Thats My Jam: Drunk Chords

I've probably told this story before -- but I was once in a band
called "Southern Comfort" with Adam Bigbee for about 3 hours.
Essentially one night at Arteagas we got really loaded on SoCo (I can't really remember why we were there, it might have been a band practice for the Bigbee's band, Someone Else that I was a unofficially a member of about a half a dozen times -- depending on how mad they were with Matt Lyle at the time. I never officially played a gig with the band, but Spence and Bigbee continually tried to bring me on board during the years they were together. Either that or we were making one of those videos where we poured mud on Dumpy's head just to see how long he'd put up with it).
And I know that probably sounds a little weird -- But like most of my Bigbee stories
from those days, You sorta had to be there if you wanted it to make any sense at all.
Anyways -- like I said, it's me, Bigbee, his drumset, a borrowed guitar, and a bottle of Whiskey -- and the next thing you know we're off on what I'm sure we felt was a vitally important musical adventure that simply couldn't wait another minute more.

Problem is, we were utterly hammered -- so we were only able to play so many things. Best I can remember, we did a jam that was basically a reworking of Janet Jackson's "Black Cat" (again, this is a Bigbee story -- just roll with it) followed by about two hours where I basically just played the first two chords from some long-forgotten TSOL song we liked while he pounded on the cymbals, because they were the coolest two chords in the entire world, so there was no need to play anything else.

At some point I think Arteaga came downstairs to kick us out of his house, at which point he complained that we were just playing drunk chords over and over (as if there was something musically flawed in that idea).
Clearly he didn't get it.
Anyways, like so many other bands in rock history, Southern Comfort eventually passed out on the couch, stumbled home the next morning, and kinda cringed whenever the idea of drinking an entire bottle of hooch and then making music was suggested ever again..
But my love for drunk chords lives on.
Which is not to say that COC were drunk when they wrote this, or that they're raging alcoholics at all. Quite the contrary -- many years back when I was still working for Fred Andrews we did sound and lights for a local gig of theirs, and they were among the coolest bands I've ever worked with. It's just that this tune with it's signature opening riff is exactly the kind of thing that could easily turn into an all night infinite loop jam -- especially if you were to get the right two idiots in a room and ply them with liquor.

I think we all have one or two of those songs in our personal musical libraries, those tunes that only sort of appear in our consciousness once we it gets a little altered -- like that one Weezer song we like to sing a capella when we get a little loose on rum and coke and then decide to go walking on the beach, or that one track we DEMAND the DJ play once we reach the right saturation level so that we can jump up on top of a table and sing along (seriously, why else would anyone enjoy Kid Rock, or continue to allow DJ's around the world to play Semisonic's "Closing Time" at last call every time we're in the club without burning the place to the ground?).
..Or is that just me?

[Listening to:  Black Flag - "Nervous Breakdown" ]

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