This song, "Down in the Cellars" is a beautiful short chisled diamond of a tune at only 3:12...but it shimmers with the luminosity of wisdom, age, and nostalgia...and it's all about wine (or so it seems)...a love poem to the Fruit of the Vine by vinophile Maestro Al!
This is the third track on Al's 2000 album DOWN IN THE CELLAR, his 14th studio release. It was one of my first albums to be purchased via Amazon.com and my trusty charge card :) I only first got inter-net in the late Fall of 1999 (I'm late/retarded that way). Of all of Al's later discs this may be his most beautiful and melodic record. The guitaring of Laurence Juber is sublime.
I would love to visit Al's wine collection and drink a nice Shiraz with my hero.
Roads to Moscow is my all time favorite Al song. That was the one I was trying to remember the other day. The line "Tigers burning in the night" refering to the Tiger Tanks just puts me right there on the battlefield. It is such a sad song - here this Joe Normal guy fights for his country all through the summers and winters just wanting to go home. Then the war is over and when at last he can go home - Joe the Butcher won't let him. He won't ever see his home again, not because of the enemy, but because of his own cruel government. Of course the best line of all Al Stewart songs is found in The Year of the Cat "like Peter Lorrie." I had a chance to see Al in a smal venure in San Juan Capistrano a few years ago and didn't go because I had no one to go with me. What a bad decision that was.
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