Stardate 2005:
Drivin' back from a - hike upstate
Dad ridin' shotgun, we were - running late
Stuck in traffic, had to - muddle through every
Goddamn CD we could - listen to

All about Vietnam, they were
All about Vietnam, seemed like
Every CD had at least one song, about a
Cool rocking Daddy gone to Vietnam...

Stardate 1984:
I'm just out of college. Still wearing my Ronald Reagan protest beard. Well, protest goatee, on account of those youthful gaps between my chin and cheek hair, but let that pass. Eight more years of Republican White Houses lie ahead, hence eight more years of silly smudges on my face. Our housemate Rick brings home the new Springsteen LP, Born In the USA. Controversy: the Reagan re-election people want to use the title track as a campaign song. They didn't listen to the anti-war lyrics, I guess: "Got in a little hometown jam so they put a rifle in my hand/Sent me off to a foreign land to go and kill the yellow man." But let that pass. The beat pounds through the stereo like Thor's hammer. With five notes and two chords Bruce lays bare the marrow of a generation, Born To Run no longer: "Down in the shadow of the penitentiary/Out by the gas fires of the refinery/I'm ten years burning down the road/Nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go."

Stardate 2005:
Twenty more years down the road: Born To Run is reborn in a fancy new package while the country slogs through eight years of insanity - I'd have to put on a wolfman outfit to protest via hair this time. But let that pass. The blockbuster Born In the USA with its many hits is mostly forgotten. But a CD version now resides in my car. As does Danielle Miraglia's Nothing Romantic featuring "You Don't Know Nothing":

I sang of Vietnam
With a reaper-like charm
Code Red and counting the dead
When an eight o'clock shadow
With eyes like arrows
Slammed down his glass and said
"You don't know nothin'
You weren't there
Till you've had shrapnel under your skin
You couldn't begin."

Then we put on Old Crow Medicine Show's self-titled CD. These super-authentic-sounding old-timey youngsters also have a song about Vietnam, "Big Time in the Jungle":

That young man got his life turned upside-down
Turned his smile into a frown
Robbed that king of his crown
For an ideal he didn't even know about.