Drew Millard often tires after 9.
I live in the woods and often play golf more hours a week than I write. I have little to show for it, golf-wise—much like writing, I sometimes feel I’m somehow worse at golf than I was when I started—other than the following story:
Over the weekend, I was out on the golf course when a group of three bros—two young, one old enough to be their dad—came up behind me blasting AC/DC from one of their golf carts. I asked if they wanted to play through; they said it was chill; I told them I was a slow golfer and they should go ahead and pass me. While the two younger bros stepped up to tee off, the older bro fished around the cart for a bottle of whiskey, which just so happened to be hiding under a case of Bud Light. He watched me watch him do this, and summarily offered me a beer as a courtesy. I accepted, and around Brian Johnson’s millionth utterance of “THUN-DAH!” the two bros looked up to watch me crack the top of my newly gifted beer and say, “Fuck yeah, bro!” The three hit their shots and drove off. I drank the beer, and because I am bad at drinking beer the slight amount of alcohol threw my body chemistry out of whack and I started playing like shit. After a few holes of absolutely horseshit golf, I started listening to White Reaper’s The World’s Best American Band and suddenly became okay at golf again.
Now, science would probably tell you that this happened because the beer started wearing off or whatever, but I prefer to think that White Reaper makes you good at stuff if there’s booze in your system. I have submitted this theory to the appropriate peer-reviewed journals and will update this post with their feedback.
With a title like The World’s Best American Band, White Reaper invite—nay, beg—hyperbole. If we accept George Orwell’s premise that all art is propaganda, then White Reaper are the Pravda of rocking out until you die from dehydration. They are Double Japandroids; The Hold Steady without all the crap about books; Andrew W.K. if you type his name with your hands shifted one key to the right (which is, for the record, Smftre E.L.). They are a regular indie rock band, but naked in the shower doing AC/DC cosplay after having snorted space meth. They are the sound of the boys leaving town, coming back to town, setting the town on fire, leaving the town again, then coming back to town to piss on the fire they set before they left the town the second time, then becoming engulfed in flames*. In other words, The World’s Best American Band is really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really good.
*Here I must acknowledge that I stole the basic conceit of the White Reaper/“Boys Are Back In Town” joke from my friend Ian Cohen. Ian, please forgive me.
