These are powerful hours

If you grew up here in the Midwest, where cheap beer is plentiful and there ain't shit else better to do anyway, chances are you've done the Hour of Power or joined the Century Club at some point or another.

I remember trying both of them out back in college just to see what they were like. Come to find out, I had been done both of them already, by virtue of the fact that sometimes I would drink seven beers in an hour, or 10 beers in 100 minutes. I used to get mad thirsty.

Not to sound like a crotchety old man (this was, after all, a few years ago), but back then you had to look at the damn clock. Which was of course boring as shit. A lot of times, I'd get 3/4 of the way done and forget what I was doing. Because I was drunk like that. Who knows the depths of depravity to which I would have sunk if I'd had an actual soundtrack.

The other day, I came across this site called These Are Powerful Hours, which really does provide soundtracks for people doing the Hour of Power. There looks to be about 16 of them so far, mainly divided by individual artist, as if they were mixtapes. A few of the ones I'm definitely gonna have to check out, for the sake of journalism, are by Prince, Ghostface Killah, and Steely Dan (for when I'm looking to get my old man drink on).

I checked out a few minutes of the one by Prince, and I thought it was pretty cool. There isn't a whole lot of emphasis placed on mixing, as if it was an actual DJ set or mixtape. Songs tend to end and begin all of a sudden, but that's probably by design. You need an abrupt transition to know when to take the next drink. One thing they have done is have each song start out at a point that's especially good for drinking, rather than just the very beginning. And of course, at least in this case, most of the songs are brilliant.

Checkit: These Are Powerful Hours