Wu-Tang Clan – "C.R.E.A.M." (1993)

Cash rules everything around me

C.R.E.A.M., get the money

Dollar, dollar bill, y’all

The reviews are in, and they range from boffo to even more boffo.

According to the critics, 2 or 3 lines (and so much more) is “delightfully eccentric” and “entertaining, opinionated, and thought-provoking,” with a “distinctive voice [that] gives the blog an identity that is difficult to manufacture and even harder to imitate.”  

2 or 3 lines “has a personality, and isn’t afraid to show it.”  It offers “a masterclass in how personal voice and absolute creative freedom can build an engaging . . . and unpredictable community space” and “remind[s] us why we started reading blogs in the first place.”

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I gave birth to 2 or 3 lines exactly 17 years ago today – I recommend against visualizing that metaphor because once you do, you may never be able to unsee it – and I’m celebrating that anniversary by sharing several recent reviews of my wildly successful little blog.

Happy 17th birthday to 2 or 3 lines!

The reviews I’m presenting in today’s post aren’t the product of human critics – who Mark Twain compared to “tumble-bugs hatching eggs in others’ dung.”

Instead, those reviews are the product of large language models that have been trained on immense amounts of data – which means that those reviews are vastly superior to anything that mere mortals could produce.

I asked five of the most sophisticated A.I. chatbots – ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Muse – to generate 500-word review of 2 or 3 lines.  What follows are edited versions of what I got back from them – along with the word count for each of the reviews, which in several cases was not very close to 500.

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From CHAT GPT (695 words):

There are blogs that simply publish information, and then there are blogs that remind us why we started reading blogs in the first place.  2 or 3 lines (and so much more) belongs firmly in the latter category.  

Written with personality, humor, curiosity, and a healthy disregard for conventional wisdom, this long-running blog offers an entertaining mixture of music appreciation, cultural commentary, history, politics, and observations about everyday life.

The blog uses a few lines from a song’s lyrics as a launching point for an extended exploration of the song's meaning, its historical context, or its relationship to contemporary society.  What begins as a musical appreciation can quickly become an essay about American culture, human nature, or the peculiarities of the political world.

The blog's musical selections span an impressive range of artists and genres.  Songs become conversation starters, with their lyrics being examined from unexpected angles.  Whether discussing recordings by Frank Sinatra, the Grateful Dead, or Alice Cooper, the author approaches each selection with enthusiasm and a willingness to challenge conventional interpretations.

One particularly appealing feature is the author's sense of humor.  The writing is conversational, irreverent, and frequently sarcastic.  There is little interest in pretending to be neutral or diplomatically agreeable.  Opinions are expressed directly, jokes are delivered without much hesitation, and readers are occasionally invited to laugh at the absurdities of American life.  This distinctive voice gives the blog an identity that is difficult to manufacture and even harder to imitate.

The blog also deserves credit for its willingness to do some homework.  Musical references lead to historical anecdotes, quotations, statistics, and interesting background information.  

The author clearly enjoys making connections between seemingly unrelated subjects.  A discussion of a popular song might introduce readers to a historical figure, a political observation, or an unexpected piece of trivia.  This makes the posts more substantial than their musical starting points might suggest.

Another considerable strength is the site's longevity.  In an internet environment where blogs frequently disappear or become inactive, that continuity is worth appreciating.

The author's strong opinions will not appeal to every reader, particularly when political subjects enter the discussion.  Some arguments are deliberately provocative, and the humor can be sharp.  Readers looking for strictly objective reporting or purely technical music criticism may find the approach a little unconventional.  But that is also part of the blog's appeal.  It has a personality, and it isn't afraid to show it.

The presentation is refreshingly straightforward.  There are no elaborate multimedia distractions or complicated features competing for attention. The emphasis remains where it belongs: on the writing and the ideas.  

Ultimately, 2 or 3 lines (and so much more) is a reminder that good blogging is about having something to say, finding interesting ways to say it, and giving readers a reason to return.  Its combination of music, humor, research, commentary, and individual perspective makes it a distinctive destination for curious readers.

The verdict: An entertaining, opinionated, and frequently thought-provoking blog that demonstrates the enduring appeal of independent writing.  It may begin with two or three lines, but it rarely ends there.  Highly recommended for music lovers, curious minds, and anyone who appreciates a writer with a point of view.

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From CLAUDE (550 words):

The basics: Gary’s Blogger-hosted blog has been running since November 2009.  The archive shows steady output: roughly 170 posts a year at its peak in the early 2010s, tapering to a twice-weekly rhythm.  The current project is the “2 or 3 Lines Quintessential American Songbook,” a hand-picked set of 13 songs that supposedly capture something essential about America. 

The format: Each post starts with a short lyric snippet, then spins into a loose essay.  The post on Sinatra’s “My Way,” for instance, becomes a tour through the song’s French origins, a rejected David Bowie lyric attempt, Paul Anka’s account of writing it, and Tina Sinatra’s claim that her father disliked it.  The posts are broken into short sections divided by rows of asterisks, and they end with a YouTube link and an Amazon purchase link.  That makes them quick to read, and the structure suits a blog you would dip into once a week.

What works: The best thing here is the digressive curiosity.  A post about a Steve Miller song takes in the cheeseburger as the national food and a psychology professor’s theory of how liberals and conservatives each want government help.  A post on the Grateful Dead’s “U.S. Blues” mixes patriotism polls with Samuel Johnson and P. T. Barnum. The research is real, the connections are often clever, and the author likes to puncture myths, such as noting there’s no evidence Barnum said the famous “sucker” line.  The images and pull quotes are well chosen, and the pacing never drags.

What may not work for everyone: The tone is consistently sardonic and often crude.  A running gag about Americans (and the French) being “full of sh*t” appears more than once, and the language gets rougher still when Gary turns to politics.  The Alice Cooper “Elected” post is openly contemptuous of politicians as a class.  

Practical notes: The site is a plain Blogger template with Amazon affiliate links, an RSS/Atom feed, and an archive that’s easy to browse.  Newcomers are pointed to the two oldest posts and the intro essay, “What? Who? WHY?”  The blog reads as a personal project rather than a media operation, and that’s much of its charm. 

Verdict: 2 or 3 lines (and so much more) is a good fit for music and trivia fans who enjoy a cynical, jokey storyteller with a taste for pop-culture history and a long memory.  After seventeen years it still posts regularly and has a distinct voice. If you dislike profanity or partisan-flavored snark, you may bounce off it. If you like a quick weekly read that sends you off to a Sinatra record or a Dead track, it’s easy to recommend.

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The next 2 or 3 lines will feature reviews of the blog by Gemini, Grok, and Muse.

In the meantime, I invite you to take a deep dive into the lyrics of today’s featured record.  “C.R.E.A.M.” – which is a backronym of “cash rules everything around me” – is the second single from the Wu-Tang Clan’s debut studio album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which was released in 1993.

I’m featuring “C.R.E.A.M.” not only because it is (as Mac and Tosh, the “Goofy Gophers” of Looney Tunes fame might say) indubitably one of the greatest hip-hop tracks of all time, but also because our trivia questions last night included one about the Wu-Tang Clan (which I almost choked on, but came up with at the very last second) and one about portmanteau words (one example of which is “backronym”).

Click here to listen to “C.R.E.A.M.”

Click here to buy “C.R.E.A.M.” from Amazon.

Alice Cooper – "Elected" (1972)

We’re all gonna rock

To the rules that I make

I wanna be elected!

You think Halloween is the scariest day of the year?

No way, José!  The most frightening day of the year is ELECTION DAY!

The good news is that once we get past this Tuesday, it will be two whole years before the next election.

The bad news is that the campaigning for that election will begin on Wednesday.

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Mark Twain seemed to take special pleasure in satirizing the American political system.  The journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken – who was a great admirer of Twain – was even more cynical about the government.

“I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time,” he once wrote.  “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

H. L. Mencken

Mencken said you could always count on politicians to have a simple solution for even the most complex problem.  You could also count on that simple solution to be wrong.

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Mencken once defined democracy as “the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

I don’t know what will happen in Tuesday’s election.  But however it turns out, I have no doubt that Mencken will be proven correct.  Sooner or later, we voters will get it good and hard.

Whatever the results of Tuesday’s election, many people will be unhappy with the outcome.  If you’re one of those people, there’s no use in complaining.  In the words of former big-league pitcher Joey Eischen, “You’ll suck on it and you’ll like it.”

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Alice Cooper’s “Elected” is a brilliant deconstruction of the psyche of the typical American politician.

The line that’s repeated over and over in the song is “I wanna be elected” – which is the only thing politicians really care about.

They will do anything to win – they will even help someone with the same name as that of their chief opponent to get on the ballot in the hope that confused voters will vote for the wrong one.  (That actually happened in Alaska this year, and there’s a good chance that the dirty trick will work.  Click here to read what the New York Times had to say about the sleazeball candidate whose campaign came up with that underhanded tactic.)

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The politician-singer in “Elected” has the b*lls to claim “I’ve never lied to you,” when everyone knows that politicians lie in the mornin’, lie in the evenin’, and lie at suppertime.  

There’s an old joke about politicians that goes like this: 

How can you tell when a politician is lying?  You can see his lips moving.

“I thought jokes were supposed to be funny,” you might be saying to yourself.  “What’s funny about that?”  

Good question.

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Actually, the worst thing about politicians is not their inability to tell the truth.  It’s their belief that they are smarter than other people – which means they have the God-given right to tell the rest us what to do.

These lines from “Elected” say it all:

We’re all gonna rock

To the rules that I make

I wanna be elected!

If Mencken have lived long enough to hear “Elected,” I think he would have found those lyrics to be spot on.  After all, Mencken believed that a politician’s claim that he or she is running for office in order to serve the public “is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”  

Go back to the first record chosen for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK – Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” – and you’ll find the appropriate response to the typical elected official’s “urge to rule”:

F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!

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Click here to watch the brilliant official music video for “Elected’ – the 13th and final song selected for the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL SONGBOOK.

Click here to buy “Elected” from Amazon.

Frank Sinatra – "My Way" (1969)

I faced it all

And I stood tall

And did it my way!

Although “My Way” became Frank Sinatra's signature song, his daughter Tina has said that her father hated the song: 

He didn’t like it.  That song stuck and he couldn’t get it off his shoe.  He always thought that song was self-serving and self-indulgent.

Ol’ Blue Eyes hit that nail right on the head – “My Way” is self-serving and self-indulgent as hell.  

“My Way” is so full of sh*t that if it had eyes, those eyes would be brown.  Which is why “My Way” belongs in the 2 OR 3 LINES QUINTESSENTIAL AMERICAN SONGBOOK.  Because Americans are so full of sh*t that our eyes are brown, too.  

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“My Way” was originally a French song.  (Not surprising – after all, the French are even more full of sh*t than Americans are.)

The French version of the song – which was titled “Comme d’habitude” (“As Usual”) – was a hit in France in 1968.

The song’s publisher asked a young David Bowie to write English lyrics for the song.  Bowie did so and made a demo of his version of the song, but it was never released.

Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra

Paul Anka heard the original French recording of the song while vacationing in France, and bought the rights to it.  He rewrote the lyrics after having dinner with Frank Sinatra in Florida:

At one o'clock in the morning, I sat down at an old IBM electric typewriter and said, “If Frank were writing this, what would he say?”  And I started, metaphorically, “And now the end is near.”  

I used words I would never use: “I ate it up and spit it out.”  But that's the way he talked.  I used to be around steam rooms with the Rat Pack guys – they liked to talk like Mob guys, even though they would have been scared of their own shadows.

Anka finished the song a few hours later: 

I called Frank up in Nevada – he was at Caesars Palace – and said, “I’ve got something really special for you.”  When my record company caught wind of it, they were very pissed that I didn’t keep it for myself.  I said, “Hey, I can write it, but I’m not the guy to sing it.”  It was for Frank, no one else.

Sinatra recorded the song in one take.  “My Way” sold well in the U.S., but it was an even bigger hit in the UK, where it remained in the top forty for 75 weeks.

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It turns out that Paul Anka was full of sh*t, too.  Despite staying that he wasn’t the guy to sing it, Anka ended up recording “My Way” no fewer than five times.  

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Three of the people who were asked to nominate songs for the CBS Sunday Morning show’s “Essential American Songbook” named “My Way.”  

One of those three was the very brown-eyed William Shatner, who sang “My Way” to George Lucas at a 2005 American Film Institute ceremony honoring the Star Wars director.

Click here to watch Shatner’s performance.

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Click here to listen to Frank Sinatra’s recording of “My Way.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.