Category Archives: Music

Sanssouci

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At the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, more about which eventually, there is an enormous canvas by Adolph Menzel (d. 1905), one of a number of his paintings on display: “Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci” (“The Flute Concert of Frederick the Great at Sanssouci”; “Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci”), dating from 1850-52.

When I made my detail, I focused on the king. Reading about the painting, and looking at images of it, I see that I might as well have focused on the preternaturally luminous chandelier.Sanssouci

A few days earlier, on March 9, Jay and I had boarded a train at AlexanderPlatz in central Berlin bound for Potsdam, location of Frederick’s summer retreat, Sanssouci. I expect that in the 18th century, the area was indeed a retreat, a healthy distance from Berlin and its hubbub. These days, you take the S Bahn to an outer suburb. From the Potsdam main station, a municipal bus drops you off near one of the outbuildings of Sanssouci, now the ticket office. Remember that, it will be important later.

This wasn’t our bus, but rather a tour bus, playing up the Potsdam Giants, a storied Prussian infantry regiment and special passion of Frederick the Great’s father Frederick William I, who is pictured as well (and it was Frederick the Great who disbanded them). I’d heard of the Giants, but not in detail, and the more I learn about them, the more amused I am.Sanssouci

Now there’s a name for a German baseball team: The Potsdam Giants. As far as I can tell, there is no such team, though the Humburg Stealers, the Mannheim Tornadoes and the Heidenheim Heideköpfe (ah, those funky Swabians) knock around the horsehide sphere professionally in the Federal Republic. That’s what I ought to do, if I ever go back to Germany, see a baseball game. Bet there are some peculiarities. Like in Japan, when you release balloons during the Seventh Inning Stretch. At least they did at Hanshin Tigers games in the early ’90s. Actually, they were blown up condoms.

The styling is Sanssouci in most English-language sources, but spelled Sans, Souci. on the building.Sanssouci Sanssouci Sanssouci

Seems like party-time in stone. Vineyards were important to the scheme of Sanssouci, so of course Bacchus-adjacent figures should be too.Sanssouci

The view from the palace. This time of the year, there was no admission to the Sanssouci gardens, so it functioned as a city park. A mild Sunday in March had brought people out to the park. Sanssouci

A benefit of low-season tourism: practically no waiting to get into the palace. I say low season, but in a lot of places in Berlin, and Prague too, we noticed that school groups, or individual students, were out and about in force. A form of spring break?

Images without reference to room.Sanssouci Sanssouci Sanssouci

One thing to like about the Rococo effervescence at Sanssouci is that there isn’t too much of it. As 18th-century European palaces go, it’s modest. Frederick wanted a place to entertain himself and others, not wow visiting muck-a-mucks. Only a dozen or so rooms. You don’t come away feeling overloaded.

What is this about?Sanssouci

I quote this at some length because this material, from the organization that oversees the palace, is funny. And a little quaint.

On May 13, 1998, at Sanssouci Palace a taboo in historical preservation was broken. After more than a hundred years, the Marble Hall of Frederick the Great’s summer residence once again became the scene of a festive dinner...

This time it was the Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had prevailed against all of the preservation apprehensions. It had been his express wish to honor Bill Clinton, the president of the United States of America, with a luncheon at Sanssouci during his second state visit to Germany…

The suggestion to hold the dinner in the Ovid Gallery in the neighboring New Chambers of Sanssouci, which otherwise served as the festive setting when receiving state visitors, was turned down by the American chief of protocol.

The sensual scenes from the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid, set into the gallery walls in the form of gilded stucco reliefs, were considered by the protocol chief as being too permissive. There was a fear that the press would make a connection to the Lewinsky affair, which had been a constant theme for the media since the beginning of 1998.

Scenes from the room supposedly decorated for Voltaire, who visited the palace till he had a falling out with the king. rococo rococo rococo

When we were done, we went back to the bus stop where we got off, operating under the assumption that Sanssouci was as far as the bus went, and it would take us directly back to the train station. This was wrong. Soon we were riding along, further into less developed areas, and I remember thinking – or did I say it out loud? — I don’t remember any of this.

We passed by a sign for the Max Planck Institute in front of some buildings in the mid-distance. Really? That’s here? Suburban Berlin was certainly plausible, but later I found out that Max Planck Society is headquartered in Munich, and has a lot of branches. That includes one in Golm, an outlying neighborhood of Potsdam, with narrow and lightly traveled streets through smallish but pleasant single-family houses with yards. Elsewhere in Golm are fields that are probably agricultural, or at least pastureland.

I hear Max Planck Institute and I suspect one or more branches are doing Time Tunnel research. You know, go back in time and make sure Hitler becomes an architect instead of a politician, that kind of thing. That kind of thinking is what I get for watching TV science fiction as a lad.

Then the bus stopped and we were directed to exit at the end of the line. Jay mustered his German and communicated with the driver, a chunky middle-aged fellow puffing on his vape, now that he was on break. The bus, we found out, would return to the train station in about 30 minutes. We were able to communicate this to the two other passengers who had done the same as us, two women tourists from South Korea, I think.

Such was a Sunday schedule, meaning a wait at the transit hub of Golm.Golm, Germany

Luckily, the day was mild, almost pleasant, so sitting around outside for a while was no issue. Or taking a short walk.Golm, Germany Golm, Germany

An oddity.Sanssouci

3.10.1990 is all it says. The date of German reunification. The neighborhood’s private memorial to that event? Or was it a former border marker? I checked and no, Potsdam was firmly in East Germany. A stone marking the occasion when Potsdam, or even Golm, didn’t have to be in the DDR any more? Could be.

P.D.Q. Bach 1980 (Not 1780)

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Below is a poster I picked up among the debris in the closet of my former room in San Antonio, and brought back north last month. I probably originally liberated it from a wall at Vanderbilt, though I would have had the good manners to do so after the concert.

I remember going to see P.D.Q. Bach in Nashville in early 1980, but, maybe true to the spirit of the not-great composer himself, I don’t remember much about the concert. After all, Schickele.com says: “P.D.Q. was virtually unknown during his own lifetime; in fact, the more he wrote, the more unknown he became.”

It’s easy to believe that after 45 years, my memory of the concert is slight. I saw Bob Marley in concert in 1980 as well, and mostly I remember the various kinds of smoke at the venue, and Marley’s frequent cries of “All hail Jah!” and “Free Zimbabwe!”

Back to P.D.Q. Bach. I must have been amused by the concert. Not as much as if I’d actually known anything about classical music, but I’m sure Peter Schickele’s antics were amusing above and beyond mere music spoof. I’m also pretty sure I went by myself, since even the student price (more than $34 in current money) would have been a lot for an act no one else had ever heard of.

But I had. We had at least one record of his around when I was in high school, namely Report from Hoople: P. D. Q. Bach on the Air, which was in personal heavy rotation for a little while, along with all our Tom Lehrer records.

That reminds me: I need to get around to writing that short bio of that other non-famous musician, Irwin Hepplewhite, leader of Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys during the gold and silver age of American pop, since clearly no one else is going to do it.

Back to P.D.Q. Bach again. I didn’t note the passing of Peter Schickele last year, but I’m going to now. Here’s an interview he did only a few years after he came through Nashville. Everybody comes to Nashville, even Irwin Hepplewhite and the Terrifying Papoose Jockeys, who brought the house down – literally, a ceiling fixture fell on them – at the Ryman in ’69, one of the lesser-known events referenced in “American Pie.”

Musical Maps

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This is quite a site: Musical Maps, whose title isn’t quite descriptive, since it lists and illustrates the locations of a wide variety of music album cover photos. Still, it’s a place to meander for a while, to sample and follow your idle curiosity, only to find our more time than you thought disappeared while looking up the location of x, y and z. And another one after z. And that reminded you of another – scroll down – wait, what about a, b and then c?

The cover of Hotel California, which does such a good job of evoking some dark desert corner of California, a place of colitas smell and no exit — is for example actually urban, on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills.

Looks like there’s been some gentrification since Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five posed on 123rd St. in Manhattan in 1982.

Our Man in New Orleans – an Al Hirt disk from 1963 that I’m pretty sure was around the house when I was growing up – features the trumpeter in front of 941 Bourbon Street, at night with shadows for that extra New Orleans vibe (and probably to avoid the heat).

Good to see that at least two Chicago albums depict Chicago in some form. Chicago 13 is a variation on Marina Towers.

Part of the site is organized geographically. The inordinate number of shots taken in New York City and California and various parts of the UK is little surprise. This isn’t a list of Bollywood soundtrack albums, after all.

I was inspired to look for the most remote location, at least on this list. I was hoping someone, maybe some prog rocker of the ’70s, had used an image of a moai or a row of them, which would put it on Easter Island, but apparently not.

Hit Collective goes Bossa Vol. 1 features a view of Rio from Christ the Redeemer, which seems fitting, but a little further away is that busy set of musicians called Various Artists and their album Guitare, whose cover was shot at the colorful Dr. del Valle Iberlucea 1256 in Buenos Aires. Both places one can aspire to see.

No Snow. Also, “Snow”

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For a few hours on Sunday afternoon, it felt warm enough to build a fire in my back yard grill, so that’s what I did, successful grilling a pack of brats acquired at some optimistic moment this fall and stored since then at lower than 32° F. I expect that to be the last grilling of ’24, but who knows.

Tested the front yard lights as well, considering that it wasn’t so cold. I left them hanging on the bushes all year, and they seemed none the worse for this year. Lighting will be on Friday, in honor of the feast of St. Lucia. Pretty much everyone on the block who is going to light up already has. I suspect they won’t last long after the New Year. I plan to keep them going till maybe the second week of January.

Since no one around the house plays Christmas music, I haven’t heard much of that yet this year either. This suits me. Of course, when you’re in a store, there’s no avoiding it. And also of course, it’s the same songs in heavy rotation. Except when it isn’t. I was astonished to hear “Snow” from White Christmas at a store the other day.

Charming little song. Don’t think I’ve heard it outside the movie. Even then, I had to look it up. More public Christmas music ought to reach beyond those few dozen you always hear again and again.

Dam It

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Plenty of people visit places simply because they’ve been in some famous bit of entertainment, and can’t say I’m immune to the impulse. Still, my choices are a little more – obscure. Eccentric? I’ll bet the Grand Coulee Dam never appears on formulaic lists like these, mainly because the compiler (he, she or it) has never heard of the Woody Guthrie song of that name.

Or the version I like best, by the King of Skiffle himself.

I’d probably have heard of the Grand Coulee Dam anyway, but would we have gone maybe an hour out of our way in eastern Washington to see it, but for the song? I’m going to say no, because how many dams are there, even very large ones, on the rivers of North America? A lot. How many had skillful publicists like Grand Coulee? Not as many.

The Bonneville Power Administration paid Guthrie to write some songs about the mighty Columbia, and write he did, including “Grand Coulee Dam.” Fairly obscure, maybe, but not unknown more than 80 years later. I’d say the agency got its money’s worth.

They got some extraordinary verse.

In the misty crystal glitter of that wild and windward spray,
Men have fought the pounding waters and met a watery grave,
Well, she tore their boats to splinters but she gave men dreams to dream
Of the day the Coulee Dam would cross that wild and wasted stream.

The dam doesn’t disappoint, if you’ve a eye for infrastructure.Grand Coulee Dam Grand Coulee Dam

How is it that human beings can building something that large?

“Grand Coulee Dam, The Eighth Wonder of the World” gets right to the point of awe-inspiring comparisons.

“Holding in check the mighty Columbia, at a point where the river flows through a lava-rimmed, 1600-foot-deep chasm on its way to the sea, the dam dwarfs the efforts of the Builder Cheops, to whom is accredited the largest of the pyramids at Gizah, Egypt,” the booklet says.

“The ancient sepulcher of kings is surpassed in size nearly four times by the Grand Coulee Dam…”

The payoff.Grand Coulee Dam

Roosevelt Lake provides irrigation and recreation, but the core function is its hydropower generation capacity, which is 6,645 MW. Number-one in the United States and still among the top dams worldwide, on a list that’s mostly crowded with Chinese structures these days.

By the time Guthrie wrote the song, he was able to include this rousing verse.

Now in Washington and Oregon you can hear the factories hum,
Making chrome and making manganese and light aluminum,
And there roars the flying fortress now to fight for Uncle Sam,
Spawned upon the King Columbia by the big Grand Coulee Dam.

The dam has a visitor center with a mid-sized museum about the dam, including such artifacts as building tools, enormous corona rings, the wheelchair available to President Roosevelt when he came to dedicate the dam, bottles that held water from each state and territory that were used in a ceremony at the dam in 1951, and film and stills from the construction itself. Woody Guthrie and the song get a mention, as did ordinary dam workers and people displaced by the creation of Roosevelt Lake. There is a map illustrating the 31 dams of the Federal Columbia River Power System and a plaque for workers who died on the job.Grand Coulee Dam

Grand Coulee wasn’t the only dam we saw. On our return trip, we paid a visit to the Bonneville Dam, also on the mighty Columbia, just further downstream.Bonneville Dam Bonneville Dam

Also mentioned in a Woody Gurthrie song, “Jackhammer Blues.” The one I prefer is a late Weavers’ modified version.

Hammered on the Bonneville, hammered on the Butte
Columbia River to the five mile chute…

Hammered on the Boulder, Coulee, too
Always broke when the job was through

One more dam, much smaller, but impressive in its way. The Jackson Lake Dam in Grand Teton NP.

Holds back the Snake River to form an enlargement of a natural lake.Lake Jackson

Not mentioned in any song that I know of, but a tip of a massive reservoir system.

Bashful Bob

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I didn’t imagine it: Bashful Bob’s Motel in Page, Arizona, was a real place, which I called “a real, honest-to-God tourist court” more than a quarter-century ago. I still have a card I picked up when we stayed there in 1997.Bashful Bob's MotelWhen we returned to Page two years ago, the renovated place was the pleasant but less interestingly named, and more expensive, Lake Powell Motel. Bob Wombacher was nowhere to be found. Not a surprise, since he died in 2011.

I suspect, but don’t actually remember, that we met Bob briefly in May ’97, when we checked in. Running an honest-to-God tourist court is (was) usually hands-on work for the proprietor. In our time, someone with a name like Wombacher, if he left any trace at all, can be found on the Internet.

Turns out Bob was more than a tourist court operator. He left a legacy of obscure humorous poetry, according to a curious site called Porkopolis, the “arts, literature, philosophy and other considerations of the pig.” (Which has a page devoted to Arnold Ziffle, I’m glad to say.)

Bob wrote a poem about pigs, or at least referencing pigs. A collection of Bob’s – Rhyme Time – can be found here. It includes such verse as (picked at random for their brevity):

“Just Following Orders”

I step inside my fav’rite store
And spy a cone inside the door.
“Wet floor,” it states, and so I do
Exactly what it tells me to.
Then, rather wishing I had not,
I’m banished to the parking lot.

“All Set”

I’ve saved enough money
To last me for life.
The children are grown;
I don’t have a wife.
I’ve got enough money.
Yes, plenty and then some.
To last me forever.
(At least ’til I spend some.)

“Half-Pint”

It isn’t that I’m little.
I’m just not very tall.
Until I grow,
I’m last to know
When rain begins to fall.

I also wondered: Bashful Bob? I always considered that a just bit of alliterative whimsy on the part of Bob, but I now know there was a song of that name recorded by Bobby Vee. Mainly because I just found out.

Maybe the song title was an inspiration for him. If so, it was still a bit of Bob’s whimsy. Mr. Wombacher seems like the kind of guy to name his business after a teen-idol pop song of an earlier time, just for fun.

He May Ride Forever ‘neath the Streets of Boston

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Something I never thought of until today: you can buy booklets to hold fortune cookie fortunes. One at Amazon promises 10 pages that hold 40 fortunes, for $12.99. That came to mind, or rather set me looking, when I happened across another fortune I saved:

Magic time is creale when an unconventional person comes to stay.

I supposed “created” was meant, but in any case that sounds like the pitch for a sitcom episode.

I’m not buying a fortune holder. Those little slips will be tucked away with my business card accumulation: five holders so far, holding some hundred number of cards. Many are restaurant cards, some dating back to the ’80s. Others include a sampling of hotels, museums, shops, even a few churches.

Also, transit cards. I got a kick out of this one.

I used it during my most recent visit to Boston in 2018. Previously the system used metal tokens, but of course those are gone. CharlieTickets and CharlieCards were introduced in 2006.

Charlie was the sad-sack (and poor) protagonist of the song “M.T.A.,” which I know well. That is, the Kingston Trio’s 1959 recording, but not so much about its background. So naturally I had to look into it.

“The text of the song was written in 1949 by Jacqueline Steiner and Bess Lomax Hawes,” writes Jonathan Reed, once a student at MIT. “It was one of seven songs written for [Walter] O’Brien’s campaign, each one emphasized a key point of his platform. [He was running for mayor of Boston that year.]

“One recording was made of each song, and they were broadcast from a sound truck that drove around the streets of Boston. This earned O’Brien a $10 fine for disturbing the peace.”

The Kingston Trio got ahold of it a decade later and it sounds like they had fun with it. Clearly the song endures locally, enough to receive a sort of official recognition by the modern MBTA.

Spring Break Bits

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It might not feel like spring out there, but no matter. Time for spring break. Back to posting around April 18.

Not long ago, an entire movie on YouTube called First Spaceship on Venus came to my attention, and I decided to watch a few minutes to see how bad it might be. Soon I realized, this isn’t that bad. For what was clearly a pre-manned spaceflight depiction of spaceflight, not bad at all. I didn’t have time to finish it, but I will at some point.

I’d never heard of it. But I have heard of Stanisław Lem. I read His Master’s Voice years ago – nearly 40 years, so I don’t remember much – and saw the 1972 movie version of Solaris, ditto, though I’ve read it’s rather different from his novel. Turns out First Spaceship on Venus is the American title of Silent Star (Der Schweigende Stern), an East German-Polish production from 1960. Lem wrote the source book, The Astronauts, a few years earlier. The American version is dubbed into English and, I understand, cut in length.

Also, if you want, you can listen to the original soundtrack of Der Schweigende Stern. YouTube’s quite the place.

More idle curiosity for the day: checking ticket prices for Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks, who are appearing the same night at Soldier Field in June. The closest ticket for sale is pretty close indeed: front section, third row. For resale, actually. There are a scattering of resale tickets available in that section, with those on the third row listed for $3,791 + fees. Oddly enough, fourth row seats list for $2,794 + fees. At least for now. So one row ahead, where you can catch a slightly better glimpse of Mr. Joel’s shiny pate, is worth about a grand more?

I expect that represents dynamic pricing of some kind, facilitated by soulless algorithms in the service of maximized shareholder value, and varies from moment to moment. But I was never one for front row seats anyway, or even third or fourth. Checking further, I found that you can bring your opera glasses and sit way back for $179. As it happens, I’ve seen both of those entertainers; separately, in 1979 and 1980. I don’t remember what I paid. A handy inflation calculator tells me that $179 now is the equivalent of $47 back then. I’m positive I didn’t pay that much, total, for both tickets.

Visiting Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago last month, I took an image of carved text that puzzled me a bit, but then I forgot to look it up.

“Ecumenical Year?” I remembered to look into that more recently, and realized that it must refer to the first year of Vatican II, which was indeed 1962. Formally in English, the meeting was the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.

Naturally, when one hears of Vatican II, it’s time to listen to “The Vatican Rag.”

The council might have been 60 years ago, but that song never gets old.

WWOZ’s Shrove Tuesday

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Woke up this morning and for a few moments thought it was Thursday. Went downstairs (my commute), fired up the laptop (odd phrasing, when you think about it) and soon realized it was Wednesday. Fridays are still the best workdays, naturally, but Thursdays aren’t bad either. You still have Friday to look forward to. So I must have wanted it to be Thursday.

Still, that’s odd, since I was fully aware of it being Shrove Tuesday the day before. As time allowed during the day, I listened online to WWOZ, nonprofit radio out of New Orleans that broadcasts New Orleans and Louisiana music. I’m sure it’s a local treasure. It should be a national treasure. It was one of the first online radio stations I ever encountered, by happy chance back in the early 2000s, when maintaining a connection consistently was no sure thing, especially if you used an iMac. I don’t listen to it enough.

But I did on Tuesday, for obvious reasons, and the celebration was on all day. The guys behind the mike got especially giddy as the evening wore on, maybe even rowdy, though I didn’t hear anything breaking. Just the kind of happy DJs – and those with some personality on display – that radio consolidation and rote programming have mostly banished from the airwaves.

Except maybe for morons in the morning? You know, drivetime voices, often a man and a woman, who yuk it up between songs and commercials and news snips, without regard to good sense or good taste. Is that still a thing? My commute, as you’d think, doesn’t involve radio.

Such duos were so much a part of radio programming 20 years ago that another of first radio stations I heard online, one from Sydney, as in Australia, was being hosted by a man and a woman – who yukked it up without regard to sense or taste. But with such fun Australian accents that I didn’t mind listening a while.

Now I seem to have further evidence that the algorithms are getting better. Better at drawing conclusions from their spying. Today those opaque entities suggested a version of “St. James Infirmary Blues” that I didn’t know.

Wow, that’s good. Tom Jones and the talented Rhiannon Giddens, once of the Carolina Chocolate Drops.

The song is associated with New Orleans jazzmen, of course, especially Louie Armstrong, and I spent a lot of yesterday with Carnival in the background. So was that the connection the machine made? Or is it that I’ve listened to many other versions of the song, or a clip from the same show, or all that other jazz (and I mean that literally and figuratively)? The bots ain’t telling.

Pretty Sure It Will Be Dry February As Well

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Not only are we rid of January today, it was the most pleasant weather I can ever remember on a February 1 in northern Illinois: sun out sometimes, temps touching about 50 F.

YouTube algorithms are getting better at their game. Or so it seems. Today they suggested a Mexican ska band, Mexican Nutty Stompers, who have just released an album. The song, “Souvenir.” I was the 83rd listener.

Never mind the delight in finding Mexican ska when you didn’t such a thing existed, whoever the lead singer is, she’s got some voice. I might look into finding out her name, but for now the voice is more than enough.

A snippet from a press release that came a few weeks ago:

Embrace the spirit of Dry January with Hotel ZaZa Memorial City. Dine in at Hotel ZAZA’s Tipping Point Restaurant and Terrace and indulge in exclusive mocktail specials, crafted to make your taste buds dance without the spirits. Throughout the month of January, enjoy a selection of zero-proof concoctions, each priced at just $8.

Closer to my wheelhouse, but not quite in it. Still, I learned a couple of things from the release. One, Hotel ZaZa Memorial City is in Houston. Zaza is a collection of boutique hotels in Texas, in fact, with locations in Austin and Dallas too. I wasn’t familiar with the brand, but it looks posh all right. Also, this is the essence of the luxury hotel business: serving drinks at what would be a very reasonable price, if they contained any alcohol.

Dry January. I had to look around for more information on that, and it turned out to be a thing. Not sure if it’s just a thing of the chattering classes, or has stronger purchase on the steep slopes of American culture, but anyway you can find mainstream articles about it. Never heard of any of that. I’m late to the party, as usual. Or the non-party, considering no alcohol is served. As we all know, alcohol is essential to any fun party. That’s true in song and story.

The concept is simple enough to be a thing: Dry January just means not drinking alcohol during January, presumably timed to come after personal bacchanals in December. The hotel is using the concept to sell mocktails, but people do seem to use the idea to improve their lives. Good for them. I found it a little hard to imagine, though. Every January is Dry January for me.

I did order, and drink, an Old Fashioned at the bar of the Nashville Italian restaurant where we had dinner on the last full night with my friends in November. We were waiting for a table, so we all sat at the bar, enjoying some lively conversation with each other.

We also spent a few minutes watching the bartender, a nattily dressed slip of an African-American young man, maybe 30, who seemed to be everywhere behind the bar doing everything all the time, but mostly assembling the various liquors for his cocktail creations. With an economy and grace to his movements that spoke of years of practice. He was an artist.

So I wanted to order something from him. But what? As I later explained to my friends, a little part of every man wants to be Don Draper, so the drink in front of me was my homage to the character, and a vehicle to provide a nice tip for the bartender.

A little more than 12 years before ordering the Old Fashioned in Nashville, I ordered one in Appleton, Wisconsin on a press trip because I recently heard of the drink on Mad Men and was curious.

But mixed drinks haven’t been how I’ve usually spent my money over the years. All those years later in Nashville, I nursed my Old Fashioned a while – I’m not a hard-drinking TV character, after all – and concluded that I hadn’t had a bar cocktail between those two times, only occasional beer and wine, most of which wasn’t at bars anyway. What’s the term for that? Not teetotaler. Quasi-totaler?