Overheard on the Bus: Metallica, "Death Magnetic"

Being a simple folksy fellow, a "Joe Sixpack" if you will, I do my best to avoid the elitists and their corresponding ideas; I steer clear of libraries and refuse to look beyond the celebrity gossip section of the newsstand. But sometimes a person can't hide from genius because sometimes a person rides the bus. The public bus, as in open to the public bus, i.e. anybody can ride if they have a buck or a smokin' hot bod that the bus driver appreciates. Nobody got on for free that day.

As I boarded the #34, there were several things I expected to witness: a gaggle of teenagers being depressed, a gaggle of teenagers being morons, a gaggle of teenagers being depressed morons, three veterans with a combined total of nine and a half limbs, and an elderly Hispanic woman trying to perform an exorcism on the bus itself. I never expected to hear a sage statement like the following:

"Two Words; [sic] Hell Yeah."

I frantically turned around to try and determine the erudite source. Instead I found the Hispanic woman's silver crucifix in my face. Could she be the one?

"For the first time in twenty years, Metallica has a great album. I listened to it three times in full today alone. It comes really fast, well wrapped and really coooooooool. I've never seen this album in this price!! excellent."

No, the proclamation came from behind her. Settled in the molded plastic seat was an unassuming twenty-something male. From the visible absence of a collection of Pavement original pressing albums, and his admiration for an album being "well-wrapped," I could tell that this man was not a professional music critic. His capacity to hold my attention by way of mouth was even more amazing considering his abcedarian status. Even more extraordinary was that he appeared to be talking to no one in particular. He sat alone, leaning his head against the bus window and watching the potholes pass us by. He continued,

"It certainly is not nearly as good as the 'black album'. It's not as bad as St. Anger. Yet unlike Toby Keith, they're not as good once, as they once were. A recurrent problem for me is thinking that I'm buying into a group at the zenith of their appeal to me. Metallica apparently is well past that. I can listen to this but all the cuts in a row is harder to take than it should be. Repetition tends to bore me and bored I am if I don't just listen to a select couple of tracks."

I dug through my man-purse, desperate to find a pen and paper so as to record everything this public-transit prophet had to say, but as I did so, the modest vaticinator quietly slipped off the bus. The world would only be allowed to hear the stream of splendor I was able to commit to memory.

Professional music critics beware: our savior is amongst us! He will cleanse the back pages of music magazines of posturing and pretension, leaving only ads for recording arts institutions and sex cushions.

There is nothing that I could give to this review, only what the review gave to me: hope.