Someone’s Feeding on Your Anger and You’ve Seen His Face Before

Sheryl Crow’s “Out of Our Heads” rekindles the Spirit of the Sixties (well, at least in me it does)

Sheryl Crow in one of many sexy poses she has done for publicity photographs over the years. This one was to promote a 2011 show at the Orpheum.

FOR FIVE YEARS I toiled at a restaurant doing everything from cashiering to food prep to handling the back of the house where things go to die and never be heard from again. But no matter where I was, I heard the music that was piped in via one of the satellite feeds that play the same damn songs over and over at a volume just loud enough that snatches of song catch your attention while you’re doing something else. This had the effect of turning everything into muzak-mush.

The music that was played was actually usually fine: well-known rock, soul, and pop music that was all over the map generically and chronologically. Elvis and Roy Orbison and the Supremes were played back-to-back with contemporary artists I with whom I wasn’t remotely familiar.

The front “cover” for the insert to the compact disc of Detours, which I have cropped into a square to look more like an LP.

One selection played so often that I became so familiar with it—against my will, mind you—that I could recognize it immediately no matter where it was the song at the moment that I became aware of it.