Following the Boss’s Orders

Song 360: This week on the playlist you can find Company Men by Bob Nichols, who also wrote the song. Seven weeks after posting a track by my friend Jeff Larson, this week's cut is by my late friend and former Berkeley housemate Bob Nichols, who died back in November of 2005. It comes from a cassette release Bob called Ordinary Eatery. He gave me a copy of that tape during our stretch as housemates in the 1980s, and I have given it many spins on the player, though, of course, these days I mostly listen to the SanDisk, but it's on there too, along with a few other Bob releases. From the beginning of our friendship, I liked his music, and his death over a decade ago has not dampened my enthusiasm for it. When I hear him sing "We tow the company line but the line gets faster all the time“ it sounds even more meaningful today than it did 3 decades ago. He and I both knew that he borrowed his closing lyric here from Mark Twain, but he adds an ironic twist to it that I always relished.