Of Aliens and Pranqsters

The scenes of panic described in press reports, passed through the ages as part of our American folklore, are accepted as truth. They were probably little more real than those scenes of panic described and portrayed by Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre company on the famous and infamous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds, which first aired 70 years ago tonight.

“We know now that in the early years of the twentieth century this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own,” began Welles, straying little from the opening line of H.G. Wells’s 1898 classic but to set it in a new century. What followed added a bit of theatrical flourish to the grave ruminations of the novel’s opening missive:

We know now that as human beings busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. In the thirty-ninth year of the twentieth century came the great disillusionment.

Then, as the story goes, when this opening narration gave way to the dramatic conceit of a breaking news bulletin, mass hysteria ensued. People fled their homes in panic, and doomsday fears gripped radio listeners coast to coast. 

Said the New York Daily News account on Halloween, 1938:

Without waiting for further details, thousands of listeners rushed from their homes in New York and New Jersey, many with towels across their faces to protect themselves from "gas" which the invader was supposed to be spewing forth.

Simultaneously, thousands more in states that stretched west to California and south to the Gulf of Mexico rushed to their telephones to inquire of newspapers, the police, switchboard operators, and electric companies what they should do to protect themselves.

It’s almost comical, the events that were reported to have followed. But while some were no doubt taken in by the convincing performance – just as some today are taken in by conspiracy theories suggesting that the broadcast was an experiment in psychological warfare funded by the Rockefeller Foundation – the news of  widespread pandemonium may have been exaggerated ever so slightly.

That the news media might inflate, embellish, and amplify the magnitude of a situation should shock exactly nobody who has seen a news report in this century. That legend might over time supplant truth – even if the specific instances of panic detailed in that original Daily News piece were all true, for example, the totality of the situation was something less than a national panic – should similarly come as little shock. 

Whether  better proof of the gullibility of the masses can be found in the initial response to the War of the Worlds broadcast, or the subsequent willingness to believe that a nation of rubes fled its homes in terror, that October 30, 1938 broadcast remains a pivotal moment in radio history if only for catapulting the great Orson Welles to notoriety. Needless to say, Welles would go on to a great career which included a brilliantly ironic turn as studio boss Lew Lord in the 1979 masterpiece The Muppet Movie.

(If the irony is not immediately apparent, one need only to look at his extensive post-Citizen Kane history of clashes with studio execs over later films like The Lady from Shanghai and the phenomenal – and highly recommended – Touch Of Evil.)

On this fine day for a beer, we offer you the entire original broadcast of The War of the Worlds – and as a special Halloween bonus, The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s inaugural  July 11, 1938 broadcast of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As you listen, and imagine an era when families gathered around a box full of wires and transistors and stared at the wall for hours on end, toast the illustrious and mercurial Orson Welles with North Coast Brewing’s Pranqster Belgian style golden ale. 

This deceptive brew – North Coast’s own intoxicating version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo! – looks light in the glass. It feels light in the mouth. But a whisper of clove spiciness and a robust (yet not overly assertive) alcoholic strength – 7.6% abv – conspire to give it a warmth that will sneak up on you if you let your guard down. Drink willingly but cautiously, and you will remember the wonderful lesson you learn tonight: That grinning, glowing, globular invader of your living room is no inhabitant of the pumpkin patch – it’s Pranqster.

Beer In Marvelous Times

On this fine Sunday for a beer, we have "Life In Marvelous Times," the new single from Mos Def, courtesy of RCRDLBL.com (a highly recommended destination, by the way, for anyone interested in checking out new music). Mos Def's new album The Ecstatic hits stores November 25. "Life In Marvelous Times" lands at the iTunes music store on Election Day.

Meanwhile, as you enjoy the sneak peak at Mos Def's new cut, you'll notice a handful of minor changes around here. Most notably, we've added an email subscription option, and a ShareThis button (by all means, share). Like the email subscriptions, the Fine Day RSS feed is now handled by FeedBurner. Keep an eye out in the coming days for links to the previously dormant It's A Fine Day For A Beer Facebook and MySpace pages, as well as links to a number of beer and non-beer related sites. 

And, yes, you'll notice a few more ads. Be assured that these ads in no way affect our editorial content. And be assured, it's our goal to keep these ads relevant, possibly even useful, but reasonably unobtrusive. Should you find this not to be the case – or should you have any other complaints, comments, or suggestions – the feedback lines are always open at Mike (AT) Finedayforabeer.com.

With that being said, crack open a beer, enjoy what's left of your weekend, and stay tuned as we continue to upgrade the site.

Birds fly away

You know The Basement Tapes and Toys in the Attic. You've heard plenty of garage bands. You might have suffered through more than a few bedroom folk singers in your high school or college days. You probably sing in the shower. But kitchen rock? Maybe not.

One man bands – toothless old men with harmonicas, accordions, and all manner of percussion strapped to their backs and limbs – sure. It's not so uncommon these days to see performers on stage hunched over a laptop with a guitar slung around their shoulders. The frantic calm with which Theresa Andersson attacks the array of effects pedals laid out before her while performing her song "Birds Fly Away" in her kitchen, though – it's pretty good. Fascinating. Mesmerizing. Or at least entertaining.

The New Orleans-based Swedish expat plays tonight in Charlottesville, VA before hitting the road with fellow Swedes Ane Brun and Tobias Froberg on Tuesday. Andersson's new CD, Hummingbird, Go! – recorded in that same kitchen that you just saw – came out last month on NOLA's own Basin Street Records.

It's a fine day for a beer whenever you can "try it before you buy it." We have a pair of tracks from Hummingbird, Go! here for you to listen to and download. Enjoy!

Download "Birds Fly Away"

Download "Na Na Na (Empty Heart)"

Theresa Andersson tour dates

10/21: Washington, DC @ The Swedish Embassy
10/22: New York, NY @ Living Room
10/23: Phildelphia, PA @ Tin Angel
10/24: Arlington, VA @ IOTA Club & Cafe
10/25: Norfolk, VA @ Attucks Theatre
10/28: Nashville, TN @ The Basement*
10/29: Dayton, OH @ Canal Street Tavern*
10/30: Indianapolis, IN @ Rathskeller*
11/01: Chicago, IL @ Schubas
11/06: London, ON @ London Music Club**
11/07: Toronto, ON @ El Mocambo
11/08: Montreal, QUE. @ Les Saints
11/11: Allston, MA @ Great Scott
11/12: Brooklyn, NY @ Union Hall

*solo shows

**with Tobias Froberg only

Liquorpond and a river of porter

We hear of people drowning themselves in drink, and we rightfully expect that it’s a figure of speech, an allusion to tragic immoderation. Never would we expect to find lives swept away in a torrent of beer rushing through the streets.

That’s precisely what happened on this day in 1814, though, when a massive vat of porter burst at Henry Meux & Company’s Horseshoe Brewery at Tottenham Court Road in London. First one 22 foot high brewing tank – which at the time held in excess of 3,500 barrels of beer – burst, then others ruptured from the force of that first explosion. In all, some 8,500 barrels of beer tore through the walls of the brewery and spilled into the streets and surrounding buildings.

The October 19 London Times described the episode as “one of the most melancholy accidents we ever remember.”

The fluid, in its course, swept every thing before it. Two houses in New-street, adjoining the brewhouse, were totally demolished. The inhabitants, who were of the poorer class, were all at home. In the first floor of one of them, a mother and daughter were at tea; the mother was killed on the spot; the daughter was swept away by the current through a partition, and dashed to pieces…

…The bursting of the brew-house walls, and the fall of heavy timber, materially contributed to aggravate the mischief, by forcing the roofs and walls of the adjoining houses. The crowd collected from the time of the accident to a late hour was immense. It presented many distressing scenes of children and others inquiring for and lamenting their parents, relatives, and friends.

A coroner’s inquest (as noted by the Times on October 20, 1814) listed eight deaths from the incident, all women and children. Popular legend suggests that the London Beer Flood claimed a ninth life – by way of alcohol poisoning. Indeed, the BBC’s encyclopedia project h2g2 purports that throngs of people in the tenement neighborhood pounced on this occasion for free refreshment: 

Fearful that all the beer should go to waste though, hundreds of people ran outside carrying pots, pans, and kettles to scoop it up - while some simply stooped low and lapped at the liquid washing through the streets. However, the tide was too strong for many, and as injured people began arriving at the nearby Middlesex Hospital there was almost a riot as other patients demanded to know why they weren't being supplied with beer too - they could smell it on the flood survivors, and were insistent that they were missing out on a party! Calm was quickly restored at the hospital, but out in the streets was a different matter.

Whether this much was true or not, popular misinformation about the disaster abounds. There are frequent references in London Beer Flood lore to a 1785 Times mention of construction of a large cask being built by Meux (“the size of which exceeds all credibility, being designed to hold 20,000 barrels of porter”), as well as a dinner for 200 held in the enormous vat before its inauguration as a brewing vessel.

Interesting nuggets of trivia, for sure, but ones which have little relevance to the brewery at Tottenham Court Road. Rather, they refer to Meux, Reid and Company’s Griffin Brewery (not to be confused with Fuller’s better-known Griffin Brewery), located at a site that would have been far more fitting for a flood of beer: Liquorpond Street. 

Volume 2 of the 1911 A History of the County of Middlesex – in turn, citing 18th Century  British historian and naturalist Thomas Pennant – sheds considerable light on the matter:

The locality is one of much interest; close by are Gray's Inn Road and Hatton Garden, and in Brooke Street, near the brewery, the poet Chatterton brought his life to its sad end. The buildings, which covered upwards of 4 acres, extended from the north end of Gray's Inn Lane, across Leather Lane, to Hatton Garden. The business was established some time in the 17th century, and was always noted for its black beer or porter. In 1809 the firm dissolved partnership, Mr. Meux acquiring a business for himself in Tottenham Court Road, and Mr. A. Reid retaining possession of the old brewhouse in Liquorpond Street. Various distinguished persons from time to time visited the brewery, among them the Emperor Napoleon III, who showed his appreciation of the firm's famous stout by emptying a tankard.

Pennant gives statistics of the barrels of strong beer brewed by the chief porter brewers of London in 1786-7, in which Richard Meux, who then owned the Griffin Brewery, figures ninth on the list with an output of 49,651 barrels. The same writer, speaking of this brewhouse as it existed in his day, says:

The sight of a great London brewhouse exhibits a magnificence unspeakable. The vessels evince the extent of the trade. Mr. Meux of Liquorpond Street, Gray's Inn Lane, can show twenty-four tuns, containing in all 35,000 barrels. In the present year he has built a vessel 60 feet in diameter, 176 feet in circumference, and 23 feet in height. It cost £5,000 in building, and contains from ten to twelve thousand barrels of beer, valued at about £20,000. A dinner was given to 200 people at the bottom, and 200 more joined the company to drink success to the vat.

Another vat of even greater dimensions was, about the time that Pennant wrote, constructed by this firm in their no. 3 store. This was called the 'X.Y.Z.,' and exceeded in size all similar vessels constructed before or since; its capacity was for 20,000 barrels of porter, and it cost £10,000. At that time the London porter brewers strove in rivalry for the possession of the largest vat. 

Different company, different location (albeit one with a quite suggestive name), and two different vats, all frequently included in tales of the London Beer Flood. Don’t believe the lies – but do believe, as we recall this terrible waste of beer and far more terrible waste of innocent lives, that it is a fine day to enjoy the relative safety of a mere pint.

The original Horseshoe Brewery is no longer with us, torn down in 1922 and replaced in 1928 by the Dominion Theatre. Meux & Co. survived the flood, thanks in part to their success in convincing Parliament to return the already-paid excise duties on the lost porter. They did not, however, survive the ongoing trend towards ever more mergers, acquisitions, and consolidation. According to the British National Archives, after obtaining Thorne Bros. in 1914, Meux & Co. relocated in 1921 to the Nine Elms Brewery – renaming it the Horseshoe Brewery. As the result of a long series of subsequent moves, the closest thing we have today – on the business family tree, that is – to Meux’s once renowned porters is Tetley’s English Ale. This sleek flaxen brew is a far cry from the porters of any generation, though. 

Instead on this fine day for a beer, seek out Meantime’s London Porter and sip it to these words of Peter Pindar (aka John Wolcot) from “The lamentations of the porter-vat, which exploded of the drug-gripes, October 17, 1814”:

Here—as ’tis said—in days of yore,
(Such days, alas! will come no more),
Resided Sir John Barleycorn,
An ancient Briton, nobly born,
With Mrs. Hop—a well-met pair,
For he was rich, and she was fair. 

Yet they—like other married Folke,
When their past vows they can’t revoke—
Were opposite in disposition,
And quarrell’d without intermission;
For He alone produc’d the Sweets,
Which She, with Bitters only, meets!

Howe’er by dint of perseverance,
By gentle conjugal endearance,
The Sweets predominating most,
In strength excelling, rul’d the roast;
Whilst she, obedient, did her duty—
That greatest ornament of beauty. 

Her Bitters, thus by him controll’d,
Their wholesome properties unfold,
And give to him superior pow’rs—
Superior charms for social hours;
As Beauty, with persuasive tongue,
Tempers the mind, by passion wrung. 

At length, from this domestic Pair,
Was born a well-known Son and Heir;
Whose deeds o’er half the world are fam’d,
By Britons, Master Porter, nam’d. 

The weekend grab bag

It should go without saying, of course. It’s Saturday. The weekend. You don’t need to be told that it’s a fine day for a beer – and surely you’re resourceful enough to find your own motivation. 

So instead of needlessly filling your head with still more reasons why a quality beer might enhance the quality of your day, weekends here are a time to stray a bit, to unwind, to offer a little something different.

In today’s weekend grab bag, it’s an alternate take on Giant Sand, whose new disc proVISIONS we paired with Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity earlier in the week. This Giant Sand live performance from just three weeks ago at the Orpheum Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin can be downloaded at the great Internet Archive. A handful of tracks from the album take new shape with the interpretations given here. Enjoy.

Ex Scientia Tridens

On Dec. 1, 1842, the U.S. brig-of-war Somers was wallowing through the long mid-Atlantic rollers under balmy skies, four days' sail from the Virgin Islands. Converted into a training ship, the brig was on her way home from what had begun ten weeks earlier as a routine cruise. But a terror unique in the U.S. Navy's history had mocked routine. From the main yardarm dangled three lifeless, hooded figures. They had been hanged by order of the ship's captain. Reason: alleged conspiracy to mutiny.

So opens “Queeg’s Predecessor,” a 1954 Time magazine review of Frederic F. Van De Water’s now out of print book The Captain Called It Mutiny. The implication of Van De Water’s book was that no mutiny ever took place except in the suspicious mind of the ship’s captain, Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie. Officially, the Navy saw it differently. In fact, that December mutiny was the United States Navy’s first (and remains the only) officially recorded mutiny.

Just the same, hanging his charges at sea without benefit of court-martial may not have Mackenzie’s wisest move. Particularly not when one of those swaying from the makeshift gallows – the ringleader of this mutiny, in fact – was the 19 year old son of Secretary of War John C. Spencer. Neither may it have been the most surprising of disciplinarian excesses or vindictive lapses in judgment:

“During the six weeks of final work before the Somers left on her maiden voyage Mackenzie inflicted about fifty separate punishments,” writes Leonard F. Guttridge in Mutiny: A History of Naval Insurrection.

Some were for desertion or theft, for which he ordered a dozen lashes, the maximum allowed, with the cat-o’-nine tails. The busiest punitive instrument was the colt, a three-stranded rope frayed at the ends, and he ordered shirt-clad adolescents whipped 422 times for blaspheming, being unclean, fighting, losing a hammock, spitting, throwing tea or tobacco on the deck, and most frequently “skulking” – which usually meant attempting to shirk duty

.

“Even before he took command of the schoolship, Mackenzie had been described in public print as having a reputation for cruelty,” Guttridge adds, proceeding to detail a long list of disciplinary measures taken by the Commander both earlier in his career and on that fateful voyage.

Whether guilty of mutiny or not, Midshipman Philip Spencer was a recalcitrant and unruly conscript – and conscript he surely was, in essence, with little discernible interest in his Naval commission beyond his distinguished father’s insistence. A college dropout fascinated with pirate literature, Spencer twice drunkenly assaulted a superior officer while serving on the USS North Carolina and was entangled in another drunken brawl while on shore leave from the USS John Adams before being assigned to the Somers. 

Mutinous or merely mischievous? Incorrigible or simply immature? Regardless, the young Spencer – whose apparent plan for the Somers was to make it a pirate ship on the Spanish Main – was a bit of an eccentric (with a lazy eye, at that). Writes Guttridge:

In a reference that begs further amplification, Captain Mackenzie would recall someone’s telling him that Spencer had amused the crew by making music with his jaw: he had the knack of “throwing his jaw out of joint, and by the contact of the bones playing with accuracy and elegance a variety of airs.”

Engaged in combat during the Mexican-American War, the Somers would eventually capsize and sink off the coast of Mexico in 1846. Unlike the hanged mutineers, Mackenzie would receive a court-martial – and ultimately be exonerated despite his hasty meting of justice. Hounded just the same by the scandal of “The Somers Affair,” he died in 1848 at just 45 years old.

And, with the need now evident for a more controlled – that is, land-based – environment for training future Naval officers, it was on this day in 1845 that the Naval School opened at Fort Severn in Annapolis, Maryland. Initially offering a five year program, with the first and last years spend on land (and three years at sea in between), the Naval School would ultimately become the four-year United States Naval Academy in 1850.

From the shores of another Navy town – Portsmouth, New Hampshire, home to the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and occasional address of John Paul Jones – Smuttynose Brewing’s Finestkind IPA is an outstanding choice with which to salute more than 150 years of America’s finest. 

The hazy orange glow of this unfiltered offering conjures images of sunrise burning through the Atlantic mist. An exquisite East Coast IPA, Finestkind may not quite be locked in mortal battle with the threshold of taste perception like some of its wilder west cousins, but it nonetheless has a commanding hop presence. Robust yet refined, it is a seaworthy refreshment just as suitable for solid ground on this fine day for a beer.

Is this heaven? No, it's Denver.

A fine day for a beer? Pshaw. Phooey. Balderdash. Today is no mere fine day for a beer. It is a magnificent, glorious, truly sublime day for a beer. And even that is a monumental understatement. Today – Thursday, October 9, in the year we call 2008 – is the start of an utterly mind-blowing, and indeed fine, three days for not one, not two, but close to 2,000 beers.

At this very moment, the doors are opening on the Great American Beer Festival in Denver. This three day extravaganza, expected to quench the thirst of some 46,000 people, is just a roller coaster shy of being the beer drinker’s ultimate amusement park. (Those spinning rides? Not so necessary, as more than a few of those 46,000 will likely experience wooziness of their own making.)

Some more staggering numbers for the staggering crowds: 432 American breweries will be serving roughly 1,800 of their finest beverages at the festival. Not four breweries. Not thirty-two. That’s four hundred thirty two and ^XX/₁₀₀. And 479 breweries have a whopping 2,950 beers entered in competition in 75 different style categories.

No, really. 75. Take the number 15, multiply it by 5. That’s what we’re talking about.

An expected 18,000 gallons of beer are expected to be served. That’s 144,000 pints – the real, genuine 16 oz. kind – or nearly 165,000 so-called pints in the standard 14 oz. glass. The equivalent of an astronomical 192,000 12 oz. bottles or cans. That would translate to more than 8 1/2 beers per person at the average Tampa Bay Rays home game this year. Nearly 20 cans for every resident of Wasilla, Alaska. A bottle for every person ever to serve in the Peace Corps. Almost 9 beers for every woman Wilt Chamberlain ever slept with (by the late scoring machine’s own preposterous estimate, of course).

It’s a lot of beer.

It’s a battle for bragging rights, a craft beer tour of the United States, a source of inspiration as competing breweries prod each other towards innovation. Most fascinating of all, though, might be the Pro-Am booth nestled amongst the big boys – a revolving lineup of 60 different award winning homebrews on tap, all brewed in volume in partnership with commercial breweries. This is where dreams – or even waves – are made. 

While high-fiving frat boys and their graying, pot-bellied counterparts aggressively pursue quantity, flavorless quantity, in search of a buzz they hope to regret, the true thrills lie in chasing the unknown, the unexpected. Those beers that are perhaps but a passing moment in time, never to be brewed again; those beers that might be a glimpse into the future. 

And as you scan the tap handles on the horizon, should a sombrero-donning chihuahua catch your eye, it’s an invitation for neither a bad taco nor a slice of lime in a skunky, jaundiced brew. Quite the contrary. Although it is brewed with Mexican piloncillo, No Hoplo Ingles hardly draws its inspiration from south of the border. Born of humble roots in an Arizona driveway, it is a Belgian-style strong ale brewed by Papago Brewing in Scottsdale, Arizona in conjunction with homebrewer and student of beer David Schollmeyer. If you haven’t heard of him before, you have now. Lightly hopped (what’s in a name?), No Hoplo Ingles dangles floral and fruity esters, those favorite temptresses of Belgian yeasts, before your nose. It seduces with dizzying sweetness, then strikes with a spicy finish and sneaky alcoholic strength.

 

It’s not the first beer you should try, lest havoc be wreaked with your palate. It’s not the only beer you should try, lest the world pass you by. And there may be a hundred others (or a few hundred, or a thousand) just as elusive outside the wondrous confines of the Colorado Convention Center. But No Hoplo Ingles is surely a reminder, on this finest of days for a beer, of why we drink: Not just in a hopelessly (or, heaven forbid, hoplessly) romantic hunt for unattainable perfection, but in a valiant and inexhaustible crusade to experience the new and reimagine the familiar.

At GABF 2007, Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian

tries to hide his disappointment after realizing that he's 

not talking to Mark McGwire after all.

All photos are from GABF 2007, ©2007 Jason E. Kaplan

Viscosity in the sand

The lights are on. The computers are running. The cages are unlocked, and the typing monkeys have been put to work. Physically, we here at the FDFAB offices have long since returned from our four day excursion – nearly two weeks ago – into the heart of the Sonoran Desert in search of, among other things, that perfect union of malt, hops, water, and yeast.

Mentally, though – spiritually, perhaps – the return has been harder to pinpoint. It’s not so easy a transition, going from merely oppressive heat to the oppressive atmosphere of Los Angeles. Especially Los Angeles. The mountains always loom in the horizon, both barrier and gateway to a world of tranquility that can’t be found amidst cloudless brown-gray skies, crumbling, fading concrete, and that unending turf war between the armies of Escalades and Priuses.

That’s why people go to the desert, really. To find themselves or to lose themselves. Troubled souls, confused souls, lost souls wandering – aimlessly or purposefully – to escape the watchful eye of the law, the maddening pace of modernity, or the tightening grip of encroaching surroundings. They go to find peace. To find solitude. To find clarity.

But what happens when the desert doesn’t hold the answers? When solitude becomes desolation? When one’s thoughts, instead of converging into that sought-after focus and clarity, begin to fracture and fray?

Giant Sand’s new album proVISIONS (out last month on YepRoc) might not explicitly ask those questions – nothing is so explicit when, as Giant Sand’s architect Howe Gelb puts it, “Giant Sand is a mood” – but the disc’s dark, meandering path offers a sobering glimpse at the answers. 

What begins as longing (“When I look in your eyes I surrender / Such surrender is rendered justified,” Gelb sings on opener “Stranded Pearl”) becomes surrender of an altogether different kind, as the road leads to Vegas – “a hapless joint” – and Gelb verges on triumphant in the realization that “I’m never gonna leave / I’m never gonna leave well enough alone.” 

A relatively straightforward (though decidedly idiosyncratic) mix of honky tonk country and rockabilly sinks steadily into despair, culminating in the piano ballad “Spiral.”  Elsewhere, Gelb dances around both melody and meaning with a drawling delivery and sly, sometimes subversive wordplay that embraces ambiguity. Here, though, at its most forlorn, proVISIONS approaches lucidity – hauntingly sparse and harrowingly direct in its appraisal of the state of the world.

But it is here, too, with the truth laid bare, that things begin to crumble. It unravels slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, with the tense but somber “Pitch And Sway” – but the washed out world of proVISIONS is quickly engulfed in chaos. Solid footing – steady bass lines, guitar melodies both lilting and soaring, horns, piano – appear and disappear like mirages on the horizon. Discordant notes and noises rudely interject as the rational realm of words and vocals fights a losing battle with the abstract.

(This battle plays out most strikingly on the dazzling epic “The New Romance of Falling,” an almost Sisyphean, nearly nine minute quest to find melodic resolution. The song builds, disintegrates, builds, disintegrates, then breaks through with a shimmering burst of melody, only to collapse completely. Talk about your desert mirages, though – this song seems to have vanished from the retail version of the CD, replaced by the less daunting 4 1/2 minute “Belly Full of Fire.” Go figure.)

Then, of course, the answer that’s no answer at all. The clarity to recognize clarity as a temporary illusion. The celebration of human futility, “Well Enough Alone,” perhaps the most conventional track on the entire disc. 

Deliberate manifesto or incidental philosophy – does it matter? Is the answer even there to be found? Maybe it’s just a mood after all. An evolving and ambiguous mood, murky in its meaning but savored for its flavor. Assertive but ambiguous in its own right, Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity is the ideal accompaniment. Old Viscosity’s stark, scorched-earth color both suggests and belies its profusion of flavors, as dark, bitter chocolate and coffee flavors mingle with caramel sweetness, hints of licorice and a lingering, warming whisper of bourbon. Sip slowly and ponder, or simply enjoy the swirling sounds of proVISIONS while Old Viscosity swirls in your glass on this fine day for a beer.

"Increment of Love" from Giant Sand's proVISIONS

Photo of Howe Gelb by Patsy Gelb