[Jeff Higgins]

"Hey hey, my my, rock and roll will never die; there's more to the picture than meets the eye..."

Neil Young

Rock has outlived one other shallow flash in the pan called "disco". It will outlive this one, too. When there is no talent, no lasting artistic merit behind a genre of music, it simply cannot survive beyond the first generation that adopts it.

You guys arguing the merits of rap, touting it as the heir apparent to rock and roll, sound the same as all those pin heads from the '70's that were dancing in leisure suits and platform shoes. Hell, even the Bee Gees sang and played instruments. All these rap "artists" seem to manage is cussing a blue streak, beating on the walls and furniture, and scratching old LP's. They can't even shoot well enough to hit each other most of the time.

I have two teenage boys that are, like most teenage boys, very much into the music of their generation. It's still called rock and roll, and there are some damn fine bands out there today. I admittedly pretty well skipped the '80's and 90's musically, but the new stuff coming out now is really quite good. We actually share a lot of our music between us; they introduce me to the new stuff, I introduce them to the classics.

Their take on rap? It's for losers and gangsta wannabes. They laugh out loud at the middle class white boys with their hats on backwards, cruising down the road in some crapped out old Monte Carlo, leaning on their right elbow damn near in the passenger seat, with the gangsta crap booming out through the windows. They think it's funnier than hell that daddy's little princess is listening to music calling her a "ho" in her Civic on the way to shopping at Nordstrom's. If you run in these circles, with their aspirations, then maybe to you rock is dying. Out in the real world, however, it is thriving.