Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#245) "The River" by Bruce Springsteen - The title track off one of his best albums, it might be said "The River" was the beginning of Springteen's artistic evolution from boy to man - post Born to Run/pre-Born in the USA. Its quiet, folk-oriented sound reveals in dark, gritty detail (worthy of The Boss) the life, lifestyle and livelihood of much of the real small town America, too often beholden to traditions that do it no good, and dependent on jobs provided by companies that offer no guarantee of sticking around...jobs that surely aren't sexy, or even healthy.

"The River" is not sexy. But it's real. It's truth.

Bruce's entire body of work should really come along on any cross-country road trip, as so much of it reflects this country through the decades, the good, bad, and ugly...

...the wild, the innocent, and the e-street shuffle.

"Then I got Mary pregnant, and man that was all she wrote / And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a wedding coat..."

#246) "Trashy Women" by Confederate Railroad - What can I say? Yes, the song is kind of a throwaway, for this list and for country music in general, but I think it's funny...and more or less true for most men, whether they admit it.  True for me, anyway...just a little.

Of course, it is an unnervingly short half-step from "trashy" (easily idealized in the safe, stable sanctimony of a song) to slatternly and rancorous. So all men are well-advised to review this predilection frequently. ;-)

"They said well pardon us Son, she ain't no kid, that's a cocktail waitress in a Dolly Parton wig / I said, I know it Dad, ain't she cool? That's the kind I dig..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#230) "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen - Even though the song was written specifically for "Philadelphia", the 1993 movie starring Tom Hanks (at this point it's crazy to think that Tom Hanks was once just that guy from the TV show "Bosom Buddies"), it creates such a raw emotional moment, it almost inadvertently takes on a universal meaning. That isn't to detract from its actual message, or the message of the movie, only to suggest, with much appreciation intended, that it's one of those songs you start listening to, and by the end you're so compelled, you're not quite sure how long you've been sitting there listening.

"I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt, I was unrecognizable to myself..."

#231) "I'm On Fire" by Bruce Springsteen - This song, on the other hand, is about as universal as can be. It's Bruce's quiet moment amidst the pipe-banging bluster of Born in the USA.  I guess there's "My Hometown" on that album as well, but everything is above board with "My Hometown". It's obvious what he's singing about, and you either can relate to it, or you can't. "I'm On Fire" also is obvious, but it's one of those rare moments when what becomes obvious is something intensely intimate and personal. That's artistry.

This just might be Bruce's finest song, and although I think it gets mocked by purists (Bruce is the caliber of artist to have "purists" squawking over his work, grading it, assigning it to eras, thinking they are the only ones who get it....), I think the video really does the song justice. It was innovative for its day (and heralded, I remember, as The Boss's first non-concert video). It is also, in a hundred different painstakingly subtle ways, haunting: the fact that you never see the woman's face (only her ring as she drops the car keys into his hands), Bruce driving out to the hills to deliver the car late at night, then the shot from those hills as he walks home, resigned to his place in the world...I don't know, man...this, perhaps more than any other music video I've ever seen, compels me to watch, and at the end I'm not sure how long I've been watching.  Musically and visually, it's fucking hypnotic.

As for the song itself, I was there once...and yeah, that's pretty much exactly what it sounded like.

"At times it's like someone took a knife, baby edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul..."

Yet ANOTHER Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#227) "Angel" by Aerosmith - One night in May 1988 found me walking briskly through the streets of my hometown. It was after dark, after 11 p.m., later than I  - all of fifteen - was used to being out...at least without a reason.

"Just out!" I'd grumbled earlier, when my parents asked where I was going. "I don't know!" was my response when pressed about when I'd be back. "I'll be back when I'm back!"

That level of saltiness toward my parents was not only unprecedented, but unwarranted, and I'm surprised one of them (my dad especially) didn't intervene. But they were nothing if not amazing parents, always seeming to know when to rein me in, and when to let out the leash a little. I like to think they must have sensed this was one of those teenage moments that just had to be left alone, allowed to fix itself.

And it surely was. My first love was out with someone else that night, and as I put on my shoes and shouldered into a light jacket, I was, for the first time ever, experiencing the slow, agonizing shred of jealousy.

Sadly, it wasn't even a true relationship. She and I had a strong connection, had made out a few times even, but at the end of the day, it was really just the dreaded "friendship". She knew this, because she was older and smarter, and I guess I knew it too. I just didn't want to accept it.

She lived a ways out of town, so it wasn't at all easy to get together. Behind us lay a year of long but largely unsatisfying phone conversations, during the most recent of which, the words no guy wants to hear had reluctantly but determinedly escaped her lips: I was such an amazing person, she loved and respected me...but as a friend. She had designated (demoted) me to friendship status, then went off to her prom with some douche...

Okay, I don't know if he was a douche. In my mind he was, anyway.

Plopped onto that was an extra greasy dollop of futility surrounding the difference in our ages. This girl was not a freshman like me, she was a senior, and about to graduate high school. Long, unsatisfying phone conversations lay behind, and now a long summer of frustration lay ahead, at the end of which she would go off to college, and I would enter 10th grade. Let me tell you (or maybe I don't have to, actually), it's one sorry state of affairs when you're the sophomore in that equation.

A year later, Summer of '89, I would have my drivers license and my own car, and I would stay out all night for the first time, wind up on a beach on the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore of Lake Superior, watching dawn crack the sky in the east at 3:30 in the morning, and everything would be put into perspective.  In other words, so much would be different in barely 12 months' time. But it wasn't even imaginable now. Now, I was feeling sort of helpless. I had no car, no license, a heart overflowing with feelings I didn't know what to do with, and I was about to be left behind to boot.

I had gotten into the habit of coping with unrequited love by doing something creative; over the course of that year, I'd written all sorts of songs about that girl, made funny videos for her (and her family's) amusement, written poetry, started novels ("Jared Glovsky is the author of several unfinished novels..." was for a long time a critical element of any "author bio" I composed). But none of that was working on that night in May 1988. I didn't want to "create"...if anything I wanted to destroy something, destroy everything. I knew I couldn't do that, but I also knew I couldn't sit still...I couldn't stay seated. It was almost like a panic attack. I had to do something. I had to get out.

Six years before the movie came out, it was a real Forrest Gump-type moment in my young life. I didn't have anywhere to go, just felt I needed to go somewhere. I simply could not sit cooped up in my bedroom with the silence of my phone blaring in my ear. Forrest Gump started running. I starting walking.

By some miracle, I'd made it past my parents, and as I stepped outside and started down the block, I felt like I was discovering the night. There really was something magical about being out so late, so close to the midnight hour...even past the midnight hour....and on a lovely spring night smelling of the rain that had passed through earlier, to boot.  I avoided downtown, where so many of the kids I knew from school were cruising and hanging out (God forbid I run into her...). I hit the side streets instead, and I liked feeling incognito...

...even kind of nebulous.

That first late-night walk was a monumental step in my life. I was in turmoil, but for the first time ever, I found myself coping with that turmoil within the framework of something larger than myself. And what I really discovered was an undeniable comfort in knowing that I was part of a larger state of affairs. It made my turmoil seem less Earth-shattering, somehow. Not any less painful, necessarily, but less important...if that makes any sense.  Perspective.

That I grew up in a place where I could take a late night walk safely was itself a miracle not lost on me. I had a cousin who was my age, had grown up in New Jersey, in pretty much a concrete jungle surrounded by expressways and neighborhoods he was well-advised to stay out of. He had a single path to and from the Sears store near his house, and not much else. It made me feel better to think that whatever he was doing on that night, whatever teenage malaise he might have been going through at the dawn of adulthood and however he was coping with it, it wasn't by walking around the streets of New Brunswick. He couldn't walk anywhere he pleased. He simply didn't have that option.

I would eventually get a Walkman, and on walks like these (of which there would be countless more in the next two decades) I would bury myself in my music (Smokey Robinson would be discovered as a powerful inoculation that September, right around the time that girl went off to college). But for now, I had just the sounds in my head, and I'm not sure why, but the sound in my head as I made my way up and down the tree-shrouded streets of my hometown, the sound accompanying so much newness, so much revelation in that sweet spring darkness: "Angel" by Aerosmith. It was on the charts at the time (in fact, I think it was the theme of the prom she went to with douche guy...) and positively ringing in my ears as I conquered each new block, visible for just a moment or two passing under the streetlight at the corner.

I came back from that walk feeling better about things, really a new kid, ready to be a new young man...and the song has kept a special place in my heart ever since. It's not a happy song, I don't think, but there's a spaciousness to its sound that was well suited to the new space in my mind back then, and to this day, it makes me think of excitement and anticipation...the hopeful notion that each exit in life is merely an entrance to someplace else.

"I'm in love, and I don't know if I can face the night..."

#228) "Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann - Another one of those rare examples of a cover version that outshines the original, although I'm sure many purist Bruce fans would disagree. The driving force of this song is the lyrics; Bruce's early stream-of-consciousness style is pretty obvious here. And if you know that, I guess it's hard to take Manfred Mann's "interpretation" seriously. In a way, Bruce Springsteen is like The Beatles, and Tom Waits...maybe everyone ought to just leave him alone. Don't try to "cover" him.

That being said, this is an instance where I simply came to like the first version of the song I heard. Bruce's version is a deep track, whereas Manfred Mann's has been residing on classic rock radio for three decades now.

I also think Manfred's arrangement does the poetry of the lyrics justice, particularly the bass line and the dreamy middle section, which crescendos to the most important line in the song: "Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun, but Mama, that's where the fun is..."

If nothing else, it's just a fun song, great to sing to. And oh yeah, it's "revved up like a deuce", not "wrapped up like a douche"...

Unless we're talking about my first love's prom date. ;-)

"She got down but she never got tight, she's gonna make it through the night..."


#229) "Tik Tok" by Kesha - Yes, it's true I've complained about Kesha pretty negatively (and loudly) in the past, and I guess I stand by it, for the most part. Her saccharine, image-saturated (and yet completely contrived) persona is probably more emblematic of the times we live in, and the generation that spawned her, than anything.  She is the Millennial fantasy girl, absorbing all the self-absorption, willful ignorance and infantile emo leanings of what academic Mark Bauerlein has called "the dumbest generation", and blowing it back into our faces in a kind of musical and aesthetic belch.

That being said, I've mellowed out tremendously about her and her generation. My objection was mostly about the larger thing that created her, but screw it, I don't care anymore. And at this point, for better or worse, Kesha, and all that her glitter and dollar sign posturing implies, has become historical. She is to the Millennial generation what the flannel-wearing goatee "grunge" guy eventually became to Generation X...or the hippie-cum-yuppie to the Baby Boomers...a totem for an age that is passing faster than we (or they) realize.

So therefore, "Tik Tok" is no longer an annoying (rather than impressive) affront to the senses, so much as just an extremely catchy pop song. Maybe that's always what it was. For her part, Kesha, it would seem, has known it all along. I admit, I may have been mistaken: it would seem she's not the persona she presents, and isn't really expecting anyone to take her (or it) too seriously or literally...even if they have.

I think "Tik Tok" is a much better produced song (more complex) than anything she's done since, more listenable, less laughable. Although I still can't watch the video without feeling a little grody.

I laugh a little too, however, and I think I'm supposed to...so, there's that.  ;-)

"But we kick them to the curb unless they look like Mick Jagger..."

IN SUMMER'S FINAL MOMENTS: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding, no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material. You know...desert island albums. In the case of 1/48/50, whole urban areas, entire counties, fully one half of any state even, may be traversed on the power of a single inspired album playing all the way through.

So good, in fact, they require no two cents thrown in by the likes of me.  Just listen.  ;-)

"RUBBER SOUL" by The Beatles

"THE RIVER" by Bruce Springsteen

AS SUMMER WINDS DOWN: Whole Albums to Travel By

Those rare musical treasures that require no song-to-song cherry picking, no fast forwarding, no selective exclusion from playlists. They are their OWN playlists...each a greatest hits package of brand new material. You know...desert island albums. In the case of 1/48/50, whole urban areas, entire counties, fully one half of any state even, may be traversed on the power of a single inspired album playing all the way through.

So good, in fact, they require no two cents thrown in by the likes of me.  Just listen.  ;-)

"BORN IN THE USA" by Bruce Springsteen

"THE PRETENDER" By Jackson Browne

The NEXT Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#158) In Another World" by Joe Diffie - A left turn for country music, In Another World is not a typical break-up song, nor a typical Joe Diffie song.  Its melody has a kind of elastic, dreamy quality that suggests (just suggests, never actually says...) nothing is simple, never quite as it seems, even in supposedly quiet and 'sleepy' small towns.

It's especially remarkable, given a typical Joe Diffie song at the time ran more along the line of Third Rock From the Sun, John Deere Greene, and Good Brown Gravy. Here, he admirably steps out of his safety zone, even altering his singing style for the occasion - replacing what seemed to be an obligatory 'a-hyuck! a-hyuck!' defining his contribution to 1990s country (I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way...) with a more serious, monotone delivery, slightly anxious, but steady as a rock. It does the oddly compelling melody and arrangement of In Another World justice.

"There you are with your hair all down, and your feet are bare, and your cotton gown..."

#159) "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" by Bruce Springsteen - It's too bad that when people think back on Bruce and his career, they're most likely to remember Born in the USA first. Though he was already a virtual legend in the eyes of savvy rock and rollers by the time it was released in 1984, Born...(in the USA...not ...to Run) was the album that secured his place amongst Top 40 royalty, that poster of him in his jeans in front of the American flag becoming as iconic to the 1980s as anything. All of it much to the chagrin of Bruce purists who had been digging his musical vibe since the early 70s, and may not have liked having to acknowledge his artistic growth, since his artistic infancy was so solid. Imagine being fortunate enough to have caught him playing somewhere along the Jersey shore when he was still unknown, in days when the Jersey shore meant something other than the place where Snooki puked up tequila and corn chips on the boardwalk. (er, you know...)

I don't think Bruce's mainstream success in the 80s is quite the lame selling out that some do, but it's certainly not the entire story. The Boss's lasting greatness is simply not to be found in the tired, middle age resignation permeating Born in the USA, but instead the wild-eyed certainty in the face of uncertainty that marked his early stuff - the boundless and earnest energy and enthusiasm that powered four-hour concerts back in the day - music for kids that weren't bad, weren't rebels, exactly...just restless, and uncompromising.

That's the interesting thing about Bruce's early music. As poetic and romantic as it was, as uniquely 'Bruce' as it came across, there was no posturing to speak of, no carefully calculated style evident. It was completely organic and effortless, encompassing the collective 'style' of all young people everywhere - young people restless and uncompromising, and blessed with an entire summer before them.  And knowing it.

And really, what better accompaniment to such a fantastic state of affairs as the start of summer than Rosalita? Bruce's lyrics, Weinberg's drumming, Bittan's piano, the Big Man's sax...There's nothing else I can say about any part of this song that doesn't pretty much speak for itself.  

And for everyone, at some point or another.  If they're lucky.

"And my machine she's a dud, out stuck in the mud, somewhere in the swamps of Jersey..."

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#60) "Truckin'" by The Grateful Dead - I can't say I'm a fan of The Grateful Dead. I don't really get the appeal, and to be honest, there's always been something about the concept of the 'Deadhead' that's annoyed me a little. Not to mention, the band's 1987 Touch of Grey was proof positive that even the grittiest, most anti-establishment rock outfit with the grittiest, most die-hard following is in danger of selling out.

But the older I get, the more I appreciate Truckin'. Sometimes there's nothing better to groove to driving down the road; sometimes this is what I want to hear just sitting in a chair staring out the window. At the same time, the older the song gets, the more significant it becomes. On the surface, it would seem a musical travelogue of the band's tireless life on the road, but it also captures a snapshot of America at a specific moment in history, that precipitous time when everything was changing, and open drug references and 'hippie' defiance were still new and terrifying to Middle America, and thus groundbreaking in music (yet tame, of course, by today's standards).

There are those who dig even deeper into the lyrics, consider Truckin' a metaphor for Life, and I can get down with that.

"What a long, strange trip it's been..."

#61) "Folsom Prison Blues" by Johnny Cash - In 1996, when I was working in country radio, I found Cash's American Recordings CD stashed amongst the collection of 'hot country' artists of the day. I can't remember what about it caught my eye, or what prompted me to listen (I was indifferent to Cash when I first got that job, and country music in general), but I was blown away by the gravitas of the songs, the fact that, though he was already in his mid 60s by then, Cash was still making relevant, impactful music. Little did I know American Recordings was only the start of a twilight resurgence for the Man in Black that would continue, with a little help from the competent Rick Rubin, right up to the time he died.

This was before all of that though, before his cover of Nine Inch Nails led to a posthumous explosion in popularity, before the Joaquin Phoenix movie, before it became uncool not to recognize his greatness. Cash deserves all of it certainly, but in this instance, I really was country when country wasn't cool, digging it way back when I was not allowed to play it on the air.  I played Drive On (from American Recordings) once, and immediately got a call on the studio line from the station general manager, who seemed to be always listening. 

'What the hell...!' he cried. "That's not hot country!' 

Though I wanted to, I didn't bother asking what the CD was doing in the on-air booth with all the Shania Twain and Brooks and Dunn and Jo Dee Messina if I wasn't supposed to play it. But I was a Johnny Cash fan from that day forward in any case.

With its train rattle rhythm and one of the wickedest guitar licks ever fried in a pan, Folsom Prison Blues is from the vintage era of Johnny Cash. Outside of Ring of Fire, it's probably his signature song. The live version is the one to seek out, a little faster, little kickier than the album original, recorded at Folsom Prison, as a matter of fact, in the late 1960s. "I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die," Cash warbles in his powerful - yet intriguingly unsteady - baritone. A second later, someone, presumably a member of the felonious audience, screams out "woooooo!", which I have always thought is as unsettling as it is hilarious.

Folsom Prison Blues is perfect for a road trip; always gets me thinking about freedom; that is, personal freedom, the simple yet seminal right we all (should) have to come and go as we please at any given second of our lives, to choose whether to stand on pavement or on grass, as it suits us. I can't imagine having that basic right taken away. I've known guys who have sat in jail, known some who have sat in jail repeatedly. And a few, even, who just can't seem to stay out of trouble, the majority of their adult time has been spent behind bars. No hardened criminals, mind you, but more than a few local losers who aren't bad people, just keep screwing up, and doing time, screwing up, and doing time, over and over.

This is beyond comprehension to me. One time locked up would be my only time. I would be lucky to survive it; I sure as hell wouldn't be back.

"But those people keep a-moving, and that's what tortures me..."

#62) "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns and Roses - Predominant here is what I believe to be the driving force behind G-n'-R's greatness back in the day: Slash's guitar work.

Also, if 1/48/50 is at all going to be about taking a little bit of the past along with me, no other song reminds me more of being fifteen than Sweet Child O' Mine.

"Her hair reminds me of a warm safe place, where as a child I'd hide..."

#63) "Born in the USA" by Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen purists may disagree, but Born in the USA should never be dismissed, or God forbid excluded, when discussing his complete body of work. The Boss's transformation from wild-eyed denizen of boardwalk carnivals in the 1970s to working class everyman who comes home spent and falls asleep in the dim light of his own regret in the 80s could easily be considered a perfectly organic evolution. Bruce couldn't get into his 30s and 40s and still be singing songs like Rosalita, could he? There is probably no more lamentable cold hard truth about Life than the fact that as we age, "Rosalita" - and all that she implies - goes away.

Born in the USA is by no means my favorite Springsteen song. But it's one of those loud, ringing anthems that complements any ride into - or out of - any community, any cruise past strip malls and factories and antenna farms and housing developments surrounding sporadic vestiges of our agrarian past - the odd silo, or random barn sprouting up from the now lifeless land. It truly plays well as one sails past a lot all at once. And I love the fact that the song is not uber-patriotic. In fact, it's not patriotic in the least. If anything, it's an indictment of the USA in the post-Vietnam era. The whole album is this, really, and as I understand it, Springsteen has refused more than a few politicians and organizations who didn't understand this and asked permission to use the song as a patriotic anthem.

For that reason alone, Born in the USA is worthy of Bruce's pantheon.

"They're still there, he's all gone..."

The Top 100 (or so) Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50 (cont...)

#27) "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World" by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - While it's true this song is overexposed, sometimes nauseatingly so, it's with good reason. This medley is one of those rare musical creations that transcends time. It could have been recorded in 1965, 1985 or today, and Kamakawiwo'ole's hypnotic voice and finessed agitation of a ukulele would stand up to even the fiercest scrutiny of changing tastes, fashions and styles.

It was in fact recorded in 1988, and released on a '93 album. Kamakawiwo'ole passed away in 1997 at the age of 38, and the surge of this song's presence in countless movies, television shows and commercials since then has been driven by a posthumous appreciation that might get a little annoying but is not at all surprising. Kamakawiwo'ole left behind a sort of music alchemy - a reconstruction of two old classics into a new classic that frankly sounds and feels a lot like an afternoon most of us hope to one day find in the afterlife.

"Someday I'll wish upon a star/wake up where the clouds are far behind me...."

#28) "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen - Given enough time, The Boss appears on the radar of just about every American teenage boy worth his restless salt, whether that restlessness has him staring down the highway leading out of New Brunswick, New Jersey or Bangor, Maine, Park Falls, Wisconsin or Casper, Wyoming. Though he's never quite topped my musical heroes list, Springsteen (early especially) still holds a place in my heart. His music is an oil essence of earnest romanticism,  and no road trip would be complete without the very last word of road trip songs: Born to Run.

This is what we all imagine the road to be, isn't it? From the engine-driven drum roll that opens the song, to the action-packed bass riff that carries Springsteen's whimsically poetic lyrics, this is what we dream we are escaping to when we stare down any length of highway, and what we're sure beyond a shadow of a doubt we're escaping from. And when we go, we go with every confidence that we will 'walk in the sun' soon enough. It's a serenade firmly rooted in youth to be sure, but the song's energy can bring that feeling back at any age.

"It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap/we gotta get out while we're young..."

#29) "My Old School" by Steely Dan - If the word 'alchemy' could be used to describe just one band's music, I'd quickly submit Steely Dan to the short list of candidates for the honor. Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's perfectionism in the studio is reportedly the stuff of legend, and really no surprise when you consider what they contributed to the 1970s. You can't create something as intricately woven, as brightly dyed, as My Old School (among countless others) without holding it to some level of perfectionism. Perfectionism is how greatness gets done. It's how you guard against allowing anything - even the act of getting out of bed in the morning - to become 'good enough.'  You never grow weary and settle.

The most interesting thing about the music of Steely Dan just might be the lyrics embedded in the slick, jazzy riffs. A seedy underworld of drugs, sex and all around dysfunction belies the bouncy, bright rhythms and hooks, and serves as testament not only to their perfectionism as musicians, but complexity as artists.

"California tumbles into the sea/that'll be the day I go back to Annandale..."

#30) "Without Me" by Eminem - I raised two kids, and there was a time when I worried about the music of Eminem. Not because I think swear words are evil, or raunchiness has no place, or believe 'bad' music makes for 'bad' kids...I don't believe that at all, actually. Kids who are raised right will turn out okay in spite of Slim Shady. Kids who aren't raised right are going to face challenges...may turn INTO Slim Shady.

No, my problem with Eminem was not a soccer mom outrage, but more a disbelief, and certain disquiet, at the acceptance of him into the mainstream. When he first rose to fame in the late 90s, his popularity struck me as a significant lurch forward in the gradual but consistent coarsening of our society that's been going on the last several decades.

Not even a coarsening so much, come to think of it (again, I'm no prude), rather, a steadily increasing lack of subtlety. I mean, let's not kid ourselves, society has always been coarse beneath the surface. People are coarse beneath the surface. But Eminem helped spearhead the dissolution of a base standard for public behavior.

"Cause I'm only giving you things you joke about with your friends inside your living room," he sang, "the only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of you all and I don't have to be false or sugarcoated at all..." 

For better or worse, that made total sense to me. And everyone else.

But 2002's Without Me reveals that Eminem is, essentially, a joke...in a good way. I can get on board with anyone who shows me they have a sense of humor, that they don't take themselves too seriously (Miley Cyrus accomplished this, sort of, on SNL not two weeks ago), and the humorous video is indisputable evidence that no matter how seriously Eminem was taken, how legitimate his talent, how accurately his crass persona may have reflected something about our society as much as it affected, he was never too cool to have to pull his superhero tights out of his ass when they bunched up.

I can totally get down with that. Don't think for a second I haven't cruised along, bobbing my head just like Eminem and Dr. Dre do in the video. And don't think for a second I won't do it on 1/48/50, even though I'll be almost 50...

But so will Eminem, as he is, and will always be, two months older than I am. A fact that my teenage son found hard to wrap his head around, back in the day. ;-)

"Feel the tension soon as someone mentions me..."