'Cocktail Pop' Parties Pair Booze With Kurt Cobain Songs (VIDEO)

The music of Kurt Cobain and Adam Yauch has inspired some San Diego mixologists to create cocktails designed to be paired with their music.
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It's nothing new to pair cocktails with food, but what about music?

Lots of people drink while listening to music but a group of San Diego mixologists are starting a new series of drink parties called "Cocktail Pop" where new cocktails are crafted to blend and comment on classic songs and albums.

The inaugural event took place May 16 at Burlap, a San Diego restaurant owned by former Top Chef finalist Brian Malarkey and will feature a four-course meal with each course inspired by MCA and the Beastie Boys, e.g., the "No Sleep Till Brooklyn" pizza, and specially-themed cocktails such as a concoction called "The Commemorative MCA Beastie Bloody" that contained a six-chili infusion, a house-made bloody mary mix and cucumber that is inspired by this Yauch verse: "Well I'm cool as a cucumber in a bowl of hot sauce, you've got the rhyme and reason but got no cause."

People have long guzzled booze while listening to music, but Ian Ward of the Snake Oil Cocktail Company, the organization doing the "Yauch-tails," is hoping to jumpstart a new craze of pairing certain types of alcohol with music.

"We're actually doing a series of different cocktail nights inspired by different classic albums, or what we perceive to be albums that made a huge difference in our lives," Ward told The Huffington Post.

Along with the MCA tippling tribute, Ward is planning a May 23 event where every drink served will be paired to a particular song from Nirvana's groundbreaking 1991 album "Nevermind."

"All of the drinks are based on a particular song so you can only have that drink while that song is playing," Ward said. "Every time the song changes, the drink changes, but there are elements to each cocktail that go on to the next."

To be fair, Nirvana songs are pretty short so to prevent aging punk rockers-turned-craft cocktail buffs from chugging down eight or nine drinks in less than an hour, disc jockey Bobby Calabrese plans to spread out the grunge by pairing each Nirvana cut with a similarly-tempoed ditty from one of Kurt Cobain's influences.

"We have the Stooges, Pixies, Shonen Knife, Leadbelly," Calabrese said. "Cobain was a true music lover, not into just punk and rock."

It takes a lot of creativity to make drinks that reflect the qualities of a particular song and Ward admitted it was a challenge to make a cocktail after Nirvana's biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the title of which was inspired by a deodorant.

"The only flavor of Teen Spirit left on the market is strawberry so strawberries played an influence into that," Ward said.

That drink combines Hendricks gin with strawberry Jam and strawberry bitters and Ward said the idea was to keep the drink light because it's the first cocktail and "to remind us of the old Teen Spirit ads."

Ward and crew are also planning a tippling tribute to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon" album in August, but while that album has lasted nearly 40 years, he doesn't see the drinks he's devising for these classic albums to become classics themselves.

"I think these drinks have a place exactly where they are," Ward said. "So hopefully not. I think the 'Come As They Are' drink should stay with 'Come As You Are.'"

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