Soup Dragons – "I'm Free" (1990)

I’m free to do what I want

Any old time*

[* – Except when you’re in a bar in Pennsylvania.]

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I admit it – I like to have a beer or two after taking a bike ride.  

(You gotta problem with that?)

But recently it’s become more difficult for me to do that.  Wanna guess why that is?

If you answered, “Because the effing government can’t mind its own business,” YOU ARE CORRECT!

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I recently learned that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Dumbass* had signed an order in July that permits bars to sell alcohol for on-premises consumption only when a meal is purchased at the same time.  

[* – Not his real name, although it fits.]

(Just mine?  Or everyone else’s, too?)

Previously, bars only had to offer meals to their customers – the customers weren’t required to order meals in order to get a beer.

According to Pennsylvania law, a meal means “food prepared on the premises, sufficient to constitute breakfast, lunch or dinner; it shall not mean a snack, such as pretzels, popcorn, chips, or similar food.”

So what happens if you own a bar or a craft brewery that doesn’t have a kitchen?   You are S.O.L.  

After all, the law says meals must be “prepared on the premises.”  

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Earlier this week, I took a bike ride on the North Central Railroad Trail, which runs for 48-plus miles from the Baltimore suburbs to York, Pennsylvania.

I started my ride in Maryland and rode north into Pennsylvania, crossing the Mason-Dixon Line in the process.   (It’s always seemed odd to me that Maryland – a former slave state that’s on the south side of the Mason-Dixon line – is much “bluer” than Pennsylvania.  But it is.)

(So who yields to me?)

A few miles from the end of my ride, I stopped for a beer at a bar in a small town just north of the state line.

It wasn’t my first visit to that bar, which reminded me of some of the redneck beer joints I had hung out in while I was growing up in a small Missouri city.

I ordered a pint of Yuengling – the closest thing this bar had to decent beer.  As the bartender was drawing my pint, he asked me what I wanted to eat.  I didn’t want to eat anything, and told him so.

“The state doesn’t allow us to sell beer unless you order a meal,” he said, handing me a small styrofoam container of soup when he gave me my beer.  “That’ll be three dollars.”

“Three dollars for the beer and the soup?”  I asked.

“Three dollars for the beer,” he replied.  “The soup is free.”

“What kind of soup is it?” I asked.

“It’s bullsh*t soup,” he answered.

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What exactly did Governor Dumbass hope to accomplish by requiring the bar and me to engage in this ridiculous charade? 

I suppose that he was thinking that if everyone who went to a bar for a cold one (or two) had to spend additional money to order a meal as well, fewer people would go to bars – which presumably would slow down the spread of the virus.

Bullsh*t soup and beer

But when the bar can get around the governor’s order by giving away a little styrofoam cup of bullsh*t soup to everyone who comes in for a beer, what’s the point?

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The Soup Dragons were a Scottish band that named itself after a character on Clangers, a British TV show for kids.

The group’s cover of the Rolling Stones song, “I’m Free,” was a top ten hit in the UK in 1990.

It sounds nothing like the original – which I think is exactly what a cover should sound like.

Click here to listen to the Soup Dragons’ recording of “I’m Free.” 

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: