Rock & Roll Just Can't Recall

Maybe the most astonishing thing about the rock music I love most is how many different natural resources can fuel it: you can get there from sexual frustration or fulfillment, bliss or the blues, righteous fury or your right to party, explosion or implosion (by fusion or fission, cold or blazing), remorse or absolution, travel or transformation, rebellion or re-engagement. According to Lester Bangs, all it takes in N-E-R-V-E, though the stuff that sends me takes more than that (but that, too, even if it's the nerve to stay quiet, hold still, which Lester rarely sanctioned).

Even as the music dies (and it does seem to be doing that), spectacular new artists keep surfacing, from soil they mulched and tilled themselves. Like these dazzling people, who seem to have erupted from a whole new source of roaring, sizzling, songful rock rejuvenation: kaleidoscopic disappointment.