The Popstream Gets Drunkulated

Photo by dotbenjamin

Listen: I don't want to encourage any irresponsible alcohol-related behaviors on the part of our readers. Personally, I'm one of those people that enjoys the hell out of drinking but knows well enough to keep it a relatively sporadic occasion and stops drinking when he starts feeling as though his inebriation could lead to awkwardness and social mishaps. (In my case, it's usually after my second Iron Butterfly. That's a White Russian with Bailey's; it rules yr world.) But it remains a solid fact that drinkin' is right up there with screwin', being mad about not screwin', and driving your car really fast as a metaphor for screwin' when it comes to great subject matter for pop music. People drink when they're happy, when they're miserable, or when they're bored; drinking can lead to anything from pathos-ridden lost-love tragedy to crazed fisticuffs to a woozy-headed, giddy sort of happiness; and everyone from the brokest of the broke (Thunderbird!) to the highest of all rollers (Goldschlager!) tends to get tore up every once and a while. So pretty much any genre can wrap itself around the concept of inebriation. Here's a few of my favorite examples.


You might be wondering who this bemustached Edd Kalehoff character is. Here's a hint: The Price Is Right. Yes, this is the man that wrote the theme song and most of the cues on the show, though I can't confirm whether or not the famous "fail horn" is his doing. Here he is bopping along to his big circa-'73 Moog and cranking out a chirpy little rendition of the Schaefer Beer jingle, back when ordinary TV commercials lasted a full minute and a slogan like "the one beer to have when you're having more than one" wasn't considered borderline irresponsible.



These guys, you probably know -- Black Flag, plowing through a noisy rendition of "Six Pack" in Philly back in June '82. This is one of several early-mid '80s Black Flag clips on YouTube where they perform this song in blown-out, muddy audio through waves of screaming feedback, which is not something you want to watch when you're hung over. I'm also pretty sure this is the only clip of all of them where Rollins is rockin' a beard. He actually looks kind of like a trim Jack Black -- and oh shit, I just came up with my $50 million buddy comedy pitch. (ROLLINS. BLACK. Brothers separated at birth, and they're... ROCK COPS.)



And, of course, there's Tha Alkaholiks. You may also know them as Tha Liks, a name they adopted because apparently radio stations thought playing tracks from a group called Tha Alkaholiks would make for an unfortunate segue into a commercial block filled with Samuel Adams spots. In any case, as you might've guessed, these dudes like drinking and subsequently rapping about drinking, so they put together this 1993 two-fer video that combines the first two tracks from debut album 21 and Over, "Likwit" ("So testing 1, testing 2, testing 3/Too much Olde E will make you pee") and "Only When I'm Drunk," which starts out under the premise that J-Ro and Tash are too hammered to actually rap and then counters that premise. There's a lot of burping.