Misanthropes Playlist (Track #1)

I began my undergrad at Bloomsburg University. It’s a college in middle of nowhere Pennsylvania. They had apartment complexes which would throw a huge street party in Spring each year. We drank a lot those days and so the details are a bit blurry, but I remember one thing very clearly. A man walked into the complex and he was dressed up as PeeWee Herman. He had the same suit, the same hair, he had clearly put a lot of time into this and it was paying off, he looked and played the part of PeeWee Herman brilliantly and as people approached him, he didn’t break character and I was captivated.

I thought it was best to flag him down and offer him a beer. Here he is bringing so much joy to others, perhaps I can reciprocate that joy and offer PeeWee an ice-cold beer as a gesture of my appreciation. PeeWee comes over and I dug into the ice box and pulled out a bottle of beer and handed it to him. I offered words of encouragement, like, “I love what you’re doing man, that’s an amazing outfit”. PeeWee nods approvingly and gives a big mischievous smile, twists off the cap of the beer and does something so unexpected, it shocks me to this day. He took that bottle cap and threw it at the head of a girl who was sitting with us as hard as he could. I mean, he threw it like a fastball, and it bounced right off her head. I don’t think it did a lot of damage, but it was a clear signal that we misread PeeWee and giving him a beer was probably a mistake.

Our first playlist is about misanthropes. A misanthrope is a person who hates mankind, but I think of them as people who just refuse to fit in. Let’s get things cooking with our first song on the theme, “The Rat” by the Walkman. God, I love the drums in this song.

Song – The Rat by the Walkmen

Track #2

In my college years, I dove into the beat generation and all their writings. Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and of course, Bob Dylan. Years later on a business trip in Denver, I walked past Colfax Avenue. The Beat Generation’s Neal Cassady met Hal Chase at the old Denver Public Library on Colfax Avenue and Hal later introduced Neal to Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg while he was attending Columbia University. Colfax Avenue is also mentioned in On The Road, Kerouac’s most famous book, so while walking by this famous street, I decided that I would grab a beverage later that night and perhaps sit in a haunt once patronized by the writers I had admired for so long.

The bar I stumbled upon was a dive, the street seemed to be littered with dives and I wish I could remember the name, but it was a long, long time ago. A very tall and older Native American man was seated next to me, the staff and patrons referred to him as “Chief” and he was drinking a lot. He asked who I was and why I was there.

The bartender overheard and was very excited to have someone think of this dive bar as something worthy of a pilgrimage, he had no knowledge of the beat writers but was proud of his bar and the regulars who frequent it. He told me Chief was a Vietnam vet and I told him my father was also in the Vietnam War. He asked me what my father did there, greatly slurring his words, and his eyes were penetrating and absent all at once. I said he was mostly involved in transport, drove trucks, was in the Marines. Chief told me he was a sniper. He was very close to me, slurring, and almost in a whisper. The quotes below are not verbatim, but this is the gist of what he said over the next 10 minutes:

“I would go out deep into the jungle, I was often by myself, had to be hidden, had to be quiet…”

In a slurred whisper, he then put his finger to his mouth and said, “Shush, Shush.”

At this point, I probably tried to redirect this conversation, bring us to safer ground, but he stayed in the jungle and pulled me deeper in there with him.

“I would see the target walking.” He was now using his hands to imitate holding a sniper rifle, looking down the scope.

“Shush, shush”

“Pow!” His imaginary rifle dispenses a shot, kicks back and he turns to me…”Shush! Shush!”

“Another target, shush, shush” He refocuses his rifle, he sees the target.

“Pow!” He dispenses another enemy combatant.

His reality, our reality was becoming very, very blurred. I was here to celebrate the past of pseudo intellectuals who probably would have skipped the Vietnam draft in pursuit of writing poetry and cross-country trips, but instead ended up in Chief’s violent past serving our country.

We stayed hidden in the jungle, remaining quiet as he eliminated half a dozen enemies and then he started looking at me like I was the enemy. There are very few times where I have felt like someone was going to kill me and I hope that is true for all of you too, but this was one of those times. I barely said a word, but I was now in his foxhole and I didn’t belong in there and both of us knew it.

I set $20 on the bar and got the hell out of Colfax Avenue.

That brings to track #2, Something’s Not Right With Me by The Cold War Kids.

Track #3

Dave and I stumbled across this man with the bald head, beard, and tattooed face at a watering hole in San Diego. I actually believe this guy was quite outgoing and offered us lots of wisdom, but surely the face tattoo created headwinds in courting romance or occupation. In honor of this gentlemen, here’s Harlem River Blues by Justin Townes Earle, son of famed musician, Steve Earle. Steve named his son after another famous musician, Townes Van Zandt. Townes Van Zandt was an amazing singer who ultimately died of alcoholism and drug abuse and Justin Townes Earle ended up going down the same path and passed away at 38 years of age from a drug overdose. He started using drugs at the age of 12 believing self-destruction was the key to making great art, landing in rehab 9 times along the way. I always loved this song and wish he was still around to play it.

Track #4 and #5

I finished up my undergrad at Temple University and spent a lot of time in Philadelphia. I was young with zero responsibilities, no college loans, and a steady stream of income from working at a fish market & bookstore (two separate places but perhaps a good business venture to combine them). My friends and I would explore the city at night, checking out bars and hot spots. Our nights had a rhythm to them, starting somewhere cheap and grimy graduating to places that were fancier with dancing where we would make overtures to ladies who were understandably non-interested. One time we started off the evening at a cheap place on South Street called Tattooed Moms. The walls were covered in graffiti, jukebox cranked up to the max, and I recall a bumper car or two available as furniture. My friends and I were nerdy dorks (at least I was) and we clearly did not belong. Unsurprisingly, most people were tattooed, pierced, wallet chains, and lots of leather. I remember two songs, the first was Cocaine Blues by Hank Williams III. I had never heard that song before, but between the people and this song, I was beginning to think that I was in a place that was borderline frightening. This song got the crowd all kinds of worked up and there was lots of hooting and hollering and my “Let’s Get The Hell Out of Here” meter was just about to burst when the next song came on the jukebox. That song was a power ballad that caught us all off guard, an organ playing, slow tempo, and vocals that sound an awful lot like Michael Bolton. 30 seconds in the patrons were pissed off, people were screaming their jukebox disapproval. The whole scene was so comical, we were in this graffiti covered shithole with all these tough dudes and they were just becoming irate with this cheesy song but then at one minute and fifteen seconds in the song, it shifts gears and kicks ass. The entire vibe changed in a flash with people thrashing and singing along, more than made up for the preceding hostility. The song is Here I Go Again by Whitesnake. Whitesnake was fronted by David Coverdale who previously fronted the classic rock band, Deep Purple. Not sure if I ever went back to Tattooed Moms, but hear it is a lot tamer now days…it’s still there if you’re interested!

Track #6

As a grown up, sometimes you get to experience working with a misanthrope. I’ve experienced a couple in my 20+ years of professional occupation but none was better than Jason. It’s like his venn diagram circle had zero overlap with the rest of the world and it made him miserable. The difficult thing was he was always right, his circle was true, but he just could never get to the point to understand or explore other circles and see how they could be true as well. Dealing with difficult people is really tough, especially if you yourself may be somewhat difficult. I’ve gone through some rough patches (we will talk about that in a different playlist) and a therapist once gave me excellent advice. She said, when you have something very important to say, but it may be hard for the person to hear, try framing it as “When this happens, it makes me feel…” She said the other person cannot argue about how you feel, if you feel a certain way, that’s your right and your truth. Perhaps it is not the other person’s intention to make you feel that way, but using the “I feel…” language can help you unpack the intent behind the action or words. Here’s a song about a person who does not feel like trying anymore, I got to that point with Jason, but that was well after a ton of stress, high blood pressure, and anxiety. The song is Somedays by The Raconteurs formed by Jack White, did you know both of his parents worked for the Archdiocese of Detroit and he was an alter boy before becoming a rock God?

Track #7

A couple years ago I had a weird memory come to me. It seemed so strange, I was wondering if it was real or fantasy. The memory was that I was inside a prison while my father worked on something. I was in a prison yard surrounded by prisoners. The prison walls were about ten feet tall, huge blocks of stone, super thick and old. On top of the walls was a lot of barbed wire and then there was this crazy contraption that had arms covered in razor blades that constantly spun rapidly. And this is the backdrop of one of the wildest high stakes games I’ve ever witnessed between prisoners and birds. Some of the prisoners did not eat all their bread from lunch, brought it into the yard with them and they would take a piece and toss it above the spinning razor blades. The birds swooped down and tried to catch the bread before it got into the spinning razor blades where it would no longer be accessible. The stakes were high, the birds needed the bread, but prisoners would toss the bread just high enough above the razor blades to make the margin of error very small for the birds. That day the birds manage to avoid the razor blades and consume some bread, but provided a bit of suspense and entertainment for the bored and perhaps evil prisoners.

I texted my dad to say, “Did this really happen or am I crazy?” and he wrote back immediately, he remembered the prison and circumstances. I was sick from school and so he decided to take me to work with him that day. It was a prison in New Jersey. My father liked to expose me to other people’s hardships, I suspect to motivate me to stay on the straight & narrow. On multiple occasions he would take me to homeless encampments around Philadelphia, not sure what I took from it, but I have managed to stay out of prison.

Track #8

One of the best insults I ever heard was at a medical conference where I was walking behind two doctors. The one doctor says, “Did you hear Dr. Smith’s son is graduating top of his class at Harvard?” The other doctor says, “Crazy, Dr. Smith ain’t too smart, guess his wife must be brilliant…or maybe the mailman?”.

Track #9

Work often takes me to cities for conferences, San Francisco has hosted a significant number of them. El Guapo loves music and so it was important to venture over to the crossroads of Haight-Ashbury. Haight-Ashbury was home to iconic bands such as The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and Jefferson Airplane, it was also the epicenter of hippie culture. I walked up and down the street, checking out the record store and psychedelic shops and eventually parked at a bar that looked like it has been there forever and a perfect spot to get a feel of hanging with the locals. It was called Murio’s Trophy Room, it’s still there, but has been cleaned up substantially a decade ago (after the visit I’ll describe below).

I walked in and grabbed a seat at the bar. The bartender had long hair and a very large blue airplane earring that hung from one of his ears. He was delighted to see me and told me about the happy hour specials which were dirt cheap. He then offered that he used to be fat like me, but then started doing meth and now he is skinny. My first thought was to caution him on the risk / benefits of this dietary approach but felt like we had not yet built our relationship to discuss life decisions. I asked if they serve food and he said they don’t but there is a place right up the street where I could get food and bring it back. I told him I’d do that and then he asked if I could grab him something too. Our meals came to about $25 so I just bought his meal and we ate our meals talking for a bit and I think he shaved about 95% off my tab at the bar. The bartender was actually quite friendly, but he did imply I was fat and he made no effort to hide his meth habit, so I feel like we can shoehorn him into this playlist.

I dedicate this song to the Airplane Earring Meth Taking Bartender from Haight Ashbury, it’s Don’t Follow by Alice In Chains.

Track #10

This track and story are united. 96 Tears by ? & The Mysterians. The lead singer of the band was born with the name Rudy Martinez. Rudy and his band, The Mysterians created one of the best garage punk rock songs of all time, you can’t dispute it. I love the song 96 Tears and really give him a ton of credit for writing and performing it to perfection. What surprises me is that he decided to formally change his name from Rudy Martinez to Question Mark. That would be like Bob Dylan changing his name to Exclamation Point (Bob Dylan’s actual name is Robert Zimmerman). Poor Question Mark never managed to replicate their success, endured a horrible house fire in 2006, and I believe is still out there kicking, but true to his name, it’s hard to find out much about his recent activities. If you can’t tell by now, I am partial to misanthropes and misanthropic behavior, so I’m rooting for him.

Track #11

I was driving through France once in a rented car. Two quick stories, the first is I drove across France in record time and when I got to the destination I said how fast I was and I didn’t get a single ticket. The host said, “No police cars, just gray boxes that take your picture and mail you ticket.” I was immediately nervous about how many gray boxes snapped my picture to send me tickets. The second story is where the misanthropic behavior comes in. I was driving back on the same highway, probably going close to 70 mph when we hit a huge patch of fog and I slowed down to about 25 mph. In my rearview mirrow, I saw a car come flying behind me but the fog was so thick he couldn’t see me and smacked right into the back of the rental car. I pulled over to the side of the road to inspect the car and he looked like he was too, but when I walked around back, he said it was fine, waved goodbye and sped off. Miraculously, the car appeared to be fine but I rubbed my hand on the bumper and bits of fiberglass cut my fingers. I returned the car and flew home nervously checking the mailbox each day for a message about multiple speeding tickets and damage to the bumper. Two weeks later a mailing from the rental car company finally came, I anxiously opened it and was relieved to see nothing but coupons encouraging me to rent from them again.

Track #12

The reason my first playlist is dedicated to Misanthropes is because there is no better place to find one than at a record store. I grew up loving music. I remember my father quizzing my brother and I to name the artist and title of the song playing on the radio as we drove, recording songs off the radio on mix tapes, tuning into obscure radio stations or staying up late to watch the weird music on MTV, I was always searching and compelled to discover new music around the next corner. So it is remarkable how you have all that knowledge and enthusiasm and still feel like a total dweeb at the neighborhood record store. To this day, you can walk into Siren Records in Doylestown and I promise you will not only hear music you have never heard before, but even the genre might be completely off your radar. No one says hello, no one looks up from what they are doing, they pretty much ignore you until you go up to purchase something, even then, you’re basically hoping that they make no comment. Despite that, I love the place and always stop there when I’m back in town. Takes a misanthrope to dedicate all their waking hours listening to music, discovering genres of music that are unlistenable to us mortals, and in the end, that knowledge allows them to have a selection broad enough to satisfy the most insatiable gourmand of music. Here’s a terrific song by The Strokes, saw then right as they were exploding in popularity at the TLA on South Street (just a couple blocks away from Tattooed Moms) with Regina Spektor as the opening act, I’ve loved her ever since!

Track #13

Each playlist will be a baker’s dozen. Why is a baker’s dozen 13 and not 12? One theory is that bakers were afraid of getting beaten for short-changing customers. King Henry III passed a law to enact strict standards of how much bread needed to weigh with a possible consequence of getting beaten or thrown in jail. Bakers would throw in an extra piece to error on the safe side.

The last vignette for you is about my daily train travel to Temple University. I hear its really nice now, but when I went there it was in a terrible neighborhood. During orientation they spent most of the time imploring students to stay on the campus and not go into the surrounding neighborhoods which were plagued with gun violence. When I would get off the train at the North Philadelphia train station, there was a billboard right there, it advertised Folgers Coffee. Presumably a local resident spray painted in huge letters, “Fuck You White Temple Students, Stay Out Of Our Neighborhood!”. I would have to walk past that sign, walk two blocks through the neighborhood to get to campus. At the halfway point was a little phone booth which had a security officer stationed inside. Never once did I see that security officer leave the safety of that booth. I did that walk many, many times, and never had a problem but there was a bit of an uncomfortable situation. One morning I got off the train and a car alarm was going off, it was really loud and just kept beeping and honking repeatedly as I walked by it. Later that day after my classes wrapped up, I had to walk back through the neighborhood back to the train station. As I was walking through the neighborhood, I heard the car alarm still going off. The next thing I saw was a little kid with a shopping cart running full speed and he rammed that cart into the side of the car, leaving a sizable dent. Then a huge man walked to the car with a cinderblock over his head and smashed the front window. At this point, I’m about 25 feet away from the group of folks and they all look at me. I said, “Not my car” and kept walking. Even if it was my car, probably would have said and done the same thing.

Let’s wrap this up with Anthony Bourdain’s favorite song, Anenome by The Brian Jonestown Masacre.