As to the stance that Phil Gammage takes on Cry of the City, other rockers have taken this tack, but it usually doesn’t sound that bad.  Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” – a longtime favorite of mine, and if anything, Metallica’s 1998 cover of “Turn the Page” is even better than the 1973 original – explores themes of boredom and isolation, but not poverty and danger.  This is not true of the music video that accompanied the Metallica song, however, which follows a single mother who works as an exotic dancer and a prostitute.