One Night Only—Cocktails Live
While enjoying a Julep with my neighbor a few weekends ago, he mentioned his son, returning from the first year at college for the summer, came home with two cars full of this, that, laundry, and a turntable. Being a surprised and proud dad, he immediately dug out some of his favorite records from the basement to share.
One of my favorite summer albums is Tom Petty's Wildflowers. Last year Tom's estate released a new version of Wildflowers called Finding Wildflowers with rare and never-before-heard versions of the tracks from the original record in a different order and, dare I say it, with some better takes on the sacred originals. I listened to it through for the first time a few weeks ago while sipping an Old Fashioned and smoking some chicken leg quarters in the backyard; I'd recommend a similar situation for your listening pleasure.
It is a strange feeling to know a song you have never heard before. Yet, I've experienced that feeling before back when I first listened to Dire Straits Alchemy, a live album full of their hits, including a beautiful 13-minute version of "Telegraph Road" that I absolutely love. Radiohead In Rainbows From The Basement is another killer live recording from a band that always seems ahead of their time from an album that I know every second of, but this recording makes it new again.
There are plenty of notable live recordings like Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock, Bill Evans Sunday at the Village Vanguard, Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison. Heck, I'd even throw in Encores, a live compilation of Jimmy Buffett encore performances, primarily acoustic and picked largely from his pre-Margaritaville days for the true Parrot Heads in the audience. You may know all the songs by heart, but that live sparkle changes everything.
Then I started thinking about actual live shows I've experienced in person or watched/listened to at a later date. Prince at Super Bowl XLI (in the rain!). Radiohead in Berlin. REM MTV Unplugged. Queen at Live Aid. Daft Punk in Mexico City. Why are these live shows so good and oftentimes better than the record? The musicians themselves are great when recorded on an album, but they are something else when performing live. Something new!
Cocktails can live in both worlds too. We have the album versions—the classics in their pure form. They are recorded in books under perfect conditions and plenty of start overs and redos. A live performance is something else altogether, and again, I dare to say often a better version.
Cocktail hour at my house is a live show. No do-overs. No starting over. If I mess up, I have to riff and fix it. If my Martini is in the wrong key, I either go with it or fix it in the next verse with more or less vermouth. Recipes that call for "half the juice of a lemon" know what I am talking about. That is a live kind of recipe. If it were a studio cocktail, it would be exact. When it is live, you have to adapt. It might not be exactly what you set out to make, but it could end up better.
I like to think of cocktail recipes as sheet music. Sometimes I can't hit all the notes, meaning I am missing a bottle, but I can keep the rhythm, meaning I get the gist of the drink and can adjust. Other times I am confident in my range, but the tempo is too fast, meaning the drink is too boozy for me, so I need to dial it back. That is okay! I can correct and do the right thing for myself.
Rumor has it that when Miles David showed up to record Kind of Blue, he brought a few notes but no sheet music, not nearly enough for the entire album, and handed them out to the amazing musicians featured on that record, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, "Cannonball" Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cob, and Wynton Kelly. They took what he had put to paper and filled in the rest making one of the best jazz albums ever recorded.
We may not be able to play the sax like Coltrane or "Cannonball" or tickle the ivories like Kelly and Evans, but we don't have to. The bottles are the notes. It's our job to put them together. Yes, you can follow the sheet music precisely as it is, the album version, or you can play by ear and put together a drink for tonight, and tonight only that may never come together that way again.
It's one of the things I love about live music and jazz specifically. It's always the same, and it's always different. Every show is a different version of the same thing. With on-the-fly composition, improvisation comes into play with every jazz show and most likely all live performances of any genre. Doesn't that sound like cocktails? Sometimes you have to wing it!
For a musician, it is their music, so they play it the way they want to. A studio recording is just one recording, one slice of something they have played a million times. That is why I often like to listen to the outtakes and the other recordings that didn't make the final cut to get the complete picture. How many times have you played a Manhattan the same way, the album version or with sheet music? Maybe it's time to play it live from memory!
A record may be a classic for a reason, but I can assure you seeing it performed live, faster, slower, with a guest singer or acoustic and unplugged is when a piece of music truly shines. That is when the goosebumps kick in! That is why we like to go to bars—to see the live performance.
How do you make an acoustic Martini? Do you ever add a guest singer like an Amaro to your Manhattan? What about a slow version of a Negroni or a fast take on an Old Fashioned. Maybe a Gin and Tonic with a drum solo ala Moby Dick or a Tom Collins with a sexy guitar riff ala Mark Knopfler.
Make and drink your cocktails live! You can always have the album version, it's already written down for you, but man, you should have been there!