'drive,' That's The One. I

The Word 'repulse': I Hate This Word. I Believe 'repel' Is A Perfectly Good Word, And 'repulsion' Is The Noun, As Well As The Title Of An Excellent Dinosaur Jr. Song. A Compulsion Compels You; An Impulse Impels You. Nobody Ever Says 'compulse' Or 'impulse' As A Verb. So Why Would You Ever Say 'repulse'? This Word Haunts Me In My Sleep, Like A Silver Dagger Dancing Before My Eyes. Renee Looked It Up And I Was Wrong. But I Still Kind Of Think I'm Right.

Singing What's In Your Heart? Naming The Things You Love And Loathe? You Can Get Hurt That Way. Hell, You Will Get Hurt That Way. But You'll Get Hurt Trying To Hide Away In All That Silence And Leave Your Life Unsung. There's No Future Without Tears. Are You Really Setting Your Hopes On Not Getting Hurt At All? You Think That's An Option? You Clearly Aren't Listening To Enough Morrissey Songs.

'the Voice' Has Lots Of Singers Who Fit The 'idol' Mold Of Young, Innocent Ingenues With Psycho Stage Moms. But It Also Has Long-suffering Adult Pros, With A Whiff Of Thirtysomething Despair In Their Voices. That Adds An Edge Of Realness.

'the Sopranos' Gets Praised As Novelistic, But It Follows The Most Banal Of Life Patterns, Showing The Sheer Tedium Of Being A Mobster. It Has Dead Spots, Boring Plotlines, Weak Episodes. Characters Develop Slowly, Or Don't. Like Viewers, A Gangster Might Get Bored, Fade Out Of The Action, Then Come Back To Find None Of His Debts Forgotten.

The Sax Solo As We Know It Today Would Not Exist Without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 Soft-rock Classic 'baker Street' Has To Be The 'ulysses' Of Rock & Roll Saxophone, Giving The Entire Chorus Over To Raphael Ravenscroft's Sax Solo, Creating One Of The Seventies' Most Enduringly Creepy Sounds.