Here I am once again, tucked into the dim corner that serves as the DJ booth of Ye Olde Matador Bar & Lounge. It is September 11–a date that remains laden with the weight of events that unfolded 24 years ago in New York, Washington DC, and rural Pennsylvania. I remember the day all too well. By the time I woke up that Tuesday morning the tragedy was already underway and it took me several groggy minutes to try and make some sense of what the radio was telling me. By the time I staggered downstairs and turned on the television United Airlines 175 had slammed into the south tower of the World Trade Center. In that moment I realized that the world had changed. Forever changed and much for the worse. I don’t mean to get all grim about this—not my signature jam, Gentle Reader(s)—but there just ain’t no way around it: We live in difficult and precarious times and it doesn’t take much imagination to draw a line directly from the global cataclysm spawned by 9/11 to where we find ourselves today.

Yes—I know: You can scarcely believe your luck, Gentle Reader(s), for here it is once again, that much beloved (if largely ignored) Mass of the Opiates, that Musical Balm in Gilead, the Cure for What Ails Thee—Ye Olde Matador Playlist. Yes indeed, it is that time once again and we—'we' being pretty much the same thing as 'I'—have a real doozy for you this week. Not that the preceding playlists were in any manner lacking for dooziness in their own right(s), but please allow me to pump myself up, to toot me own horn a bit, as it were. I feel as though I have earned it... sort of.