Social Distortion, "Ring Of Fire"

Do I need to say, "This is awesome"? That seems gratuitous somehow.

What's remarkable about SD's cover is how faithful it really is despite a faster tempo and an arrangement that's louder, harder and (in some ways) fuller than Johnny Cash's version. June Carter and Merle Kilgore's song is really punk somehow, with its portrayal of love as an apocalyptic event. Which is exactly what love is when you're sixteen. And love when you're sixteen is also crashing guitars and pounding drums. It all goes together like ice cream and that special quick-freeze chocolate dipping sauce they have at Dairy Queen, and if Johnny had been born thirty years later his version would have been slamming and sung through the nose.

You get older and possibly wiser (as long as you invest points in it and don't treat it like a dump stat). Also, your hormones finally regulate. Love is no longer something that inflicts actual physical pain. I don't miss that; I think I might have written better poetry at the time, but all of it was about mooning around, so, enh. But I still dig a fuzzy guitar, so maybe some things change for the better while other things remain happily consistent over the decades.