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Health & Fitness

Tonight is Kind of Special

Here's to good friends. Translating an ad of the 70s/80s.

I’m the type of person that marches to the tune of a different drummer that’s in a stadium across town that no one else can hear. In other words, I’m an odd nerd whose mind is often wandering in directions that many others either can’t fathom or don’t dare fathom.  

I amuse myself (and quite frequently ONLY myself) with parodying song lyrics, attempting witty barbs back at the inanity on TV, or asides about the inanity all around us.  Basically, I’m the guy at the party who is entertaining for about 3 minutes …and then you’re looking for a way to create a diversion in order to escape.

Since I understand that my shelf life is about three minutes, I’m going to keep tonight’s topic to about one minute.  (Lesson #1: Know your audience and know your weaknesses.  Lesson #2:  Ignore both)

As Saint Louis Post Dispatch sports columnist Bernie Miklasz would say…Reading time:  Five minutes.

If you’re a child of the 70s and 80s like me, you remember the old Lowenbrau ads.  The acting parts were basically chewing gum for your eyes, some drunken ad copywriter’s convoluted idea of what friends do when they get together. 

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The music, though, saved the day.  The jingle was sung by a South Carolina jazz singer by the name of Arthur Prysock.   If the name doesn’t sound familiar, don’t worry…it’s not important to the story, but will be repeated incessantly.  Prysock could best be described as a poor-man’s Barry White.  (If that name isn’t familiar, please open a new tab on your browser and pull up some of his work on YouTube.)

So, you’ve got the slightly-out-of-tune sounding piano in the background and this rich voice oozing out some incredibly schmaltzy late 70’s/early 80’s lyrics.  In a public service to all (including that whippersnapper, Kris Janisch), I will translate.

Line 1:  “Here’s to good friends”   Sounds like a standard generic toast, no?  But you’ll notice that Prysock isn’t calling YOU a good friend, is he?  Of course, unless you’re one of a select few, you’ve never met him (especially not lately since he’s been terminally inconvenienced and metabolically challenged since 1997.)

Line 2:  “Tonight is kind of special”  Note that he says “kind of” special.  Not Honey-I-just-won-the-Nobel-Prize special or even I-just-landed-the-Jorgensen-account special.  No sir.  We don’t want to restrict it to those things because then you’d rarely buy the brew. 

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“Kind of special” could mean that the dog is no longer pooping in your shoes or you didn’t staple your sleeve to your desk at work.  Celebrate these minor victories with Lowenbrau, my friends.

Line 3: “The beer we’ll pour/must say something more, somehow”    What does beer really need to say beyond, “Drink me?”   But, beyond that, if it’s only “kind of special”, what more should it say?

Line 4: “So tonight (tonight), Tonight,  Let it be Löwenbräu (let it be Löwenbräu)”   Buddy, this is a one-night-only engagement.  Tomorrow, we hope to land that account and forget that we had too much Lowenbrau tonight and woke up in the gutter tomorrow morning with a lawn trimmer in one hand and a copy of TV Guide in the other.

Line 5: “It’s been so long/Hey, I’m glad to see ya”  Haven’t we heard this repeated insincerely at every  charity function, party, and class reunion we’ve ever been to?  Maybe it’s just me that hears that.

Line 6: “Raise your glass/Here’s to health and happiness”  Aaaaand cue generic toast number 2 in less than 30 seconds.   Prysock is clearly hoping that either he’s drained his glass so that he excuse himself to get it refilled and find someone interesting or that you’ve drained yours so that you need to leave in order to get it refilled.  Therefore, he doesn’t want to get specific with the toast, otherwise you might be able to continue the conversation.

Line 7: “So tonight (tonight)/Let it be all the best.”  The implication that Prysock is making is that Lowenbrau is “all the best” and that he’s going to chug a whole bunch of it.  Considering that it’s the 1970’s, he could be going the “Steely Dan” route with the “Cuervo Gold and the fine Columbian” and making “tonight a wonderful thing” (which may be better than “all the best”…I’m not sure. I was 8 when “Hey Nineteen” came out.)

So, there you go.  An ad reduced to what is most likely the exact opposite of what the copywriters had in mind.  You can thank me later.  Hey, where are you going?  Oh, you’ve got to refill your Lowenbrau?

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