A few months ago, while the idea of "blogging" was still interesting to me (no offense to any proponents, but i ended up finding it kind of creepy in the end) i ran off a rant about my favorite 'drinking alone' music. here's a re-post, as it seems to apply to this thread!
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If I'm Drinking Alone, I'm Listening To.....
ANYTHING by George Thorogood I mean, cmon. The guy has MULTIPLE songs about drinking alone, including the obvious I Drink Alone, which contains the appropriate lyrical content such as You know when I drink alone, I prefer to be by myself, and Now, the other night I lay sleeping, and I woke from am terrible dream. So I called up my pal Jack Daniels, and his partner Jim Beam. So George and the Destroyers get a great big honorable mention. If you are just getting your feet wet in Drinking Alone, George Thorogood is a great beginners intro! Bottoms up!
Nebraska by Bruce Springsteen - 1978 For me, a lot of early Bruce can be Drinking Alone music. Even the youthful, jangling Greetings From Asbury Park from 1973. That album, his first, kind of introduces all of these young, reckless characters that, by the time Bruce records Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978 are dispersed, troubled, and failing to make it as adults in the real world. If that progression holds true, these same characters by 1982s Nebraska are all fugitives, murderers, gamblers, and downtrodden drifters. Isolation and desperation drip off this record like sweat off your forehead on a slow, muggy summers day.
Well our luck may have died, and our love may be cold,
But with you forever Ill stay
Were goin out where the sands turn into gold
Put on your stockings, baby, the nights getting cold
Well, everything dies, baby thats a fact
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
Put you makeup on, fix you hair up pretty
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
This album can cover Angry, Frustrated Drinking Alone to Melancholy, Sad Drinking Alone. It is very versatile, and very thorough in its bleakness. Even the sound is eerie Springsteen recorded the entire album by himself on a tape four-track. When he brought these demo tapes to his million-dollar studio and listened to them with his band, they all decided the emotional desperation and isolation caught on these tapes would be unachievable as a group. This album is a testament to all of us people whove found themselves in over our heads at times in this life. This album is an essential item in any true I Drink Alone collection, even if you arent a big Springsteen fan.
Heartattack and Vine by Tom Waits 1980 This is the Mach Daddy of Drinking Alone. And beer isnt good enough. Dont even THINK of disrespecting Mr. Waits by sipping a weak mixed drink or a pink wine cooler with this on. Its bottom shelf whiskey here. Plastic bottle. Maybe on the rocks, but thats it. And you have to kill the bottle....no sipping. You will find yourself stumbling around slurring along with an obviously drunk Tom Waits echoing such classing lines as Dont you know there aint no devil, its only God when hed drunk. This is the kind of Drinking Alone music where you dont answer the phone, dont get the door, and dont even remotely feel like cheering up. Total burn out as opposed to fading away. While this album is only for the most experienced Drink Aloneer, it should be waiting in the wings of ever collection. Someday, someday. Just keep trying.
From a Basement on an Hill by Elliot Smith 2003/2004 Perhaps its that this album came out a year after Smith died. Perhaps its that he died by stabbing himself in the heart.....twice. Perhaps its that this event is seemingly foreshadowed in the lyrics (specifically in A Fond Farewell). Perhaps it was the Elliot had deteriorated to a paranoid, rambling heroin and crack addict and these influences crept into the very sound of his voice. This album is truly, truly sad. A guy with so much promise and talent, as displayed on the masterwork albums XO and Figure 8, just should not crash this hard. All associations with his personal lifes sadness aside, there is some serious sad songwriting here. And in classic Elliot Smith style the bad news is delivered in a beautiful, almost soothing way. This album is a great big contradiction of love and hate, isolation and interaction, fading beginnings and approaching endings. Even when Im not, this album makes me want to pull the shades, dim the lights and pull up a cooler. It is sad, almost pathetic. Like watching the self-destruction of an artist, all recorded on tape. If you want this feeling condensed into unbelievingly potent strength, listen to some of the bootleg shows recorded in the year leading up to his suicide (Belly Up Tavern in particular). He performs alone and he sounds absolutely horrible. He forgets lyrics, chords, and rambles on in a trembling, thin voice between song parts. It is too sad to listen to and too sad, in fact, for Drinking Alone.
Deliverance (1994) /Wiseblood (1996) by Corrosion of Conformity and Angel Dust (1992) by Faith No More These all share a spot under the Ass-Kicking type of Drinking Alone where there is no introspection, not regret, no sadness. Just anger, aggression and more anger. If youve never listened to Woodpecker From Mars and imagined your 75-foot-tall self smashing your way down Broadway, Your Town with lead ****kicker boots, fireball throwing hands and laser-beam eyesight you are WAY to normal for me. Get angry, get alone, get drunk, and blast any of these albums. Who needs a shrink? Thats therapy.
Honorable Mentions:
Bridge Over Troubled Water Simon & Garfunkel 1970 Sad/Calm/Introspective
Let It Be The Beatles 1970 Reminiscing
It This It? The Strokes 2001 The days the used to be/Reminiscing
ANYTHING by Creedence because Creedence is ALWAYS good. so that automatically places it in any situational music list.
ANYTHING by Zeppelin same as above
(some country song... cant remember who its by)
