Ode to An Uncool Mixtape

no such thing as a "guilty pleasure"

Yes, I still have it.

“Hey, there’s air in my glass,” cracks the fortysomething punk rocker. Alone, hunched over the bar in a battered biker jacket, he points at the pinkish dregs of his fourth vodka-cranberry. It’s a slow Wednesday night at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, late 1990.

Should I serve him a fifth cocktail? This punk rocker, an OG Ramones fan I’d wager, has been tipping 20% – a buck per drink. He’s holding his rotgut liquor well. Perhaps most important, the man is enthusiastically nodding along to my mixtape, Dumb 70s.

Punk rocker’s enjoyment is a pleasant surprise. As often as not, my painstakingly-crafted cassette of “classic rock” annoys East Village patrons. “This is the reason punk happened!” is a common, operatically-rendered gripe. But with each sip of Alexi (bottled in Newark) and Ocean Spray, and each “corporate” tune from the Me Decade, my patron’s pleasure increases. I like that.

Hot blooded, check it and see

I got a fever of a hundred and three

C’mon baby do you do more than dance?

I’m hot blooded, HOT BLOODED!

Dumb 70s is not typical post-punk pre-grunge Wah Wah Hut fare. The collection offers a break from edgy, locally popular groups like The Jesus & Mary Chain, Sonic Youth, Tad, Mudhoney, et al. The smoky bar resounds instead with unhip “dinosaur bands”: Bad Company, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Queen, Heart, Foreigner, Kiss, Aerosmith, and the Sweet, to name a few.

I only brandish Dumb 70s on slow nights or happy hours, in part because it elicits spirted conversation, which passes the time. Plus, like an intoxicant, Dumb 70s relieves my people-pleaser compulsions, allowing me to enjoy irritating the cool kids. Requests to change the tape are denied, because, at twenty-five years old, I’m not only tending bar, I’m managing the joint.

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As a boy in Atlanta, I adored long-haired, androgynous rockers singing unabashedly of sex, fame, money, drugs, and fun. For untold hours, my eager ears were glued to FM rock radio, my open mind uncluttered with notions of “hip.” In my young adult years, a few wannabe-outsider friends would attempt to shame my love of such bands.

Nice try. While I may have blushed under some sadistic criticism, the crunch of an arena rock guitar always effectively banished any guilt. Even after my so-called “critical faculties” came online, and I became a “new waver,” I still screamed along to, say, “More Than a Feeling” whilst alone in my VW bug. In time, I would discover many others furtively retained affinities for the likes of metal, pop, Top 40, etc., even as they outwardly cleaved to the music, and ethos, of punk, or hardcore, or “alternative,” or whatever.

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Unbeknownst to me, Dumb 70s will ultimately be more than just nostalgia. Culled from LPs purchased on weekend visits to upstate New York in the late 80s, that cassette now documents the golden age of flea markets, thrift stores, and yard sales. 1990 was early digital days, with longboxed CDs ascendant. Folks were practically giving away space-consuming vinyl, bemoaning the “inconvenience” of records. Many would be kicking themselves. By the first quarter of the next century, lots of those LPs – cool, uncool, and otherwise – will become sought after, pricey collector’s items.

Who knew an original pressing of Kiss’s Destroyer, bought in a Catskill front yard in the Bush Sr. administration, would prove an excellent investment?

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I’ve paid my dues, time after time

I’ve done my sentence, but committed no crime

And bad mistakes, I’ve made a few

I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face, but I’ve come though!

I place the punk rocker’s strong vodka-cranberry, his fifth, on a fresh serviette. He slides another fiver across the burnished oak. I slide it back.

“On the house,” I say over “We Are the Champions.” I empty the punk rocker’s ashtray and return it in time for him to extinguish his umpteenth Marlboro.

He flashes a yellow-y smile, nods appreciatively. Beckoning me with a freshly lit cig, the punk rocker looks around dramatically, ensuring only I will hear him. I lean in. In a Queens-accented stage whisper, he says, “I gotta tell you something.”

“OK.”

“I fuckin’ love this tape.”

Usually, a drunk person’s noxious spittle on my cheek will repel me. I let it slide.

“I thought so,” I say, smiling back. Our eyes meet. His are dark, red-rimmed, but full of soft glee.

“You can’t tell anybody,” he says, only half-joking.

“Wouldn’t think of it. Our little secret.”

The intimacy is sweet but awkward. I lean back, grab my bar rag, do some unnecessary wiping down. I steal a glance back at the punk rocker. He’s staring at the middle distance, that smile still plastered to a face that is getting younger by the second. Whatever punk rock gave him – and clearly, it gave him a lot – it didn’t give him that.

The author, circa early 90s, by Jimmy Cohrssen