Road Rage

The other day I was waiting in the drive-thru at the bank, and in a fairly pissy mood. The weather had been shit all day, I'd been stuck in the line for over twenty minutes, and when the vehicle ahead of me didn't move on quick enough so that I could finally get up to the window, make my deposit, and go home, I blew my horn as a means of nudging it along. I didn't lay on the horn, but didn't merely tap it either. It was about a one-second yawp in the Key of F to express my impatience with this driver, and yes, also my general aggravation with an entirely unconcerned world.

The gentlemen driving the vehicle had just started to pull away, but when I blew my horn he braked, put it back in park, and climbed out. He took two steps toward me, spread his hands out and said, "Is there something wrong with me?"

Yes, there is, I thought. You sat there diddling on your phone with your foot holding the brake for a full 45 seconds before moving forward, demonstrating a gross lack of courtesy, a total disregard for the preciousness of anyone's time other than your own.

I didn't say that though. Instead, I passively swiped my hand in front of me, shook my head, and said, "Naw, we're good."

He was not a physically imposing individual; that wasn't the issue. He was short, and thin, and in his early 60s, if not older. Whether I could "take" him in a physical fight didn't matter, just as whether he should have immediately moved his ass after the bank teller completed his transaction didn't ultimately matter, no matter how much I thought it should in the moment. I'd inadvertently baited him, he was outraged, and it was incumbent upon me to suck up my pride and keep the situation from escalating. I had no way of knowing how pissed off he was (read: what he might have been capable of), and no way of telling if he might have had a gun in his vehicle, or on his person, in this state, which allows permitted concealed carry, so I "squashed it" (to borrow a line from Beverly Hills 90210 a hundred years ago), and it was the right call. I cooled my own jets, and he cooled his, got back in his car and drove off.

But the near-incident illustrated how low the flashpoint of people's rage is. It really doesn't take much to get someone flying off the handle, and that's got me reconsidering my own behavior when I'm driving around, especially on any extended trip. I'm not a hot head, exactly, I don't freak out over every little slight that comes my way (in a reversed situation, my response to him blowing his horn would have been to mutter, "yeah, okay, calm down, asshole..." to myself, before moving on...), but I can't say I've never laid on the horn, can't say I've never flipped anyone the bird, although it's almost always been in response to the other person doing it first. What can I say? I'm human. I fuck up sometimes, don't always have the right answer. But I will say that the older I get, the less often it happens. Thank God for that.

Road rage isn't really a new phenomenon. There were TV news stories about it when I was growing up in the 80s. Back then it was presented as a new, burgeoning phenomenon, and largely centered around urban areas, where traffic congestion tweaked the nerves of drivers on a daily basis. I seem to recall a kind of, "What's happening to our nation's urban freeways...?" theme. 

That, of course, is no longer true, if it ever really was. Road rage happens everywhere now, on all types of roads, in all types of places, involving all types of people of all ages, and YouTube provides a harrowing glimpse into how frequently it happens, how easily it can escalate, and indeed, just what people are capable of when it does. You watch enough of those videos depicting intersection screaming matches, angry tapping on driver-side glass or punching of hoods, the aggressive, multi-lane maneuvers, the occasional brandishing of firearms, it's hard to keep faith that anyone "squashes" anything anymore, hard to believe that we're not going (or gone) off the rails as a society.

I have a couple of completely unscientific theories as to why road rage happens (that is, frequently enough to qualify as a phenomenon):  

1) We're in motion when we're in a car, but we're not in control of that motion really, or at least always on the precipice of losing it. Instinctively, we know that something catastrophic could happen in a split second to wrest it from our grasp, and even if it's not something we consciously think about all the time, we're not at all okay with that notion. It makes us anxious ... puts us on guard.

2) Our feet aren't touching the ground, which further makes us feel vulnerable, and we're sitting down to boot, so when someone gets too close, or almost sideswipes us, or cuts us off, our kneejerk response is amplified.

I don't know if there's any warrant to either of those points, but they make sense, don't they?

Road rage is, in any case, a pretty horrible part of modern American life, and something to consider when I take this long road trip. On one hand, 1/48/50 will be an epically restorative experience. There will be something grand about having nowhere to be for an extended period of time, just tooling around here and there, wherever the wind (or the road) takes me, going places I've never been and will be unlikely to ever visit again.

But there will be a lot of driving, a lot of time stuck in my vehicle - that is, sitting down with my feet off the ground - and I wouldn't want a situation like what began to boil at my bank the other day to escalate when I'm in an unfamiliar town, or a thousand miles from nowhere (or anywhere ever, actually).  I can't really control how anyone else responds or reacts, but I can do my part, by keeping off the horn and keeping my middle finger in its holster. 

Also just by keeping my own anger in check, and the best way to do this is by keeping perspective: about how insignificant I am in the great cosmic all, and how unconcerned the world really is whether I get angry or not. It's not worth the elevated blood pressure, much less (God forbid) facing what may lie in wait at the end of an escalation. 

Just shake it off, reset, and drive on.

"Squash it!" ;-) 

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

 #374) "My City Was Gone" by The Pretenders - It's probably not possible there exists any American who has ever ridden in a car in the middle of the day with the AM radio playing for so much as ten minutes - any time in the last 30 years - who wouldn't associate this lush, satisfying, bass-driven jam with The Rush Limbaugh radio show, for which it has served as the opening theme for three decades.

I do not like that fact at all ... but not because it's Rush Limbaugh. I don't like the thought of it being turned into a theme song, a jingle, for anyone, or anything. In fact, if it were my song - if any of the songs on this list were mine - I would guard jealousy (that is, Prince-like...) the context in which I'd created it. I would not want Rush Limbaugh or Rachel Maddow appropriating it for their own purposes, turning it into something it's not. Likewise, I'd do everything I could to keep Pepsi, Budweiser, McDonalds and Depends undergarments from turning it into something it's not. Sure, I like soda, beer Big Macs, and yeah, someday I just might need those padded undies, but I would not want my music to have anything to do with any of that. (Even in jest, even if one day I'm "also a client.") This might sound funny, would surely provoke eye rolls if I said it out loud at a dinner party, but whatever it consists of, whatever it sounds, smells or tastes like, and however many people enjoy it or think I'm a talentless hack, my art is my art, and it's not - not - to be used by pundits for political purposes or Pepsi to push product.

As an aside, I'm actually really glad I'm not a musical artist. I wouldn't want to have to be forced to accept the rampant misuse / misappropriation of my work on YouTube and social media by people who think copying and pasting is part of the creative process.  

The story of how Limbaugh came to use the song is tainted by politics. The conservative Limbaugh's attempt to identify/brand himself with a song written by Pretenders frontlady Chrissie Hynde, a liberal environmentalist, did cause a stir at one point. But the two sides reportedly reached some kind of détente over the issue in the mid-1990s, and Limbaugh was given official permission to continue using it. 

That's all six degrees of what-the-fuck-ever in my mind. "My City Was Gone" has nothing to do with politics, or shouldn't, and is instead (should be) of universal relatability: libs, conservatives, Dems, Republicans, white, black ... who among us hasn't returned to their hometown after many years to find things lamentably changed?  Whatever your political stripes, nobody should be just okay with any world they once knew being "reduced to parking spaces." 

I love that the song never gets too overwrought in delivering its message. It skillfully makes a larger point, an important one, without having to force it home. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that, musically speaking, "My City was Gone" doesn't really go anywhere, simply trades on the sturdy bass line to carry it through to the end. But that bass line it's so appealing, so pleasant to nod your head to, and the lyrics so simple yet potent, I find myself not expecting or needing anything to happen. It's all good just the way it is, just the way it plays out ... this time, and when I play it again right after. Which I almost always do.

And then usually once more, because the song is just fun to listen to. It's not a song so much as a groove ... which doubtless is why (for better or worse) it works so well as radio bumper music.

"I  was stunned and amazed / My childhood memories, slowly swirled past / Like the wind through the trees..."

#375) "Let Her Cry" by Hootie and the Blowfish - This is one of the songs that has stuck to my heart like paste as the years have passed, evoking an emotional chill nowadays just like it did back in what have lamentably become the proverbial old days.  The song breezed quietly and unassumingly through the year 1995, as I dated and wasted time and tried to be the best 22-year-old father I could be. It was the crest of Hootie's popularity, and this anguished melody and arrangement were well suited to Darius Rucker's low, gritty vocals.  

I have two specific memories associated with this song. The first involves hearing the 40-something mother of a girl I was dating at the time cry out "Hootie!" with an exuberant pump of her fist when it started playing, and me and the girl shrinking down and rolling our eyes like the snarky shits we were (not realizing, of course, that before we knew it, we would be older than her mother was at the time).

The second memory is inextricably linked to the attendant (and inevitable) drama that arises when you're young, early 20s, and trying to hack out a serious relationship with someone who is just as young and unreliable as you. In the days of our lives when for most of us it's largely about going out and meeting people and partying and all of that, when restlessness saturates the air of any given day, and everything that happens - good, bad, or indifferent - is something to be stored away for some later use (as a memory, a lesson learned, whatever....), there arises two types: people who can handle their shit, handle "partying", and people who can't. 

"Let Her Cry" tells the story of a couple being torn apart because one of them can't. I've been in those kinds of relationships, seen substance abuse first hand, and it sucks. But what's interesting about "Let Her Cry" is that it digs a deeper emotional trench than other songs of similar subject matter.  For me, the heartbreak intrinsic to the song (and still causing that chill) isn't the substance abuse per se, but the futility that follows it wherever it goes, seeping into everyone's lives, leading to alienation, then eventually distance. In other words, it's not that someone in this relationship has a substance problem, it's more the note standing by the phone (as the lyrics go) saying, "Maybe I'll be back someday...".

Words as futile as they are sad.

"I wanted to look for you, you walked in, I didn't know just what I should do / So I sat back down and had a beer and felt sorry for myself ... "

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

 #355) "Ain't Even Done With the Night" by John Mellencamp - John Mellencamp is kind of an enigma. He's an American small-towner, proponent and defender of the perceived sanctity of family farms and dirt roads and cornfields and small towns and general stores and bright afternoon sunlight glowing through frosted gymnasium windows just after school, as girls congregate in the bleachers checking their makeup and watching the boys down on the hardwood, who are running practice drills and pretending not to notice...and all that. 

Yet he's not a good old boy...not exactly...and if you look back at the height of his career in the 1980s, none of his work could be called bare bones anything. There was always something else going on, a certain artistic expression, a certain polish, that pushed him right to edge of legitimacy without ever pushing him too far. That's because John Mellencamp really is an artist, fully capable of bringing to bear a vision without ever letting it become overstated or obvious, or fake. He's kind of like the Billy Joel of the Heartland, except the argument has been made (by others, not me) that Billy Joel allowed his craft to push him a bit too far off the city streets and into schmaltz, whereas Mellencamp always seemed - to me anyway - legit. That is, always knowing completely that which he was singing about.

Just the name of the 1980 album on which "Ain't Even Done With the Night" appears suggests a certain expanded state of mind: Nothin' Matters, and What if it Did.  That's pretty heady, and any small towner who earnestly engages that kind of rhetoric is the one I want to sit and have a few beers with.

Sublimely tender without ever becoming too much so, "Ain't Even Done with the Night" sways, swings and bumps its way along with equal parts confidence and clumsiness, mirroring the vulnerable nature of the lyrics. It's fun, funny, sexy and pathetic all at once, not to mention compellingly pretty, and never allows whatever vulnerability might be afoot to quash a stellar sense of anticipation.

"Well I don't even know if I'm doin' this right..."

#356) "All Those Years Ago" by George Harrison -  My introduction to the Beatles came in two parts when I was eight years old: first the assassination of John Lennon in December 1980. When it happened, I was mostly just annoyed, because coverage of the tragedy interrupted my after-school TV viewing (a full week of The Brady Bunch, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Battle of the Planets got pre-empted), but eventually I learned, through my parents, who John Lennon was, what the Beatles were, and how significant that impossible tragedy was.

Then, a few months later, George Harrison's musical tribute to his fallen friend was released and pretty much defined the year 1981 for me, turned me into a Beatlemaniac for life. 

This is more of a thing all around as I age, but man, when this song was new, I really considered "all those years ago" to be some mythical epoch long, long ago, covered in the dust of the ages and only detectable through the micro-lens of George Harrison's first-hand songwriting. But it was barely 15 years past that Harrison was singing about when he sang about it. Not even one generation. The Boomers were barely into their thirties at the time, and Gen X...well, we were all still kids. Nowadays, of course, fifteen years feels more like the amount of time it takes to lift a coffee mug to my lips, take a drink and set it back down. 

As to the song itself, it's one of Harrison's best, and the "quiet Beatle" had a lot of songs that placed him shoulder to shoulder with the "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting juggernaut. I think it's brilliantly suited to its subject matter, bonded seamlessly to melancholy and reminiscing, with Harrison's uniquely bittersweet musical signature - gentle humor, and winsome-sounding chords strained like juice from a citrus fruit.  Maybe that's a tortured metaphor, but I'm sticking with it. ;-)

"You were the one that they said was so weird..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

 #353) "Walk on the Wild Side" by Lou Reed - One of those songs that's probably been stylish to say you like (even if you don't) since its release, I must state that until recently, I wasn't a fan. I appreciated it objectively, recognized how significant it was that a song like this, giving voice to something completely unknown or stubbornly unrecognized at the time, got recorded and released and made it all the way to #16 on the American charts in 1972, the year I was born. It was way ahead of its time, and pretty edgy, I'd imagine (in a year when The Brady Bunch was part of ABC's prime time lineup), without being repulsive.

And that's its greatest weapon, I'd say: the mysterious serum created with just a few musical ingredients: a spartan arrangement of alienated-sounding bass, horns and lightly brushed percussion paired with tired vocals that have trouble standing on their own (in critical need of help from the "colored girls", who totally step up). It just sounds like the streets, I think, sounds like everything it's talking about and everything going on around what it's talking about. I remember listening to this song years ago and hearing, but not really listening.  Now - I don't really know why - it's hypnotic, to the point of being a little unsettling. 

Doubtless, as intended. 

"Plucked her eyebrows on the way, shaved her legs and then he was a she..."

#354) "Against all Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil Collins - It's not often that a song written specifically for a movie soundtrack is...well, any good at all, much less superb. Written (by Collins) and named for the 1984 flick starring Rachel Ward and Jeff Bridges, "Against All Odds" ebbs and flows seamlessly between tender ballad and blustery power ballad, with Collins' vocals seaming to tie it all together for his ability to sing tenderly then, on a dime, pour it all out.  Heavy and brooding from the outset, it explodes suddenly with a clap of Collins' thunderous drumming (which I often think is overstated in his music, but not here...), then snaps back.  It explodes again...then snaps back, leaving a sense of uncertainty, of questions waiting to be answered. It's a really unusual experience when I listen to this song. Definitely not a garden variety soft rock 80s hit, "Against All Odds" is musical craftsmanship.

"You're the only one who really knew me at all..."

One More (?) Go Around: A Hundred Songs I Absolutely Must Have With Me on 1/48/50

#337) "Key Largo" Bertie Higgins - Man, when I was a kid, about ten or eleven, and this song came on the radio, I had a hell of a raucous time singing out loud what I thought were the actual lyrics. Having no knowledge whatsoever of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall or the movie being referenced, I thought the line was, "We had it all, just like boogie in the corn", and thought that was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.

For the most part, the song didn't do much for me, even though it could be said I was plugged into sappy ditties - the "shit your parents listened to" - more than other kids. All I ever felt moved to do was make fun of this one, and I totally did (while not knowing what the hell I was talking about). But "Key Largo" is one of those songs that gets better with age, the passage of time, and perhaps requires a next level of maturity to appreciate. If you park your snark for five minutes (and maybe don't watch the video), you'll likely come to realize that there is an oddly dim beauty to the musicality of this song. Although it still doesn't move me to want to fall in love or fuck, its soft edges are hard not to get caught on, and swept away by...just a little.

"Starring in our own late, late show / Sailing away to Key Largo..."

#338) "Sailing" by Christopher Cross - Now this is a song I could get on board with when I was ten, and it remains so to this day.  So subtly rendered, without ever becoming overwrought or too sappy, it's the music of a soft, bright day dream, any pleasant afternoon-turned-evening, of, indeed, the very azure sky and calm blue-green seas it speaks of. It's the progenitor of that subgenre known as yacht rock, but I think it works if you're just sailing through the rich blue waters of your mind, and I would say it qualifies for "they just don't right 'em like this anymore" designation. Surely, it would not wind up on pop radio these days, as it did, reaching No. 1 in August 1980.

"Oh, the canvas can do miracles, just you wait and see..."

SUMMER PROJECT: Songs That Will Definitely NOT Be Coming Along on 1/48/50

Music, like all things creative, is subjective. I know the list of "road songs" I've been cobbling together on this page for quite a while is not the last word. I'm fully aware everyone has a vastly different list of songs to place on something so heady as a road trip mix.  I like to think I have fairly eclectic taste, fed by an open mind. If something moves me, it moves me. I don't get bogged down by age, image, genre or coolness factor and looking back, I'm proud of the fact that my list has been all over the road, so to speak.

But there are some songs I simply cannot get on board with, for any number of reasons. Sometimes they try too hard. Sometimes they don't try hard enough.  Sometimes it's a song from a band or an artist I otherwise like, just an odd left turn into a musically bad neighborhood that rubs me the wrong way.   Sometimes there's no reason for a certain song to be rubbing me the wrong way, it just does. I can't explain it. Sometimes there's not really anything wrong with a song, as such, it just reminds me of a time in my life I don't wish to remember (don't wish to bring along on a 14,000 mile road trip).  

And yes, sometimes it is true that a certain song is just horrible, so lame or poorly or lazily rendered, so insulting to its genre, the artist performing it, and the LISTENER, it makes my skin crawl, even pisses me off a little.

Here are a few of the musical lemons that will not be coming along for the ride on 1/48/50.  I won't comment beyond the listing.  Readers can take them for what they will, or not take them at all. They may decide I don't know what I'm talking about (if they haven't already), or they may cry out 'Hallelujah!'  Either way is fine with me.  ;-)

❌  "Working For the Weekend" by Loverboy

❌  "My Humps" by The Black Eyed Peas

❌  "Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus

SUMMER PROJECT: Songs That Will Definitely NOT Be Coming Along on 1/48/50

Music, like all things creative, is subjective. I know the list of "road songs" I've been cobbling together on this page for quite a while is not the last word. I'm fully aware everyone has a vastly different list of songs to place on something so heady as a road trip mix.  I like to think I have fairly eclectic taste, fed by an open mind. If something moves me, it moves me. I don't get bogged down by age, image, genre or coolness factor and looking back, I'm proud of the fact that my list has been all over the road, so to speak.

But there are some songs I simply cannot get on board with, for any number of reasons. Sometimes they try too hard. Sometimes they don't try hard enough.  Sometimes it's a song from a band or an artist I otherwise like, just an odd left turn into a musically bad neighborhood that rubs me the wrong way.   Sometimes there's no reason for a certain song to be rubbing me the wrong way, it just does. I can't explain it. Sometimes there's not really anything wrong with a song, as such, it just reminds me of a time in my life I don't wish to remember (don't wish to bring along on a 14,000 mile road trip).  

And yes, sometimes it is true that a certain song is just horrible, so lame or poorly or lazily rendered, so insulting to its genre, the artist performing it, and the LISTENER, it makes my skin crawl, even pisses me off a little.

Here are a few of the musical lemons that will not be coming along for the ride on 1/48/50.  I won't comment beyond the listing.  Readers can take them for what they will, or not take them at all. They may decide I don't know what I'm talking about (if they haven't already), or they may cry out 'Hallelujah!'  Either way is fine with me.  ;-)

❌  "I Don't Want to Wait" by Paula Cole

❌  "All by Myself" by Eric Carmen

❌  "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People

SUMMER PROJECT: Songs That Will Definitely NOT Be Coming Along on 1/48/50

Music, like all things creative, is subjective. I know the list of "road songs" I've been cobbling together on this page for quite a while is not the last word. I'm fully aware everyone has a vastly different list of songs to place on something so heady as a road trip mix.  I like to think I have fairly eclectic taste, fed by an open mind. If something moves me, it moves me. I don't get bogged down by age, image, genre or coolness factor and looking back, I'm proud of the fact that my list has been all over the road, so to speak.

But there are some songs I simply cannot get on board with, for any number of reasons. Sometimes they try too hard. Sometimes they don't try hard enough.  Sometimes it's a song from a band or an artist I otherwise like, just an odd left turn into a musically bad neighborhood that rubs me the wrong way.   Sometimes there's no reason for a certain song to be rubbing me the wrong way, it just does. I can't explain it. Sometimes there's not really anything wrong with a song, as such, it just reminds me of a time in my life I don't wish to remember (don't wish to bring along on a 14,000 mile road trip).  

And yes, sometimes it is true that a certain song is just horrible, so lame or poorly or lazily rendered, so insulting to its genre, the artist performing it, and the LISTENER, it makes my skin crawl, even pisses me off a little.

Here are a few of the musical lemons that will not be coming along for the ride on 1/48/50.  I won't comment beyond the listing.  Readers can take them for what they will, or not take them at all. They may decide I don't know what I'm talking about (if they haven't already), or they may cry out 'Hallelujah!'  Either way is fine with me.  ;-)

❌  "Dream On" by Aerosmith

❌  "Leather and Lace" by Don Henley and Steve Nicks

❌  "Girl on Fire" by Alicia Keys

Road Trip CliffsNotes

Of course, the details that shape a road trip are missing from a video like this. I would (will) document 1/48/50 differently (I'm way too much of a blowhard to keep quiet through six hours of video). But nevertheless, take a few minutes to watch some of it, and you'll find it's not only fairly mesmerizing, but I think it encapsulates visually what people love about driving. Without description, without sound, it makes me want to be the person behind the wheel in the worst way.

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

#282) "Interstate Love Song" by The Stone Temple Pilots - I was never really into The Stone Temple Pilots. In fact, were it not for Scott Weiland's distinctive vocals, I might not otherwise have known "Interstate Love Song" was their song, because I honestly can't say it ever did anything for me.

Looking back, I don't know why. It's really a gorgeous piece of music, one of those (in my opinion) perfectly constructed songs, universally appealing, that from my point of view wound up draped fully across the decade in which it was released. In the past, I've said that nothing smells like 1975 more than "Sister Golden Hair" by America, more recently I claimed nothing smells more like 1997 than Smash Mouth, but nothing smells more like the whole of the 1990s (especially as time has passed and it's gelled into a by-gone era) as "Interstate Love Song".

It never got my attention, and yet it always seemed to be playing in the background of my life - on the radio at work, in my car, the jukebox at a bar, at parties, on TV. It was, in a word, ubiquitous, and it isn't hard to understand why. It's brilliantly not too "grunge" for its own good (or post-grunge, or other classification that for better or worse helps us interpret our world), not too much anything and yet a little bit of everything. There is nothing specific in its lyrics that speaks to me personally, but when I think of the full scope of being in my twenties - of ceremonious drinking late into the night all the way to sunrise, of flannel and hole-y jeans and carefully crafted stubble, of smoking cigs because I still had plenty of time to quit and taking selfies (with an old film camera) with one of them dangling out of my mouth because I was the even more carefully crafted "writer guy", hell-bent on doing things my way, living life on what I thought were my own terms - it's simply this song that is playing in the background, probably more frequently than songs I liked a lot more, even though I never actually listened to it until three years ago.

"Waiting on a Sunday afternoon, for what I read between the lines / Your lies..."

#283) "Why Can't I?" by Liz Phair - Same exact deal as above, only replace the 1990s with the 2000s, and replace hooking up, drinking until dawn and cigarettes dangling from my mouth with attempts to quit, health kicks, kids, business ventures and all the attendant adult bullshit "writer guy" swore would never, ever be his life. My stubble was still there, but a little grayer. I was still writing, but it was less a pleasure, more a chore. I found I didn't have nearly as much time as I once did...and noticed it was running a lot faster. Though, of course, not as fast as it is now. 😐

While all of that transformation and transition was going on, "Why Can't I?" was the song droning in the background.

"We're already wet and we're gonna go swimming..."

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

#277) "Walking On the Sun" by Smash Mouth - What the band America was to the 1970s, it might be said Smash Mouth was to the 1990s. Make no mistake, I think America was a much better band, and their music had a much greater (lasting) impact. But as I once said that nothing smells more like 1975 than "Sister Golden Hair", nothing smells more like 1997 in my mind than "Walking on the Sun".

Into a world with "Friends", "Frasier" and "Seinfeld" on TV, "blazing fast!" 56K technology taking the Internet by storm, and everyone drinking fancy coffee in a fancy coffee house and planning to publish a poetry book, Smash Mouth released "Walking on the Sun", a never unlistenable little jam that says more about the let-down of the 1960s than a lot of painstakingly rendered historical documentaries. I feel the second verse in particular distills the unfortunate road society has taken since that time (idealism crushed cruelly beneath the boot heel of corporate-controlled consumerism) down to a simple, deceptively rhetorical question:

"Twenty-five years ago they spoke out and they broke out of recession and oppression
And together they toked
And they folked out with guitars around a bonfire
Just singing and clapping, man, what the hell happened...?"

Drop the mic, boys...

"Because fashion is smashing the true meaning of it..."

#278) "Drinking Song" by Loudon Wainwright -  Though it might be considered a deep track (truthfully every one of Wainwright's songs, other than 1972's "Dead Skunk", which for better or worse is probably what he'll be remembered for, might be considered a deep track), "Drinking Song" encapsulates everything I've loved about the man and his music over the years.

It is quintessential Loudon. He treats the guitar as much as a percussion instrument as a string.  The song starts like any other of his ditties - a little anxious but also a little clever and wry, nothing if not comical. But like all his music, the best of it at least, "Drinking Song" has a way of turning overcast as it wears on. By the end, that trademark anxiety Wainwright employs to fuel his music has gotten itself onto you, like a musty smell, and you are left sort of wondering why you were laughing at all.


"
Drunk men stagger, drunk men fall, drunk men swear and that's not all / Quite often they will urinate outdoors..."

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

#267) "When the Stars Go Blue" by Tim McGraw - Tim McGraw made this Ryan Adams song a hit in 2006, and he's to be applauded for it, as it's neither a typical country ballad, nor typical of McGraw (although he did do a stupendous job with "Please Remember Me" a few years earlier, kind of an off-beat ballad itself, so perhaps this was not totally out of left field). If the word "gorgeous" can ever be used to describe a song without sounding like overkill (or in the case of country music, overcompensation), this is it. "Please Remember Me" is lush and lovely, but it might be said, by those with no taste for ballads of any kind, that it's a bit fruity.

Whereas there's nothing fruity about "When the Stars Go Blue". To me, it seems naturally placed wherever it's heard. It drips like rain off the roof on a gunmetal gray afternoon...or maybe it's the sound of the light that cascades down through the clouds when they break up later in the evening. Maybe it's the overnight.

Or the sound of a new day. Maybe the new day's rain.

"Where do you go when you're lonely? Where do you go when you're blue...?"

#268) "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" by Gerry and the Pacemakers - There are some songs that just seem to come from a faraway place, a place you know is remote, a place people neither travel to or from very often.  For me, "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is one of those. Out of its very arrangement (full of wispy strings, totally uncertain-sounding horns, overly cautious percussion, and an oboe that sounds as though it's contemplating whether there's any reason to go on living) broadcasts an unavoidable (and undeniable) sense of remoteness that, for my money, can only get anywhere by riding the light through the vast sky. In other words, like "When the Stars Go Blue", "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Crying" is uniquely gorgeous.

But it's also odd as hell for how Gerry Marsden sounds as he's singing it. Maybe it's my imagination, but for a song of hope, Marsden sounds intractably cold, and wholly unsympathetic to whoever he has caught crying.

Maybe it's merely the best a hard-bitten Liverpudlian can muster in the emotions department. It could also be intentional, I guess, a vocal stylization if you will, to match the haunting melody. If so, here's a song that truly captures the nuanced subtleties of the human condition: "There there...it's okay to cry, just....okay, come on, all right then, you're good...let's get up now, pull yourself together...hey, stop it... stop it..."

"We know crying's not a bad thing, but stop your crying when the birds sing..."

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

#253) "Are You Experienced?" by Jimi Hendrix - Quintessential Hendrix here, I'd say...sexually charged melody, guitar singing (or in this case groaning) rather than merely being played, and lyrics that are beautifully poetic, deceptively smart, and kind of predatory all at once.

"Are You Experienced?" is also one of those songs that, I think, has become historical, representative of everything that was going on at the time it was released (1967), not just out in the world, but in people's minds, as everything "out in the world" was changing so drastically.

"If you can just get your mind together, then come on across to me..."

#254) "A Thousand Miles From Nowhere" by Dwight Yoakum - For many years I've heard people talk about what's roundly considered the greatest country song of all time - "He Stopped Loving Her Today" by George Jones.

Meh, that's all right, but I've never understood why people consider it worthy of country music canon. For my money, it's not even the best George Jones song.

"A Thousand Miles From Nowhere", on the other hand, casts the ideal country mold - sorrow, heartache, a larger sense of lonesomeness - without trying to be "country". It doesn't try to be anything. It just is.  A thousand miles from nowhere.

"All that I keep hearing, are the cruel, cruel words that you said..."

#255) "Maple Leaf Rag" by Scott Joplin - I rediscovered this music only in the last few months, after about a four-decade hiatus. I hadn't heard it since I was a kid, but there was a time, long ago, when it was a pretty big deal. My parents had an 8-track of ragtime composer Scott Joplin's greatest hits (seriously, it existed), and I wore that cartridge out jamming to Joplin in days when I was barely out of diapers (no, not high school). "Maple Leaf Rag" was my first experience feeling emboldened by music, first time being struck by the impulse to air play along.

Honestly, that's still the case. You can't help but have a little swagger after listening to this. It's not cool, hip or sexy, but it's simply good. The bratty-sounding melody coupled with an equally sassy rhythm make you feel good , which, at the end of the day, is the thing we most expect - and crave - from our music.

Right...?

Thoughts on renewing my driver's license

My driver's license expired on my birthday, which is Christmas Day. It wasn't until the following week I realized it had lapsed, and not until after the New Year that I had a chance to take care of it. Oh yes, this 'bad boy' went nearly two weeks driving the highways and byways without a valid Wisconsin license, and I'm proud to say that's just about the most illegal thing I've ever done, unless you count my overnight parking violation ten years ago, a $25 fine I neglected to pay that resulted in a warrant being issued for my arrest.

Ever since I first got my license in January 1989, each 'renewal' - mandated by the State of Wisconsin every eight years - has felt like a passage, an exit off one stage of my life, onto another. I've kept all of them, all the little plastic cards that not only declare I'm qualified to operate a motor vehicle, but over time have allowed me to live my life - to buy cigarettes (back when I did so), buy alcohol, rent cars, rent movies, apply for jobs, check into hotels, check out books, deposit checks, step onto planes...to prove at a moment's notice, that I am me, should any individual of even the lowest level of authority think to ask (and all that that implies). Unfortunately I don't have them all with me, so can't display them with this post. Too bad. It'd be kind of trippy to see my transformation from scrawny, acne-ridden teenager to not-so-scrawny but still occasionally acne ridden adult, who at least can hide behind stubble when blemishes attack.

Things have changed since the last time I renewed. They don't process your license on site anymore. They give you a temporary slip of paper to provide as requested, and your new license arrives by mail within a week, from St. Louis, or Wichita, or somewhere. This surprises me, a little. It's hard to believe in this day and age that it is more efficient, or cost saving, to outsource production, and out-of-state no less, but I can say (at least) that it arrived within 7 business days, as promised. No hassle.

And I have to admit, the license that arrived is remarkable. Sporting a modern design that takes into consideration our society's appetite for visual stimulation ('packaging' as important here, it would seem, as it is on a bag of Doritos, or an NFL-sponsored beer can), it's also decked out in a lot more of the 'bling' that, for better or worse, defines the age we live in - an age in which, for security purposes, everything must be watermarked and hologrammed to the Nth degree, in an effort to combat/discourage tampering and forgery. It's not a stretch to suggest that these days your license isn't so much about proving you are allowed to drive a car as it is proving that you are who you say you are (or think you are ;-)...proving your identity, and more importantly, ensuring someone else hasn't stolen it.

My new license has all the pertinent information, all the physical stats, like usual. There is a picture of me on the left, but now a weird, clear version of the same picture on the right as well, with my name represented in a squiggly line below (not sure what that's all about; doesn't seem all that different from Microsoft WordArt). Directly below the actual picture, my birth month is stamped in big block letters, allowing me to fool no one.

FRESH NEW LICENSE, FRESH NEW LOOK...TIRED, MIDDLE AGED JGLO - I've saved all my old driver's licenses over time, since receiving my first in January 1989 (on the first try, thank you very much). Can it be that in the ensuing quarter century, I have gained 45 pounds!? 8-/

But what really struck me was the expiration date, that is, the next time I will be required to get my license renewed: December 25, 2023.

The day I turn 51.

I've been dwelling on the passage of time as it relates to my getting older for a while now. I went through what I believe (hope) was a mid-life crisis a year or two ago. All things considered, that transpired smoothly: I didn't go off any type of deep end, didn't start wearing the wrong clothes, or try to surgically alter my appearance in any way, didn't start using words like "beast" and "legit" (although I WAS called out once for trying to sneak 'baby mama' into a conversation...lol.)  I mostly became keenly aware of how quickly time is passing, and I admit, was kept up a few anxious nights fretting over the outrage of it all, before finally accepting it.

Holding my new license in my hands, that anxiety was revitalized, just for a moment. Oh hell, why don't I just come out and say it: cold reality smacked me across the face hard: I'm going to be past the half-century mark the next time I renew my license. Hair that has already start thinning will be thinner. The five o'clock shadow I've been hiding behind since I was that acne-ridden teenager, already starting to gray, will be even more so. There will likely be other passages in that time. A rearrangement, a shift of family dynamic. Nothing the same ever again.

It seems to me that fear of turning 50 isn't so much about the loss of youth and time (truthfully, a lot of that starts when you hit thirty), but the onslaught of new worries and concerns in the face of an entirely new uncertainty. The future is no longer guaranteed. It's never really guaranteed of course, but the average person under 40 lives comfortably inside a fortress of presumption that he or she will live to see another day, most likely.

After 40, and certainly after 50,"men of a certain age" cannot presume anything, and need to start doing things to help lock in on that next sunrise, things that are going to remind them on a daily basis that they're getting old.

Some of it I have on lock already. I eat better these days (or try to), and for the most part I don't have a problem eating better. I like veggies, and I don't feel the need to stuff myself with garbage every night, nor feel I'm in some way entitled to do so, for being American, or male, or some combination of the two. I drink a lot of green tea; that certainly can't hurt. I've cut out soda all together, rarely drink alcohol to excess (or at all), and I don't even have the sweet tooth I used to. I exercise regularly, too; sometime it takes every ounce of resolve that's in me to get myself to the gym...sometimes I don't go, roll over on the couch and sulk instead. But usually I do.

As for the regimen of pokes and probes out there waiting for this man of a certain age to arrive - heart monitoring, blood testing, the dreaded colonoscopy - well, that's all kind of a drag. But I'll show up, and hopefully be green-lighted for at least another twenty or thirty years.

But I will still be 51 the next time I renew my driver's license! Even healthy, fit as a fiddle, still managing to leap tall buildings in a single bound (well, under three at least), that's mind-boggling! Will I have done 1/48/50 by December 25, 2023?  Will I get through 48 states in under 50 years? I'm coming up on the third anniversary of this blog. I've reviewed a lot of songs, given my opinions on all sorts of random things, from Kesha to the Kardashians to drone technology to highway construction, but...yeah...where am I, exactly, with regard to actually taking the trip?

If I don't take this trip before 50, it won't actually matter. I don't have to take it at all, and keeping that fact in perspective helps quell the anxiety. This blog is intended to be fun, a way to keep the idea fresh in my mind week after week. It's not a contract.

That being said, I'm trying to think of it that way. I want to take the trip before I'm 50, and I'm expecting to. And now that I've set myself the goal, and am actively seeking to make it happen, it has made me more sensitive to the passing of each new era in my life, and left 50 looming just a bit larger on the horizon than it otherwise would.