Sounds from the Hall Rounding third and heading home. Seger, known for his love of softball, compares the Hall of Fame to Cooperstown in a story co-bylined by longtime Seger writer Gary Graff in Billboard. "I view it like Cooperstown," an ebullient Seger said. "I think about [Detroit Tiger right fielder] Al Kaline in the Hall of Fame. I've played golf occasionally with Larry Bird, who's in the Hall of Fame. Now I'm in my Hall of Fame." "There wasn't a Hall of Fame when I started," he added, "but to be in there with my heroes -- with your Little Richards, your Elvises, the Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, is just beyond words. It's wonderful. To suddenly be in that same pantheon is pretty heady stuff." Seger said he and his Silver Bullet Band will perform at the March 15 induction ceremony in New York, which will be taped to air on VH1 later that week. Seger said his first choice for inductors are Glenn Frey or Don Henley of the Eagles, "because they're my oldest friends in rock 'n' roll," but he said Kid Rock has also voiced a desire to do the honors. Barry A. Jeckell and Gary Graff, November 21, 2003, Billboard. "Honorees React to Rock Hall Induction." In other sports news, Seger got the loudest ovation of the night at the Pistons v. Hornets game last week, when he was honored for this election to the Hall of Fame. Hammer Time. Seger told the Ann Arbor news that the band is stoked at the prospect of performing at the induction ceremony. "I think they'll be hammering me pretty hard (to tour)," he said. Seger hasn't yet decided which songs he'll play. The article also includes some memories of earlier days: "John Carver, who owned the Second Chance at the time, went to high school with Seger. 'We weren't like real buddies, but he was a nice guy - our paths crossed here and there… (Seger) was kind enough to play at Second Chance when he was a bigger star than normally would have played in a club like that, partly because of our relationship in high school,"'Carver added." Roger Lelievre, November 21, 2003, Ann Arbor News. "Bob Seger to join Rock and Roll Hall of Fame" Carver also reminisces about the Roseland Inn, the Jackson, Michigan strip club where Seger's band, the Town Criers had a standing gig: "People were trying to get him off the stage to get the girls back on." Never wanted to be no pop singer: The Hall's decision -- celebrated in Segerland -- disappointed some fans of John Mellencamp, who was nominated but not inducted. The Indianapolis Star's online site (indystar.com) complained that "long-mothballed Bob Seger got the Hall's call last week, and Mellencamp remains on the outside looking in." But Mellencamp set the record straight in an interview on Indiana TV. "Well, you know," Mellencamp said, "the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is quite an honor to even be nominated for it. I don't really anticipate getting in this year. If I get in before Bob Seger, that's going to be weird for me, because you know, I was a freshman in high school when Seger had a hit called Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, which, ya know, was probably one of the reasons I wanted to be a recording artist, because that was a great song." Eyewitness News 13, November 21. "The John Mellencamp Interview." Joe Knows Uncle Joe Benson's Off The Record interview with Seger aired nationally last weekend. The interview, which was taped before Seger's election to the Hall of Fame, covered a lot of new information. Some highlights: The comedy of physics. Seger said the neutrinos line in "Tomorrow" sprang from a comedy routine by Charles Fleischer. "He gets up in front of the audience and says, okay, what happens if neutrinos have mass? And there's dead silence. I happen to know the answer because I read a lot of physics books… I always remembered that. I said, what a question to throw at people." The kicker is that the comedy show was twelve years ago, which provides an interesting glimpse into how Seger writes. Presumably the line stuck in his head or went into a notebook for more than a decade, before emerging in "Tomorrow." Seger adds that the neutrino theory, in vogue when the song was written, is now out of date. "It changes so fast, now that we've got dark matter in the equation." (Uh…right. I was gonna ding him on the dark matter thing myself. But management insists I stay on good behavior until at least after the new CD.) (A side note: Fleischer's Comedy Store routine was remembered by someone else as well. Director Bob Zemeckis saw the stand-up act and hired Fleischer eight years later to be the voice of Roger Rabbit.) Interesting choice of words. During their discussion of "Tomorrow," Seger says, "If I was forced at gunpoint to do Letterman tomorrow night, that'd be the song I play." The laughter after the answer is priceless -- the big infectious Seger laugh that can't be faked. Was the gunpoint line a reference to Seger's ill-starred history with Letterman? Or just his reluctance to do TV in general? Seger's Answer to the Tour Question Part I. "I've basically told the band, probably not," Seger said, regarding the possibility of a tour. Uncle Joe then asked a terrific follow-up question: How 'bout just showing up with a guitar somewhere for an impromptu show? Seger's answer: "It's always been my opinion that, you know, there's one thing people want to hear. And if you can't do it the way you've always done it, it's not fair to them. I went out and saw Springsteen in the last two weeks and the Eagles and they both wanted me to sit in and I won't do it. I hardly ever do that because I just don't think it's what people want to hear. They want to hear a certain thing and I want to be true to that. When we come out we want to be, three weeks of rehearsal, you know, to get everybody's touring muscles back up…" My question is, who are these people who want to hear a certain thing??? I say we roll out the razor wire and go door to door until we find these narrow-minded fans. I say 'round 'em up and bombard them with Live Bullet and Nine Tonight, since that's what they like hearing. Then maybe the rest of us can enjoy some impromptu Seger. Or rather, I would say all this, if I hadn't promised to be on my best behavior. More songs we'd love to hear. Seger said he's written "about 40" songs for his new CD. "I've recorded about 29 of the 40 and I think about 22 of them are really good. But I would say there's definitely 11 that would probably be on the new [CD]…but I just robbed it of two, so now I've probably got to write five more. Overall, Seger said he's written "over 500" songs. "And I would say there's probably half of them haven't been released." Peter Green Reference #1. Of "Fire Down Below," Seger reiterated that he was inspired vocally by Scottish rocker Frankie Miller but added Peter Green to the equation. "[Frankie Miller and I] are very similar in the way we approach rock and roll. And I heard the song called "Ain't Got No Money." And I liked that swampy middle-rock thing. Vocally, I was probably inspired by Frankie, but band-wise I think I was inspired by "The Rattlesnake Shake" by Fleetwood Mac and you know, Peter Green and those guys." (Click here for a taste of Peter Green's Rattlesnake Shake.) All Seger quotes in this section from "Off The Record with Uncle Joe Benson," November 23, 2003. Tour du Jour Seger's Answer to the Tour Question Part II. In a phone interview with WQUT 101.5 in Tennessee, Seger's standard answer to the tour question changed from "probably not" to "we'll play it by ear." "In January," Seger said, "we'll start rehearsing for the Hall of Fame event, so the whole band will be back together. We'll just kind of play it by ear and see how my voice holds up. It has to hold up for two hours and I'm 58 and, you know, if I go out on tour I just want to make sure that I can do it justice." Experts in our Segerology department say this shift in emphasis portends better chances for a tour than previously thought. (These same experts insist that "The poptarts are in the pantry" and "You will fall in love on Flag Day," so be warned.) Seger also retold the story of how the new tracks were added to GH2. "[Punch] actually started setting up press interviews and everybody who he set up said 'What are the new songs' and after setting up about eight of them he called me and said 'We gotta put the two new songs on there.'" Seger said the lyrics and credits for "Satisfied" and "Tomorrow" won't be on the first 350,000 copies of the GH2 booklet. Finally, he predicted the new album would be released "around June of 2004." Thanks to Kevin Walsh, who runs Segerbob.com, for posting an mp3 of the interview. Click the Segerbob link to hear it yourself The Promise of Promise -- More in 04? The Boston Globe has a recent piece with more Hall reaction from Seger, but the best part of the story concerns the upcoming CD. Only three of the 11 songs planned for that album are ballads, says Seger. It's tentatively titled "Face the Promise," and Seger says he'll finish writing it by March. In another quote, Seger says he writes songs "20 to 25 hours a week." And he leaves the door open on touring. "I'll jump off that bridge when I get to it," he says. "I'm 58 now. Touring is a grueling thing, and I've got to be away from my kids. I'll have to see." There's also a quote on how long it took for the Hall to induct Seger. Seger was eligible for induction a few years ago but didn't worry about the delay. "I think it bothered other people more than me. I didn't have a clue what the criteria were. I just hoped it would happen eventually." "I'm thrilled because that's great company," Seger says. "I'm a big fan of Jackson and ZZ Top, and I used to go see Prince before he made it." Steve Morse, December 5, 2003, Boston Globe. "Garage-trance band Laguardia arrives on time." Also on the subject of the new CD, pauseandplay.com lists "Face the Promise" by Bob Seger for a summer release. And this time they really mean it, right? (It's worth noting that pauseandplay had it right when rumors of GH2 first surfaced there.) In other baseball news... Why do I get the feeling that Bob Edwards isn't the only journalist who might be reading the Seger File? Check out this piece by Scott Miller, who works Seger into the Sportsline.com baseball roundup: The recent release of his CD Greatest Hits 2 marks a very welcome return from Bob Seger, who unfortunately has been semi-retired in recent years. What does this have to do with baseball? Not much, but it's a chance to lobby for the release of what's said to be a killer cut locked away in the Seger vaults titled "Can't Hit the Corners No More," an intriguing song about a struggling, aging pitcher. No, far as we know, it's not based on the life and times of Jack Morris or David Cone. Seger once said he had Catfish Hunter and Mark Fidrych in mind. Scott Miller. December 3, 2003. Sportsline.com. "Notes: As credibility takes hit, Brewers rebuild again." Are albums over? I don't think so. When somebody puts out a collection of songs, that's an album. Doesn't matter whether it's on vinyl or tape or disk. An album is something that holds a collection of things -- pictures, songs, etc. Nevertheless, a USA TODAY article surveys a wide range of artists, including Seger, on the demise of the album -- by which they really mean that black 12-inch vinyl thing properly called an LP. "The album, music's dominant creative framework for the past 40 years, is dying under the wheels of an accelerating revolution," the article says. It was written by Edna Gundersen, (save your Mongrel jokes for a moment, please) who interviewed Seger after GH2 was released. Classic-rock icon Bob Seger is saddened and mystified by the album's overthrow. "It's a different world now, and I've got to come to terms with it…I'm just thrilled when someone like Bruce Springsteen puts out something like The Rising. That's what I strive for. We're of an era that still believes the whole package is important. But I don't know if it makes sense anymore. I'm 58, and this is all new to me." Edna Gundersen, December 4, 2003, USA TODAY. "Downloading squeezes the art out of the album." Terminology quibbles aside, it's a worthwhile read. Also quoted are Keith Richards, David Bowie, Michelle Shocked, Dave Matthews, Lindsey Buckingham, Ray Manzarek and several others. How's Sarah? In the Nov. 24 Newsweek, Kid Rock was asked whether he's a Seger fan. (Duh.) The answer: "A hundred percent. He [Seger] wrote 'Hard Night for Sarah' in the 90s and never used it and you know, offered it to me. He's never done that for anybody. He really keeps to himself. I mean, it's just mind-blowing. It made me feel warm inside and so good and just like "wow." There's just nothing sweeter than that, you know." Lorraine Ali, November 24, Newsweek. "Does the Kid Know How to Rock." Later in the piece, the interviewer proves that she has no hemi when she refers to the "Dodge 'Like A Rock' jingles." Meanwhile, USA TODAY's Edna Gundersen says Rock "turns in a pointless cover" of Sarah, calling it "regurgitated classic rock." (Okay, now you can make your Evil Edna jokes.) The Chicago Sun Times also slams the three covers on Rock's CD, calling them awful and boneheaded. The New York Post goes thumbs up, though, as follows: "Rock makes his top solo on an old, unreleased Bob Seger song, 'Hard Night for Sarah,' rendering the tune about betrayal and infidelity with arena power and compassion. Dan Aquilante, November 11, 2003. New York Post. "Kid's All Right." Florida Time 1973 was one of the years when Seger played nearly 250 gigs. One of those shows was at the Exposition Center in Orlando, Florida. A number of things went wrong that night, including the fact that the promoter didn't pay and tried to skip town. But one thing went right -- the show was aired by the local FM station, WORJ, which was pioneering live concert broadcasts in the area. Even better, they found the tape recently and posted it on their site. The show begins with two radio announcers doing the following "play-by-play" for the home listener. "This has been the second delay of the show. It was supposed to come off at around 11 o'clock last night but Bob Seger's bass player and organist got hung up in Oklahoma City -- they couldn't get plane reservations to Orlando because of the people coming in for the moon shot…" The reference to Oklahoma City makes me think this is the Borneo Band. Seger doesn't introduce them, but there are a couple references to Tom Cartmell (now Alto Reed). Once the show starts, Seger rocks through a 40-minute set, including Ramblin' Gamblin' Man, Bo Diddley/Who Do You Love, Higher and Higher (featuring "our girl singer, Stoney") and a 20-minute medley of Turn the Page / Heavy Music / Let It Rock / Heavy Music. The encore provides the second Peter Green reference: it's a cover of Green's "Stop Messing Around." At the end, you can hear the crowd of 500 screaming for more as the stage announcer shouts above the din: "I want you people to realize -- I want you people to realize that the Bob Seger band has come all the way down here from Detroit…they did not get paid for tonight! They came all the way down here at their own expense…and they knew before they went on that they were not getting paid." And they're probably not getting paid for this "re-broadcast" on the WORJ website. The link will take you to WORJ's home page - hit the Live Concerts link for Seger (as well as a Poco concert). It's a 30-minute download for us non-broadband types. The sound is good by 1973 standards, coming from the mixing board, so enjoy it while you can. Listening to the concert reminded me of a couple Seger quotes from earlier interviews: "Whenever we'd play Florida, which was my only decent market besides Detroit, we'd drive down there in 24 hours and play without rest." Timothy White, November 1977, Crawdaddy. "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rocker" "Really for the first 8 years I was more of a driver than a performer: I spent 8 hours a day driving and then an hour and a half a day performing. But that was the price that I paid to do it." May 1979 radio interview. Don't Stop Thinking About "Tomorrow." Don't get me wrong: I love all the recent news stories filled with inside information, details and background. I eat it up. But ultimately, my interest centers on the music, not the business. And I'd like to hear more about the music…particularly the lyrics. For example, "Are you going to tour?" is a business question. Ditto "When's the new CD coming out?" "What are you going to play at the Hall of Fame?" "Will there ever be a box set?" etc., etc., etc. All fascinating questions. But imagine it this way: if Seger had just come out with a book instead of a CD, the questions would be about the words: i.e., What were you trying to say here? and Why tell this story and not some other story? Of course, in some of what Seger writes, the words are just there to support the beat. I don't really have any heavy literary-style questions about "Her Strut," for example. (Although, on the business side of things, I'm fascinated to learn that producer Bill Szymczyk threw a slap flange on Seger's voice to get that gritty vocal -- thanks to Uncle Joe for that tidbit.) But with "Tomorrow," Seger was clearly writing to say something. Everyone gravitates to the neutrinos line. But the line that's pure genius, for me, is "It won't save you from the sky." As the payoff to the first bridge, it's a beautiful example of a line that's simple, powerful and chilling. From various interviews, we know that the song came out of a conversation about asteroids and comets that Seger had with his son (now 11, but presumable eight or nine when the song was written). But there's more I'd like to know. Yesterday, I was listening to the song with my son, who's ten. When we came to the line "No more road rage," he asked me to hit pause. "Why No more road rage?" he asked. "Out of all the things that won't exist when the sun blows up, why does he name that? What about some of the other things we won't have?" Here in the Seger File, when someone asks a question that I can't answer, I generally just make stuff up. But with Zane, I'm honest. "That's a good question," I said. "I don't know." "I thought you knew everything about Bob Seger." "Yeah, well, no one's asked him that yet." So interviewers, hear my plea. Ask about the lyrics. Seger spends hours, days, months writing them, and I bet he's got something to say about them. Find out about the business stuff, but don't stop thinking about the lyrics -- especially when songs like "Face the Promise," "Little Jane" and "Let Me Try" come out, presumably on next year's CD. December 1, 2003 Simpson Slams Seger (or the Limits of Contrarianism in the Classic Rock Environment) First the facts. Last Sunday, Homer Simpson went out of his way to slam Seger. It was for laughs, of course, or more like a chuckle, since the writing wasn't all that clever. Here's the context: Early in the show, Homer secretly takes up panhandling and makes a lot of money, which he spends on gifts for Marge. When she catches him and tells him to stop, Homer says: "But Marge -- that's how I bought you those diamond earrings. And that Bob Seger boxed set. Which turned out to only be one disk. But the box was nice." In other words, the cardboard box was better than the Seger music inside. Zing! -- but why? As you might imagine, I have two theories about Simpson's slam -- one simple and one complicated. Guess which one we'll do first. Okay, my Big Idea here is that Seger and Punch Enterprises employ what I call a contrarian approach to marketing Bob -- that is, an approach that's contrary to the conventional wisdom. The conventional way, as Don Henley so aptly wrote on his last album, is called Working It. That is, work every possible angle for maximum exposure. Cross promote your CD and your DVD in magazines and movies and on MTV. Look for "synergies" to grab as much of the media spotlight as you can hog. Increase your value by being everywhere. The Contrarian way is more like the JD Salinger method. Increase your value by being totally unavailable. Drop mysteriously out of sight for years. Purposely stay out of the media. So that when you do finally emerge, it's a big freaking deal. And the contrarian approach works. In fact, it's been hugely successful for Seger. Look how nuts we all went when he did a 90-minute radio interview earlier this month. Keeping the lid on tight creates massive pent-up demand among Seger fans. Note that I said "among Seger fans." Because one thing keeping the lid on tight doesn't do is expand Seger's appeal to those who aren't already fans. So you've got this big dichotomy, where Seger's reputation and respectability is sky-high among those of us who know -- the two or three million of us who send his albums multi-platinum. And then there's everybody else. They don't know Seger. Why should they? He's been practically invisible for almost a decade. I ran into one of these 'don't know/don't care' people a while ago when I had my iPod on. Hip guy, early thirties. He asked me what I was listening to. When I told him it was Seger, he snorted. Would he have snorted if I had said "Tom Petty?" Maybe, but I tend to think he wouldn't have. He probably doesn't own any Petty -- he struck me as more of a White Stripes/Dandy Warhols/Strokes kind of guy -- but I'm guessing he would have had more respect for Petty as an artist, just because he's probably seen Petty more. TP, while not a media hog, shows up on tribute albums, in videos, on talk shows. (He even portrayed himself on The Simpsons a while back.) People who don't care for his style of music still know about his reputation. They don't say "Is he still alive?" as my ex-girlfriend did about Seger recently. The irony of the contrarian approach is that we, the fans, end up doing a lot of the new customer recruitment work for Seger. Despite the snort, I told the hip guy in his thirties that there's more to Seger than Old Time Rock 'n' Roll and truck commercials. Maybe after he checks out the Segerfile, he'll figure it out. In that sense, I'm personally thankful for the contrarian approach, because if Seger were Working It, he'd have a super deluxe Web site of his own, and no one would need the Segerfile. (As it is, fairness compels me to note that Seger's official site has recently caught and surpassed the Segerfile in the Alexa traffic rank. I guess they are Working It a little bit after all.) So the bottom line of Theory Number 1 is that The Simpsons' writers are just plain ignorant. There's no Seger Media Plan to tell them what to think and they haven't bothered to seek out Seger's music and find out for themselves. Which brings me to Theory Number 2, the simple one. The Simpsons are always including musical guest stars. Maybe they asked Bob to do a guest shot and he said no. So they did the boxed set joke to get a little payback. Who knows? If it's any consolation, the very next night on syndicated reruns, the show included a pro-Seger joke. Lisa is babysitting for Chief Wiggums. As he and his wife leave, Lisa calls out "Enjoy the Bob Sagat show!" The Chief then looks at his tickets and winces. "Bob Sagat!? I thought it was Bob Seger! Aw jeez...." So we know that Chief Wiggums, at least, is a Bob Seger fan. Now, for a presumptuous and longwinded explanation of why The Simpsons would slam Bob Sagat, you'll have to visit my other site, www.Sagatfile.com. February 22, 2004 Live from New York... One of the most fascinating guessing games in Segerland lately is "which songs will he play at the Hall of Fame Induction ceremony in New York?" In his interview on Morning Edition (December 1), Seger added a few details. One song will be "Night Moves," Seger said, since it's already on the wall in Cleveland as one of the top 500 rock songs. He also mentioned "Turn the Page" and "Mainstreet" as possibilities. Earlier news stories have said Seger would play two songs, but in this interview Seger refers to "a 45-minute set." The more the better. December 1, 2003 The Wait is Over -- Seger's In! For a great piece on Seger's long overdue induction into the Hall of Fame, check out Brian McCollum's column in the Detroit Free Press, which says Seger will perform live at the ceremony. (And thanks to Brian for including the Seger File and Segernet.com in the story.) "The induction gala will be held March 15 before a tuxedo-and-gown crowd in New York. Seger said Thursday he'll stick with ceremonial tradition and perform at the show, which means attendees and TV viewers will witness his first live performance in more than eight years....Seger was home Wednesday night, in the basement watching the Detroit Pistons on television, when his family got the call. 'I heard the family screaming upstairs, and they came down and just piled on top of me,' he said." Brian McCollum, November 21, Detroit Free Press. "Seger gets Hall of Fame invite - finally." An earlier story in the Freep comes with a cool vintage photo from 1976. Check it here or click on the thumbnail. And a follow-up piece in the Freep puts Seger right smack on the editorial page. Now that's my kind of newspaper! "OUR SEGER, FINALLY: The Detroit area, which has given so much music to the world, is well-represented in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and deservedly so. But something was missing from the Motor City contingent until now, with Bob Seger's membership in the class of 2004 inductees. Seger, who began rocking local audiences in the mid-'60s, has always been all about the music, giving it everything he's got, whether in front of a few hundred people in a club or many thousands in an arena. As a performer, songwriter and musician, he's an icon of the industry. Best of all, he's ours, a whiskey-voiced, blue-collar rocker who's still living and working right here, his music a touchstone for a place and its people. Like a rock." November 22, Detroit Free Press. "Issues and Rockers." The Detroit News followed suit with a somewhat stiffer editorial: "Bob Seger finally received the respect he deserves Thursday when the Rock and Roll Hame [sic] of Fame announced he would be inducted next year. "Seger had been passed over for 10 years, even though he was immensely popular during the 1970s and 1980s. He connected with audiences nationwide and especially in the Midwest, where he played all sorts of high school gyms, roadhouses and clubs in the 1960s. "His cultural influence hasn't wavered. His "Like a Rock" remains an advertising anthem for one of the Big Three automaker's truck lines. "But the reason Seger's music resonates is because it sounds like the wisdom of the heartland. We're glad the Hall of Fame at last recognized Seger's mainstreet appeal and gave him his due." November 24, 2003, The Detroit News. "Seger Deserves Induction into Rock Hall of Fame." The editorial is subtitled "Detroiter's music personifies Midwestern sensibility," which kind of puzzles me. He uses music to make the midwestern sensibility more like a person? That's not exactly how I would describe what Seger does. Note how the Freep ends with a Seger song reference -- Like A Rock -- while the DetNews slips in Mainstreet. And what's with the "one of the Big Three automakers" line? Why not just say Chevy? And they almost get it right when they say "the reason Seger's music resonates is because it sounds like the wisdom of the heartland." If you omit the last syllable, it's absolutely true. The reason Seger's music resonates is because of his incredible voice and talent and his emotionally honesty. That stuff comes from the heart, not from the heartland. It's emotion, not geography, that makes Seger great. The DetNews reports on Seger's reaction here: "Seger gave eight radio interviews on Thursday to promote his current "Greatest Hits 2" package without even mentioning that he'd been inducted into the Hall of Fame. That's because Seger still wasn't quite sure it was true, after his wife couldn't find mention of it on the Internet." Susan Whitall, The Detroit News, November 21, 2003. "Seger humbly accepts news of Hall of Fame induction." And while we're at, check out USA Today's profile of Seger...one day prior to the announcement. "Seger, who volunteers as a football, baseball and basketball coach, says family life realigned his values. 'Your heroes change,' he says. 'My new heroes are teachers. I'm knocked out by what they contribute.'" Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY, November 19, 2003. "Seger returns to that old-time rock 'n' roll." Now that it's official, I'm finally calling off the national tourist embargo on Cleveland. Pack your bags and let's rock. November 21, 2003 Great week for Greatest Hits 2 Feel like a number, or maybe two? Check out this figure: 47,000. That's how many Seger fans bought GH2 since its release one week ago. Which means the disk debuts at Number 23 on Billboard's Top 200. (Meanwhile 322,000 addled music fans went home with Vol. 14 of the Now That's What I Call Music! rehash. With their blinker lights on all the way, I'll bet.) Seger on the radio. A couple of radio websites have short phone interviews with Seger. Try WRIF in Detroit and WZLX in Boston. The WZLX interview covers a wide range of topics. About "Tomorrow," Seger says, "Well, it's just a hammer...It really came from a science conversation I had with my son about asteroids and comets coming close to earth." Seger also talks briefly about outtakes and reissues, and says that "Fire Lake" is based on Silver Lake near Dexter, Michigan. Segerbob.com also gets a good mention. And in a week and a half, Uncle Joe Benson will air Seger's first national radio interview in ages. Uncle Joe writes this about Bob: "He's looking great, and is very excited about the new album coming next spring or fall. Still too many songs, and he keeps on writing/recording them. "The special Off The Record will air the weekend of November 23rd. There's a pretty substantial list of affiliates at unclejoe.com." He kids us not. Kid Rock's new CD not only covers Seger's unreleased track, "Hard Night for Sarah." It also begins with Seger's introduction from Live Bullet, according to a recent Adam Graham article in the Detroit News. "(Seger's) my king of rock and roll. For me, there's nothing better," Rock said. "I put him on the highest plateau, probably, out of anybody I really enjoy. Everything he stands for, I just dig. "You know, he's just a normal guy, and I think that's a big thing for someone like me that's coming up who sees all these other people acting a certain way. I could use him for my role model and say, 'No, no, you can still be normal and rock ... and get crazy and wild and then come back down to earth with it.' I think he's been a good example of that." The respect is mutual, Seger said. "I see his shows, and I think his show is great. Every time he's in town I try to see him." Adam Graham, November 7, 2003, The Detroit News. "Father role, Mich. life keep rock star grounded."  Photo update. Thomas Weschler confirms that the center photo of Seger on stage in the CD booklet is from the mid-70s. "Probably in E. Lansing w/Peter Frampton," he writes. According to TLW, the photos were selected in October 2002 -- a year ago -- and then the project got put on hold. That would track with an email I got -- and foolishly ignored -- from "J.V." on January 16, 2003, saying GH2 would be released this year, based on a Gary Graff article in the Oakland Press. Got any gum? 47,000 thousand Seger fans aren't the only ones excited about GH2. This, my friends in Detroit say, is a photo of Seger showing a preview copy of the new disk to Joe Walsh. We shoulda been there but we weren't. Meanwhile, a handful of those 47,000 first-week fans wrote the Segerfile with their own reviews. Check out the comments of Michael Good, Charlie Keegan, Paul Dunn, Chip Stewart, Gord Hunter and Bill Wolski (who explained neutrinos to us earlier), Marty Carlisle and a few others here. "It's like seeing an old friend after many years apart, " Chip Stewart writes. And I love Bill's comment about Satisfied -- "This song would make the career of virtually anybody else who could have recorded it, yet it's just Seger doing what he always does." You'll also want to ponder his query on the future of the saxophone. And Gord Hunter sums up what a great Greatest Hits volume can do: "I feel like I've found his music again with all the strength and conviction of my youth." That link again is here. November 12, 2003 Let "Tomorrow" Never End "Tomorrow" is here, and I can't stop playing it. This song has a hold on me like morphine...my family has fled to the other end of the house because I keep playing it so loud. The whole CD is great -- more on that later -- but as the final cut, "Tomorrow" makes a huge statement. Get the CD just for this track alone, if you must. Then do your life a favor and play it loud -- louder than you've played anything for a good long while. Let it thump off your chest. Hear Seger doing what he does with incredible power. As for "Satisfied" -- get ready to give up some major brain space. You won't have to open the door for this song...it floats in by itself. It's gonna be in my head for a long, long time. I'm so slammed, so jazzed about these new tracks, I can barely pull it together for a quick round-up slash rip-off of web stories and Segerfile insights. But here goes. Apocalyptic and tense. That's how Mark Brown, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, describes "Tomorrow." Some excerpts from Brown's piece. "My son and I are very into science. We're always talking about asteroids hitting the Earth, science in general, physics, things of that nature," Seger says. "We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, so it's just live for today and, gosh, enjoy it...The line about the sun and the road rage - I just really liked the way the lyric came out." Mark Brown, Rocky Mountain News, November 4, 2003. "Seger compiles greatest hits (and slips in some new tunes)" Brown says that Seger plays all the guitar solos on "Tomorrow." Seger's next album: Brown quotes Seger as saying, "I turned in 11 (songs), and I've got another 15 I've been recording since '97." "Much of the material was actually rerecorded," Brown writes, "after he (Seger) discovered a new Sony 44-track, 24-bit machine that sounded better than anything he'd ever recorded on before." "'I recorded a total of 29 songs, but the best ones - there were 11 of them,' Seger says. ...He plans to write and record five more songs during the winter and give them to his old friend Andy Slater, Capitol Records president, to package and release." Seger has also recorded Come On up to the House, from Tom Waits' Mule Variations album, Brown writes. Cooking the tapes. The master tapes of the older material on GH2 were gooey and had to be cooked in a convection oven to stabilize them, according to a Rocky Mountain News sidebar. "The problem was remastering them without destroying the tapes. That was a trip," Seger says. "We had to be very careful. You bake them for eight to 10 hours and you run them through once and put them on hard disc." Rocky Mountain News,November 4, 2003. "Tapes didn't age well in the vaults." Read the entire Mark Brown piece, and tape sidebar here. No RGM. Gary Graff, a journalist who has covered Seger extensively, explains in the Cleveland Plain Dealer why "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" is not on either Greatest Hits album. "No matter how we tried to fit it in, it's just so mono in the mix that it stood out like a sore thumb," Seger explains. "It just didn't sound right." Gary Graff, November 4, 2003, The Plain Dealer. "Something old, something new by Bob Seger." Blue Ridge? Graff adds a tantalizing note about a scrapped album. "Seger also notes that improved recording technology spurred him to scrap an album he was working on, tentatively titled 'Blue Ridge,' and create a new body of work. Sailing, including back-to-back regatta wins in 2001 and 2002, has also chewed up some time. "But mostly, Seger says, it's family that has commanded the attention he might otherwise give to the music. 'You know, it's so soothing, the whole kid thing,' he says. 'I love being around them.' Read the entire Graff article here. The liner notes. Because "Satisfied" and "Tomorrow" were added at the eleventh hour, the first batch of booklets in the CD -- and the track listing on the CD itself -- don't include these songs. According to info at Segernet.com, the first "a couple hundred thousand" booklets will have the wrong tracklist. The sequencing. It's fantastic. Right off the top, someone had the genius to put "The Fire Down Below" after "Understanding." And "Beautiful Loser" after "Her Strut." Sometimes on greatest hits collections, the sequence works against the songs. On this one, the sequence works perfectly, enhancing the songs. Weschler scores. The booklet inside the CD begins with Tom Weschler's beautiful back-cover shot of Seger from Brand New Morning. And the centerpiece is a terrific Weshler shot of Seger in concert. I've never seen this one before. Okay, TLW -- what's the story behind the photo? The Silver Bullet Girls. Naked girls wearing huge ammo belts, hugging a phallic bullet. They've never seemed Seger-like to me. Couldn't they find work as a graphic for say, a Blue Cheer cutout, or some Led Zep reissue? Do they seem horribly dated to you, or am I just getting old? (TLW: what's the story behind that piece of art?) Someone tell Capitol. This is first Seger CD since 1995, and guess what's on the Capitol Records home page? Coldplay, Duran Duran, Yellowcard, various Beatles stuff. Way to overlook a guy who's sold nearly 50 million albums. [Update: Sometime on Nov. 5, Capitol added Seger to their home page.] Someone tell iTunes. When you search for Seger at Apple's Music Store, it asks "Did you mean Bob Siegal?" Uh, no. The missing verse. I was three times through "Satisfied" when I realized it was one verse short from the version I heard in the Vault. The missing second verse is a little more biting. The full lyrics are updated in the Vault write-up. BobSeger.com? When you put the enhanced CD in your hard drive, you get a menu page where you can start the Turn The Page video. There's also a link to www.bobseger.com, which is registered to Capitol. When you go there, you'll get a picture of the album cover and a link to Amazon...in case you want to buy another copy of the CD maybe. I guess they just couldn't find any good Seger sites they could link to... Alto wants to tour: Alto Reed posts this message on his site, AltoReed.com: "Be sure to tell all your friends and neighbors to go out and snatch up as many of the new CD's as possible...and maybe that will help in convincing Bob that our fans need us up close and personal...tour wise that is." DMC and Jones. "All I listen to," says DMC of Run DMC, "is Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin - I'm like a classic-rock head." And then there's this disturbing item from the Nov. 5 Washington Times: "It wasn't until he sang a techno-y near-ballad version of Bob Seger's "We've Got Tonight" that the panties really started sailing toward Tom Jones, about midway through his 90-minute steamer at the Lisner Auditorium Tuesday night." Okay, those last two bits have nothing to do with the Greatest Hits 2 CD, but a web round-up is a web round-up. And it certainly demonstrates Seger's amazingly wide range of influence. Meanwhile, my ten-year-old son is suggesting that I not wait for the police to find me and