Member-only story
On Being A Bipolar Ignoramous
How To Begin Appreciating Yourself After An Initial Diagnosis
One of my all-time favorite songs is All My Best Friends Are Metalheads. The lyrics discuss how the easiest way to understand someone is to pretend they are not you. But along with some sick horns, the wildest thing to me remains the sample from Victor Lundberg’s A Letter to My Teenage Son — a Billboard Top 10 bop from 1967.
In the dirge, a Lundberg speech is set over The Battle Hymn of the Republic. It argues that opposition to American wars, capitalism, and the general state of racism was eventual treason to that generation’s conceptualization of freedom. Lundberg then encourages all teenage sons to burn their birth certificates along with the en vogue act of their draft cards.
As out-of-date as the perspective should take you, Less Than Jake’s chosen sample contains an authentic, if also silly, lyric from Lundberg’s chart-topper. It provides me some solace that the Silent Generation was more than capable of self-reflection about the negative consequences of their perspective.
This is a fair request
And I promise that I will not judge any person only as a teenager
If you will constantly remind yourself that some of my generation
Judge people by their race, their belief, or the color of their skin
And that this is…
