In my time covering booze for the NY Post, some arguably notable Single Malts have been overlooked due to space constraints (owing to the financial necessity of other schmucks writing about, say, Lady Gaga or season XXIV of Survivor or the new, incredible film version of "Space 1999" and getting all the do-re-mi I should, by all rights, be banking). Here are some observations on these neglected "expressions" (as the booze writers so irksomely put it) of the distiller's art.

Dunbanginerr (25 dollars for a half-n-half, plus room)
Nose: A vague scent of Coney Island Whitefish with a swirl of American Spirit smoke
Color: Reddish, slightly awkward, almost poignant
Taste: Loathsomely urgent with quick finish and pangs of bitter regret

Glencampbell (110 dollars for two with meal included and casino credits) Nose: Reconstructed with lingering traces of Peruvian flake
Color: Deceptively pale, ruddy over time
Taste: Eager and clean, developing complexity, ultimately familiar

Balgaggin (Steeper than expected)
Nose: Leather and PVC
Color: Deep black with silvery studs
Taste: Bloodclot rich with accumulating droolpool slosh and abrupt, safeword finish)

Bluntcudgel (Whatever you got in your fuckin' wallet)
Nose: Pug... impending "uh oh" sorta twitchy ozone crackle
Color: Shadowy, with glints of menace
Taste: Sneaks up on you, then: wham!

Doontknockit (A mere bag o' shells; why worry)
Nose: Fresh and guileless, unambiguous
Color: Blue skies, smiling at me
Taste: Very little to speak of

Lochdanloaded (2 dollar dreams sold out for a lousy dime)
Nose: Gunpowder and oil followed by overwhelming testosterone tang
Color: Noir
Taste: Like the chewed-up end of a raw deal with an ironic finish

Knockanbackaphyoo (Vinny's got this round)
Nose: Irrelevant
Color: Ditto
Taste: Quick heat with a beer chaser, rising nausea

Leapphroig (A nickel, a nickel, shiny and new)
Nose: Bazooka gum with curiously vivid moments of ecstatic joy, passing rapidly
Color: A rainbow array of happy possibilities, glimpsed backwards though a haze of crushing reality
Taste: Nostalgic with notes of hopeless yearning, long sigh of a finish

RECLAMATION PROJECT PART TWO: WILLOUGHBY LYRICS

See entry below for explanation. (These lyrics and those in the previous entry are copyright Mike "Sport" Murphy)

IT'S DEFINITELY SUNDAY
Feel like little Moses in the rushes - got a runny nose and I wanna scream.
Feel like little Moses in the rushes - got a runny nose and I wanna scream.
Who's gonna find me, now that I'm all on my own?
Who's gonna find me?
I feel like little Joseph in the deep hole - someone beat me up in my dreams.
I feel like little Joseph in the deep hole - someone beat me up in my dreams.
Dreaming is a hard thing, when you gotta wake up this-a- way.
Dreaming is a hard thing when you're utterl'ly nowhere... particularly sleazy...
it's definitely Sunday.
Jesus musta been there at the party - someone saved the best stuff for last.
Jesus musta been there at the party - someone saved the best stuff for last.
Change it back to water! I've never been so thirsty in my life!
Change it back to water!
I'd do a damn Novena if this agita would leave me... it's definitely Sunday.
Red-eyed in the Red Roof, apres-jag.
Guess I'll stick this Gideon in my gigbag.
Where the hell did last night go? My new friends turned into dead soldiers.
Run to the Chic Sale to throw a map, and then it's check-out time.
I'm in the fiery furnace and I'm burning... they didn't send an angel and I'm toast.
I'm in the fiery furnace and I'm burning... they didn't send an angel and I'm toast. Somebody save me!
Please, somebody, pull me out of here!
Somebody save me!
I'll vow to celibacy - & never look at whiskey! It's definitely Sunday.

THE DILETTANTE BALL
It's a dilettante ball. It's a dilettante ball.
A few bucks from now I'll be rockin' cause I'm goin' down to the Freemasons' hall
to check out the dilettante ball.
They got an excellent band. A wailingly excellent band!
I took a piss with the bass player one time - he let me shake his hand.
I said: "You're in a excellent band."
Ooh - now they're doin' the heap!
Do you know how to do the heap?
What you do is you get in a big sweaty pile, and then you all fall asleep.
Yeah! Now you're doin' the heap!
I got on my class action suit & I ain't gonna settle for "Scram!"
Gonna hang the belle-o-the-ball up like a big pink pinata
and whack 'er until she gives with the goodies!
Tonight she'll know I'm a mighty, mighty man... d'moppit d'moppit!
This is all I desire. All I could ever desire.
All we need now is some crazy ex-boyfriend to light the whole joint on fire.
This is all I desire.
'Twas a dilettante ball. Big ol' dilettante ball.
When you find my remains, just say: "Yup, here's another one..."
another one who gave his all to the dilettante ball. vout.

THE NIGHT SURROUNDS
Kettles will be whistling to proclaim, with shrill insistence, an impending cup of Sanka.
Someone will be hearing (and, presumably, enjoying) something written by Paul Anka.
Dogs will be forsaken and taken to the pound
on the day they lay your body in the ground.
A rock band will be praying for that single A&R guy who appreciates true genius. Someone in love will croon to someone who's already leaving:
"I hope nothing comes between us."
Flags the wide world over will fly high atop the mast when that day comes to pass. Smirking here inside our nervous breakdown - shaking while the Lucky Planet sleeps.
The night retreats... I swear it does... it can't stay dark for keeps.
So let's go out and act as if it's Saturday - I cannot bear to wait 'til one arrives.
The night retreats, the night returns. The night surrounds our lives.
Arguments will rage, between committed individuals, about substantial issues.
In a thousand teenage bedrooms, human passion will erupt
into a thousand Kleenex tissues.
Bats will keep careening 'round their echoes in their caves
on the day they lower you into your grave.
Come on with me, we'll wander to a quiet place -
an antidote to all this empty noise we've thrown up in our frenzy to deny each other's voice.
And, just for fun, we'll sing a little symphony -
and, just for once, not care if it survives.
The night retreats, the night returns.
The night surrounds our lives.

CARRY ME TO THE PIANO
Now, I'm counting on your kindness... all my bones are made of glass.
Carry me to the piano, and I will try to play a song that makes the sorrow pass.
Now, I always have imagined that I'd soar before I die.
Carry me to the piano. I'll fill the air with silver stars, or shatter as I try.
Well Iím awkward and embarrassed.
Iím a giggling grotesque.
I feel an end beginning... tossing, turning in my thinning skin.
Carry me! Carry me!
Now I'm homesick for my silence this dismal, long-awaited day.
Carry me from this piano!
Away, away, away, away.
Away, away, away!

WHEN I RAIN
When I rain, I'm gonna rain on something weak...
some drab Missouri shack that's bound to leak.
I'm gonna ruin someone's day.
I'm gonna make somebody pray that I'll dry up & blow away and rain no more.
And when I rain, I'm gonna pour.
I've been gathering my anger all these years - saving all this thunder, all these tears.
And it's a petty little mess, and I'll be stooping to impress,
when I wring out all of my distress one afternoon -
when I rain.
& I'm raining soon.
Gonna make sure I don't fill no reservoir or chance to slake some thirsty garden flower. They won't remember what I did.
So, when I put in my sorry bid, I'm gonna find some little kid out selling lemonade -
and then I'll rain on his parade.

AVA
Here comes Ava, swimming slowly.
Tiny bonfires 'round her body.
And she's smiling something holy!
Smiling at me... I say "Ave".
I move through a pinched & stricken world.
Oh! But your beauty, girl!
If I never find another moment's peace, at least I'll have seen Heaven.
There are cold spots in the bright lake where there were murders on early Sundays.
Ava shivers... keeps on swimming toward the shoreline.
Oh! The water is serene... it must remember everything.
And the water, it shines with a rapture now, 'cause it's holding beautiful Ava.
Up the bank strides perfect Ava... and, for a moment, everything matters.
It's her soft lips, and her heartbeat, and the sundown.
Bring the sundown!
Bring the Sun down.

THE MOON STARES DOWN
He thinks he's smelling violets - he thinks he's hearing chimes.
She moves in phosphorescent trails, and up them trails he climbs.
The headstones murmur sonnets and the shadows say "amen"...
friends old and wise who know that nights like this won't come again.
The moon stares down on them.
All his stupid "spooky" jokes are silenced by her smile.
The dreaded touch of wonder, and they stand like that a while.
The moon stares down!
The moon bears down!
The moon wears
down their... ( interlude-pan skyward)
...6 feet above some sainted stranger mouldering in the ground -
a feast of an epiphany, and paradise is found.
Aah!

SING ME TO SLEEP
Green with age and envy, here we are at last.
Nothing to distract us from the ever-changing past.
I'll sing you My True Story... it's bound to make you weep.
I'll sing what I remember, then you must sing me to sleep.
Lean low over me, beautiful angel. All of your tears fall warm upon my cheek.
Cry, cry, cry our blues away, away.
Angel, come sing me to sleep.
All my little life I yearned for something "greater"... even if it meant a greater kind of grief.
I said it and I meant it... I'm tired but contented.
Angel! Hurry! Sing me to sleep!
Pull away these shadows so that I can watch your face shine its fullest light throughout this sick and secret place.
Raise your golden voice again and I'm a happy man.
Sometimes the words are hard to catch, but sing.
I'll understand.

go 'bout your bizness
Well, the rain is come and the night ain't young
and the day's long gone with the carnival
where the laughin' and the singin' and the noise went on -
where the feastin' and the fightin' was.
And your old crowd's crowdin' the theatre now and they're all shoutin' "fire" in unison.
Christ! How they amuse themselves! They're never gonna miss you.
Go 'bout your bizness,
go on home... there's nothin' here to see no more.
Look out! There's bandits in them there blinds
and they're lads unmoved by history... and they're louts, unamused by mythology.
I can hear the cops already:
"Go 'bout your bizness! Go on home! There's nothin' here to see no more!"

KERRY DANCES
Don't mind what anybody's saying. The dogs are out here playing,
with God and Stanshall smiling down.
Don't mind those tombs you've half-erected from stacks of the collected works of Everyone-but-you.
Someday, our eyes will see the glory that we've only glimpsed, limping through this purgatory.
Hold on tight to these romances
days of Kerry dances; skies of Parrish blue.
Round here, no one understands us ...but look at what they're like!
Hallelujia! Strike the band up!
We'll grow old as two young lovers - here to see each other safely to our home.
Home!

A WRETCH LIKE ME
Smug as any specialist, blithely cruel as any child.
Vain as any atheist devout in all his high denials.
Thank you for the Four Seasons, God. Thank you for
the Beach Boys too.Thank you for my life, dear God
...and on a final note:
"AAH-OOOH!"

RECLAMATION PROJECT PART ONE: MAGIC BEANS LYRICS

I used to have a website, administered by a young fellow named Jared thru his aol account. It covered the Willoughby / Magic Beans era of somewhat high hopes for my, uh, career in music. It was abandoned along with that career, but sat there for years. Now that the aol homepages have been deep-sixed, all the content is perdu. So I used the "wayback machine" to try and retrieve some of it. Most of it's gone and no loss, but I did find the lyrics to both of those albums as well as an essay on Charles Ives. So I'll post them here.

TREAT ME LIKE AN ARTIST!
Treat me like an artist! Bend me over something! Put it to me bluntly!
I'm so glad you're handling me! I ain't misanthropic, but I must be misan-something!
Treat me like an artist! I know that I deserve it!
See, the doctor slapped my ass and said "MacBeth", and I've been skittish ever since; awaiting thy disdain with bated breath! Born to wince.
I'm way down... way, way down. Treat me like an artist.
All I am's a failure, but you can make it better: treat me like an artist! An artist got to suffer.
Treat me like an artist! Money is no object! Why dontcha wear that Sammy Glick suit... it's better when you do that.
I hate it when the clock sez "time to quit", until you give me your card.
I take it home and stare at it... real hard. I'm way down... (etc)
There must've been a trauma, something in me I'm ascared-a, 'cause I can't get off unless you tell me where to when you treat me like an artist. Artist. ARTIST!

BLACK RIVER FALLS.
The broken boughs float down the stream.
We're in a kind of nowhere now... some kind of in-between.
The great commotion that left this calm has come and snapped some of the tension I've been strung out on.
Severe and still. I'm a crocodile.
Oh river, oh river, can't you move more slow, river? For a little while...
The lines are down. A welcome spell.
Shook loose from all the shapes we take for those who know us well.
I figure you for 45. There's shadows 'round your small talk; that just proves you've been alive.
Such lonesome light... ah, such a smile!
Oh river, oh river, can't you move more slow, river, for a little while?
It's getting late, but that's okay. My hurricane-eye neighbor, thanks for leading me away, with as strong a touch as I could take, this strange and temporary day

HOME IS FAR AWAY.
Brooklyn Bridge is burning down behind me, the flames conniving with the harbor winds. There's no place too safe for fear to find me... maybe that's where bravery begins.
Sad remembered moments come a-nagging. The tiny kind that rub you raw with shame. No-one ever sees the load you're dragging, just the fishhooks tangled in your name.
Home is far away... my home is far away. But I can live with anything if I know that I'll make it there someday.
What pretty nonsense sister used to sing me! I can still hear her Reuben-and-Rachel-ing in my mind. Sister, sister, what a fine world this would be if pretty nonsense was the only kind. Home is far away...
I had a dream the other night, when everything was still. I thought I saw Susannah comin' down the hill. The buckwheat cake was in her mouth, the teardrop in her eye. Sez I, "I'm coming from the South... Susannah don't you cry!"
Oh! Susannah! Don't you cry for me!
I can live with anything.

BY THE LIGHT.
There ain't no city, just a haunted fog-drift outside these kind old walls.
The old folks are howling like cats on a fence - the Auld Lang Syne - a mile down the hall.
Here we are. Here we are: blankets and pillows and hours and hours. Turn the Blessed Virgin, so there won't be any eyes watching us.
Beautiful cousin, while I feel your heartbeat I don't believe the dark.
But here comes the morning; I hear the cops chasing glue-boys off the benches by the park.
Off we go. Off we go: a New Year, then others... and funerals... and lovers...
oh, Daphne, nothing ever quite works out.

I'M BOUND.
It ain't on the lines or between the lines... it ain't on the page at all... It just ain't there.
All the scribbles wriggle off the margin and drift away like motes across the air.
And I'm bound, and I been so long. And I'm bound somewhere I ain't always wrong. And I'm bound. Been all my days. I been bound down, waiting to get raised.
You see them paper leaves Scotch-taped up upon the old school's tall old window panes? Well, under all the flop sweat, debts and desperate bets, it's a wonder what remains.
And I'm bound, and I 'm standing still, and it's no way to get there, but I will. And I'm bound, and I'm out the door. There's a whole world I'm dying to ignore.
Here it comes again... here it comes again... I know the drill. I 've heard the speech. But I'm not the type you'll ever reach. Just another giant on the beach.

MY NEMESIS.
Yodel-ay-hee-hoo! Ted Bessell. Ted Bessell. Yodel-ay- heee!

NOTHING IN WONDERING.
Everything's ready to give - this life we've been trying to live - the rain doesn't fall, it just weighs down the sky. Nothing in wondering why.
Your smile is blessed to see, but I think it's wasted on me. It ain't getting through, it's just making me blue. Nothing in wondering why.
Darling, darling, sorry things have turned out this way.
Darling, darling, maybe everything'll be okay, maybe everything'll be okay, maybe, maybe, everything will be. Okay?
I tried to be something to you. Whatever it was, it was true.
The truth is, we mean well, but we're not that strong.
We're making it up as we go, right or wrong.
Hooray for the truth, but sometimes I just long for the lie. Nothing in wondering why.

LESLIE'S COMING OVER.
Need a splash of daylight on these silent-movie-eyes.
Find that affa koimen 'fore it gets all fossilized.
Les is more than patient, grinning up the inspiration! Salubrious as Gingko Biloba!
Recall how the Lord told Laz'rus: "Dead man,get off that mattress! Fold it back into a sofa! Leslie's coming over!"
Leslie is a silverjet emitting showers of sparks.
Leslie is a rave review with no smart-ass remarks.
Willoughby birds singing in the trees. You wait up nights for days like these, and I just wanna bossa-nova!
Leslie's coming over! Leslie's coming over...

SAINT IVES.
The too-late blues are on again. A trial by fire extinguisher.
A lot has come and gone again, and days are all a blur.
So come on, let's ride upside the river, get some fresh air in our lives.
Maybe "something" will come deliver, as we are going to St Ives.
And tell that august orchestra: play Winter off and out of town!
'Til every note's a nebula, and God is all around.
And we'll let our lonesome sorrows go and float up through the skies, for a moment of Thanksgiving above the mountains at St Ives.
Bring the old to ring the new, along the reeling ribbon home.
Bring promises and prayers to move us through sweet all-unknown.
Yeah, and you're my friend, but that doesn't say it... can't be verbalized.
It's music, so let's just play it.
A smile to go the long road rolling home from old St Ives.

FADO, FADO.
Will you whisper, if you can, some way to say you hear me?
A breeze... a beam of light or something... telling me that you're near me.
Remember when we made that bet to dance wherever we would go?
We kept it up 2 days and nights. 2 days and 2 nights so long, long ago.
Go find your demon, and ask why we had to outlive you.
I'll find my own and I'll beg it to shut up and let me forgive you.
Once I knew there was a Heaven; Sometimes I still hope so.
I think about us all together, just like we were fado, fado.
I know why I haven't joined you. It ain't some "sense of duty" ...I just want to stay and watch the years perfect her beauty.
Wish that you were around to meet her; you'd have hit it off, I know.
She's helping me to find the dreams you taught me to dream so long, long ago.

THE SMALL PLANETS.
All right, I'll split... I'm gittin' out of here.
Sorry I wasted my time on your punk planet.
What a dump.
What a weak-ass atmosphere... nix on this nickel-and-dime spaldeen o' granite.
I can walk into any book. Guess that's what I'll do. Come on! Come on!
Away out here, they got no names: each man's an asteroid, dodging the comets alone, and further out there. Further. Out there.

CACTUS BOY.
Go on and mingle among 'em a little bit, go on, child.
What's that quizzical sniffle they greet you with? What's that, child?
That's just the way they know their own... it's a very special smell.
When you catch a whiff of it, run like hell.
A group's a gang's a mob's an army: itching to deploy.
"Noli Me Tangere." You tell 'em,
Cactus Boy.
There's a whole buncha nothing a-crawling through the world, child.
When it eyeballs on Something, it wants to make it die.
One's a soul, and two's a love song. Yonder come a hoi polloi...
Wish 'em all out into the cornfield, Cactus Boy. Everybody!

PULLING OUT OF RACHEL.
Already I'm remembering the light in here, her thighs, these sheets... already they're among the unforgettable defeats.
I'm done with all endurance for this drip-drip-dripping daily drain; all the sickly seconds tick-tick-ticking like Zapruder frames.
Yeah, you try the things you try. We tried "a couple" - Christ knows why. 'Cause it's the same Hell, different cell. I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.
The way I feel right now, I believe this hatred's gonna up and go.
Away somewhere, just like our tiny piece of love did, long ago.
And this holy ghost of our first urge is just a little binge before the purge, and it's a deep sigh. Ai yi yi.
Goodbye... I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.
Past the last sweet shudder, humid beings hanging out to dry.
The Marlboro lights, the straggler moonbeams wander from our eyes.
Commence the screw-you-over-ture. The rest is silence, that's for sure, and it's no tears. Come on, years! Three cheers: I'm pulling out of Rachel for the last time.

MORE GOD.
Maybe I'm a holy fool? I figure I'm the ordinary kind.
With a grudge against the limits of my ordinary mind... poor slob.
And it's ripe for ridicule, here among these gobshites and sleeveens,
here where everything's just what it is, and nothing's what it means.
More God. More God. More God. More God. Cause you're all that I want anymore.
I'll say a prayer - it couldn't hurt - a prayer that time is kinder than it seems;
that something brighter shines behind all our unlucky dreams.
More God. More God. More God. More God. And you're all that I want anymore.

THE WEEPING ICON.
Getcher slickest Sunday duds on - let's go see the weeping icon!
Been held over at St John's: the one and only weeping icon!
It ain't some weird tortilla... it ain't some ratty shroud.
Our own parish has the icon! Jesus Christ, I'm proud!
You'd have to be a fuckin' moron not to love the weeping icon.
Hold it while I get my Nikon: say "cheese" to the weeping icon!
Honk if you're consumed with reverence, and don't let no-one take my place in line. Wouldja look at that there icon... man, oh man, it's fine!
(babada arrangement of "Sheep May Safely Graze" by J.S. Bach)
Someone musta peeled an onion! Only kiddin'... 'scuse me, icon.
More tears than a telethon... well, that's why it's called the "weeping" icon!
It useta be just some stoopid picture, but now it's on the news!
God gave us this weeping icon. That'll show them Jews!

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT.
What's come of all of the urgent decisions? Looks like the whole range from "oh well" to "so what."
Some kinda trade for your ramshackle visions... maybe you remember those ones, maybe not.
Glad that we had all that altar-boy clowning, and blowing "money-stealers" 'cross the vacant lot. 'Cause now your laugh's the last bubble up from a drowning.
Maybe I'm all wrong about it, maybe not.
I'll leave this right here, and I hope you find it. It ain't all you want, but it's what I've got.
I made it with my own hands and I signed it. Maybe that means something to you. Maybe?
Maybe not.

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO THINK? (ultra-secret mega-bonus track.)
The verdict's been reversed on Norman Rockwell's work: seems he was an artist, not a sentimental jerk. I just got used to sneering, now I gotta learn to wink. God damn it, what amI supposed to think?
See the adscape shining! Hear the chirp of mobile phones! I feel so shut-incidal, just like Bee Gees' MisterJones. I try to read the papers, but they keep using cheaper ink, and when I'm done my hands are filthy! What am I... supposed to think?