I’d never seen anything like this video, and as I was watching I wondered how these guys came up with using beer bottles to make a song. The following scene unfolded in my head as if I’d been there with them.
Disclaimer: This is all made up. I don’t know these guys or anything about them. I have made all of this up. None of this is true.
It’s a Sunday morning. A bunch of fraternity boys like the ones in Animal House are sprawled like rag dolls on couches and chairs, empty beer bottles everywhere. The one who doesn’t get hangovers is awake. The remote control is too far away, so he starts blowing into an empty bottle to entertain himself.
He grabs a different size bottle and it produces a higher note. Another bottle, slightly bigger, gives him a lower note. He starts tooting a song that sounds like, “Louie, Louie.” His friends gradually come to life and roll toward him from the floor and couches to see what’s up.
“Hey, let me try that,” one of them says.
“Get your own bottle,” he says, pushing the guy’s hand away with his foot.
Pretty soon all are experimenting with the bottles, forgetting about their hangovers. One picks up an empty six-pack container and loads it with six different size bottles. A few minutes later he says, “Check this out.” He moves his mouth over the bottles like he’s playing a giant harmonica, and toots their fraternity’s theme song close enough that the others recognize it.
Everyone is impressed, and they crawl around looking for cartons, too. One of them spots an empty water jug. “Look, we could use this for bass notes.”
The fraternity president has slept through most of this, but he eventually starts cursing the others for waking him up. They ignore him, and he gets off the couch to take a leak. On the way back he spots an empty eight-pack carton in the kitchen and gathers bottles off the counter to fill it. Soon he figures out the Michael Jackson song stuck in his head because someone kept singing the line, “Billie Jean is not my lover,” the night before. He becomes the band leader. “Play a couple of bass notes on that water jug,” he says. “That’s good. Now PT, lemme hear you do the intro.”
After a while a marketing major says, “We sound pretty good. I think we should video this and put it on YouTube. I’ll see if the priest at the Cathedral will let us record it there. The acoustics are great.”
“Good idea,” the president agrees, “it’ll be classier than doing it here.”
After a week of practicing and recording to get their moves just right, they video their song at the Cathedral, and the marketing major posts it on YouTube, where it goes viral. They become idols throughout the world. Someone signs them to do a tour.
And you and me, we’ll never look at a beer bottle again without hearing “Billie Jean” tooting in our heads.
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