frank brings it back…sorta

a brief history of jack & i…

…jack daniels, that is.

the first time i ever got my drunk on for real (not counting manashevitz at my buddy jon’s bar mitzvah when i was twelve) was at the age of twenty eight, and on a bottle of jack daniels given to me by this woman:

the head of holland dance record label “djax records” (“djax” is pronounced “jacks”) gave it to me for running their sxsw showcase in 1999…if you know my birthday and do the math you’ll realize i was twenty-eight. i wish i’d saved the bottle – not for the blonde reason, but for the proof reason. not as in “proof that this shit happened” but more as “proof of the proof”; as in to show how potent jack daniels USED to be. see, the shit that’s on my bar now and the shit you can buy in your local liquor store are the same thing, but they’re not the same as THIS:

the stuff we get nowadays is eighty proof, or forty percent alcohol by volume. the stuff in the pic (and that i got given to me in 1999) was ninety-two proof, or forty-SIX percent alcohol. why change? because of modern marketing – they found they were losing sales to beam and crown, and in customer surveys it was because those were “smoother”, i.e. didn’t have as much kick. so the pussification of america killed off the good jack daniels and they started watering down their own shit to hit the forty proof line that crown and beam had.

that’s just sad.

but finally a dead musician did something OTHER than become a hologram at a music festival or release a third rate rap album – leave it to frank sinatra to bring us…

the upside? it’s ninety-proof! the down side? it’s hard to find (supposedly – i haven’t gone looking yet) and goes for almost two bills a bottle. seriously? i like that the sinatra clan did this to bring back frank’s fave (a note – while him drinking it made it the best selling whiskey in america for decades he was never actually paid, he just drank it ’cause he really liked it) but that’s a bit steep. i think the groom’s hooch of choice come november at my wedding is still gonna be bushmill’s 1608. at half the price (about $100 a bottle) it seems like a steal!