But bringing people together is what music has always done best.

Hometown Aerosmith fans are different from other Aerosmith fans, and that mainly has to do with Joe Perry. It's tough to overstate his strange grip on the local psyche. Tyler is a star who belongs to the whole world, but Perry, that dude belongs to Boston.

It was bewildering and humbling to keep discovering how many brave things people can fail to talk themselves out of doing.

'I'll Tumble 4 Ya' has to be one of the most ridiculous hit singles that any international superstars have given the world.

Morrissey was my Mrs. Garrett, the house mother from the Facts of Life, a soothing adult figure giving me words of wisdom.

'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.

Monogamous musicians are like vegan hockey players.