Player Piano

Colin Shearn

Jun 7

Player Piano cocktail — Player Piano by Colin Shearn

Here’s a toast to the piano players. I’m not Haydn my admiration for this creation, so I hope you can Handel this fine potion. It was created by Philadelphia bartender Colin Shearn at the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Co, circa 2011. The Franklin is a Philadelphia institution, a speakeasy style bar named in homage to a fascinating piece of American history. Max “Boo Boo” Hoff was a Philadelphia mobster in the nineteen twenties who ran a legitimate prize fighting organization, but became one of the richest gangsters in America thanks to his alcohol bootlegging operation which sprang up after Prohibition hit in 1919. He ran the illegal operations from an office at the Hotel Sylvania in Philadelphia, through a sham front called the Franklin Mortgage and Investment Company.

Shearn’s musical creation is a delicious equal parts cocktail from the Last Word template. It’s actually named after the debut novel from Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., which skewers technology on how it can negatively impact our lives and make us irrelevant. The concept makes Vonnegut seem a bit like a Luddite, as technology has certainly improved our lives in innumerable ways, but the point is well taken and prescient as we grapple today with how AI will continue to replace the common worker in so many ways. It’s best we contemplate these big ideas over a good drink, perhaps sitting nearby the soothing sounds of a piano, as it plays out the mysterious puzzle of human experience. Cheers!