Charm City Jukebox

Let’s face it, guys: Smoking is cool.

It’s cool because now it’s become of confluence of cool things: Anti-establishment (everywhere places are cracking down on smoking in public, and in some cases, in private), anti-health, and a retro throwback. The latter two are inextricably linked. 70 years or so ago when smoking was ubiquitous, it was still cool. “A Real Man” smoked Marlboro’s.  Joe Camel wore a hep black leather jacket and Ray-Bans. James fucking Dean smoked like a chimney. Smoking was so cool, when research started showing, hey, you will die if you smoke all the time, people didn’t quit smoking. And now that we’ve known about the health risks for decades, people born into a world of anti-smoking ads everywhere still light up.

Think about that for a second. I’ve known my entire life (even before I could legally smoke) that smoking causes all sorts of diseases, the biggest being the horrible death of lung cancer, but I still took it up. I didn’t do it for some grand anti-establishment statement, I just thought it was cool, and it turned out to be the greatest single ice-breaker I’ve ever had. Smokers have their own built-in community, tight-knight and hacking up a lung. If you wanted a cigarette, there’d always be someone willing to smoke with you, bum you a cigarette, and have a chat. In fact, I’d say the anti-smoking movement has only made the connections between smokers stronger, as now we have to congregate outside in small clumps to fight the elements when we go to bars and restaurants (or, really, anywhere).

But there was a time, not that long ago, when smokers lived untouched. We could sit at a bar, have a beer, listen to some music, have a chat, and smoke a cigarette in peace. We were people, normal people, instead of the freaks outside freezing in the cold and wind or choking in the heat and humidity. We could see our favorite bands and not worry about missing the best song for the fag break, or safely watch every pitch at the O’s game without worrying about missing that elusive grand slam.

That’s what this playlist serves to help us remember: the  elusive smokey bar scene, one straight out of a 50′s detective movies about the 20′s. You know, where everyone wears fedoras and suits and ties and slinky dresses and pearl necklaces (back before that was slang for something gross). The kind of bar where there was a raggedy old Wurlitzer in the corner churning out the hit parade, with a million stories in the Naked City, on a dark night in a city that knew how to keep its secrets. That, or a seriously old black man fronting a band on its last throes, eking out a measly melody with a torn-up rhythm, a skinny guitar sound poking its disheveled self out of a weary amplifier. He has a cigarette sticking out of the tops of the strings at the head of the guitar, at this point mostly ash, just holding its shape for a minute before his last lick knocks it into his bourbon on the rocks. No one in this bar pays them no mind, anyway, they have their martinis and manhattans to worry about. Nobody really talks, either; they just stare wistfully into their drinks, and stab their butts in the ashtray with a weary fury. It’s an absentminded maneuver, the putting out of your dead cigarette – you know its coming but still are surprised, and if you forget, it guts itself out on your yellowed, tobacco stained fingertips.

It’s  seemingly always nearing last call, and the place is as dark as is it is outside, save for the thin, off-white florescents hanging from old, burnt out fans, the bulbs teetering clumsily as the fans wobble off-center. Nothing ever works right in this joint – the taps are on-and-off, the ice-machine rattles something fierce, and the bartender would rather wipe down glasses than get you your drink. And there it hangs, right about the bartender, the thick cloud of smoke, the one we always seem to want to complain about now. It’s never in your face, but you can never get away from it. And it never smells stale – the smell of fresh cigarettes being lit always seems to take over the smell. You know the smell and the sounds well: the click of the Zippo opening, the flash of the flame catching the paper, and the dark, roasted, heady scent of fresh tobacco aflame. There’s nothing else quite like it in the world – even the smell of a campfire doesn’t hold the same sort of nostalgia and wonder a fresh cigarette aflame does.

A woman sits two stools down from you, in a black dress, and a hat with a torn veil, and asks you if you wouldn’t mind lighting her smoke. You oblige her, and she puts her white gloved hand on yours as you light it. This is when the band announces their set break, and they set down their instruments on the stage and walk outside for smokes and a joint. You take it upon yourself to fire up that old Wurlitzer in the corner, plunking down two for a quarter, a dime for a dance, filling the place with the tin-eared sounds of….what?

Well, that’s what I tried to do with this first take of the playlist. I didn’t quite capture that scene. I think at first I was trying to hard too re-create what I would like to hear in a bar, not what would play in the scene above. Here’s the first draft, and feel free to add your suggestions in the comments, and look forward to more edits in the future.