The Crawl Through The Briars

I'm an insider

I been burned by the fire.

 Oh and I've had to live

With some hard promises,

I've crawled through the briars.

I'm an insider. 

"The Insider"

-Tom Petty

One morning last week on my drive to work (at this point in the program the days are indistinguishable from one another), as I was flipping around the Sirius XM dial, I landed on Tom Petty Radio just as a live version of "The Insider" started.  While I am aware of the tremendous success Petty and Stevie Nicks had with "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around", it has always been my belief that "The Insider"  is a far superior piece of music.  

I first became a Tom Petty fan almost forty-five years ago.  The first "boom box" I ever owned was one  I received as a birthday present when I was twelve years old.  The first cassette I bought to play in it was Damn the Torpedoes.  I have been a fan ever since.  To my ear, Tom Petty always seemed to bring his life to life in his vocals.  Not the "Instagram" iteration of life but the real, day-to-day, world-weary  life he lived.  The life that each of us lives.  

Every day.

-AK