Old and Wise Ain't Everything

Of course, to flip that coin and show that sometimes young folks can nail down a feeling that you might not think they could, consider poets and rock 'n' roll stars. Listen to some of the lyrics written by kids in their early twenties, from Rimbaud and Poe, to the Beatles to Cat Stevens to Kurt Cobain. Or watch a young-but-getting-old-fast Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company -- a bar-band that seldom played the same song twice the same way in their entire career.

Janis was twenty-five when she sang this. She died at twenty-seven, same age as Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison when they shuffled off. So young. So talented.

Such a waste.