My wife and I celebrated our eighth anniversary recently; time is flying by.  For the celebration, my wife surprised me with some tickets to see Buddy Guy and B.B. King.  It was a late night before work the next day, but I had fun.  When we got to the Hollywood Bowl, we saw the eight dollar Heineken’s and a myriad of other over priced and under-flavored beers. Fortunately, we were allowed to bring in some brew of our own.  Believe me when I tell you how nice it is that we were drinking some Firestone-Walker Double Barrel Ale.  Nothing fits the blues better than a nice beer (well…maybe if we had some BBQ it would have spot on).

As we sat listening, sipping, and enjoying, B.B. King was playing, and he said something that got me thinking about how widely cheap beer still permeates our culture.  First of all, having seen the beers that were stocked, I was already considering the fact that bad beer is still a massive part of the way things are.  However, B.B. really got me pondering. He talked about the blues and feeling good, which is stock material for a blues singer.  Then he mentioned something about drinking Bud Light.  When he said it, I thought about how great a job they’ve done to dominate the beer world.  Also, I thought about how uncritical the average person is about beer.

To be fair, I have blind spots of uncritical acceptance, but I try to keep learning along the way.  I just found it to be interesting that an artist who is known for being one of the all time best blues players—a connoisseur of the blues, if you will—was not a consumer of other great goods.

Not that I’m being critical of the King in particular.  In fact, I hold him in the highest regard.  I’m just glad that he’s more critical of blues than beer.  Of course, his job is to bring the blues.  Maybe ours is to bring the brews.