Editor’s Note: Our L.A. correspondent Randy Fuller has written a post for his excellent wine blog Now and Zin on wine and rock and roll. He has graciously allowed us to reprint this post – and we’ve included links to some of the songs referenced in the copy. And at the end, we have added a few “bonus” songs of our own.)
One of my many joys in life is music. I love gathering mp3s of songs together in a thematic group and burning them to a CD. I use these CDs to pass the hour and a half or so each day I spend behind the wheel of the car.
Another of my many joys is wine, so it’s not too much of a stretch for me to assemble a compilation of songs about wine.
It’s difficult to find too many songs about wine that are actually about the wine. Most wine songs are lyrically concerned with over-imbibing: getting drunk on wine, staying high all the time, etc. I was certainly no saint in my younger days, but at this point in my life I try to promote only the responsible use of alcoholic beverages. Besides, I drink wine to enjoy the experience of the wine, not to get blasted.
Wine has a rather seedy image in some of the more well-known wine classics. The Tom Paxton song, “Bottle Of Wine,” deals with the trials and tribulations of panhandling for spare change in order to buy some fruit of the vine. Many other songs deal with the soft underbelly of the wine drinking populace, too. In “Drinking Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee,” also known as “Wine, Wine, Wine,” the singer has a nickel and only needs another dime to afford the desired bottle. You’d be hard-pressed to match that in today’s economy, even at 7-11.
Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Sangria Wine” is all about the camaraderie of wine – which is great – but his delivery gets more liquid as the song progresses. It ends up with a “slumped-in-the-lawn-chair” sort of feeling that isn’t exactly unpleasant, just maybe a little undesirable.
“Red, Red Wine” was penned by Neil Diamond in the 1960s and performed by a wide variety of singers since then. In it, the wine “goes to my head, makes me forget.” That’s touching, but most counselors will tell you it’s a bad idea to try and hide from your troubles in a bottle of wine. (Included here is the UB40 version of “Red, Red Wine” which was an international hit in 1983.)
In similar fashion, “Two More Bottles of Wine,” “Wine Do Yer Stuff” and a host of others deal with wine as a crutch or escape from reality.
“Spill The Wine,” the great 1970 hit by Eric Burdon and War, is about a dream where wine is involved. To me it always seemed like a dream induced by something harder than wine.
Lee Hazelwood’s “Summer Wine,“ which took him and Nancy Sinatra to the top 40 in the mid-’60s, is the flip side of that dream in “Spill The Wine.” There’s no happy ending, though. Eventually, the summer wine runs empty.
I prefer songs about wine made from grapes, so I’ll toss out “Sweet Cherry Wine,” “Elderberry Wine” and “Old Dogs, Children and Watermelon Wine.” Who needs wine made from old dogs, children and watermelons?
30 Days Out 