Mellencamp vs. Seger vs. Springsteen

Jim Croce, Carol King, Carly Simon, Todd Rundgren, Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor were some of my favorites and still are.

I would also include Donald Fagen, Kenny Loggins, John Denver, Bob Welch, Boz Scaggs, Michael McDonald, Janis Ian, I could go on and on...

Ditto. Linda Ronstadt too. My house rocks when I play Mellencamp -- wife almost killed me.

Bob Seger. I grew up Michigan used to be able see him perform on a regular basis.

An interesting group. Always liked Seger but listened to him mostly on road trips, his didn't seem like music you played inside the house.

I didn't pay too much attention to Mellencamp all along but his 2008 'Life, Death, Love and Freedom', is an amazing album, one of my favorites of the last five years.

One of my close friends is considered a great poet in her native Spain and was widely published there. She came to the U.S. at age 35 speaking almost no English but quickly mastered the language. She says that she tried for years to make sense of American poetry but couldn't, until she started listening to Springsteen at my house.