You know how people who hate Nickelback are nonetheless forced to reconcile their distaste with the fact that, were it not for Nirvana, the band could not exist? Well, the same could be said for David Bowie and ABC. I’m a died-in-the-wool Bowie fan, and it both annoys and enthralls me that every aspect of this song — from Martin Fry‘s flamboyant baritone to the relentless electro pulse — is ripped from the Thin White Duke’s hymnal (with a sprinkling of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music). But the song is more than a sum of its parts: ABC’s exuberance comes through loud and clear in every call-and-response chorus and gated snare thwack.

As you were.

As far as hoary, oft-repeated sayings go, it’s hard to beat “rock is dead.” The origin of the phrase is shrouded in mystery — like the etymology of “heavy metal” — but it’s not hard to picture Lester Bangs coining it while reviewing the latest Lou Reed long-player in his underwear, specks of Robitussin drying on his mustachioed upper lip.

In reality, people have been claiming “rock is dead” since the genre wriggled its way into the repressed loins of America’s bobbysockers. Every so often, a new pack of scruffy young kids with guitars are labeled as its saviors, but it never lasts. ROCK IS DEAD. Long live paper and scissors!

But what if we had empirical evidence that rock really was dead? Or at least in a state of such dissolution that its resurgence was a probabilistic impossibility? To know for sure, we’d need data.

Now we’ve got some.

This article in The Hollywood Reporter indicates that rock is a spent force in the marketplace, squeezed out by more persistent pop forms. Based on a recent study highlighting the ubiquity of synth-pop, the news may be the final nail in rock’s coffin. (I’m just shocked that there was room for one more.)

According to Hit Songs Deconstructed, 79 percent of top 10 pop hits used a synthesizer as the song’s primary instrument. That’s up from 62 percent a year ago and seems to signal that the current electro-pop fad is here to stay — at least a little while longer. Further boosting that theory: the fact that 88 percent of Top 10 songs used electric-based instrumentation. As for the least popular instrument? The guitar, which hit a low of 4 percent during the second quarter of 2011….

…as for lyrical themes in pop music, “hooking up” is the most popular so far in 2011, prevalent in 38 percent of hit songs, followed by “inspirational” songs, which have steadily increased to account for 25 percent of the Top 10 in the second quarter of 2011, “partying/clubbing” (21 percent) and “love/relationships” at 17 percent. Curiously, any “other” categories of lyrical themes have failed to register at all, coming in at zero percent so far in 2011. Last year, when music listeners were seemingly interested in a little more than sex, it was at 9 percent.

Now, it’s easy to come right back and say that the vast majority of rock songs have been about fucking. That may be true, but the flexibility and durability of the form was such that it could include both “Wango Tango” and “Roundabout” in the same canon. I’m not sure that today’s pop will evolve to the same extent.

For those of us who still traffic in this antiquated form, there are more troubling indicators:

Other curious trends pointed to a steep drop in solos, down from 17 percent to 5 percent of hits, and the once popular bridge portion of a song now only exists in 42 percent of songs, down from 54 percent last quarter and 55 percent a year ago.

You may think that it’s perfectly fine to eliminate the guitar solo. Years of co-existing with jam bands elicits a certain sympathy for that worldview. I still enjoy them (if they’re well-placed and say something), but they aren’t a musical necessity. I have more of a problem with the idea that nobody employs bridges anymore. Sure, some of them are useless, but they are a time-honored construct that helps to give songcraft a form. I’m all for experimental art, but eliminating the bridge is kind of like saying we’re no longer going to bother with paragraph breaks. Can you get away with it? Probably. But it says something about our society if we abandon such formalities. It’s a short hop from here to anarchy. Anarchy, I tell you!

One thing that I like about having quantitative data on the death of rock is that it liberates me to keep making it. I am The Contrarian, after all. It would hardly befit my status to toil in a popular genre.

As always, we’re interested in your reactions. What do you think of this data? Was rock dead all along, and we’re just now noticing? What if it turns into a zombie? Are we prepared for that?

Only now, at the ripe age of 37, am I experiencing the fusion of progressive rock and metal in a way that makes sense for me. Although there is currently a slew of bands mining the intersection of complexity and heaviosity, there are two groups that embody the best of this integration: Opeth and Mastodon.

Both bands have new albums out (actually, Opeth’s record was released yesterday; Mastodon’s drops next week), and both have stirred up controversy among their core audiences for moving away from their metallic roots. NPR (!!!) is hosting a full-length stream of Opeth’s Heritage; Mastodon’s The Hunter can be heard in its entirety at their YouTube channel.

Analyzing a band’s motivations is a favorite pastime for music obsessives, but it is ultimately a pointless endeavor. Especially in this case, as both groups have telegraphed their stylistic shifts over previous releases.

For those not familiar with either act, here’s a bit of background.

Opeth is a Swedish band that came out of that country’s technical death metal scene. Early on, they distinguished themselves from their peers by combining the pagan mood of black metal with the more chops-oriented death style. Throw in the occasional acoustic guitar and vocals that alternate between growl and croon, and you have something approaching original. Over the years, Opeth adopted an even more progressive stance, becoming increasingly sophisticated in arrangement and execution. By the time Blackwater Park was released in 2001, the band had become a juggernaut, with a devoted international fanbase. Fast-forward to 2011 and the release of Heritage — an album that loses nearly all of the metal trappings, instead fully embracing a 1970s progressive rock aesthetic. Message boards are lighting up with comments from heshers who think the band sold out, wussed out or both. Actually, they simply became more themselves.

Mastodon sprouted from entirely different soil. Heavy-drinking, hard-drugging miscreants from Atlanta, Georgia, the band was originally as much a part of the hardcore scene as the metal community. Like their sludgy forbears Neurosis, Mastodon trafficked in crushing riffs peppered with fuck-all attitude. If you’ve spent any time in the hardcore trenches, you know the type: dirty black Carharts, full-sleeve tattoos and a kind of freewheeling nihilism. What made these guys stand out was their combination of go-for-the-throat aggression and enlightened musicality. It wasn’t long before they began incorporating elements of other styles, namely progressive rock. Their last album, Crack the Skye, is likely the high water mark of their prog odyssey, but The Hunter brings even more melody to the fore. Some of the songs even utilize — gasp! — major keys.

I could probably spend another couple thousand words describing why these bands’ latest records are worth your consideration. But what I really want to get across is that there are still acts that are willing to defy fan expectation while producing music that is ostensibly for a commercial marketplace. These aren’t avant-garde bands. They aren’t hipster noise. They aren’t irreconcilably retro (although both make fine use of older styles). They will never be featured in prime time TV shows or car commercials. Yet both records will sell, and concerts will be packed. I’d like to think it’s because the music is actually interesting.

If I were just starting out as a musician, I’d be incredibly inspired by Opeth and Mastodon. Hell, I am now. I’m not sure that Lux Eterna Records will be releasing any comparable records anytime soon, but I’d like to think that we share a commitment to musical exploration and sonic quality. That and a killer ’70s prog collection.

Titor claimed that in the year 2038, a computer-based mainframe error called the UNIX 2038 problem would wreak havoc upon the world and only an original 1975 IBM 5100 computer could solve the problem. Titor claimed that the 5100’s BASIC and APL programming languages held the key to future salvation and he was a soldier sent back in time to retrieve one in working condition.

Think of it as an uber-geeky Terminator, with Titor as the Michael Biehn character.

When asked about his year-2000 pit stop, Titor said that he dropped in to pick up some family photos lost during the “second Civil War” and to warn us of a cattle-based disease outbreak that would kill millions of people.  He also hinted at future historic events, scientific laws yet to be discovered and breakthroughs that would change human life as we know it — including time travel technology (his machine was nestled in the trunk of a 1975 Chevette). Like some Nostradamus firing off prophecies from a local Starbucks, Titor lit up scientific message boards for months with vague announcements hinting at the world to come.

Titor offered to answer any direct questions asked of him but refused to repeat himself. He confirmed the Everett-Wheeler Model of Quantum Physics and claimed that this discredited the Grandfather Paradox. The enigmatic man from the future kindly responded to most queries with a keen sense of duty and patience, but occasionally got peeved at naysayers. Eventually, the fatigue from being called crazy and the repeated denial of his warnings made Titor bow out of the message boards in March of 2001 — leaving us to the mercy of fate (or destiny).

Since his disappearance, John Titor’s predictions toppled one at a time — each failing to come true even as his legend continues to grow. His forecast of the 2004 Civil War never materialized; its escalation to near-apocalypse status in 2008 also proved false. Although some suggest Titor did hint at such events as September 11 and Hurricane Katrina, his failures overshadow any authentic augury. And now we wait for the 2015 Russian nuclear attack that destroys all major US cities, leaving Omaha, Nebraska as our nation’s capital. Why should we believe this prediction? Well, Titor’s followers — and he does have them — claim that his arrival in our time changed the path of history and steered us away from these horrific events.

Like another enigmatic modern-day folk hero, DB Cooper, who became a symbol of his time, John Titor holds a place in our own culture. Titor reflects our desire for online anonymity coupled with an urge to berate and harass from behind the impersonal architecture of message boards. When Titor reached out to our imperiled society with a desire to help — or maybe just to get some attention — we, in typical fashion, mocked and drove away.

According to his own posts, in 2011, the 13-year-old John Titor lives in Florida and is training with the “Fighting Diamondbacks” in preparation for the upcoming Russian conflict. Perhaps we should track him down and apologize before we run out of time…

When I lived in Burlington VT, back in late fall 2000, I bought a 4-track cassette recorder with my roommate Tyler Bolles. The plan was to start recording some stuff and get some ideas going. I thoroughly monopolized the thing though, and after a few months I bought out his half. For the first time in my life I was able to write songs that, for lack of a better term, were “good” or “real.” The 4-track helped immensely. And it lead me through a self-taught tutorial on recording. From panning, to bouncing, to mic placement, to EQing and mixing, my 4-tracker days were unbelievably formative and prolific for me. I started slapping the moniker “The Lazy Songwriter” on my demos. Not because my songwriting was particularly lazy — in fact, I wrote and recorded about a song a day for awhile, in almost every style imaginable. From pop, to bluegrass and gospel, to punk rock, to experimental noise, to reggae, to hip hop and R&B. I was 20 years old, didn’t work very much, slept in till 1 p.m. every day and stayed up to watch the sunrise pretty often. Maybe laid-back is a better term. But “The Laid-back Songwriter” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Eventually, I had about a set’s worth of material and got some friends together to try to play them live. Tyler joined up on upright bass, banjo and vocals, and David Stockhausen on drums, banjo and vocals. Yeah, there was a lot of banjo. We played our first show at The Radio Bean coffeehouse on May 3rd, 2001. That’s right, 10 years ago today. The show was well attended, and we had lots of fun. For the next year or so, we performed in and around Burlington (mostly at Radio Bean), recorded one full-length and generally had a great time. We didn’t rehearse that much, so we were sloppy. The line-up and instrumentation changed constantly. But, as embarrassing as some of the recordings are to me personally now… we sure had a lot of fucking heart!

So today, on the 10 year anniversary of our first show, I would like to present to you a recording of that show, made by our friend Tim Marcus — who was also the sound engineer for said show, my 4-track mixdown engineer and a one-time member of the band (for one practice that is) . It’s from a 10 year old burned CD, so unfortunately I was only able to rip a portion of the show onto my computer for your listening pleasure, but I got a lot of the good stuff. Also, I would like to digitally re-release our first and only full-length, The Lazy Songwriter, and a compilation of random demos and live recordings called Anti-Cruising Law & Other Favorites. If you were a fan or friend of the band, I hope you enjoy this musical stroll down memory lane, and if this is your first time hearing it… don’t judge too harshly! We were just kids!

I would like to thank all “official” former members of the band: Tyler Bolles, Ariel Bolles, P. David Stockhausen, Michael Scott Duplessis, Michael Piche and Tim Marcus. Plus all of the people who hung out with, recorded with, performed with or booked us over the years (during our original run or during one of our “reunion concerts”): Emily Day, Jordan Adams, Tony Shull, Dan Bolles, Casey Rae-Hunter, Lyle King, Marie Whiteford, Tobias Rower, Peter Burton, Dan Schwartz, Andrew Vick, Pat May, Nina De Leon, Alex Crothers, Ethan Covey and especially Lee Anderson for booking our first show and every show since.

Please feel free to listen to, download and share! The albums are compressed as .zip files, but they may take a few minutes to download. A few preview tracks are available to stream for each album as well. Enjoy!

-Arthur Leon Adams III

LISTEN: The Lazy Songwriter – Live at Radio Bean (5/3/01)

1. The Never Ever Song
2. I must be blind.
3. Through the TV part two
4. SLEEPY
5. Untitled (How many covers?)
6. Happy Birthday to Dave & My Dad
7. Beyond Belief (Elvis Costello & The Attractions)

Arthur Leon Adams III – vocals, guitar
Tyler Bolles – upright bass, mandolin, vocals
P. David Stockhausen – drums, banjo, vocals

Tim Marcus — sound engineer, recordist. The crackling noise coming from the acoustic guitar is a problem with the guitar’s pickup and is in the original recording. And it’s not Tim’s fault!

The Lazy Songwriter, The Lazy Songwriter (LP)
[RIGHT OR CONTROL CLICK TO DOWNLOAD .ZIP FILE]

1. The Never Ever Song
2. Back in Fashion [LISTEN]
3. SLEEPY [LISTEN]
4. Purple Blues
5. Naked Arm [LISTEN]
6. (romantic part)
7. We sang to Jesus [LISTEN]
8. Through the TV part two
9. R&R Star [LISTEN]
10. Girlfriend Punk [LISTEN]
11. I don’t want to talk

All songs by Arthur Leon Adams III ©2001-2002 TLSongs.

Recorded on 4-track by Arthur Leon Adams III, spring 2002.
Mixed and mastered by Tim Marcus at Milkmansound. ©2002 TLSongs.

Arthur Leon Adams III – vocals, guitars, piano, vibraphone, etc
Ariel Bolles – vocals, trombone
Tyler Bolles – vocals, upright bass, banjo, etc
P. David Stockhausen – vocals, drums, banjo, guitar

The Lazy Songwriter, Anti-Cruising Law & Other Favorites (Compilation)
[RIGHT OR CONTROL CLICK TO DOWNLOAD .ZIP FILE]

1. Anti-cruising Law (live) [LISTEN]
2. (The One Who’s Gonna) Save The World [LISTEN]
3. ITCH [LISTEN]
4. I Fear YR Right
5. BIG LIE
6. accrega b
7. Money Off The Crutch!!! [LISTEN]
8. That thing we just did.
9. Under it [LISTEN]
10. When You Stare [LISTEN]
11. She’s an Angel (live)
12. The Weather
13. Pretty Girl (come on and learn to dance)
14. Some Romantic Part of the World
15. SOME DAYS [LISTEN]
16. ITCH (Live)
17. Baby, I’m Comin’ Around
18. She’s a Whaaaa???? (live)

All songs by Arthur Leon Adams III ©2001-2002 TLSongs except “She’s an Angel” by Linnell/Flansburgh and “She’s a whaaaa???” by Linnell/Flansburgh/Traditional/Adams.

Recorded on 4-track by Arthur Leon Adams III
Live recordings by Tim Marcus and/or Lee Anderson.

Performed by Arthur Leon Adams III, Ariel Bolles, Tyler Bolles, Emily Day, Michael Scott Duplessis, Michael Piche, Daniel Schwartz, P. David Stockhausen and Andrew Vick.

It’s been a well-known fact among musicians since the early 20th century: you’ve got to pay your dues to play the blues. However, thanks to recent changes that price may soon not be so high.

“I just feel it’s a real disservice to erect a paywall between today’s young musicians and this vital American art form,” said 28-year-old Dylan Zimmer, recently named director of the Office of American Rural Arts, a little-known division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which for decades has been tasked with the collection of dues. “It’s high time we chucked out the old, exclusionary system and moved things toward more of an interactive, open-source model.”

Created in 1928 by the Hoover administration, the OARA was formed when the popularity of so-called “race records” was booming as a way for white America to profit from the primarily African-American music phenomenon. Initially a secretive shadow organization, it was staffed by the strange bedfellows of white Southern establishment officials and a number of prominent Jewish anthropologists from Manhattan’s West Village. In the early 1950s, the department was discovered and completely overhauled. It subsequently flourished under black leadership through the halcyon days of the blues revival.

“For years, the office was funded from the dues of guys like Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House,” said Bob Johnson, Jr., who headed up OARA from 1958-1969. “We’re talking significant dues.” With the 1960s came a sudden flood of interest in the blues, and more money. “We saw an astronomical jump in revenue, just unbelievable. Hundreds of thousands of young middle-class white kids were crazy about the blues and equally motivated to pay their dues. They were all so curious — what exactly were the dues, could we take a personal check, how soon could they receive confirmation of having paid… we could barely keep up with the administrative work alone.”

In a familiar story, however, the excesses of the ’60s precipitated a downfall. Over the course of the following decade, OARA became a bloated behemoth, rife with corruption, lack of oversight and redundancy.

“You had these bands in the ’70s supposedly releasing blues records,” scoffs rock critic Jim Christie, “and my God, they were just awful. So you’d ask around, like… have these guys paid their dues, man? And miraculously they had… either with the drummer’s trust fund, or through someone’s uncle who was a mid-level flunky at OARA cutting them a deal. But it just wasn’t the same.”

A combination of scandal, financial mismanagement and deep budget cuts during the Reagan-Bush era left the office with a skeleton crew.

“We hardly had the budget to keep the lights on,” laughs Dick Springfield, who saw the office through some lean years. “So when someone like Robert Cray came along, frankly we were just happy to have some revenue to justify our existence. But though it kept us afloat temporarily… how shall I say… it did not exactly burnish our reputation. I swear, I spent most of the ’80s hiding in Port-a-Pottys at blues festivals so I wouldn’t have to answer questions from the press.”

These days, funding comes from many sources. Thanks to Zimmer’s changes, dues can now be paid online, or bundled with VIP memberships to any number of co-branding partners like SonicBids, CDBaby and MySpace. “Starbucks, for example, has been an absolutely invaluable partner,” says Zimmer. “Now with the purchase of ten grande Frappucinos, you’ve officially paid your dues and can play the blues! It’s quite a change from our parents’ and grandparents’ days when you had to, I dunno… hop freight trains or drink wood alcohol or something. Some really toxic, dysfunctional stuff.”

[Editor's Note: This article is clearly inspired by my recent Facebook rants about new bands like The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Silversun Pickups. Also, it pretty much captures my feelings about those sad and tired clowns Jane's Addiction. Thanks to Arthur Adams for making me feel like even more of a curmudgeon.]

Oh man, what’s up with that thing that people like now? It’s so terrible and transparent and derivative! I can’t believe people think it’s so cool. Remember the thing we used to like and think was super cool back in the day? It was so original and meaningful and genuine! The thing that people are so into now just steals from that older thing, and acts like it invented it.

Back when I liked that original thing so much, nobody else had even heard of it! It was totally obscure and dangerous and revolutionary! I didn’t even mind so much when other people started to like it, too. It was kind of thrilling to see that thing written about by Thing Experts — people whose opinions I respected in all manner of things (most of which I liked as well). I became friends with a bunch of cool people who were all into that cool thing. And we’d hang out and talk about that cool thing all day long. It was awesome. But then everything started to change…

After a while, more and more people liked that thing too. What was up with that? It wasn’t like they were cool people. I don’t think they even GOT what the thing was all about! I started to hear idiots rambling on and on about the thing that I LOVED, and they didn’t even know what the fuck they were talking about! What’s worse, as the thing grew in popularity, I tended to be less and less enthusiastic, surprised and challenged by it. The greater the mass appeal, the less I loved it. The thing was also starting to change. Soon it was almost unrecognizable to me. My friends and I lamented the decline of that thing we once loved so dear. This thing we had practically grown up with!

A silver lining: the nostalgia we felt for the way the thing used to be inspired us to make our own thing! And when we did it people would come up to us and tell us it kind of reminded them of the thing we all loved so much. We were so psyched! That we could continue doing this fresh, meaningful, unique thing that it seemed barely anybody understood like we did!

We met a lot of other folks who were just as into the way the thing used to be, all of whom were attempting their own version of it as well. Some were more successful than others, but we all had a common love for that amazing, obscure, original thing and a total hatred for what it had become and all the dumbasses who loved the new lame version of that thing. God, they made us so mad! We’d try to educate them about the way the thing was when it STARTED. When it was real. When it moved and inspired us.

But it was no use. They just wanted their safe, recycled bullshit thing. The thing we liked wasn’t anything like that! It came from a place of real honesty and humanity. It wasn’t just some regurgitated crap, like the things are today! No sir. These things today are either tired clones of things that were never as amazing as the thing we loved, or worse, ripoffs of what the thing we loved became when it started to be bad. Or even ripoffs of the ripoffs of the thing we loved. What a bunch of posers!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I realize that the thing I loved so much wasn’t made up out of wholecloth. But that thing — OUR THING — was inspired by only the best, most original things that came before it and a reaction AGAINST all of the worst, most conventional things in the world.

I wouldn’t have liked anything else!

For John Briggs of Berkeley, California, the realization came a few months ago at a downtown nightclub. “I was out at a bar with some friends. The DJ dropped that Justin Timberlake track and boom — we were all immediately out on the dance floor.” The joy was quickly replaced with embarrassment though. “I turned around and suddenly I’m face-to-face with an old friend from the swing dancing scene. It was really awkward at first. I stopped going to those dances, gosh… five years ago or so. And that scene used to be like, my life. These days I don’t even own a decent zoot suit. Frankly, I don’t think I’d have the strength to throw a girl in the air.”

Briggs’ story is increasingly familiar nowadays, as 1990s hipsters who revived old styles from the dustbin of history are now giving them up in record numbers. The reversal of this trend is leaving the remaining stalwarts in the awkward position of being, well… forgotten.

“I thought it so cool that circuses were coming back,” says Emma Wheeler, on the phone from her cubicle in a Chicago call center. “Fire eaters, aerialists, all that stuff. It was so weird and old and totally ours.” These days her remaining friends in Cirque du Sinister, where she spent most of her 20s swallowing swords, are battling not only financial problems but popular irrelevance. “These days it all seems, I dunno… just weird and old.”

“I’m pretty sure our freakshow isn’t exploitative,” says Corneilius The Mystyrious, nee Justin Fox, whose Austin-based touring company Freaks! Unlimited has recently fallen on hard times. “But it’s getting harder to convince people with rare medical conditions they should quit their jobs, get in a van with us and go on tour. It’s damn near impossible these days to find a midget — ” Fox hesitated for a moment, “sorry: little person — who’s not gonna report us to some kinda advocacy group.” However, Fox does find his situation somewhat bittersweet. “It has put us in the position of being, y’know… legitimately obscure. Which is pretty ironic, come to think of it… which I guess makes it cool?” he says, looking uncertain. “Mostly though, it just sucks.”

I want to point you in the direction of an article at Metalsucks, “Being in a Band is for Losers [Scientific Proof].” It’s not only where I stole the image for this post, it’s also a amusing/terrifying indictment of a life in music.

I’m not gonna contradict anything in the piece, because it’s pretty dead-on in terms of the diminishing returns one experiences from “being in a band.” There’s also this less sarcastic — but still not exactly scientific — Hypebot post, “7 Ways Most Non-Famous Musicians Make a Living.”

I’ve been playing music, recording music and writing about music most of my life. And, I’m happy to say that for better than half of that time, it’s been how I’ve paid the bills. I still do all of those things, but I’ve augmented them by working in music and arts policy, which also finds me speaking in public and in the media about the structural issues around how creators make a living.

Obviously, I consider this stuff on a personal level, too. Many of my friends are musicians, and I know intimately their struggles and victories. While some still perform live (I’ve mostly retired), others do studio work, compose for film and TV or find other gigs — related and unrelated — to get by. This can be everything from nannying to bookkeeping to on-set work for the aforementioned film and TV productions. (It’s amusing to me that a few of these friends might think I’m talking exclusively about them, when in reality this applies to several folks.)

One of my friends recently filled me in on the unfortunate breakup of his last band on the verge of major success. That was a decade ago, but these wounds can take a while to heal. I understand this story all too well, having experienced my own version of it.

Still, we don’t stop. Well, some of us do, and that’s OK, too. Those of us who continue to pursue a life in music do so not because we’re chasing old glories, but because we still believe we can add value to the world. Whether it’s creating art, inspiring others to create it, or blabbing endlessly about the most appropriate conditions in which to do so, we are active participants in the overall experience. Whatever that ultimately means.

Is a life in music worth living? I say absolutely. There are times where I ponder what might have happened had I focused my intellect on more lucrative activities, but I have few regrets. Besides, in what other life would I have the opportunity to hang out with my heroes from the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll and even lead them in conversation? Plus I can give something back by helping to get some great new music into the world.

Sure beats working for a living.

Let’s go to the floor and hear what Senator Tankerbell has to say about it:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m9Fv9O6AnU

You know, I was really starting to miss the 1990s. Looks like I get another bite at the apple, conservative maggots and all!