Wrapper: Dominican
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican, Nicaraguan
Size: 6 x 50 Toro
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $17.00

OK. This is going to be fun.
Cigars International advises you, below, to grab some before they are all gone.
As they have been on the market for nearly two years and only 1000 five count boxes were released…and that they’re still available tells you what?
That’s right…they are dog rockets. Expensive dog rockets which means chrome was added.
Yet, I found several reviews by respected, dignified, and knowledgeable reviewers who rated this cigar through a gamut of different scores. Some really liked it and others, not so much. And at $17 a stick ($85 for the 5-count box), well…a BJ, a ripe cantaloupe half, coconut oil, and a trip to Disneyland should accompany each purchase.
I have had my sticks for several months. Plus, they have the 2 years in the box…would mean that this cigar is rarin’ to go. Ready to please. Aiding and abetting. Signaling the 7th Cavalry to charge. Willing to change your colostomy bag. And will be your wingman at a LGBTQBINGOISHISNAME-O club in West L.A.

So, are these high-priced Nat Sherman sticks dog rockets? Let us explore, dissect, and do an autopsy on this fine-looking cigar.
No skulls. Good sign.

BACKGROUND:
Production: 5,000 boxes of five cigars each.
Released: July 2019
From Cigars International:
“Nat Sherman cigars have a rich history, and the quality of the brand has always been primo. The Timeless line of cigars has seen many reinventions to the brand. From the Prestige to the Sterling and everything in between, Nat Sherman has chased boundaries with Timeless.

“This time around, Nat Sherman has created a masterpiece presented in a package of 5 premium cigars sized in a 6″x50 vitola. Using a filler blend combining Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos, a Dominican binder and a wrapper leaf grown in the Dominican Republic, still somewhat rare in the cigar industry, Nat has produced a medium to full-bodied profile filled with notes of leather, cinnamon, almonds and white pepper that engulf the senses from start to finish. Nat Sherman Timeless Limited Edition 2019 is not going to be around long. Grab yours while you can.”

APPEARANCE:
Excuse the orange in my photos. Tried a new photographic light.

For a $17 cigar, it ain’t so pretty. Big, long veins run the gamut of the cigar’s length. Small, unseemly veins run amok. Seams are pretty good, but this is far from a beautiful cigar. You can buy a Casdagli cigar for the same price and the wrapper is flawless. A sight to behold. And what the hell is going on with the cap? I picked the best of the 4 I have left. They are off kilter and asymmetrical. Did they use professional rollers or street vendors?

The cigar is not evenly filled. I feel soft and hard spots everywhere. It’s like the Sherman company was disappointed with the presentation and said, “I know. Let’s charge $17 per cigar and call it a day. Who cares if it looks like shit. It tastes great!!”

SMELL THE GLOVE:
Big notes of chocolate, floral, malt, cedar, and barnyard. Smaller notes of caramel, salted nuts, a hint of lemon citrus, and baking spices.
The draw is clean, so I don’t need my PerfecDraw draw adjustment tool for this review.
The cold draw presents flavors of barnyard, hay, espresso, black pepper, a little chocolate and some creaminess.

FIRST THIRD:
The draw is tighter than I thought, so I use my PerfecDraw to level the playing field.
Much better.

The cigar starts with some mild flavors of tobacco, black pepper, hay, creaminess, malt, and cedar. Wow.

And immediately, I get a run at the foot. Fucking hell.

And then it turns into a day-old tampon (Don’t ask). No shit. It tastes funky.

It now tastes like a popsicle stick, dried hay, fried ferret pancreas, green bologna, and your grandma’s basement. Yuck!

It didn’t wait even two minutes before this blend descended into hell. And yet the limited-edition cigar is still available on the market two years after release. How could that be?

Not kidding, but this cigar tastes like a $2 liquor store cigar. Not a lick of it showing that it’s a premium cigar. How the fuck did the Nat Sherman people have the gall to shove this blend up the arses of its customer base without being struck by lightning?

Fortunately, it is burning quickly. What a relief.

The reviews I took a gander at were written a year ago or longer. This means that the cigar is not aging with grace.

I truly despise mustiness in a cigar. No excuses. I reviewed a $10 HVC blend yesterday and the HVC makes this turd seem like I’m smoking a Q-Tip.
Absolutely no sense of this becoming a good cigar. I am flummoxed. Did this cigar ever taste good? Who at Nat Sherman gave the go ahead? Off with their head.

I’m going to give it a chance. I’m not stopping now. I have a bushel full of adjectives just waiting.

Fucking Fleetwood Mac again.

A touch of nuttiness emerges from the morass. It gives renewed hope that I can finish the cigar without executing myself. Ride the lightnin’ boy.
Ever sit in a real electric chair? Pretty creepy.

The mustiness might actually be dissipating. Alert the media. What?
Strength is mild. The P.R. says it’s medium/full. How the Regis Philbin is it going to get to medium at this point?

I figured it out. Nat Sherman made a bunch of joke cigars that explode and had planned to give them away at some big party and then no one RSVP’d. So, they realigned their thought process and figured it would be a great idea to foist this rotten, dried sparrow body on their customers.

Sometimes I really wonder about cigar manufacturers and how the fuck they think. Did they even consider word of mouth might destroy sales? Apparently not.

Ooh, ooh…a bit of creaminess appears. The black pepper shows up. Big fucking deal.

Did you ever wonder why certain manufacturers hate me? Me neither.

I do believe they spent more on the triple cigar bands than they did on the quality of the tobacco. They brag that hardly anyone has ever used a wrapper made of Dominican tobacco. Not so fast, boys. It’s like bragging that you came within a foot of the toilet before you shit your pants.

The crappy seams are doing their best to stay in place, but it is beginning to unravel near the foot…ha-ha. The hits keep on comin’.

No really. This cigar design was meant to turn heads…are you kidding me…unless the intention was to turn you into Linda Blair. If I see avocado coming from the foot, I’m outta’ here.

SECOND THIRD:
Oh boy. More whatever this cigar is called….”Handcuffed in a Turkish Jail Without KY.”

I think I will shove this cigar up my cat’s ass to see if that helps. Don’t report me to PETA. I would only shove the cap end up poor Sammy’s arse. Never the burning end. Whew.
Hmmm…it helps. But after that, Sammy is now reclining on the bed and smoking a cigarette.

OK. Flavors. You got any? Because I don’t taste any.

Naturally, the music I have playing on Pandora sucks this morning. I swear the music is synced to the quality of the cigars I review.

Strength remains mild. This cigar was not meant to get better with age. It probably tasted tits when it was right off the assembly line. But as soon as it was shoved into its cellophane sarcophagus, it went into a coma…never to wake up.

The burn run is contained but the flapping of the wrapper makes me stand up and sing our national anthem.

Every now and then, I report that this is the worst cigar I’ve smoked. And then, I get to say it again, and again, and again. But at least this one is expensive. It has that going for it.

I believe the cigar is giving me a headache. Could be the Polonium the Shermans used to smuggle it to the Iranians. My right temple is beginning to glow a faint green.

My first sip of water…the water tastes so good as it washes away any hint of this cigar.

I might as well be smoking a matchbook. This blend has zero redeeming features. I can’t believe the cigar actually got a couple decent reviews. Can the cigar be that different? Of course, the Iranians could have gotten to the reviewers and told them they know where they live. Just kidding, relax boys.

My kid, her husband, the two little boys, the husband’s parents, and some friends all drove down to Nashville overnight. Probably still an hour or two away. Staying in a rental home. These plans were made 7 months ago. We were afraid. We didn’t want to spend the dough and find out that only zombies were piloting the planes. And that Nashville might be on lockdown.

We could have driven but you ever see what seventy-something old folks look like after a 10-hour straight drive? It’s not pretty. But they have nice weather and I’m sure will have a good time. Charlotte and I will be using our free time not babysitting by having hot monkey sex day and night. Just kidding. I’m still waiting on my birthday sex.

The only good thing I can say about this cigar is that it hasn’t had that terrible musty taste in a while. So, it is like smoking a two dollar 5 Vegas Connie…with my apologies to the 5 Vegas.

LAST THIRD:
Ever get your nose stuck in your girlfriend’s butt? And she starts slapping you on the top of your head to remove it? Me neither.

Or even better…back in the day when women had pubic hair the size of the Brazilian rain forest and the braces on my teeth became festooned with loose hairs. I looked like I had just eaten a wild hare…so to speak.

I can’t believe this…but the cigar is getting worse with a really funky Swiffer detritus flavor. I do believe I can taste dust from 1986.
The burn is running again. Sigh.

Smoking a bullshit cigar in the prime part of the day ruins my mood, my appetite, and my desire for ever tasting food again. I think I will go Buddhist Monk later today. Although, the weather is going to be nice. So, maybe I’ll just light my middle finger instead.

Ever get a wart on your winkie? I did back in the late 80’s. They must remove them. When my doc told me that, I fainted. So, in the office, he grabbed all his tools including a laser tag gun and proceeded to remove it. But he couldn’t start right away as he couldn’t find his eyeglasses. They were sitting on his forehead. I told him where they were, and he laughed. I nearly passed out from fear. My schmekel was in a cast for 6 weeks. All my friends signed it. The sling was kind of a pain in the ass though.

I do believe you can stick a fork in me. Don’t believe I will ever try another Nat Sherman cigar again after this balderdash experience.
Plenty of five count boxes still online. If you have a numbskull relative that smokes, the perfect gift.

RATING: You’re kidding me, right? OK. Same price as the cigar: 17

And now for something completely different:
Skip Behind the Wheel…

I had just passed the audition. A band was being formed around the famed violinist, Darryl Way. On drums was Stewart Copeland. On guitar was Mick Jacques. Our singer was an American named Butch Hatcher. And me, on bass.

We called ourselves Stark Naked & The Car Thieves. A band in the Berkeley area had that name and since Stewart had gone to school there, he remembered that name. So, he suggested it. After all, we were 5000 miles away.

We rehearsed in Miles Copeland’s house in St John’s Wood. A block away from the famous EMI Studio…better known as Abbey Road Studio.

Stewart got himself a bachelor flat about 5 doors down from the studio. We would sit on his stoop, smoking hash, and watch the tourists risk life and limb trying to get that famous Beatles’ crosswalk photo. But drivers rarely slowed down and it appeared to be a sport to see how close they could come to running them down.

Our first gig got booked in Nottingham. The money was lousy, but Miles supplied us with equipment and roadies….sort of.

Nottingham was a couple hours’ drive north. Butch Hatcher got his best buddy to roadie, but we needed one more. I asked my best friend, Skip, if he wanted to make 10 Quid? He said yes. Skip never roadied and took the gig for fun…and the $25.

The two roadies drove a huge lorry with the equipment. Neither had driven a stick on a big truck…let alone drive on the left side of the road. Skip learned on the job. He was a complete wreck on arrival.

There was no freeway to Nottingham so one had to take the “A” roads through towns and neighborhoods…and 12-foot-tall hedgerows.

Not only had he not learned to drive a stick, but he had to do it with his left hand and backwards. Apparently, there was a lot of screaming during the trip.

Meanwhile, the band was driven to the gig by our road manager.

The gig went really well. Butch had worked in carnivals in the Southern U.S. And he knew how to spew fire from his mouth. We decided to add that during our encore. As the band played furiously, he turned his back to the audience, slathered some Vaseline on his lips and chin, and then squirted lighter fluid into his mouth. A lot of lighter fluid.

He turned around. His buddy lit a torch for him and Butch held it to his mouth and out came fire. The crowd went absolutely bonkers. He did it a couple more times because he liked the applause.

The band was on Cloud 9 afterwards and decided to hit a restaurant for food and drink. Back then, most restaurants closed by 10 and it was only the Indian and Chinese places that stayed open til midnight, so we had to hurry.

The roadies had a couple hours of packing…plus the horrifying drive back. Only this time in pitch blackness. There were no streetlights then. You took your life in your hands driving those A roads in total blackness.

I still remember the look on Skip’s face when I told him I was going with the band. He was crestfallen. I wanted to stay with my best friend, but the band expected me to come with them. I was new to the band and this was not the time to act out. Butch had no problems with saying nighty night to his buddy.

The next day, (we lived in the same flat); Skip would not talk to me. I didn’t blame him. I felt pretty guilty and apologized.
We did several more gigs as Stark Naked but when I asked Skip if he wanted to roadie again, he politely told me to go fuck myself. A short, but brilliant, career as a roadie.

During a band rehearsal, Darryl told us that there would be a 3-month hiatus. Apparently, his old band (Curved Air) had one record deal to finish. They owed Decca Records an album, so the decision was to put all of the original members back together and do a tour and record it giving them a live album. The easiest way to get that commitment out of the way.
And as Darryl finished telling us this, he looked at me and said, “Kohn. You are going to be our bassist.”
Just like that.
I had no idea what he was talking about or what I was getting myself in to.

And now for something completely different Part 2:
Continuation of the story I told yesterday in the HVC Serie A review.

February 1975, the day after my 25th birthday, and the huge LSD fest we had the night before still lingered in our blood stream.

We had our first gig of the European tour in London. Most tours were 7-8 weeks long. We’d take a month break and hit it again. I went crazy in that month. Once you’ve tasted the exhilaration of playing live, improvising, and the audience…well…it’s an addiction.

You wander the city or drive all day from gig to gig. But you live for those 2 hours on stage that night.

The band Renaissance had also taken the same acid as my bandmates. Another Miles Copeland band with a lead singer that was a chick, Annie Haslam. While her band was a bunch of regular guys who smoked the ganja like us, Annie did not.

Apparently, the potent dose of Berkeley California acid that Stewart passed around was too much for the Renaissance guys. They were too fucked up the next day to do anything and ended up canceling their first gig of the tour that night in London.

Of course, Curved Air members were tough fuckers. What’s a little LSD to idiots like us? We went on stage that night, high of course, and did 3 encores.

Now I didn’t hand out the acid. Stewart did. But it was my birthday party and Annie Haslam decided it was my fault that they had to cancel their gig. Miles was furious with Stewart and the boys in Renaissance.

Just before going on that night, Stewart decided to smoke a huge bowl of hash. Well, there were consequences to pay for that. It brought all that LSD rushing back.

We had the same boring set list every night. No spontaneity whatsoever. Just one night it would have been nice if Darryl called out a different song. But no. It was deemed by the All Mighty that we did the same songs in the same order every fucking night.

Throughout the 2-hour set, Stew kept doing long extended drum solos. Not only when they were designated, but during the songs. Stewart Copeland would go on to be a beloved drummer by the masses once he was in The Police. But while in Curved Air, he was an out-of-control madman. That was fun. It didn’t bother me at all like it did the prima donnas of the band who craved the spotlight.

The violinist and guitarist did a lot of woodshedding by trading riffs during the instrumental breaks. Darryl would play 4 bars. Mick would play 4 bars, etc.

Stew would do a Keith Moon through the whole thing and the boys couldn’t find “1”. The first beat of the bar. They were completely lost because of Stew’s incessant soloing through their trade-offs.

They were just completely lost and couldn’t find the beginning of each bar. I saw Darryl, the violinist, give Stew the stink eye a’ plenty.
But Stew was as high as a kite. Me too, actually. He didn’t care. After all, his brother was our manager. And he was hooked up with the lead singer. So, his place in the band was secured.

I had to ‘save the day’ on some songs. Instead of playing what I would normally play, I hit quarter notes with the emphasis of hitting the 1 at each new bar. This allowed the boys to find their way back to the start of each bar.

After the gig, in the dressing room, Darryl fired Stew.
This was nothing new.
Stew got fired every week. Yes, the drummer from The Police got fired weekly.
But since Stew and Sonja were an item, Sonja would threaten to quit. This happened over and over. It got very tiring.

It basically gave Stew carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. That’s a pretty cool position to be in. I envied him. Me? I was scared to death I’d be fired on a whim by Darryl.

Darryl loved me at the start. He hated me at the end. He told me I was tone deaf. Fucking tone deaf? He said I only knew the neck by mechanical means. WTF? Yet, after Curved Air, I snagged a 4 string fretless bass by Schecter…and recorded endlessly with it. I also owned an electric Dobro upright that I used for recording. No frets folks. You can’t play fretless if you are tone deaf.

I just didn’t have the intense skills of a classically trained violinist and Darryl just had no patience. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. A series of events occurred over my time in the band that made Darryl envious of me. My sense of humor got Stewart and noticed during city stop radio interviews before the big show. The praise I got from my bass playing on the Live album. Invited to move in with him in Datchet, along with my girlfriend and her daughter.

My girlfriend was 5 foot tall even and weighed 90lbs. Darryl had two huge dogs, Setters. And he expected my girlfriend to take care of them while we were not at home. One dog weighed more than she did and she had no control of them when walking them. So, they peed on the floor and Darryl went nuts. Just a bunch of petty shit that an ego like his couldn’t handle.

In the beginning, he actually asked me to teach him to be funny in a media interview. It was hopeless. The man had no sense of humor. I tried. But it was like teaching a monkey to be Groucho Marx. His dislike for me continued to build. I’m sure he is much more of a gentleman now. And not a prick…and then, maybe not.

The bottom line was that he was an uppity fuck who had no interest in taking the time teaching me his songs. And to be honest, his pre-written bass lines were the shits. I had done well on the previous Live album with the Gibson. But I was young. We were all young. I just wasn’t an arrogant fuck like certain members of that band.

Plus, the real problem was management, probably on the urging of the band, they bought me Martin Turner’s (Wishbone Ash)1968 Fender P bass to replace my 1970 Gibson EBO bass. My Gibson was short scale. The Fender P is like playing a 2×4.

I got the EBO because I idolized Jack Bruce. He was the first rocker in the 60’s that taught me to improvise. I did tweak my Gibson. It had the original Humbucker pickups. But I added a set of Fender P pickups and could toggle between the two; or use them together as much or as little as I wanted. I thought it had a great sound.

I have small hands and I had only a couple of weeks to learn how to play the 2×4. But it was clear that I was merely a sideman and I was told to know my place because there were at least 3 other bassists in England willing to work with Darryl…maybe just 2. Regardless, I was pretty darn lucky to have gotten the gig when I was 24 years old.

The band is painfully aware of my writing about my time in Curved Air. I am accused of being bitter. But actually, I’m not bitter. I am angry that I got stiffed on all of my mechanical royalties for 45 years. That pisses me off. Over the years, I’ve spoken to other ex-members of the band and they all got screwed out of their royalties as well. So, it’s not just a dislike for me, it is pure greed by those with plenty of dough.

And when you get down to it, the only ones in my stories that come off looking bad are Sonja and Darryl. Even with Stewart soloing all the time, I could look right at him and know where 1 was. Not my fault that Darryl and Mick could not. And I do believe that Copeland redeemed himself with flying colors. Whatcha’ think?

Where was I?

It was at this concert, that at the end of a song, Stew raised his arms to signify that the song was about to end and then bring his arms down with a flourish on top of the kit. But the acid threw him off his balance and he fell backwards off the stage.

Most stages were 6-8 feet or so off the ground. But even farther on the back side.
The roadies always stored the drum cases behind the stage and drum riser.

The drum riser was about four feet tall making it about a 10-foot drop to the stage floor. Fortunately for Stew, the drum cases broke his fall as he tumbled through them; all the way to the floor.

Sonja went running backstage to see if he was alive. We stopped playing.
He jumped up with large dinner plate sized eyes, and said he was alright…meanwhile, blood dripped from his forearms where he scraped long layers of skin away from the drum case latches.

He jumped back on stage and we finished.
The audience, of course, loved it thinking it was part of the show.
The entire couple years I was with the band, we never did a gig where we weren’t high on hash or weed.
But this night was a most memorable experience.

Next bunch of stories will be about something other than Curved Air.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS