NOT MY TOWN ANYMORE
Words and music by Eric Wrobbel
Description from 
"I thought Hollywood was kind of seedy and rowdy when I lived there in the late-'70s. But tolerably so. It had a hard but slightly dumb quality that made it appealing and easy to call home. One night a few years ago, I took my sons to a concert there, dropped them off, and spent a few hours cruising my old boulevards. This song was the result." --Eric Wrobbel, 2007, in the liner notes to "Unknown Favorites."
To call this song "bitter" is to completely miss the rich evocation of the passage of time--what stays, what goes, and what matters. There is a bitter tone underneath, sure. What song about generational change will not have that in some measure? Yet there is this: In the second verse, the singer recalls his youth and the camaraderie of peers, particularly those who were ambitiously trying to make their way in the world as he was. The field of endeavor of these peers mattered less than the attitude they shared--of putting one's self "out there." Confidence, that quality so necessary and yet so fragile, was bolstered in these relationships. The song dryly refers to this essential confidence building as "we kept each other company.".
And that is the thing that the singer finds missing in the town that is not his anymore. He is no longer in the company of others who will share. It seems to him that he is now obsolete in the eyes of others. He experiences a taste of the dreaded "grandpa syndrome," as the town no longer even sees him but rather blankly looks past him. He has "made it," is comfortable and free to move around the place at will, but he is no longer a part of its beating heart, if it even still has one. He is irrelevant and useless in a youthful world that is cockier than ever in the supreme ignorance that it is the only relevant and useful generation.
About Eric Wrobbel
This songwriter, artist, musician and humorist has written and produced hundreds of interesting tracks for himself and others in his long, eclectic career. Rarely performing live, he has almost exclusively focused his musical efforts as a studio artist, working in a wide range of styles that have variously been described as rock, folk, country, psych, humor, and pop.
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