Rock and roll is a religion.  The records constitute a Bible, which provides a roadmap for living.  Illuminating what has come before, and delineating how one should proceed in the future.

This is not the rock and roll of corporations, bastardizing tracks to tell tales of consumerism.  This is the rock and roll of the bedroom, played in isolation, as one gains just enough insight, just enough power, to get through.  And there’s magic in sound, "Back In Black" can make you feel powerful when you’ve been oppressed, but it’s the lyrics that deliver the code, that point the way.

They don’t all come from the classic age, some of the most poignant wisdom is contained in Jay-Z’s "Can I Get A…":

How we gonna get around on your bus pass?

Then the point is driven home directly and succinctly:

Ambition makes me so horny
Not the fussin’ and the frontin
If you got nuttin’, baby boy, you betta’
Git up, git out and get somethin’, shit!

The "bus pass" reference delivers an element of humor, but the message is dead serious.  If you want first class pussy, you don’t have to be somebody, but you’d better WANT TO BE SOMEBODY!

I’m not talking about sitting on the couch, complaining about the people on TV, saying you can do it better, but hitting the streets and trying to make something of yourself.

And not everybody can be a famous rapper or big time baller.  What have you got besides hot air?

These are universal truths.  Delivered in a first class way on wax, they stick with us, forever.  Which is why lyrics do matter.

Not quite a week ago, Jim Carroll died.  People speak of the Leonardo DiCaprio movie and that one famous song, "People Who Died". But that track is a novelty cut.  The true rock and roll burner on that album is on the other side, "City Drops Into The Night".

An alternative "Jungleland", sans the romance, "City Drops Into The Night" is the story of scoring.  The writhing body that needs drugs, that needs another hit, delivered on the dark side of life, in order to live for another day.  Then again, the flip side of living is dying.

But it’s not the story that entices here, that enraptures.  It’s the ripping guitars, the howling sax, it’s the sound that sends the message of danger.

And at the very end of the song, nearly seven minutes in, Jim drops the definitive lyric:

I’m just a constant warning, just a constant warning to take the other direction

Just like the religious nuts, we rock and roll believers also take words out of context.  This is the paean of the drug dealer.  But to listeners, it’s a restatement of the sixties ethos, however many years later.  In a world of supposed winners, what to do with the alternative thinker, the person willing to take a stand for what’s right, not what’s expedient, not what everybody else believes.

Everybody buys dot com stocks.  Everybody buys real estate.  It’s a new economy, investments never go down, until they do.  I can remember my father vividly saying "If everybody jumped off a bridge, would you too?"

If everybody else says the number one record is good, do you buy it and say you love it?

Ditto with movies?

Are you a member of the group, a follower, or a leader?

Oh, there’s nothing wrong with masses, they’re not inherently bad, but too often they’re built on hysteria, fueled by unquestioning zealots fearful of a deviation from the status quo.

I quote this Jim Carroll lyric all the time.  Even in my writing just a couple of days before he died.  It reminds me of the power of rock and roll, that with the music in my head, I have the strength to question what is presented to me so definitively, that I have the power to come to my own conclusions.

And you do too.