A lonely man driving a taxi

For some time, I have been trying to find out who sings the song wherein a man bemoans the fact that "The nights are still so long." There is also a reference to seeing something or someone "in the crowd." It was unclear to me exactly what, but the singer definitely appeared to state "Sometimes I think..."

Typically, when I hear a song that I want to identify, I run whatever phrases I can decipher and remember through Google to find a match. That, however, did not work the first few times around for this one. I asked the person behind the counter at the Yoshinoya Bowl if he knew the title of the song when I recently heard it there while having my trademark spicy combo. He did not.

Fortunately, I did hear the song last week-end, and I finally learned that the song featured Train. The title was "Cab." Apparently, the driver sometimes thought that he was "the only cab on the road." I ordered the CD from Amazon. It arrived yesterday. While I took a bit of a break from grading final papers, I played the song over numerous times.

This reminds of of the old days when I was a freshperson or sophomore in college and got into the habit of playing Genesis' song "Man on the Corner" over and over again. This story is in the third person, but otherwise, there are certain similarities. This was back in the old days of cassette tapes (or turntables which I rarely ever used). There was no automatic repeat feature, so I would manually rewind the song each time. This really frustrated my sister who did not have the same fondness for hearing the same song over and over again.

To some extent--and with some variations--there appears to have been at least a partial repetition of history.

Old habits die hard, especially for old eccentrics.