We Care a Lot… About Beer

Faith No More’s Introduce Yourself Through Beer

If it’s a sunny, Summer day and I’m driving and I have the windows down and I’m moderately pissed off that I’m driving and I don’t want to be pissed off that I’m driving, I listen to one album—Introduce Yourself by Faith No More.

This is the album before the album with the song that has the video that ends with the flopping fish (Epic). This is before Mike Patton, before Faith No More experiments with hints of country (great stuff), does music for Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey (the better B&T movie). This is the time when I spend countless hours watching MTV videos (when they still played videos) and we know all the songs and are influenced and corrupted while we lie on the floor in a daze or rock out and smack each other in the face with pillows on the couch.

The year is 1987. That whole rock rap thing hasn’t really taken off yet. The music world doesn’t have Rage Against the Machine, 311, or Kid Rock (though, Beastie Boys have released License to Ill). With the rock airwaves dominated by cheesy, hair bands, we’re waiting for the Pixies and Nirvana and all that Seattle stuff. But there’s no reason to wait for that. We already have Faith No More.

Beer Full of Miracle

Genesis’s Foxtrot Through Beer [Originally posted at Jenn and Beer.  Thanks Jenn!]

I recently started an unprecedented, wholly unnecessary experiment to pair beer with song.  It’s simple.  I pick an album, go through each track, and determine what beer would be best with it and why.  This is attempt #2.

For today’s album, I’ve chosen an old favorite.  It is going to be great, a real hootenanny (no, it’s not by The Replacements), and should go over really well.  I say this because everyone, I mean every single normal person I’ve ever met on the face of this planet (with the exception of Jared & Jason Prosek), has never heard of it.  It’s called Foxtrot from1972 by little known band, Genesis.

11 Songs, 10 Beers

The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America through beer.

Friends know I’m a huge fan of The Hold Steady.  I probably think about their music too much.  Hector and I are flying to Birmingham in September just to see them.  We were at their Ogden performance in June, and I’ve seen them two times before—once in Chicago at the Pitchfork Music Festival.

While jamming out on guitar to the song Chips Ahoy, a question popped into my mind:  What beer, if I were drinking, would I want right now?  In other words, what beer goes best with this song?

An answer didn’t immediately come to mind, but an idea did.  Could one perfectly pair a beer with a song?  Could I pair a beer to each song off of an album, or more specifically, a Hold Steady album, or more specifically still, the album Boys and Girls in America?