B-side, 1987
No one tried harder to like Medicine Show, the 1984 follow-up to The Days of Wine and Roses, than I did. While it now makes perfect sense in the context of the music that Steve Wynn has made for the rest of his career, in 1984, it felt like an abandonment of core principles.
And even now, the hollowness of both the production and the songs overshadows everything else. With Precoda gone — and Wynn doing great work with his pals in Danny and Dusty, I barely paid any attention to 1987’s Out of The Grey when it first came out.
That is, until I encountered “Drinking Problem,” one of the b-sides of the “50 in 25 Zone” single. While it felt more like The Lost Weekend than The Days of Wine and Roses, I’d be a fool not to love a song that starts off with:
Well I gotta friend in San Francisco
Made a fool of himself on the Letterman show
In Dallas Texas he was thrown for a loss
When he passed out face first in the Bar-be-que sauce
With a riff that’s a cousin of “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” and a singalong chorus, “Drinking Problem” was perhaps the most joyful song about an alcoholic fuck-up I’d ever heard.
He’s got a drinking problem
Likes to let his hair hang down
He’s got a drinking problem
Til there’s noooo one else around
In the end — after Paul B. Cutler plays a nice winding solo, the rest of the guys start chiming in with the call-and-response vocals of “No one around,” as Wynn describes his buddy (or “buddy,” as the case may have been) getting deeper and deeper in the shit.
No one else around
(No one around)
No one else around
(No one around)
Yeahhh, gimme a pint
(No one around)
C’mon, make that a fifth
(Make that a fifth)
Does the stuff come in gallons?
(No one around)
Just bring me back all you can quick
(No one around)
Yeah, he’s got a drinking problem
(No one around)
Oh he’s got a stinking problem
(No one around)
Ah, it’s a big problem
(ONE MORE ROUND!)
‘Til there’s no one else around
I’m not even gonna lie: that joyous “ONE MORE ROUND!” just kills me every time.
Video for “Drinking Problem”