THE
DOUBLE -SHOT SOLUTION
With Lou Reed’s passing and so many people discussing
his impact on the contemporary culture of the 60s I can’t help but to remember
the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground. It was in Dhahran when I
was 19. This very wonderful but basically quiet girl, I’ll call Sharon, who I
had known my whole life finally had convinced her parents to allow a
small party for only her college-age friends – as if that was more respectable
than the usual horde of returning students.
The day before the party she asked me if I would be the bar
tender. This was obviously the worst decision possible but I was touched that
she thought I was worthy of such a responsibility and of course I was at her
service. So the next night I arrived early in a clean shirt, perfectly happy to
be a proper bar tender, and she showed me her parents’ bar set-up and put out
the ingredients, the shot glass and the glasses.
Well this wasn’t my first cocktail party but my problem with
the previous ones was that after waiting in line, you’d get your one shot and
it wasn’t long before you’d have to wait in line again. My insight was that I’d
give each drinker a double shot and then I wouldn’t have to see him or her for
twice as long. It was a great idea. There were about 30 college-age kids and
things were boiling along when some guy came rushing through the front door
with the Velvet Underground album, the one with the banana on the cover. “This
is so cool.” he says. And it was.
The Stones LP comes off the record player and the Velvet vinyl starts
playing for about the first time in Arabia. The party was already cooking but
when the cacophonous Velvets started up, dead pan Nico singing and then Lou
Reed began his hypnotic droning that somehow became so urgent, everybody started
dancing wilder and chanting lyrics that they had never heard before. By the
time that Waiting for the Man started
playing the whole room was a writhing bacchanalia of frenzied dancers that quickly
crashed when the record finished.
A new album went on the record player but people
seemed listless, worn out, they started to leave and barely three hours later,
inexplicably, this party was just about over. An old friend of mine who I’d
known since second grade, came up for a drink. I poured her the usual
double-shots I’d been serving all night long, when she said, “Do you know that
is a double-shot glass?”
Yikes! I had been pouring quadruple shots. Can’t
say if that had something to do with the enthusiasm for the Velvet Underground
but it was directly responsible for the short half-life of the party. I closed
the bar and fled. The next day Sharon called to thank me for my help. She couldn’t
stop talking about the Velvets. To her the party was a fabulous success and
thanks to Lou Reed I guess it was.
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