#148) "Roll Me Away" by Bob Seger - Oh, would that it were this easy.
But alas, the story told in Roll Me Away is so far-fetched, so implausible, it's difficult to suspend disbelief. I mean really, come on, he just steps outside one day, looks down a road, and decides now is the time to go? No destination is given, no details as to what he's leaving behind, only that he's 'tired of his own voice'...he meets a girl, she's convinced, and together they speed off into the high plains.
More believable, perhaps, when one is young and prone to (or capable of) believing romanticism and idealism are soul mates.
I still like Roll Me Away, though. It's the song that started it all, back in that motel room in Madison, Wisconsin, when I was thirteen.The piano introduction, strung together by a thin orchestral wire, always stirs something in me...and there are parts of the story that ring quite true. Notably the fact that the girl he meets in the bar, who at first is pulled in by the idea of taking off, eventually can't keep going with him.
"She said she missed her home / I headed on alone..."
That's part of what my road trip will be about. I can talk all day long about responsibilities and being sensible, but it is a little bit true that the innate fear of stepping away, even temporarily (much less permanently), from what's familiar, has kept me around. 1/48/50 will be about marshaling that...for a little while.
"I too am lost, I feel double crossed, and I'm sick of what's wrong and what's right..."
#149) "My Next Thirty Years" by Tim McGraw - Back in my DJ days, I was twice wrong about Tim McGraw. First, I predicted that his career was not likely to survive Y2K, because Indian Outlaw was the dumbest song I'd ever heard, and would prove to limit the scope of his career to that of a novelty artist.
My second prediction was that he and wife Faith Hill would not last much into the 21st century as a couple. This was inspired by the heavy blast of duets they recorded and released in the late 1990s, each one sappier than the last, that listeners just couldn't get enough of. It's Your Love might have been the most requested song at our station in 1997 and 1998. I didn't (and don't) have anything against them personally, or as artists, just a knee jerk 'get a room, you two...' mentality at the time, and belief that celebrity couples, particularly in the music industry, are almost always doomed.
I obviously didn't know what the hell I was talking about. Twenty years since Indian Outlaw, McGraw is still active in country music and taken his place among the revered. And against all odds, he and Faith Hill are going on twenty years. Good for them.
2000's My Next Thirty Years is also a kind of fantasy, how you hope things will go as you cross the dreaded threshold from your twenties to your thirties. But unlike Roll Me Away, it doesn't have to remain mere fiction. It's possible to achieve what the song is talking about, if you fashion the right circumstances in your life, smartly and incrementally relinquish certain lifestyles and viewpoints in the name of the growth required for smooth transition of life stages. I like that kind of optimism, and I gotta say, I've been able to make a little bit of it true. I don't want to get old, I don't want to die, nobody does...but so far my next thirty years have been a lot more enjoyable than my first thirty.
"Maybe now I've conquered all my adolescent fears / And I'll do it better in my next thirty years..."
