Bluff City: America's Playground Pt. 00

Friends at the Table

Games, Fiction, Leisure

4.9 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2022

⏱️ 89 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Old Mister, Old Mister

In 1897, the “Twin-Pan” barrel organ was introduced to Bluff City by the Callahan Corporation and took the boardwalk by storm. The ease of use, the smoothness of operation, and purity of tone were a significant step forward from the common “Trout” model used at the time. These new instruments were expensive to source, and as such, many organ grinders found themselves pushed out of business by “Twin-Pan” operators paid for by the boardwalk hotels.

This song, first recorded by Elliott Callahan in 1899, speaks to the mingled pain and opportunity felt on the boardwalks in those days.

Old Mister, Old Mister, I heard from my sister!

The man on the boardwalk is closing up shop,

Oh brother, our mother has heard from another,

A new kind of organ has forced him to stop!

The tunes that it plays are a new kind of sweetness,

Old Mister, Old Mister, my spirits take flight!

Old Mister, with such incomparable neatness,

Its harmonies thrill and its measures delight!

So brother, we’re steeling our hearts for the parting,

The man on the boardwalk’s departure does ache,

But when we attend to the new organ starting…

We’ll find sacrifices are easy to make!

Featuring: Austin Walker, Art Martinez-Tebbel, Jack de Quidt, Janine Hawkins and Keith J Carberry

Music & Description by Jack de Quidt

Mall Kids is available at https://mr-matthew.itch.io/mall-kids

Transcript

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0:00.0	Never feel that you were born in the wrong time, the wrong place.
0:09.4	I was born, I was made, in a world of shit, but just a tunnel away a few hundred years
0:17.7	ago.
0:19.2	There was paradise, ah, bluff city, the old bluff city, before the era of the tri-city
0:29.4	agreement, for anyone knew about the blue, before things blended so haphazardly.
0:37.9	It was a world of surprise and wonder, a family-friendly dreamland.
0:44.6	It was pure and simple and American, not like Atlantic City, not like Luffington Beach,
0:51.3	not like today.
0:52.3	There were no walls of smoke, there was no cacophonous drone of the anti-grave walkways,
0:58.3	or the bleeding neon hollows, which advertised the symptoms of a better life to a bunch
1:04.8	of unwashed drags that wouldn't know what to do if they got them.
1:09.8	There wasn't always like this, even Atlantic City was once America's playground, but
1:14.7	bluff, bluff was a fantasy, the kind you spell with a pH to emphasize its buitiphacy.
1:23.8	It was a boardwalk you could eat off of, the waves were bigger and bluer and the salt
1:29.3	was the sort you find in candy, which to say it was especially edible, and in the sand.
1:35.7	It never got near shoes I've heard, or if it did, it did it in the cool way, where it
1:40.4	sort of made you nostalgic about the day you had at the beach, ah, the beach, as if anyone
1:46.3	here in bluffington knows what that means anymore.
1:49.9	I'm sure you're wondering, who's perfect, how do you know all of this?
1:53.8	Have you been there to the past, to the beautiful past?
1:57.4	No, but I've been to the second closest thing.
2:01.2	I'm a VIP member of the Upper Cross Tri-City History Museum, which you should visit at your
	...

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