You Can't Beat The Beehive For Glam

Like Many Other Touchstones Of Twenty-first-century Pop Culture, 'the Sopranos' Was Hatched In The Late Nineties, Predicting A Future That Never Arrived. It Was Designed For A Decade That Would Be Just Like The Nineties, Except More So, In An America That Enjoyed Seeing Itself As Smarter And Braver And Freer Than Ever Before.

It Was Bewildering And Humbling To Keep Discovering How Many Brave Things People Can Fail To Talk Themselves Out Of Doing.

'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.

Every Mix Tape Tells A Story. Put Them Together, And They Add Up To The Story Of Life.

If All Music Did Was Bring The Past Alive, That Would Be Fine. You Can Hide Away In Music And Let It Recapture Memories Of Things That Used To Be. But Music Is Greedy And It Wants More Of Your Heart Than That. It Demands The Future, Your Future. Music Wants The Rest Of Your Life. So You Can't Rest Easy. At Any Moment, A Song Can Come Out Of Nowhere To Shake You Up, Jump-start Your Emotions, Ruin Your Life.