A Voice Of My Generation Silenced……For Now

I warn you up front that this post has little to do with comics, publishing or pop culture (well, kinda pop culture). This post is about a friend and one of the more creative voices I have ever heard.

I learned last Friday that a friend of mine lost his job. I first met Tommy Mischke almost 15 years ago sitting in my living room and listening to him on late night Twin Cities AM radio. It would be impossible to attempt to describe Tommy, but James Fallows did a pretty good job in an Atlantic Monthly profile a few years back that you can read here. Fallows also gives a nice blog reaction to Mischke’s firing here.

Through the years I got to know Tommy personally and we’ve spent a number of evenings together doing what else but talking (and yes, some drinking too) and somewhere in that time he started calling me Bookmen (I was running the big indy bookshop in the Twin Cities at the time) which I always liked as a nickname, but maybe you’d have to hear it in T.D.’s thick Minnesota accent to really appreciate it. Tommy got the ax from the biggest radio station in the Twin Cities on Friday and there is no apparent explanation to date.

T.D. Mischke is, to me, one of the most original and creative performers I had ever heard – but he wasn’t really a performer but rather a commentator. He was dark, sarcastic, poignant, mischievous and above all else he was curious. Curious about people that called him at 11:30pm on a Tuesday night, curious about the wrongs in the world, curious about why guy in Hastings, MN would collect a barn full of junk and then gave it all his own spin. And his spin was unlike anything you’ve never heard.

Tommy was the anti Garrison Keillor – not out of spite but out of what he was. Keillor is contrived and crafted, Tommy is genuine and spontaneous.

I beg you, just give a listen. Please. You won’t be disappointed. But don’t listen for “a bit” or “a gag” just listen to the way he conducts a show. It’s like Bogosian said in Talk Radio, “This is the last neighborhood in town” and that’s how Mischke treated it.

You can catch a few short links here but without catching his whole show over a cold Summit beer it’s hard to wrap your head around it. Try the Mischke tribute poem, you can hear here.

If for no other reason, I love this man because he summed up the Twin Cities at the end of every broadcast in the most succinct and accurate way I have ever heard,

“So long from good ole St. Paul and big time Minneapolis.”

I’ll hear you again Tommy, just not broadcasting from the last barren patch of University Ave.

- Bookmen