I was walking through the Berlin museum district on a blindingly sunny yet bitingly cold Sunday morning. My wife and I had worked up quite an appetite from learning about wars not taught in American public schools, ogling Soviet furniture, and counting the feathers on the dodo at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. We stopped at a cafe for a late breakfast and to interrupt a bored server’s book. She kindly seated us far from the host stand so she could continue to read— we were the only guests in the joint. I can’t remember the exact iteration of avocado toast (2015) that we ordered. But what I do remember as clearly as if I recorded it on my iPhone is, that through laziness or profound and acute incisive observation of what should happen, the hostess server decided to play Tracy Chapman’s first and eponymous record, start to finish. The record came out when I was eight and I’m as aware of it as much as anything on VHI at the time but I’d never really stopped to realize how beautiful it is. Tracy Chapman has the voice of an angel that mortals are lucky to hear. Her first record is so intense but gently, touching, and deeply political, it was a harbinger of that 90’s production style I hate, and yet it’s so perfect I still listen to it and hold back tears.
During “the hit” (Fast Car) I took about three dozen photos of Michelle. I realized the hostess/server/DJ was just going to spin the whole record. The photos I took of my wife went from flattering to joyous to annoyed and back again. Whenever I hear a track from that record, I feel like Michelle and I are the only two people in the world and I think of that morning in Berlin. And I think of this moment often because, well, I have almost 100 photos of it and it’s one of my favorite moments in my life given to me by someone who just wanted to get to the next page of The “Girl on the Train.”
Michelle in Berlin
What I’m trying to say is: music is important.
Casey Robison, whose Sunday shift I’m covering for the next year, said to me: “don’t overthink TDO too much. It’s the most bar-y bar you could hope to work in.” I believe him and what he’s also trying to say is I have enough cheap tricks, institutional knowledge, and frankly a wall of fancy shit behind me that would impress anybody, ever. But what I was actually the most intimidated about was setting my own playlist. I haven’t had to do that in years, I take it very seriously, and I’m very bad at it. While I like good music, my taste tends to be accurately described as “sad-bastard-gutter-ballads.” Getting ready for my first shift I knew I needed to get a real playlist going but that I couldn’t just mainline 20 years of Rolling Stone articles. So I did what we should all do: I asked for help.
The day after Christmas I sent a few dozen emails out to musicians, interesting folks, and some hospitality friends asking for “five songs you’d want to hear in a bar.” Mehal, my first friend to respond is the perfect example of my diverse panel, a guy who has played competitive Scrabble with Peter Dinklage, he’s a fella of unique tastes and experiences. Rejected was the theme song to Jurassic Park but I.G.Y. by Donald Fagan was certainly in. I got a lot of responses and I’m actually still digging through a few. That said, with those suggestions and a few other hypotheses I built up a 14-hour default playlist with nearly 14 hours of stories to match (even though I just blew that Peter Dinklage gem). Before I get to those precious Ira Glassian anecdotes, let me tell you the theory of the playlist. I want everyone to have a genre to enjoy, a song they know and a memory to grab, something they’ve never heard before, something from a genre they dislike but will see someone else enjoy, and most of all everything needs to be a bit unexpected. The playlist has Vivaldi, A Tribe Called Quest, Esquivel, Röyksopp, Neil Diamond, Lead Belly, Björk, Yola, well, you get it. It’s a patchwork quilt just like the bottles on a bar.
This playlist actually grew from the germination of a playlist for a dinner party Michelle and I hosted in 2020 just before everything changed. Everyone was anonymous at the dinner party much like the 1985 masterpiece Clue, except nobody died. The idea was that you weren’t supposed to talk about work, rather you cooked dinner together and intuit what the other guests did for a living. I made a playlist trying to push around the edges of who people might be, and find secret interests and the ages of guests. Serge Gainsbourg, Kendrick Lamar, and Madonna together, you know, just see who would start humming “Lucky Star.” I also need to give a quick shout-out to the 2017 NPR piece: The 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women which is really inspiring and I learned a lot from it. Odetta Holmes, for example, I didn’t know before this list and I’ve subsequently visited museum displays celebrating her.
But pushing at the edges, that’s the idea. Now that I seem swaddled in my pretentious quilt of patchwork Pitchfork articles, let me offer the opposite take: The first compliment I got on this playlist was for Natalie Merchant. “The Natalie Merchant song with such a good choice, I was around when that was big and I was kind of over it. But when I just re-listen to it and thought about how it works in the playlist, I really enjoyed it,” I told Zach, the former Marine who suggested it. I would have never picked that tune, but people who like her/that track shouldn’t have to suffer through all my cool kid b-sides and twisty mustache nonsense. However, to add some nonsense, another buddy sent me perhaps the most oblique psychedelic-polka-nursery-rhyme-dirge “Blue Canary” by Frank Chickens. Toby said, “ my wife and kid both hate it with vehemence.” I imagine him sneaking into the kitchen in the early morning, cooking up skyscrapers of pancakes before his family wakes up, but then forcing them to listen to him sing along to this song as they eat as fast as they can before they run away.
I really like a cover on a playlist. Geraldine suggested, “Dancing on My Own - Grouplove. (Do I love the original? Yes, it’s bubble gum pop at its finest. But this version turns the song into a dreamy queer anthem. I love it so much.” A cover is trying something new in a safe way, it’s like always having ketchup at the ready to placate a child but it’s also a new perspective, familiar but attention-grabbing. Speaking of perspective, A.J. put me on to Tut Tut Tut Tut by Gillian Hills who rode that 1960’s French pop thing to the top and then made a plethora of exploitation films including being one of the girls in that one scene in A Clockwork Orange, you know which scene. These days the 78-year-old lives in Britain with her husband Stewart Young who used to manage AC/DC, Foreigner, Cyndi Lauper, and many others. Gillian Hills offers us the perspective that old people used to be young and probably naked or some wild shit.
All of these songs tell stories, are stories, and are also just background. But they are the background… to life (eye-roll emoji). Someone in the bar is seeing a friend for the first time is years, someone is falling in love, and another couple might go home and make love, maybe fuck, maybe both. Here’s the soundtrack for memories.
But my real take on the compilation is bringing my friends into the bar with me and introducing a slice of their life to my guests as well. I can’t thank the people who responded enough for helping me put this together. I will be telling (stealing) their stories while I work and listen.