POISON Playlist

Music is critical to my writing. I use it to explore and establish a mood and then to preserve it — looping and looping until the feeling no longer supports the theme. When "Twitching" was first published in Gravity Magazine it included a playlist, a soundtrack for personal reinvention. That list reflected where I was at the time, what I had been through and how I was changing. Thirty two years later, when confronted with the idea of making a playlist for the second edition of POISON, my thoughts on the subject are different. Confrontational music and feeling can only take one so far. Sooner or later we must sit with ourselves in the quiet moments. At some point we must rebuild what we have broken or destroyed. Sometimes the still-glowing fires of the bridges we burned light the way ahead with a melancholy, soft and pensive light, tinted by the spinning embers of everything we torched in our wake. Sometimes brighter, hopeful melodies lead us forward, and sometimes we circle in a mood that eventually kicks us out toward new thinking, different feeling, unanchored from the past.

In the first issue of RAZE and later in REFUGE I wrote, "Proper revolution is not just destruction but the creativity that follows - or better yet the creativity that makes destruction unnecessary." These words might could describe my relationship with music; it is a tool I use to examine and to destroy, to create and to build, and most importantly, to reinvent. Here follows a playlist that is more exploration than declaration, with reference points to all of these ideas.

"I'm Bored" by Iggy Pop

When Mark Johnston, my climbing partner at the time, played this song for me it made me realize that we can and should do something with the time we have here instead of wasting it.

"Death Party" by The Gun Club

Mark Johnston turned me on to this as well, and we named a new route after this track later to learn we had done the second ascent. I loved "Miami", the first Gun Club record I heard, and this five-song EP solidified my lifelong attention to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. "Throw down your heartache, throw down your worldly blues. They'll tear your heart out, lookin' at you wail the blues. Come to the death party, you ain’t got nothing to lose." And that last line was the theme of my early climbing career.

"Humor Me" by Pere Ubu

I was searching. It was 1980 and I bought this record because I knew David Thomas' original group spawned the Dead Boys and I was very into them. When I heard, "Another day? Well, suffer. For that's the way of the West. Suffer." I wondered if that was really my fate, and asked myself, "What could you do if you didn't care whether you lived or died?" My first climbing mentor just had so it wasn't mere fantasy.

"Driven Like the Snow" by The Sisters of Mercy

Tim Jones, who ran Urban Renewal records (and later the Starbucks music team), introduced me to many influential bands in the mid-80s because his record store was a few doors down from the climbing shop where I was working. I spent a lot of time there, listening, feeling. When Floodland came out I already had every Sisters EP and the first album and a bootleg live recording. On this track I heard a relentless beat, with "Driven together and driven apart" being a life lesson at the time.

"First Word" by Snapcase

In the very early days of Gym Jones one of the most played records in our work space was End Transmission. I mean, how could I argue with, "Illuminate a realized potential. Terminate idealized, idealized hype that keeps us down," when I was trying to change a suffocating paradigm?

"Another Way" by Swayzak

I discover the band while I was working on "300" in Montreal. When I finally brought my skate skis up from SLC and could get outside on the weekend I would loop this track and disassociate from the previous week's shit, and prepare for what would come next.

"I Won't Slip Up" by The Delines

I love drinking when I write. I also know what too much leads to, and it's not good writing. When Amy Boone sings, "I'll go to little Sam's, just have a couple of drinks, I'll catch a ride back home, don't you worry about me," I feel that desire, that need in my bones. And sometimes all I need is 'the need' to write good words.

"Eternal City" by The Old Firm Casuals

Punks evolve. Some lose their grounding, others maintain and do so hard and well. Lars Frederiksen is one of those guys. When you hear him sing, "It's the end of eternal city, it's the end of the golden road, it's the end of all prosperity, it's the end of an empire: the fall of Rome," and put it in current context, well, who among us could say he's wrong?

"The Missing Boy" by Durutti Column

This track was written by Vini Reilly after his friend, Ian Curtis, committed suicide the previous year. The lyrics, "There was a boy, I almost knew him, a glance exchanged made me feel good, leaving some signs, now a legend ..." would be the mantra I sang late at night after another of my friends or climbing partners died. And Bruce Mitchell's drumming is impeccable.

"10 Laws" by East Forest

I have never heard a better set of rules. I try to live by them.

"All Sparks" by Editors

The song I used to sing whenever a younger friend died climbing. It was on constant rotation after Sue Nott disappeared on Mount Foraker in 2006 and I can't hear it now without thinking of her.

"Streets of Arklow" by Van Morrison

It's a slow, soulful and heavy walk through a land that shaped him, and reminds me of the vistas and horizons and the demanding environments that moved and changed me. "And our heads were filled with poetry..."

"Dust" by Black Swan Lane

It is difficult to choose a single track written by Jack Sobel that influenced me or the writing in POISON but if I look back and feel the turmoil when everything was falling apart and I was seeking something different and better — the best version of the idea that I could imagine — this is it. "Express the joy in your mind, dismiss the worry behind, chase the moments to live that you can easily find ..." These words were a way out of the darkness of that confrontation.

"Exit Everything" by Rowland S. Howard

I could have blown it up but in the moment when I considered destroying it all I realized how much I cared for them, those who helped make it, but also felt the pressure to do and become things that were inconsistent with my heart. It was a close run thing, and I believe I was more than generous and accommodating because the other reality could have been this, "Exit everything, torch the throne, kill the king ..." Burn the bridge and anyone trying to cross it.

"Where I Am" by Code Blue

Old, and it disappeared for a couple of decades but when it flowed back into my consciousness it held some power ... "At least I know where I am."

"Reptile" by The Church

Often it's the lyrical moments in passing that hit and offer unintended commentary on one's intimate, personal situation. I don't love snakes or reptiles but when human beings take on their venomous characteristics I love it even less.

"Myopia" by Agnes Obel

I struggle still. Losing what I made with my heart and blood, with my soul, and watching who took it over destroy it bit by bit is terrible. I often sit with thoughts of what I did and what I might have done ... "Let it go, let it go, I can't let it go, let it go ..." It will never not be heavy.

“I Am a Rifle” by The Rebel Spell

I first heard the cover by Propagandhi and then Shawn Kingrey steered me to the original track and the story of Todd Serious, aka Todd Jenkins, and his death in a rock climbing accident. While I was working on POISON I often refereed to these words, "Don’t look to me to give the future back, don’t look to me to rework the past. I’m only here to bring things to a head, you can cover your ears it doesn’t change who I am."

"Pendulum" by Mark Lanegan

When I was in Michigan in 2014 and wondering why I was doing the work to support the ideal that some others in my circle couldn't step up to or sustain I listened to Mark Lanegan a lot. This track looped for a few POISON essays ... "Swing pendulum, swing slow, got no time to call my own, oh my Lord, don't you bother me, I'm as tired as a man can be ..." The weight I tried to carry alone, while others added even more, finally became too much. I couldn't bear it and I broke.

“Darkness” by The Beauty of Gemina

I hadn't heard of Michael Sele until early-2022 when I was finalizing edits for POISON. At that point — when it was all coming down to minute details — I would sometimes stare at the screen for hours, not trusting my sight, not sure whether I had already fixed an error or not, second-guessing myself, again. Sele's words were not foreign and the topics familiar; depression, loneliness, heartache, and suicide ... a monologue on loss and change. Sometimes I looped this track and sat with the loss, waiting for the screen to put itself to sleep so that I might try to do the same.

"More Hate Than Fear" by One King Down

Rob Fusco came into my life via Fed Ex. He wrote a letter, with heart, in blood, laid his soul bare after having been deeply moved by what I was doing and writing and broadcasting through Gym Jones. We connected. We remain dear, deep friends. He taught me much about commitment, the intensity of voluntary sacrifice which was different from the commitment demanded by my old environment, risk, gravity and all that. He showed me that consequences could be imposed internally as well as externally, and that we could push ourselves to higher achievement and performance if we simply demanded more of ourselves, facing self-imposed penalties whenever we fell short.

"The Modern World" by The Jam

From the first time I heard it I knew this song would be a constant soundtrack my life, and I wasn't wrong. Early in my climbing career these words hit hardest, "I've learned to live by hate and pain, it's my inspiration drive." Later, the more accommodating ideas filtered in, "Say what you like 'cause I don't care, I know where I am and going to ..." And I guess this hasn't changed.

"Apply" by Glasser

There was a period between when I thought Gym Jones and my involvement with it, and the people who had taken root there could find an accommodation, where my too sharp ideals might meet their looser ethics. I tried. I fucking well tried to see through their eyes and walk in their shoes. I couldn't. "There is something in my mind, keeps me up at night ..." And it was like that. One day, I decided that sleep and comfort with my own beliefs was more important.

"Bright Horses" by Nick Cave

I was working through it, trying to understand what my separation from Gym Jones meant, how I might continue to live, and whether I could actually do what I believed in, and survive on the back of my own ideals. I was driving south into the desert when this song came on, somewhere in Nevada, and the signs directed me to a canyon I'd never heard of ... but instead I charged onward, flowing with the music and words, searching for something different than what the normal, real world proposed. I heard that, "... everyone is hidden and everyone is cruel and there is no shortage of tyrants and no shortage of fools ..." and it helped me understand that I wasn't in control, and that whatever happened in the wake of GJ wasn't for me to steer, that I could only float and flow on the energy and relationships initiated many years before.

"Invincible" by Tool

Eventually, we all confront who we once were, what we accomplished and how those acts created our identity. We did and did and it would have been easier of we had died after doing the things that made us. But no, we remain, alive, and uncertain, unstable, wondering how we might live or survive when we can no longer do the things that made us who we are ... sit with it. Good luck.

"Never Arriving" by New Model Army

I've been listening to Justin Sullivan since 1986 and when this record hit in 2019 I marveled at his endurance, his curiosity, and that his creativity has not faded across the years. While the anger of the early years of New Model Army has given way to observation and commentary, sometimes melancholic, sometimes incisive, always present in the moment, this moment. "Somehow by now it should easy to forgive everything that happened back on the roads that are like the lines in the palms of our hands, wearing deeper and dividing ..." Forgiveness comes and goes. I like to think it will stay someday.

"Sequential" by OneTwo, Claudia Brucken

I'd call it a OMD/Propaganda collaboration to steer you towards the source ... but the words and intent are more important than the history. "We can't reverse the changes already made." And this is a truth we must live with until the end of our days.

"Bro Hymn" by Pennywise

I first heard Pennywise in 1993 when their second album dropped and figured they were a Bad Religion wanna-be act, after all they were on the same label, Epitaph. It took me years to come around but I did so after watching Travis Swanson's memorial and "Bro Hymn" was the final track as his partners on Gallatin County Search and Rescue passed his urn to each other across the stage and then filed out together. During their relationship Trav had told his wife, Blair, "If anything happens to me you have to play this song at my memorial." And when he did die on Mount Cowen in 2019 Blair spent days trying to remember the name of the track. These days I can never hear it without crying.