13 Oct Remembering Brother Theodore + Matador Playlist 9/25/25

I’m not sure how many of you out there, Gentle Reader(s), might be acquainted with the life and legacy of Theodore Isidore Gottlieb, otherwise known as Brother Theodore. I became a big fan of Brother Theodore’s unique brand of philosophically-minded mania through his guest spots with David Letterman on Late Night in the 1980s. Over the course of 16 appearances Letterman obligingly played the straight man for Brother Theodore’s unhinged ‘stand-up tragedy’ routines. Letterman loved to needle Gottlieb by referring to him as ‘Ted’ and by bursting the bubble of his bug-eyed bluster with mundane comments and questions.

Thankfully, many of Brother Theodore’s performances are preserved for posterity on the intrawebs, and you can link to a classic early (1983) Letterman appearance by clicking here. Methodically winding himself up into one of his characteristic towering rants, Theodore declares in his thick German accent ‘I am a cosmo-dynamic personality walking through life in beauty and eternal youth! I am in the prime of my senility! I am what you might call a controversial figure—people either hate me or despise me. They would rather shake the devil by the tail than shake me by the hand! BUT with every failure my reputation GROWS! One of these DAYS you will see my picture on EVERY POSTAGE STAMP! One of these DAYS I’ll furorize the WORLD!!’

Letterman waits a couple beats, takes a sip of coffee, and inquires ‘Is that, uh, a Ban-Lon shirt?’

After a break Theodore returns to deliver one of his signature deranged spiels. Spotlit against a black background, Theodore launches into a frenzied reminiscence about his childhood obsession with his cousin Liselotte Bindl, whose teeth became the only part of her he desired after she was tragically afflicted with a disfiguring head-to-toe case of athlete’s foot. After the story reaches its crazed crescendo Theodore concludes wearily, ‘I am not well, my friends. Not well at all. The only thing that keeps me alive is the hope of dying young!’ (Theodore died in April of 2001 at the age of 94.)

When Letterman would inquire as to the state of Theodore’s well-being he would respond by paraphrasing Nietzsche, declaring ‘David, I have gazed into the ABYSS and the abyss has gazed into ME, and neither one of us liked what we saw!’ Why do I bring this up now? Well, for one reason, because I love Brother Theodore and I think you should too, but also because of the endless, mind-boggling barrage of post-truth insanity that we are confronted with on a daily basis. We know what David Letterman thinks of the Orange Goblin (whom Letterman regularly mocked to his face over the course of 30-plus appearances on his show) and the dismal tide of MAGA, and it’s not too hard to imagine what Brother Theodore might think as well. Growing up in a Jewish family in Weimar-era Germany, Theodore confronted fascism face-to-face and was even imprisoned at Dachau until he signed over his family’s fortune to the Nazi regime for one Reichsmark. This painful history bestows a undeniable gravitas on Brother Theodore’s comic genius: There is genuine heartbreak behind the hilarity.

I truly wish Brother Theodore was still with us, because sometimes it seems as though the only rational way to respond to the madness is with absurdity and invocations of the irrational. And, for all you doom-scrollers out there, as Nietzsche observed, by looking too deeply into the maw of the monstrous you risk becoming a monster yourself.

So here’s the deal: I purposefully sidestep confronting the monstrous by utilizing this site—a good old fashioned blog on a good old fashioned website—as my personal soap box. I do not allow for direct commentary or likes or dislikes or any of that shite because I know where that can lead (though you can contact me directly with but a modicum of effort). I completely and vehemently reject social media of every type and I opine that you should too—but my opinion and $5 will buy you a half-caff oat milk skinny latte at Starbucks.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, as Your Humble Narrator I purposefully avoid utilizing the actual name of the actual Orange Goblin hisself. This is a precautionary strategy but also because that name is a commodity that Cheeto Jesus and his vile family sell and license to suckers who buy into the delusion that it conveys class and quality. These days more than ever before in human history, the thought police are out there and they have never had more eyes and more ears and more technology at their disposal to apply the heavy hand of their all-consuming retribution. So, in the spirit of the late, great Brother Theodore, I encourage you to invoke the irrational and the absurd and let your freak flag fly in whatever way works for you—but seriously: Stay safe. Fuck the Goblin.

And lastly, but not leastly, here below is a belated Matador Playlist for you persons. I am taking a few weeks break from my DJ Inky duties to attend to familial matters in my benighted hometown of New Orleans—and by the way, we got a saying down here: Won’t bow down, don’t know how. Dig that.

You can access the YouTubish iteration of the playlist by clicking your clicky thing right HERE. Peace and out.

Grammar of Life – Charles Bukowski
Open (Rara Avis Raremix) – Jamshied Sharifi & Hassan Hakmoun
Bag of Bones – Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Tarhatazed – Mdou Moctar
Little Sister – Queens of the Stone Age
Sound System – Operation Ivy
Sour Grapes – Descendents
Matangi – M.I.A.
Enough is Enough – the Hives
Tour de France – Kraftwerk
Thunderstruck – AC/DC
Kooks – David Bowie
The Letter – PJ Harvey
Here Comes the Weekend – the Jam
Johnny Too Bad – the Slickers
Dead in the Saddle – Dead Moon
Laid – James
Sonic Reducer – Dead Boys
Rise – Public Image Ltd.
I Walked With A Zombie – Roky Erickson & the Aliens
Airbag – Radiohead
Pretty Little Thing – the Deepest Blue
Bed for the Scraping – Fugazi
Mother Popcorn – James Brown
Ca Plane Pour Moi – Plastic Bertrand
The Sky Is A Landfill – Jeff Buckley
Be My Baby – the Ronettes
Chase the Tear – Portishead
Chesterfield King – Jawbreaker
Photograph – Def Leppard
Twist Barbie – Shonen Knife
Rock Billy Boogie – Johnny Burnette
Broken Peace – Prong
Santa Fe – Drive-By Truckers
Come On, Let’s Go – Girl In A Coma
Gimme Shelter – the Rolling Stones
Monkey – Low
Floor of the Ocean – Mark Lanegan Band
All Day & All of the Night – the Kinks
Sucked Out – Superdrag
Look-ka Py Py – the Meters
Now Get Busy – the Beastie Boys
Chinese Rocks – Richard Hell
Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat) – Digable Planets
Night Train to Memphis – Roy Acuff
Paid In Full – Eric B. & Rakim
Love Will Tear Us Apart – Joy Division
Back to Black – Amy Winehouse
California Dreamin’ – the Mamas & the Papas
South Bound – Thin Lizzy (request)
Devil Girl – Tiger Army
Jailbreak – Thin Lizzy (request)
The KKK Took My Baby Away – the Ramones
Cowboy Song – Thin Lizzy (request)
Train In Vain – the Clash
You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory – Johnny Thunders
Anthrax – Gang of Four
Help I’m Alive – Metric
TV Set – the Cramps
Custard Pie – Led Zeppelin
Jail La La – Dum Dum Girls
Froggy Went A Courtin’ – Flat Duo Jets
Y Control (Brooklyn Fire Retouch)- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Baby, I Love You – Aretha Franklin
Looking For A Kiss – New York Dolls
La Jumpa – Bad Bunny & Arcangel (request)
Racer-X – Japandroids
Nuevayol – Bad Bunny (request)
007 (Shanty Town) – Desmond Dekker
Comin’ Out Strong – Future & The Weeknd (request)
Aneurysm – Nirvana
Ballad of a Teenage Queen – Johnny Cash
We Carry On – Portishead
Iron Fist – Motörhead
Rat in the Kitchen – UB40
Maggie Mae – the Pietasters
Guns of Navarone – the Skatalites
Fire – Ohio Players
Purity Rock – Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry
World Without Tears – Lucinda Williams
Buona Sera – Louis Prima
Happy Trails – Roy Rogers & Dale Evans
Taxi – Bryan Ferry