6. Cowboys - (Counting Crows)

"This is a list of what I shoulda' been / but I'm not... "

Last week, an old friend of mine commented on the contents of this blog (hooray! Someone is actually reading this darned thing!). His exact quote?

"dude, you might not have heard, but a few new albums have been released since we were in college. What's with all the nostalgia?"

Fair enough, and point taken. And since you asked so nicely... I'll tell you what I'm gonna' do: JUST FOR YOU! -- we're flashing forward right up through 2008, and we'll be spending the next two (count 'em, TWO!) entries tackling an outstanding pair of tracks from Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings, the latest studio effort by the staggeringly talented tribe of troubadours known as the Counting Crows.

Here's the scoop on the SN&SM album:

Whereas so many of their mid-nineties alt-rock contemporaries have faded into obscurity (remember Seven Mary Three? Didn't think so), Adam Duritz and the gang have kept pumping out quality new material even now, well over a decade and a half after the release of their breakthrough August and Everything After first arrived in 1993. Their latest release is a mix of hard-driving rock songs and a country-infused array of introspection. It's fast, it's slow -- it's new, and yet it's familiar all at the same time. In short? It's the same old Counting Crows.

But they've certainly come a long way since "Mr. Jones."
Adam Duritz: For the last time, NO -- that song is *not* about my penis.
Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings is a clever little double album (of sorts). Even though there's only enough material on the disk to fill a scant 80 minutes, the tracks are divided thematically between six edgier, "Saturday Night" rock & roll songs and the eight slower, more contemplative "Sunday Morning" ballads that close out the set. Effectively, this is the artist's way of telling fans:

"Saturday nights are for rockin' -- Sunday mornings are for reflection."

Say... I kinda' like that. After all, you can't have one without the other, right?

So over the next two blog posts, we'll be tackling the two tracks that best exemplify each of these same phases, respectively. And fittingly (since the tracks are, in fact, no more than divided halves of the same, larger, and themeatically unified piece) -- we'll likewise be sizing them up against an equally complex, divided, and giant-sized poetic predecessor by none other than the late, great T.S. Eliot.

Today's track? The crescendo of the hard-driving "Saturday Nights" chapter. An awesome little song called "Cowboys:"
No, not you, Tony. You are the antithesis of awesome. PS: Die in a fire.
- Everyone

Now then -- to the Counting Crows' "Cowboys." And boy, does this one hit the ground running:

"Cowboys on the road tonight, cryin' in their sleep /
If I was a hungry man with a gun in my hand /
There's some promises to keep..."

Right off the bat, there's no denying it: Adam is *PISSED*. Dude is storming through the streets, contemplating "what's as easy as murder" and brandishing a firearm. The adrenaline is pumping. His mind is racing. And bidness is about to pick right on up in a hurry. Heck, before the night is through? It looks as if our ever-doleful vocalist might just be fixin' to put a bullet in somebody else's head.

(Or worse -- his own).

See this is why Cowboys is such a fantastic piece -- throughout the song, we've got these hard, driving guitar riffs and these desperately embittered vocals. So naturally, we're supposed to think that something wicked this way comes, and our boy Adam Duritz is just one verse away from shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die, yes?

No.

Because when you look at the lyrics, there's a whole lotta' "if," "and," and "but" scattered at every turn -- which totally undermines the song's otherwise strident intentions. Sure, the singer's got some serious (and perhaps indeed violent) passions bubbling right there underneath the surface, but he never can quite seem to bring himself to act on these motives in spite of himself, which means we're left with lines like this:

"This is a list of what I shoulda' been, but I'm not.
This is a list of what I shoulda' seen, but I am not seein'
...
I'm just turning away from what I shouldn't see
Because I am not anything."

He wants to make a difference, but he can't. He's dying to make a change, but he won't. He's got the best (and worst!) of intentions, but zero capacity to act on them. In other words --

Adam isn't a cowboy... he's a coward. Kinda like...
T.S. Eliot: a.k.a. J. Alfred Prufrock

What's that? You haven't read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, " you say? Humbug. Thankfully, that's what the internet is for.
Go ahead, I'll wait.

(Alternately: here's a quick recap):

J. Alfred Prufrock: a man with the best of ideas, but zero ability to bring them to life. Has a massive crush on pretty much every woman who passes by his way, but he can't make a decision for the life of him, and so he's forced to sit back and watch as life unfolds around him, all while making ridiculous mountains out of even the tiniest of life's incidental molehills (e.g. -- "which way to part my hair?" "Trousers: rolled, or unrolled?" "Do I dare eat a peach!?" etc.).

Like our buddy Adam Duritz, Eliot's alter-ego is loaded with passion (it's kinda' heartbreaking, actually), but he remains absolutely crippled by the words that he can't quite ever bring himself to say. So instead of doing something about it, he chickens out and writes his thoughts down on the page, and we see just how sad and screwed up the poor guy really is. Riddled with indecision, Prufrock looks at his life as a waste:

"I should have been a ragged pair of claws / Scuttling across the floors of silent seas...

In short, he thinks his existence would have been better spent if he were a hermit crab. He's the type of dude who might make "a list of what I shoulda' been but I'm not."

And why?

"Because I am not anything."

Man, talk about your self-confidence issues.

Next time, we'll see how Adam Duritz and J. Alfred Prufrock's egos fare when stacked up against a certifiable giant of the Italian Renaissance.

(SPOILER: Might wanna' keep our emo balladeers away from sharp objects and firearms).

5. Spirit in the Night - (Bruce Springsteen)

"And we danced all night to a soul fairy band / And she kissed me just right like only a lonely angel can."

BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE!

Today, we're talking Bruce Springsteen's “Spirit In the Night” -- a mystical, bluesy song that is equal parts Van Morrison and William Butler Yeats. But first, a quick word or ten on the original source material to which The Boss is referring in his "Spirit in the Night." After all, even a casual Bruce fan could tell you that words like "fairy," "soul," "spirit," "hazy," and "Crazy Janey" aren't exactly staples of the typical, working-man Springsteen concordance.

So what's this all about, then?

"Crazy Janey" is most likely inspired by the "Crazy Jane" poems, a seven poem sequence that W.B. Yeats composed between 1929 and 1932. In them, a spitfire of a free spirit trades barbs with a man of the cloth. He's a holy roller, she's an unrepentant blue-collar rebel.

Got it?

Swell. Now let's jump right into the Springsteen stuff:

“Crazy Janey and the Mission man / Were back in the alley tradin' hands.”

"Crazy Jane," eh? And a "Mission" man (as in, a "Missionary")? Wow. Real subtle there, Bruce. But hey -- at least The Boss isn't trying to hide his source material. Not surprisingly, Springsteen’s remark that the two characters were “trading hands” seems to mirror the structure of Yeats' source material -- you know, where "trading hands" could mean something along the lines of "going at it in a friendly manner" or "playing a game of "can-you-top-this." 

"So what's the structure of the first three Crazy Jane poems," you ask?

“Crazy Jane and The Bishop” (where Jane expresses her feelings on love toward the clergyman)

“Crazy Jane Reproved” (where the Bishop rebuts Jane’s argument and offers one of his own)

“Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgment” (where Jane lays the smackdown on the bishop in a poem that might as well be titled "The Bishop Reproved”).

Hmm -- so Crazy Jane(y) is "trading hands" with a Mission man... tricksy, right?
Bruce Springsteen: Don't look at me -- I'm (wild and) innocent, I swear!

Actually, that's kind of clever. But before we can get too caught up in the Janey/Bishop drama -- who shows up in Springsteen's song but a "crazy cat" named -- what else but -- "Wild Billy" (of course).

Hmm... first a "Crazy Jane," then a holy roller, and now a wild dude named -- "Billy?"
William Butler Yeats: ... but you can call me Bill.
True story: Yeats' friends actually called him "Willy," and the dude was a certifiably crazy cat (fun fact: the guy practiced all sorts of fringe religions, had an honest-to-goodness monkey gland inserted in his man-parts in a desperate attempt to curb his erectile disfunction, and bought himself a samurai sword and a FREAKING MEDIEVAL TOWER, just for fun).
Thor Ballylee: a real bitch to heat in the winter.

(The more you know)

But getting back to the song: Crazy Janey and our narrator are interrupted as "Wild Billy (Yeats) and his friend G-Man" (more on G-Man momentarily) asks the partygoers to join him for a nighttime shindig down by the lake so they can get their dance on. And by "get their dance on," he wants them to get their dance on like...

Like spirits in the night, in the night
Oh, you don't know what they can do to you
Spirits in the night, in the night
Stand right up, girl, and let it shoot through you

"Stand right up girl and let [the spirits] shoot through you?" You say. Fair enough.
George Hyde Lees Yeats: Wife, author, automatic writer & makeshift portal to alternate dimensions.

It's true.

Remember when we said we'd get back to G-Man in a second? Here we go: George Yeats (yes, that *is* a girl's name, in spite of its obviously MAN-ly, or masculine sound) was Wild Billy's real-life wife. Their marriage was something of a sham (Georgie actually helped arrange numerous extramarital affairs on her hubby's behalf), but they remained pretty close in spite of the charade. (One -- like Springsteen -- might even be more inclined to say that G-Man was more of a "friend" than an actual lover).

But anyway...

The real-life George Yeats actually used to dabble in automatic writing (can't make this stuff up). You know, the type where you "stand right up / and let the sprits shoot through you" -- by holding a pencil and let the dead generations dance around the room and tell you what to write (e.g. -- "hey Will, TAKE OUT THE GARBAGE! The spirits told me so.")

So to recap:

Crazy Janey = Crazy Jane, a.k.a. the awesomeness

Mission Man = The Bishop, with whom Crazy Jane "trades hands"

Wild Billy = William Butler (Yeats)

G-Man = George Yeats, automatic writer

But since Bruce mentioned "Greasy Lake" (you know, the one "about a mile down the dark side of route 88")... here's another fun bit of trivia: W.B. Yeats wrote most of his poems while residing at his pal Lady Gregory’s nearby estate at Coole Park. Coole Park, in turn, was the home to none other than (surprise!) one big-ass lake, which also just so happens to make its way into some of Willy's best-known works. Recounting the distance between his own home and Lady Gregory’s in a poem called “Coole and Ballylee, 1931,” Yeats writes:

Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on top,Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven’s face
Then darkening through ‘dar’ Raftery’s ‘cellar’ drop,
Run underground, rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.

Suddenly, Springsteen's "Greasy Lake" isn't just any old place: it's Coole friggin' Park. Heck, Bruce describes the locale itself (“lake”), it’s distance (“a mile”), and the winding path one must travel upon to get there (“dark”) in exactly the same words that Yeats had once used.

Pretty cool, yes? Well this is where things get really wild. Because right about now (funk soul brotha'), Springsteen's loveable, blue-collar narrator throws back a few too many, stares Crazy Janey right square in the eyes, and says:

“I think I really dug her ‘cause I was too loose to fake
I said, “I'm hurt,”
She said, “Honey, let me heal you.”

And BAM! Springsteen goes right back into Crazy Jane and the source material we go to close out the song.

(No, literally: "into Crazy Jane" -- get it? Needlessly vulgar, I know.)

But perhaps we shouldn't be all that surprised.

After all, Crazy Jane was a bit of a slut (Yeats' words, not mine). And as her poem sequence draws to a close with stories like "Crazy Jane and Jack the Journeyman," the heroine talks openly about her "wild" love for a character she calls Jack the Journeyman; the kinda rebellious, blue-collar dude who -- not coincidentally -- would have fit perfectly in a song about chasing skirts and slammin' brewskis down on the Asbury Park boardwalk.

Hmm... now where might one find themselves a rebellious, young, blue-collar journeyman at an hour like this?
That'll do, pig. That'll do.

Springsteen doesn't just borrow Yeats' inspiration. Instead? He writes HIMSELF right back into the Crazy Jane source material -- and by the time he's done? He even manages to steal Wild Billy's girl while he's at it.

(Wow --- the *nerve* of this guy!)

Guess that's why they call him "The Boss."

4. Waiting for Gilligan - (Vance Gilbert)

"I know folks who laid side by side for years and never knew that they were stranded."

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale... a tale of one of the greatest songs you've never heard.

(Yet.)

Vance Gilbert's "Waiting for Gilligan" -- not exactly a household name or a jukebox mainstay. But no matter; the song is brimming with literary allusions, and it's friggin' brilliant, to boot.

A quick summary:

The weather started getting rough and the eponymous star of the famed 1960s TV series ended up shipwrecked on a desert island with Ginger, Marianne and the rest. Familiar story, right? Right.

.... but what about the love he left behind?
Gilligan: Oh snap!

Suddenly, we've got ourselves a new twist on an old classic: it's the same basic Gilligan narrative we all know and love, but this time, it's told through the eyes of the girl that our hero left back on the shore. Even though all hope seems lost, Gil's gal ("Gal-ligan?") keeps a "lonely vigil" day in and day out, watching the waves and staring off at the horizon in a desperate hope that her man will indeed find his way back home to her.

It almost seems like she's been doing this forever.

People call her crazy. An entire generation has come of age on her watch. And she has no sign or reassurance that the waiting will ever pay off in the end (after all, "the short-wave [radio] has been broken down for years"). But still -- and perhaps even in spite of herself -- this gal can't help but cross her fingers "with every ship that makes the trip back home."

After all -- she's doing the only thing she knows how to do: "I'm waiting for Gilligan."

Equally humorous and heartbreaking, ya' know? Why it's almost absurd. Here's an excerpt of an interview with old Vance himself in which he practically says as much:

"[People] can laugh at the top, I don't care because there is a lot more song to go at that point. But then there is a line "If faith and hope were made of gold I would wear that crown because I'm waiting for Gilligan." [And] suddenly that's not funny anymore. Like, this is a real definition of somebody waiting and pondering love and its just not going to be funny then."

So lemme' get this straight...

We've got a narrator who's wholly determined but totally stranded and helpless to change their situation, yes? And they're waiting for somebody to arrive in spite of the fact that all reliable signs tell them that such an effort is completely in vain?

Yup, definitely read this one before:
Waiting for Godot (1949)
- Samuel Beckett

Beckett's "tragi-comedy" pretty much defined the literary movement which would come to be known as the "Theatre of the Absurd." What's "Theatre of the Absurd," you ask? Simply stated: plays in which there's a whole buncha' stuff happening, but there's with no real meaning to connect it all. It doesn't have to make sense. Things just -- happen. People don't get what they earn or get what they deserve: they simply get what they get.

Here's the five-second recap of Wating for Godot:
Two regular guys (Vladimir and Estragon -- or Didi and Gogo, for short) waste an afternoon in conversation while waiting for this fella' named Godot. They don't quite know *why* they're waiting, of course, or *if* he'll even show up in the first place (they did the same thing just yesterday, as a matter of fact, and he was nowhere to be found) -- but still, they keep their daily vigil all the same. Because if Godot doesn't quite manage to make it out to find them today, and if he didn't quite manage to make it out to find them yesterday, well then surely this means he'll arrive all the sooner tomorrow, right?

Ha.

Is it "commitment," or is it "crazy?" Humorous? Or heartbreaking? Heck -- some might even say it's (wait for it...) "absurd." And intermittently throughout the play, Didi and Gogo occassionally seem to catch on to this fact:

Estragon: Let's go.Vladimir: We can't.Estragon: Why not?Vladimir: We're waiting for Godot.Estragon: (despairingly) Ah!

Its almost seems like they've been doing this forever (hey wait a second...)

But in spite of themselves, the duo is resolved: they will do today what they did yesterday, and then do it all over again tomorrow, if they have to.

After all -- they're doing the only thing they know how to do: "We're waiting for Godot."

(I'll give you two guesses on how *that* one turns out...)
Corky St. Clair: I can't put up with you people: because you're BASTARD people!

Ahh, but that's a story for another day. Tell you what: let's leave it here for now, and why don't we pick right up where we left off tomorrow, yes?

...

...

(... see what I did there?)

*PS: If you're reading this entry anywhere outside of the original blog location, click here and you can listen to the song, too :)

3. Words of Wisdom - (Jump, Little Children)

"If I cannot follow where you go / I promise to teach what I have learned."Oh man, Jump Little Children were so freakin' great. This song is particularly heartwrenching, and it totally nails that often elusive songwriting balance between wonderfully vague and unflinchingly direct.

Here's the backstory:

The lead singer's father has just died. In mourning, the singer (we'll call him Matt, because -- well -- that's his name) writes a song -- a "bittersweet melody." He "long[s] for that embrace, the strongest arms / that troubled face" that made [him] feel safe." And he begs the recently departed to "leave [him] some words of wisdom" as he tries to make sense of this new life alone.

Clearly, he's not taking this too well.

So basically, this entire piece is really just one big old eulogy for dear old dad, right?Hamlet: You rang?!?

Maybe, maybe not.

See, like the best works of literature, a really well-written pop song actually lends itself to a wide array of thematic interpretations. Hamlet isn't *just* about doing right by your dead father. It's about finding one's place in the world. It's about searching within one's self for the answer to that all-important question posed in the very first lines of the play ("Who's there?"). And it's about taking the necessary time to discover what it means "To be, or not to be."

Now sure, as is the case with great literary analysis, there's an "acceptable range" of what all a song *can* and *cannot* mean (example: when our buddy Matt sings "if I cannot follow where you go, I promise to teach what I have learned" -- he's probably not talking about eeking out life-lessons while tailing some dude on his way to a one-stall men's room. Well okay, maybe). But by and large? The songwriter has pretty much laid bare some universal themes here, and now it's up to us, the audience, to make sense of things.

So let's do exactly that. And since we're obviously dealing with some heavy subject matter, let's do it by looking at this song as it relates to the similarly universal themes on human suffering and sadness, as once so famously put forth in the ever-handy "Kübler-Ross model" (a.k.a. -- the five stages of grief).

Take it away, Wikipedia-level understanding of advanced psychological theories!

Anger: ("Fortune smiles with teeth of jade, and the greediest eyes")Translation: "Greed. Argh! Boy, I'm pissed that you've been stolen away from me."
Denial: ("How do years so far away so suddenly evaporate?")Translation: "Man, I can't believe this is actually happening."
Bargaining: ("If you will go and not return / leave me some words of wisdom.")Translation: "Go if you must, but please -- one last thing before you do..."
Depression: ("Who was it that said to me / that heroes would live forever?")Translation: "I'm a sad panda."
Acceptance: (If I cannot follow where you go, I promise to teach what I have learned.")Translation: "Well, ok then. This sucks and it'll take time, but I'll try."

Hey cool.

The figurative language opens the song up so well that the songwriter's once intensely personal eulogy for his late father actually becomes a broader commentary on the universal themes of life, love, and loss. Suddenly (just like Hamlet), we're not just talking about the simple case of some dude who's trying to make peace with his dead father anymore.

You want to follow, but you know you can't.

You've given your all, but still you're left standing all alone.

And even though you might well have accepted that things simply had to change, you're certainly not over it -- no sir, not by a longshot.

(Damned ear poison)

Wow. This just got deep in a hurry. Infinitely more universal, too. Heck, when you look at it *that* way -- one might even call this a tailor-made breakup song. And for a track that doesn't once mention the word "love" -- that's quite a feat. Crazy, right?

Yay figurative language!

(... now get thee to a nunnery...)

2. The Scientist - (Coldplay)

"I was just guessin' at numbers and figures / pulling the puzzles apart."
Poor, poor Chris Martin.

Sure, the guy might have ended up with Gwyneth Paltrow, but deep down? He's a total science dork. I mean seriously -- just look at how often the guy finds himself singing about outer space, "questions of science," and other similarly themed poindextery stuff:

"Look at earth from outer space" (Politic)"You and me are drifting into outer space" (X&Y)"All of the stars and the outer space" (White Shadows)

(In retrospect, this could explain the whole "virgin until his mid twenties" thing).

But getting to the song at hand --

We've got ourselves a scientist. And not just *any* scientist, mind you -- but "THE" Scientist. As in a guy who pretty much defines his entire self through his life's work. He's brilliant, probing (heh heh heh), coldly analytical -- and dangerously good at his job accordingly. After all -- a mind for "pulling the puzzles apart" is a must-have when dealing with "questions of science." Wouldn't you agree?Dr. Gregory House: Word, dawg.

Ok -- so we've got ourselves this scientist, yes? And when it comes to solving analytical puzzles? Dude's a friggin' genius. But when dealing with matters of the heart?

Not so much.

Hmm -- a science dork who just can't seem to make sense of human relationships? Kinda' reminds me of another tortured genius with a Ph.D. from roughly 400 years earlier.The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604)
By Christopher Marlowe

When it came to Elizabethan playwrites, there's no question that Billy Shakespeare was the man to beat. But if Shakespeare was the shit, then Marlowe was -- at the very least -- the urine (how's that for a colorful metaphor? Thanks, Kanye). And Marlowe's wildly controversial Faustus was pretty much the closest thing to Better-Than-The-Bard to have emerged from the whole of the 17th century.

The story is simple:

Dr. Faustus is a genius, but he's not satisfied with simply being the smartest guy in the room. Instead, he wants to be the smartest man IN THE WORLD, and so he makes a deal with the devil to trade his soul for exactly that. Mephistophilis (being the devil and all) is more than happy to agree -- and so he makes Faustus an uber-genius, but promises to steal him back to hell as per their agreement some 24 years later.

Flash forward 24 years...

Just as Mr. Fausty Pants is hitting his stride as "the smartest man in all the world," he comes across a total knockout of a ladyfriend (in the form of one Miss Helen -- of Troy fame). And whaddayaknow -- our forsaken superdork falls madly in love.

(Wanna' guess how well *that* turns out?)

How about we leave the summary to the immortal words of the good doctor himself:

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

Ooooh, BURRRRN!!! (literally)

Or as our good friend Chris Martin might say --"Tell me you love me, come back and haunt me..."

Just when you think you've got all the important stuff figured out, love comes in and changes the questions. Boy it sucks to be you, Faustus (and that goes double for The Scientist). But unlike Marlowe's hell-bound physician, Coldplay's lovesick scientist actually has a brief chance at redemption. As he sings:

"Nobody said it was easy

[but] no one ever said it would be this hard
I'm going back to the start."

In other words: when your world falls down, take a good, hard look in the mirror and get right with yourself.

Aww, that's nice.

Too bad it's blatantly cribbed from Yeats:

"Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."
- William Butler Yeats, "The Circus Animals Desertion" (1939)

(Why they even borrowed the whole "heart" / "start" rhyme. How clever).

Wait -- COLDPLAY?!? STEALING MATERIAL FROM OTHER ARTISTS, you say!?!

Hey, songwriting's a tough bizniss. Or, in Chris Martin's own words:"Nobody said it was easy."

1. Semi-Charmed Life - (Third Eye Blind)

"I want something else to get me through this / Semi-charmed kinda' life."

Sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and a roaring ode to tripping on crystal meth and meaningless one-night stands. Boy, Stephan Jenkins and company certainly have the life, eh?

Not so much.

The poppy sound of Third Eye Blind's breakthrough single goes a long way to mask the deeper message at play (kinda ironic, since they come right out and state it right there in the title and again in each chorus... but whatever). Yeah, things sure seem all well and good -- but the band knows that this is all just a string of temporary highs in their otherwise unfulfilled existence. As Jenkins sings: "I want something else to get me through this / semi-charmed kinda' life."

Hey waitasecondhere -- a "charmed kinda' life?" Where have I heard something along those lines before?

Oh that's right:
"I bear a charmed life."
- Macbeth, V.8
In Act V of the-play-we-cannot-name, the would-be Scottish king waxes philosophical about his lot in the world. His life is "charmed" (the witches told him as much in Act I). He literally got away with murder. He's got a kingdom. A sweet castle. All the wine he can drink. A beautiful bride (nutty though she may be, ya' just know that Lady McBeth is a total dynamo between the sheets). And -- in most stage adaptations -- a kickass beard.

In short? Sex, drugs, and heads-will-rock-&-roll. Macbeth does indeed "bear a charmed life." He's riding high on fortune's wheel. And he practically dares the enemy to come and get him, since everything is just so gosh-darned perfect.

(To the surprise of ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, guess who dies almost immediately thereafter?)

Literary allusion FOR. THE. WIN.

Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life" is a modern-day reflection to exactly the same sort of "charmed" life so famously lauded by the Bard's tragic hero of the Highlands. Yeah, things *seem* good -- but is that all there is? If Macbeth's fate is any indicator: not likely. Fun is fun. But there's gotta' be "something else to get me through this / semi-charmed kinda' life."

Best guess?

It sure ain't crystal meth.