, found the rest of the lung to be free and clean, and stitched him back up. All of this was delivered in a cavalier manner that was not boastful but comforting.

This was very good news.

I would like to say that the post-op recovery has gone smoothly, but it hasn't. I'll get to that later. For now, I'd like to ruminate on the day long wait that ensued from what it took the surgeon (and his team) only an hour to do.

Hospital observations:

1. Every hospital that I've been to has made absolutely no sense in regards to design. I'm sure this is a result of constant "updating" (Oh! How I long to blog about that word! Update indeed.). I remarked to Dana's brother that I felt like Spinal Tap trying to find the stage. (A tried and true joke, to be sure, but damn those hallways twist and turn!)
   
   
2. The surgery waiting room presented a new hospital environment to me. It was a large room with long, low but comfortable couches. Its windows looked out over the sprawling parking garage and the heliport for airlift emergencies. The room had a reception area, as well as another reference desk that handled incoming calls from surgery rooms and the outside world. Throughout our wait, those manning the phones would announce "Such and such family, please come to the desk for an outside call." They would then direct the families to a bank of numbered phones to receive their calls. It was an efficient system. It was also a bit shocking to think that so much was happening at the same time. So many families, so many surgeries. Statistically speaking, not all would go so well.
   
   
3. On a trip back to my car, I spied not one, but three individuals smoking in their cars. Say what you will about personal choices and responsibilities, but I still find it absolutely stupefying that anyone continues to smoke given what we all know as honest to God truth about the habit. I can understand anyone older than me who smokes. Not forgive, mind you, but understand. Anyone younger than me should know damn better.
   
   
4. Despite the general mythos of hospitals, you would think that their cafeterias would be more health conscious. Wake Forest's Baptist Hospital had a fried chicken and wing bar! Yeah, their cafeteria had all the usual suspects. True, they had a salad bar, but should a hospital offer so much processed food and beverage? Is this some kind of irresponsible insurance policy? Or is it simply comfort food? Ugh. No comfort in that.
   
   
5. The bathrooms were clean. Yeah, that's to be expected, but I will take this opportunity to praise again those most glorious of inventions: the automatic urinal, faucet, and paper towel dispenser.
   
   
6. When the surgeon came out to tell us about Dana, he still had on his hair/face mask. Dana's brother leaned in and said something about this that made me laugh. I found it comforting (and ironic) that this guy turned out to be Dana's surgeon! That made my day.
   
   
7. Despite the wealth (I mean wealth. This is, after all, one of the premier medical institutions in the state of North Carolina) of technology contained within that hospital, I couldn't use my debit card to pay for parking. Could this be another failing on the part of the U.S. health care system? I still owe Baptist four bucks…
   
   
8. The surgery took an hour. We waited for nine. Granted, three of those hours were spent waiting while Dana went through his initial recovery, but… Well, that's the way it is, I guess.
   
   

IV.

The Hatchers are good people. I've known them for years, but until this day spent waiting, I had not spent much time with Dana's older brother, nor had I spent any time with Dana's wife without his presence. I was not surprised by this quality time with the Hatchers, but it was definitely welcome on such a stressful day. I just hope my wife and I weren't an imposition. I don't think we were.

Dana's brother is an interesting individual, a college professor of journalism. I've heard a lot about him, but I had only met him on a couple of occasions. And while I was not surprised by his openness and sincerity, I was surprised by the fact that the waiting didn't drag on; good conversation kept boredom (and/or anxiety) at bay. The ability to strike up good conversation must run in the family.

We all spent about nine hours in the hospital and it did not seem like that long. True, by the end of it, we all felt drained by the experience (a physical reaction heightened by bad cafeteria food and over-exposure to florescent light), but it could have been much worse.

And then there's Marty. It's interesting. I've been friends with these people for years now, but there's nothing like hours of waiting—and the ensuing conversation, bits and pieces, random thoughts with brief glimpses of something deeper—to elevate a relationship. I've never doubted the solidity of the relationship between Dana and Marty. They're an odd couple that works instinctively.

The story of their relationship is a great one. Old acquaintances who went about their lives separately, to greater and lesser successes, only to end up happily together many years later. They've known each other for most of their lives but have only been married for seven or eight years. Dana is fond of saying that Marty told a friend of hers, "That's the man I'm going to marry someday." He, of course, was an oblivious (and slightly self-destructive) youth. But when he finally came around, it was for good.

They're both such terribly interesting people. An elementary school librarian and a community college instructor. He's an encyclopedia of television and movie trivia with a penchant for speaking his mind; she's a sharp witted Jimmy Buffet fan. In his office, Dana has a little statue of a big bear with its arms around a small cub. "It's me and Marty," he says.

A couple of years ago, when his favorite cat, Spooky, died, he called to tell me about it and I thought it was one of the saddest phone calls I've ever received. Mandy and I went in search of a sympathy card (only to find that they don't really make many "death of a pet" cards that aren't condescending). We were so honored to find that very card professionally framed and hanging in the hall of their home.

That's the kind people the Hatchers are.

And so, and anyway, over the years, I've known that Dana's relationship with Marty is the best kind there can be. But until this day spent waiting in the hospital with Marty (and Anthony), I wouldn't have said that I know her. And I still don't, really. But this day convinced me that she is the best kind of person. I know that.

Dana has repeatedly said (and I've echoed the sentiment about my wife as well) that he knows Marty is too good for him and he never forgets it—and, as such, he will do everything in his power to be as good as he can for her. (Or something like that).

About some things, we can be so incredibly lucky. For that we must be grateful.

As for the other shit (hospitals, cancer, human fallibility), well, that's for the universe to decide.

V.

Yeah, so that spot they cut out of the lung was a sarcoma. They got it. And Dana won't have to have radiation or chemo this time around. He will, however, have to have CAT scans every three months. And he's still staring down the barrel of a long recovery from having his ribs pried open and his lung dallied with. And if this first week is any indication of how that's going to go… Well, October is going to be a long month.

I have to circle back to the whole human physiology 'bag-o-surprises' thing. Microcosm of the universe. Being grateful for the lives that intersect ours and make those surprises easier to cope with. Easier, of course, being a relative term.

Words like grateful, deserving, and fair always pop up with discussions of cancer. Lord knows I've been batting those words around in my rotting melon for the last few years. I've been, on the surface anyway, the first to knock back any argument for fairness. "The universe doesn't work that way," I say. I think of a line from O Brother Where Art Thou? (one of my father's favorite movies, mind you): "The law is a human institution." By extension, fairness is a product of our human need for reasons and resolution.

We want it all to be fair.

And, to be fair (har, har), about some things—many of them actually—we can rightfully expect fairness.

What's happen(ed/ing) to the Hatchers is not, by anyone's (terrestrial or divine) definition, fair.

But what I became convinced of (again) last Thursday was that I am so thankful to have the Hatchers in my life.

They are a surprise of the good kind.

And despite that big bully of a universe (the macrocosm picking on its little brother) I will do everything in my power to fight for some of that fairness they deserve.

You and me, universe. Ten rounds.

Twenty-Five Albums for Twenty-Five Years: #20

20. The Blues Brothers: Original Soundtrack Recording
The latest installment in my ongoing list of Twenty-Five Albums for Twenty-Five Years. To view previous posts, click here: Twenty-Five Albums for Twenty-Five Years.

My father was always a pushover when it came to buying things for me and my brother. Holidays and birthdays weren't big at our house because we usually got what we wanted (if we could reasonably justify our need). As such, I don't really have many memorable birthday presents from my father. The two that I do remember, however, are a basketball goal and a VHS copy of The Blues Brothers.

I remember the basketball goal because I remember thanking my father for it but being damn confused. Didn't my father know I hated basketball? Was this some kind of joke? I was old enough at the time to be thankful and not let my disappointment show, but to this day I just don't know what he was thinking. True, my father was a bad gifter. Mainly because of what I said above: If we wanted something badly enough, then we would get it. No reason to call it a gift. No reason to create drama or suspense. And I've got to say that I love my father for passing some of this on to me: Take care of those you love; don't just save it up for special occasions.

The Blues Brothers VHS tape, though, is a different story. That one he got right. We hadn't had our VCR for long at that point (this falls between 1984 and 1986) and this was the eighties, so we didn't have a massive collection of movies in the home repository. When I got The Blues Brothers, I think the only other official copies of movies we had were Back To The Future and Blazing Saddles.

I still have that Blues Brothers tape. It doesn't play anymore for reasons I don't need to explain.

Our household was fond of the late-seventies-early-eighties comedy, and The Blues Brothers was at the top of the list (with Animal House, Caddyshack, and Blazing Saddles). I remember writing a film review of it for my Introduction to Film class in college. I wrote about it lovingly and with much analytical gusto. I distinctly remember getting it back from my instructor (who would later serve on my master's thesis committee) and reading his comments. He said something like "Great analysis! Still not sure I would call BB a great movie, though…" Great? Questionable. Funny as hell? Yup.

Now that I'm older, there aren't that many movies (or albums, for that matter) that I can quote almost in entirety. The distractions of old age get in the way of remembering lyrics and movie lines.

The Blues Brothers, however, is one of those that I can still watch and drive my wife crazy with quoting… And there's something to be said for that, I think. In grad school, I had some colleagues over for drinks and they spent a good part of the evening rummaging through my CD collection (don't like to brag, but…). They pulled out stacks of discs and loaded them in to my single disc player, one after another, best tracking them. Each song they played, I knew all the lyrics—and several beers into the evening sang with honest delusion… Anyway, one of my friends remarked, "It says a lot about someone who knows all the lyrics to the CD's in his collection." I took it as a compliment.

I've crossed over into music land, but let me go back to the movie for a moment: The movie is downright silly when you really think about it. Two brothers, one recently out of prison, are tapped by God to save the orphanage where they grew up. Classic hero's journey, story of redemption, mixed with lots and lots of blues music and car chases. Stripped of everything else, this movie probably still holds records for most cars crashed in a movie.

So, yeah, it's silly. But if you add up all those disparate elements, you get a movie that is entertaining. And if you break it back down in search of the one thing that is most appealing (besides the car chases), the one thing that holds the entire rat-trap of a movie together, it's got to be the music.

Think about it. What other movie can boast cameos and performances by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, James Brown, John Lee Hooker, and Cab Calloway? And herein lies the meat of the movie: It opened me up to music that I would have otherwise never have encountered. I would even go so far as to say that I might not have been open to Tom Waits if it had not been for the Blues Brothers. That's no joke.

Just as I could quote the dialogue from the movie ("It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago…"), I could sing back up to Aretha, shake my tail feathers with Ray, praise Jesus with the godfather of soul, and scat with Cab. These kids these days are probably getting their musical ya-yas out of that High School Musical crap, but I was shakin' my ass to some good, old fashioned blues and boogie. Jake and Elwood made me want to wear dark sunglasses and a dirty black suit. I wanted to be able to do flips on stage like Jake and play the harmonica like Elwood. I think I even taught myself how to do the eyebrow raise because of John Belushi…

My brother and I wore that VHS tape out. Mostly because it was the only way to hear those tunes…

In my entry on Outlandos D'Amour I mentioned that my first ever CD purchase involved birthday money and two CD's. One of those was Outlandos. The other was The Blues Brothers: Original Soundtrack Recording.

Let's talk tunes. When I first heard the music in The Blues Brothers, it never really occurred to me that the songs were R&B standards. And, had it not been for my father, I would likely have not known who Aretha, Ray, Cab, and James were. I am even ashamed to admit that I had no frame of reference for the "Theme from Rawhide" or the "Peter Gunn Theme." Yeah, I'd heard them before, but I had never watched the shows. I am, after all, only thirty-three…

In the intervening years, I've gone after most of the Blues Brothers' source material. Luckily, BMG and Columbia House have control of a lot of old R&B recordings, and I've purchased a large portion of this stuff from them—and purchased cheaply, mind you.

From the tape player in the Bluesmobile, I spied The Best of Sam and Dave and later bought this for my collection. I was proud of the fact that not only had I located some Sam and Dave recordings, but that I bought the exact album that was in the Bluesmobile—on CD, not 8-track of course. I also got a hold of an Aretha Franklin box set (Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings). I don't listen to these much, but every now and then, I take a break from the usual suspects (still a rocker at heart) and load the CD changer up with a variety of rhythm and blues…

One of my favorite performances from the movie is Cab Calloway's. There is something mesmerizing about the singing-jive-storytelling-scatting of "Minnie the Moocher." It appeals to my musical aesthetic. I mentioned above that the R&B of The Blues Brothers may have paved the way to my love of Tom Waits. There might be a direct aesthetic line from "Minnie The Moocher" to "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis."

Anyway, my search for more Cab Calloway ended with purchasing Are You Hep To The Jive? (again, through Columbia House). The recordings on this album are a bit of a departure from the older Cab in The Blues Brothers, but they are deeply entertaining. When my wife and I were planning our wedding reception, I was determined to have "Don't Falter At The Altar" on the set list.

Interestingly enough, when I bought the collector's edition DVD of The Blues Brothers, and watched some of the behind-the-scenes featurettes, I learned that it took some serious prodding to have Cab perform "Minnie The Moocher" old-school style. Cab was trying to reinvent himself with a new, disco-inspired sound (don't forget, the movie was made in the late 70's) and couldn't understand why Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi wanted to revisit the old days, the old Cab. In the end, they were able to convince him to do it and—by god!—I’m glad they did!

I am, again, shamed by the fact that I did not go chasing Ray Charles until much later, and I grudgingly thank Taylor Hackford for really getting me to seek out more Ray. I bought a used copy of The Best of Ray Charles: The Atlantic Years on CD several years ago, and enjoyed it (still do). But it wasn't until I watched Ray, and bought the soundtrack for my wife, that I began to really appreciate the music of the blind man who fired a round from a revolver at Steve Cropper as he reached for a guitar in Ray's Music Exchange—and then proceeded to prove the action was fine on an electric piano by playing "Shake A Tail Feather." Man, what a great performance.

Then there's James Brown. Like Ray Charles, I didn't go in search of more James Brown until many years later. This is due, in part, to my low estimation of James's performance in the movie. Not that James was bad, but "The Old Landmark" is my least favorite song from the film. Where all the other songs on the soundtrack hold up well when divorced from the movie, "The Old Landmark" doesn't really work without the film. It needs the high-spirit, high-energy testifying of the church scene that prompts the religious transformation of Jake and Elwood. Without the parishioners gesticulating, fan-waving, and high-flying acrobatics—without James Brown's minister robes— "The Old Landmark" doesn't really play.

This, of course, is not the godfather's fault. And, later, when I did discover more James Brown (on James Brown—20 All Time Greatest Hits!), I was glad I sought him out. "Mother Popcorn (part 1)" is one of my favorite James Brown songs, and I'm happy to say that I got a chance to see him perform it a few years before he died. My good friend Brian was working at the Greensboro Coliseum and he got us tickets to James's show at the War Memorial Auditorium. Despite his age, James broke it down something fierce. Granted, his age did show: He would perform a couple of songs, and then turn it over to the band for a song or two (to rest, I imagine). Then he was right back out there moving like he wasn't in his seventies.

I know I'm getting off track here, but… Rerun (Fred Berry) from What's Happening!! opened for James Brown, and it was the saddest performance I have ever seen. His shtick was really bad—like a man who had so embraced his one note character that he just kept hitting that one note, over and over again. He actually got booed off the stage. I was not surprised to find out that he died shortly after suffering a stroke in 2003 (a little more than a year after seeing him perform). Ah… the complications of early stardom and inescapable icon status.

Anyway.

Back to those television theme songs. What a great premise: A blues band lies its way into a gig at a country and western bar. They start to play their usual set, only to be pelted with bottles. Luckily, the stage is guarded by a chicken wire cage. How does the band get out of the situation? By playing the theme song to Rawhide. Not only do they win the audience over with the song, but due to the film's editing, we are led to believe that their whole set consists of two songs (played over and over to the delight of drunk rednecks). That's funny.

Dan Aykroyd isn't exactly a fantastic singer. Neither, I guess, was John Belushi. But there's no doubt that the two, as the Blues Brothers, were great performers. And Aykroyd's singing at Bob's Country Bunker is his best vocal performance in the film. His low-register, borderline parody delivery is spot on. And backed by the echo (and bull whip) refrain of Belushi, the tune works.

Then there's the "Peter Gunn Theme." So far, I've discussed most of the guest performers and the Blues Brothers themselves, but I haven't talked about the band. And they are well worth some space in this. In fact, if Aykroyd and Belushi, with Paul Shaffer's help, hadn't assembled a full compliment of great blues musicians, the film wouldn't have worked. Just as Jake says in the movie, "You guys were the backbone, the nerve center of a great rhythm and blues band." It's clear that without "the band," the Blues Brothers are just a couple of petty criminals in dirty suits and sunglasses. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the extended jam at the end of "Sweet Home Chicago" (that masks Jake and Elwood's escape) and in "Peter Gunn Theme." The big band horns of Tom Malone, Lou Marini, and Alan Rubin, the guitar licks of Steve Cropper and Matt Murphy, and the rock solid rhythm of Duck Dunn on bass and Willie Hall on drums—all add up to a solid foundation for the eccentricities of a couple of comedians pretending to be blues singers.

Imagine my surprise, many, many years later, when, sitting in the audience of The Late Show With David Letterman, I spied Tom Malone blowing his horn in the CBS Orchestra. That was a great "Aha!" moment.

It is this solid foundation of blues musicianship that allows The Blues Brothers: Original Soundtrack Recording to stand on its own as a great album. Long before some DVD's allowed us to listen to soundtracks in isolation, I wished that I could do just that with The Blues Brothers. Because as much as I enjoyed the humor of the movie, there were times when I just wanted to listen to the music. Luckily, when I had the opportunity to buy the soundtrack, I did. And I still have that CD.

I'll offer one general complaint about the soundtrack: I wish it had included some additional tracks from the film. I wish it had included the Sam and Dave tracks that the brothers listen to in the car, "Soothe Me" and "Hold On! I'm Comin." I also wish they had included the boys' performance of "Stand By Your Man." Most of all, though, I wish they had included John Lee Hooker's performance of "Boom Boom." My search for more recordings led me to a few of John Lee Hooker's. The Real Folk Blues was a particularly satisfying find. "The Waterfront" has to be one of the best slow blues songs ever (and, for some reason, it reminds me of Jimi Hendrix).

There's good reason that none of these tracks were included (except for maybe "Stand By Your Man"): They were incidental and not integral to the film. But, had the soundtrack gone the route of "complete soundtrack instead of an "original soundtrack", then these tracks could certainly have made it a blues compendium (as the movie might easily be termed, given its cameos and incidentals).

I'll end with this: George Carlin, in one of his later HBO specials (You Are All Diseased), made fun of old fat white guys playing the blues. He narrowed in specifically on The House of Blues, of which Dan Aykroyd was a primary investor. Though I have mixed feelings about much of Carlin's later work (his downward spiral into deep bitterness), I agree, to some extent, with his evaluation: What do fat, old, rich white guys know about the blues? And when it comes to guys like Bruce Willis hopping up on stage with a pork pie hat and a harmonica, I have to inwardly wretch. This is not a tribute, a reverence; this is a co-opting and commodification—a Disneyfication—of arguably the most soulful music in existence.

Bruce Willis will surely spend a stint in hell for it.

Furthermore, I made the mistake of going to see Blues Brothers 2000. Oh my lord, what a steaming pile of wasted film. I love John Goodman (does it get any better than Goodman's performance as Charlie Meadows in Barton Fink?), but his addition to the Blues Brothers camp was just… ugh.

But what Carlin chastises—and what Blues Brothers 2000 surely substantiates—is not present in the original Blues Brothers aesthetic. One need only look at Aykroyd's turn as Elwood: from skinny, tattooed and dirty whelp in the original film to the bloated, nostalgic retread of 2000.

I love Aykroyd, young (Trading Places) and old (The Great Outdoors), but…

Rhythm and blues is most definitely grounded in musical traditions far removed from guys as white as me, but the movie gave me an inroad into those traditions. I would not have found them otherwise. Aretha's, James's, Cab's, and Ray's performances are as honest and soulful as any I have seen, especially in a movie. And for that, I will always cherish it.

The Blues Brothers: Original Soundtrack Recording will always remain a top twenty-five formative album for me.