Last Saturday In Raleigh

1/10/09, 12:30 AM


You want to know what pathetic looks like?

I’m sitting here, the proud and recent recipient of two six-packs of pathetic beer. The first pathetic beer is a “strawberry blonde” lager that tastes like, you guessed it, strawberries. This beer is only pathetic by transitive property; it is pathetic because I am the one drinking it. I am a man; I should not be swilling strawberry-themed beer. If I was a career manager at Whole Foods, or if I were a female backup singer for James Taylor, strawberry lagers might well fit into my life picture. However, I have a pair of testicles, and they directly clash with the beer’s light fruit notes, crisp and refreshing though they may be.

The fruit notes, not my testicles. You know what, either one.

The second pathetic beer is a well-known microbrew’s winter seasonal ale, with big red and green “2008” adornments slapped all around the 6-pack handled open-top box thing.

This beer is pathetic because, at the time of writing, it’s January 10, 2009.

The Black Crowes have been through so many lineup changes that Wikipedia has a color-coded chronological chart of the band’s membership since their inception in the very early Nineties. Fans generally agree that one of two things end up causing members to take flight: drugs, or Rich.

The drugs explain themselves. Either one of the guys gets too fucked up and winds up fired, or one of the guys quits the band for fear of a relapse back into behavior they’ve worked long and hard to snuff out.

Rich Robinson and his brother Chris formed The Crowes from the members of an earlier band, “Mr. Crowe’s Garden” and have remained the only two members never to leave the band for any amount of time save the five-year hiatus where the band split up to pursue solo and outside projects. Rich, who writes the musical arrangements for The Crowes, is reportedly difficult to get along with, and one can imagine how that could be problematic. The ego complications of individual musicians are well documented and can be researched at any major library for those so interested.