Paul Nelson, Scout

"Greil Marcus says Nelson asked a lot of each record he played: 'Would it raise the possibility that you could think differently, respond differently, feel differently about the dilemmas of love or money, success and failure? Was the singer telling you something that perhaps you didn't know, or was he or she flattering you that you already knew all you or anyone needed to know? He had a phrase in the late Seventies: "the rock wars." Music had barely begun to talk about loneliness, suicide, the toughness needed to say everything you had to say in the turn of a line or the way a melody broke. Paul's role? A scout, behind enemy lines, reporting back.'"

--From the Rolling Stone obituary