Ten Favorite Drunk/Hangover Songs: Lost Weekend (#1)

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Here it is, Friday, the perfect day to end the working week and my countdown of my favorite songs dealing with getting drunk or having a hangover. This is the perfect song to close out on. Here's my favorite song about having too much of a good time. #1: Lost Weekend - Beat Farmers "Lost weekend" is the phrase for people who go off on benders, and this song describes everything on those fuzzy days. The term came (or gained popularity) from Ray Milland's Oscar-winning 1945 film The Lost Weekend, where he played a writer who went off on the eponymous trip. And, honestly, what better band to do a song with that title, about that subject, than San Diego's Beat Farmers? Lone Justice and Rank + File might have been better-known "cowpunk" bands, but NOBODY lived up to the term like the Beat Farmers. There is no way to describe this band's live show, especially Country Dick Montana (ne Dan McLain). Montana, the drummer with a booming bass voice, would come out from behind the drums and sing lead on songs (usually silly or sexually suggestive [if not downright obscene...see "Little Balls of Yarn," for instance]) while wearing a trench coat and spraying the fans with beer. Being in the front row of a Beat Farmers concert was like being in the front row for Gallagher: you knew you were going to get hit with something. Even the videos don't come close to doing their live shows justice. And this song is on top because I think it's one of the most accurate descriptions of a bender you'll ever hear. Every sordid detail is here: the marriage ("why is this ring on my finger, and who's that screaming kid?" -- remember the episode of M*A*S*H where Charles got married in Tokyo on a bender?), the congratulatory phone calls ("my phone is ringing, I hear I put on quite a show, and the more I learn the less I want to know"), and of course, the painful blur ("I wish somebody'd tell me just who and what I did"). Closing this song out is one of the best descriptions ever put in a song about the pain of a hangover: I'm praying to the porcelain god and I'm down on my knees I say I'll swear off this if you'll only help me please And as my guts are running down the drain I sing one last refrain Thanks for reading. Lost Weekend Written by Buddy Blue Recorded by the Beat Farmers From Tales of the New West, 1985 I wanna dig a hole and die: