Here I’m adding song number one to the death list, Paul McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre, which has little to do with bourbon, less with death, and even less with anything I know personally in terms of actual experience (i.e. the actual land mass the song celebrates). It’s a vibe is all, and I do love the soaring bagpipe solo that departs for the outer planetoids at about two minutes into the song. I heard it last night for the first time in years and just have to go with it.
The video has some great photos of the Mull of Kintyre, and of course the song itself as the soundtrack.
We drove back from Saskatoon today – 18 hours of driving across Western Canada – the end run of our trip to my nephew’s funeral. Matt was 24 and died in a car accident, rolling his truck on the return home from work in northern Alberta. Needless to say the funeral was wrenching. For a close family and community to lose a son, brother, and friend of just 24 years in a such sudden and tragic fashion is both terrible to behold and awesome to be part of.
On our return trip we were listening to some tunes and one song stood out so much that I have to post it here and dedicate it to Matthew’s memory. One of our favorite albums from recent times is the Decemberist’sThe King Is Dead. Our daughter Erin turned us on to it last year and we quickly included it in our go-to list of favorite albums. The song that stood out for me today was Don’t Carry It All, which is the first song on the album. The song is principally about community – that there are burdens neighbours can and should help each other carry – but also carries an extremely positive message of loss and renewal using the metaphor of nature. It seems to me entirely appropriate for the situation Matt’s family and friends have just gone through.
By the way, I’m adding this song to my own Death List…
I post some of the relevant lyrics here and of course the youtube embed:
Buried wreath of trillium and ivy
Laid upon the body of the boy
Lazy will the long come from it’s hiding
Return his quiet certitude to the soil
So raise a glass to turnings of the season
And watch it as it arcs towards the sun
And you must bear your neighbor’s burden within reason
And your labors will be borne when all is done
And nobody, nobody knows
Let the yoke fall from our shoulders
Don’t carry it all don’t carry it all
We are all our hands in holders
Beneath this bold and brilliant sun
This I swear to all
I’m starting a new play list on the bourbonhours site which I’m calling my “Death List”. It’s a list of ten songs that I would play at my own funeral, should I have the privilege. Why ten? Ten is a good number. It’s about the number of fingers I have. Toes also. It’s about how long in inches my … wait a sec, let’s not exaggerate here. Ten requires a bit of discipline, a little bit of thought, and the ability to prioritize. Ten songs for a death list means you had to leave a lot of songs off, which means you put some thought into it. I’ll add to this over time and show the edits as strike-through (a bit of a cheat, I know, as people will then have a longer play list to work from – I’ll have to think about this). Also, each song will have a post associated with it, which we’ll link to here.
Chinaski’s Death List:
Mull of Kintyre – Paul McCartney and Wings (blog post)
Adding to the bourbon playlist. This song is simply spectacular: Northfield, by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singing Convention which we have in our collection thanks to the Appalachians disc that we picked up some years ago. It was the soundtrack of a PBS series by the same name.
I don’t really know the music but I know the genre and the genre is bourbon. It reminds me of polyphony and I once described polyphony as “the new bourbon”, although i probably wasn’t completely sober when i made that allusion. Here’s a video of a choral group singing this soaring piece:
I’m adding Townes Van Zandt’s “Black Jack Mama” from In the Beginning to the Bourbonhours playlist. This is a genius riff on Bob Dylan’s genius riff “From a Buick 6″ off of Highway 61 Revisited and it is truly wicked stuff.I think I prefer Townes’ version although they both stack up pretty nicely juxtaposed between competing shots of Makers 46 and Wild Turkey….god bless this all so human attempt at intervention in a random universe….
A thief stole four bottles of Jim Beam from a Joondalup liquor outlet and attempted a getaway on foot. He was pursued by the store manager and confronted in a nearby parking lot. The manager was aided by a group of youths, who attempted to assist. The man in question dropped two of the bottles and brandished a machete, threatening the group. He escaped with two bottles of Jim Beam. Police are investigating the incident.
The Bourbonhours news desk is attempting to ascertain the whereabouts of the two bottles the perpetrator dropped.
A 66 year old Blackpool woman had about the worst week you can imagine. First, her house caught fire and she was forced to move out pending repairs. Then she was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. The final insult came when thugs broke into her damaged home, stealing personal items and even helping themselves to her Jack Daniels.
We’re adding Glen Campbell’s Jesus to the Bourbon Hours Gospel Hour playlist. This is just king-hell greatness manifesting itself as just another trailer-park hallelujah. It’s merely another incredible song on what I consider to be one of the best albums of the last…i dunno…bazillion years: Meet Glenn Campbell. The thing i like most about the album is that it gets better every time i listen to it. Including tonight when Jesus spooled by, with the thunderclap that it’s going straightaway to the playlist.
Avid bourbonhours readers, if they existed, would be applauding the fact that the once moribund Bourbonhours Gospel Hour is now receiving a little attention. Case in point: tonight we’re adding Abigail Washburn’s Eve Stole the Apple from Songs of the Travelling Daughter. It has an absolute ring of gospel conviction to it and it sounds like post-feminist jingo-banjoism to me, which is why it has earned a space on the Bourbonhours Gospel Hour playlist.
They nailed him to the cross
Another man done gone
Eve stole the apple
from the tree good lord
I know she could be me
Jack Daniels is branching out to the sweeter side of whiskey by introducing Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey, complete with a honey bee on the label. I can’t see this appealing to the typical Jack Daniel’s drinker and that’s probably entirely the point: this is the kinder, gentler Jack, complete with softer labelling and that cutesy honey-bee thing on the label.
The liqueur, bottled at 70 proof, is set to be released in April for something like 22.00 a bottle. We’ll be picking up a bottle just because, but I don’t fancy we’ll be running through it in any kind of hurry. We’re not the audience after all: we like our whiskey neat and bourbon’s strong.
