The Return of Rock

Rock and roll lives. The rock scene has been pretty dismal for many years now, with most of its promise blown away along with Kurt Cobain's brains. Since then we've been treated to a monotonous parade of mediocrity posturing as greatness, of lame bands trying to substitute image and attitude for actual talent, and, for the most part, succeeding wildly.

Exceptions such as The White Stripes don't disprove the underlying assumption but instead stand out as lonely islands of rockitudeness in an ocean of suck.

But there are signs that the foul tides are finally retreating as new bands rediscover the Golden Age of rock, when the licks were hot, vocals were smoky, bass lines were bluesy and recorded tracks were simply proof of concept -- jumping off points for live shows featuring mind-blowing jams and guitar solos worthy of Valhalla.

The lastest encouraging omen I have descried is Ride the Blinds, a San Francisco trio with a seriously outsized sound. Their self-titled album and its follow-up, "Start Running" are must-haves if you have ever found yourself rocking out to one of the following bands: The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I can't put it much better than this reviewer on Amazon.com, who probably wrote what is the best music review ever:

Imagine Bon Scott, up in rocker heaven, decided to play a joke on Ted Nugent. One night when Ted is drunk and in a good mood from a day of playing with his guns outdoors, Bon's ghost comes down and sodomizes him. Ted, thinking he's turned gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), believes it must be caused by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Why? Because Ted don't think so good. So Ted chases down the Skynyrd tour bus on the highway, pulls up next to it, and starts unloading buckshot. This leads to crazy mayhem on the bus. Some old groupie who has been around from the 70s, long enough to have a throat crusted with the dried semen from guys in both Creedence Clearwater Revival and War, jumps up from between the drummer's legs. Just then Ted shoots out a tire, sending the bus careening, and making the groupie fall forwards onto the drummer. That drummer spews his load somewhere on her stomach. One chance in a million, the groupie gets impregnated with an evil mix of DNA from Skynyrd, CCR, and war. When the kid grows up he learned to play guitar and recorded this album. This is all true.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that is in fact the best music review ever.

So, rest assured that rock and roll lives. All you have to do is tune in, turn on, and Ride the Blinds.

P.S. Oh yeah, other recent rock-revival acts are: The Black Keys (think Cream), Wolfmother (think Sabbath and Deep Purple), and Earl Greyhound (think Zep). Leave a comment if you know of any more.