As a New York City boy who’s the musical equivalent of the guy who sung “New York’s a lonely town when you’re the only surfer boy in town “–because I love mainstream Country & Western music (not merely the alt.country that is a fixture of the NYC downtdown scene although tI like that too), I feel fortunate in having not one but two nearly 24/7 C&W vdieo stations on cable.

Sometimes the raw emotion is too much to take but sometimes I deliberately seek it out and it often continues to surprize me the way new twists (of the knife) of raw emotion are constantly being devised by the great emotional manipulators among country song writers. They are often just great writers, period. And sometimes they can be incredibly clever.

Like this line from today’s Number Two C&W hit on the GAC station, “Wing in the Fire” by Tris Tomlinson. A genuinely moving tribute to a ne’rer do well father who despite all his flaws was “an angel with one wing in the fire.” Reminds you of course of the immortal Willie Nelson ballad “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground”.

But there’s this one offhand line in the song I’m particularly fond of: “he lived his life a little bit left of right.”

Lived his life “a little bit left of right”. Gotta love that.Not a political positioning but an attiude toward authority. One of my favorite echt New York t-shirts was something I saw some guy wear on the 14th street platform:” I [HEART] my attitude problem.” A little bit left of right.