You can't kill your way to security and you can't lead by scaring people. - Bruce Springsteen

...The beat of her heart, the slow burning away...of the bitter fires of the devil's arcade.

Personally, I like my gods old, grizzled and *here*. I'll take Dylan; the pirate raiding party of the Stones; the hope-I-get-very-old-before-I-die, present live power of the Who; a fat, still-mesmerizing-until-his-death Brando — they all suit me over the alternative. I would've liked to have seen that last Michael Jackson show, a seventy-year-old Elvis reinventing and relishing in his talents, where Jimi Hendrix might've next taken the electric guitar, Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and all the others whose untimely deaths and lost talents stole something from the music I love, living on, enjoying the blessings of their gifts and their audience's regard. Aging is scary but fascinating, and great talent morphs in strange and often enlightening ways.

Well, no cannon ball did fly, no rifles cut us down. No bombs fell from the sky, no blood soaked the ground. No powder flash blinded the eye. No deathly thunder sounded. But just as sure as the hand of God, They brought death to my hometown. They brought death to my hometown.