Let It Come DownIt's Raining Cocktails

Let us sing and drink to the gods of rain. The litany of heat and drought is offered up on the news every night, but no one is doing anything about the weather (except Al Gore,) so I am offering up liquid libations to the precipitation gods. Jazzman Mose Allison is in town performing at Blues Alley and who knows, maybe he’ll be singing “Let It Come Down,” and he should, because we certainly need the rain.

Willy The Shake Cocktail

Mose Allison has a song called "Let It Come Down," a title that was actually taken from a scene in Shakespeare's Macbeth where Banquo says "It will be rain tonight," and the First Murderer responds, "Then let the rain come down," only as with most Shakespeare, they aren't really talking about rain now, are they? I know. Let's have a drink:

Willy the Shake Cocktail

1 1/4 ounces Malibu Pineapple Infused Rum
1 ounce Red Bull
.75 ounces Shakka Concord Grape Eau de Vie Liqueur

Shake the rum and Red Bull and pour into a chilled martini glass. Sink the grape liqueur into the bottom and garnish with pineapple cubes...speared. Shake and spear. Get it? Knew you would. This drink has a vile look to it, perfect for misdeeds committed in the dark of night in a windblown, rain-lashed castle in Scotland.

On one of Mose Allison's albums, he quotes a story told to him by a prominent educator studying the culture of the Hopi, a desert-dwelling Native American tribe of the Southwest. He found it strange that almost all Hopi music was about water and asked one of the musicians why. He was told that the music was about water, because that was what they suffered from not having. Then the Hopi told the educator, "Most of your music is about love." Let it come down.(1)

Threatened by what you're going through
Regretting the things you didn't do
Relying on compensations you've found
Groaning beneath the weight of it
Bemoaning the fickle fate of it
Complying just to keep both feet on the ground.

That won't get you any place
Won't excuse you from the race
When you meet your destiny face to face
And no more wish I might
And if there's going to be rain tonight
Let it come down.

...or let's have a drink. How about the Let It Come Down Martini?

This drink has "stages" starting with a martini glass lined in vermouth to represent the rain.


Let It Come Down Martini

2 1/2 ounces Rain Vodka
Atomizers of Vermouth and Limoncello

Using a chilled martini glass, spray the inside of the glass with vermouth. In a martini pitcher add the vodka with ice and stir. Pour into martini glass and spray the surface of the glass with Limoncello to bring the promise of the sun, after the rain.

Let It Come Down Martini (2)

A friend of mine wrote "A Toast To the End of Summer" for this blog entry which I offer here:

Here's to the sweaty glass that drools condensation on my shirt
To the mosquito hoping to gift me with West Nile virus
To the hornet that provided an unrequested ear piercing at no charge
To the tiny ants who boldly established a new colony in the open Dorito bag
To the gentlemen of a certain age who wear shorts and sleeveless shirts in daylight
To the malevolent sun that bathes us in it's melanoma rays
And to the summer dumpster and it's heavenly scent of crab feast remains

Summer's Almost Gone Cocktail

The Doors had a song called "Summer's Almost Gone," on their Waiting For The Sun album, and I think it appropriate we close the end of August with a drink that reminds us of shortened daylight and sinking suns:

Summer's Almost Gone Cocktail

1 1/4 ounces Grey Goose Mandarin Vodka
2 ounces Orange Juice
Grenadine

Shake the vodka and orange juice and pour into a chilled glass. Sink the grenadine then stir slightly to give you a gradated shading of color, representative of the sinking sun, and garnish with half a lemon slice, also symbolizing the sinking sun.

Morning found us calmly unaware
Noon burned gold into our hair
At night, we swim the laughing sea
When summer's gone where will we be ~~ The Doors

Oh yeah...no more flop sweat:

"Katrina. Storm of a lifetime."

(1) This song comes from a 1968 album of Mose Allison's called I've Been Doing Some Thinking. He delivers the words in a deadly slow pace over piano chords so wistful and weary that you might feel he was trying to push the piano uphill.

(2) I photographed this drink two ways. With the strainer over the glass (inappropriate) and over the glass pitcher (which wasn't as photogenic, but proper.)