What does music sound like to a fetus? It has to be fairly muffled, like listening to the car radio when you're curled up in the trunk. Sometimes I like to imagine our little girl as a miniature blues singer with a harmonica. Or maybe a Johnny Cash clone, whiling away the time in her hide-out until she can emerge and make her musical mark on the world:

I hear the heart a'beatin,'

It's comin' 'round the bend,

And I ain't seen the sunshine

Since I don't know when.

I'm stuck in Karen's belly,

And time keeps draggin' on . . .

I've heard it's good to sing to the fetus, so I've been doing that at least a couple of times a day. I also play the requisite classical tunes (more Beethoven, less Mozart), as well as a healthy dose of Bjork, Neko Case, The Decemberists, Jeff Buckley, Leadbelly, Tom Waits, and the soundtrack for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Oh, and I've been playing her a lot of college radio lately so that she can get a good background in some of the lesser-known indie bands. So begins the slow indoctrination into wannabe hipster culture. (Maybe she can get through that insufferably pretentious, just-discovered-Plato's-Allegory-of-the-Cave phase while she's still a toddler. Wouldn't that be awesome?)

So, anybody have any musical recommendations?

The Rolling Stones are on tour again. Can you believe it? These notorious bad boys are well into their 60s, and yet they are embarking on another cash-infused circuit around the country. Once again, Mick Jagger will strut around a stage, his lips still puffy from those childhood bee stings, and regale the audience with "Jumpin' Jack Flash" for the one hundred millionth time. Their musical inspiration may have languished somewhat in recent decades, but their unflagging stamina and determination defies all logic. There is only one conclusion to draw:

They are the Undead.

Please know that I'm not talking about zombies. As you all know by now, I love zombies. Zombies are funny. They are like cavemen with rheumatism, lumbering about in search of brains, brains, brains (the reason for this is that most of them have the IQ of a Beernut). Any society that is able to avoid stupid, panicky mistakes should be able to deal with a herd of marauding zombies in short order. No, what I'm talking about is vampires. Vampires are smart. They are the Mensa brats of the monster world, and if they are organized, they can pose a serious problem to the survival of the human race. This is why we must keep a very close eye on the Rolling Stones.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the implementation of certain screening procedures on their tours seems to confirm my view. At all shows, for example, concert-goers are being frisked upon entry to the venue. They are not being checked for cameras or traditional weapons, however. Instead, their pockets are emptied of crosses and other Christian memorabilia. Those who have eaten garlic in the past few days are forced to wear a neon wristband. Bottles of water are examined closely, and one young man was even ejected from a concert not long ago when it was thought that he was wearing a clerical collar. It's all very sinister.

Of course, this is a difficult theory to prove. One certainly can't go by their appearance. Vampires are typically youthful looking, but every member of the Stones looks like Phyllis Diller after a combine accident. It's my guess that the youth effect wears off a few hours after the blood is consumed; however, I have no credible information to support this conjecture. And then there's the issue of why they are driven to tour at all, when so many of their peers are donning white socks and shuffleboarding in Florida. Some might say that their persistence is due to a sense of immediacy gleaned from their advancing years. Perhaps they keep rocking because at their back "they always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near." It's possible. But I think it's more likely they're out for blood.

Here's a quick vampire checklist for reference:

Do the subjects emerge only at night?

Check.

Do the subjects live a generally decadent lifestyle?

Check.

Do the subjects revel in the seduction of young, adoring women who might be utilized as blood sources?

Check.

I think it's pretty clear from the checklist that my assumptions are correct. Why haven't we heard about this before? How could a secret of this magnitude be concealed from the American public? Well, as I think we've seen, the public is predisposed to believe only those facts that jive with their pre-existing schemas about the world. The Rolling Stones are a beloved institution, and it will be tough to convince people that they mean us harm. But this is exactly what all persons of conscience must do, because until the nation awakens to the danger, this malevolent crew of vampires will continue to prowl the nation, feasting on the blood of innocent music enthusiasts.

Please help. Call 1-800-MICK-IS-UNDEAD, and find out what you can do today. Operators are standing by.

Every time I go to a Mr. Goodcents—about once a month, usually—I get to hear what is currently falling under the rubric of classic rock. That's the thing about Mr. Goodcents. They play classic rock. And it's not just this particular sub franchise, either, because I worked at a Subway store one long-ago summer and they played classic rock, too. Anyone who attempted to change the official station was promptly chewed out by the mullet-sporting manager, the same manager who often quizzed me on the artists and song titles until I knew them by heart. It was the same songs over and over again, beginning with Journey and ending with more Journey. The only selections I ever liked on the lineup were by Pink Floyd, although they always played "Money," the one song of theirs I can't tolerate.

So there I am at Mr. Goodcents again, and the classic rock station is blaring like usual. But this time there are two selections that I find to be out of place and disturbing. First of all, "Ziggy Stardust." Second of all, Metallica's "Master of Puppets." What? This is no longer just about timelines shifting to incorporate more recent music, it's what the official definition of classic rock has come to encompass. See, to me, the term classic rock conjures up images of chewing tobacco and concert t-shirts with the sleeves cut out. Classic rock is Foghat and Foreigner. It's Steely Dan and Boston. It's everything Carl listens to on Aqua Teen Hunger Force. It sure as crap isn't "Ziggy Stardust," which breaks the bank on cleverness, satire, and pure ethereality. Bowie's just a little too timeless and hip for old Carl there, anachronistic hunk of beef that he is. So what is Bowie doing on the classic rock station, exporting his orchestrated magic just after that Rod Stewart song? That's like someone putting a bird of paradise in the primate cage at the zoo.

Then there's the Metallica problem. Let me tell you what I recall about Metallica back in their heyday. They were hardcore, evil-looking people with long hair, bad attitudes, and untreatable drug problems. Their fans were cut from the same cloth, at least superficially, and they were not even remotely the same people who camped out overnight for R.E.O. Speedwagon tickets. I loved Metallica. They produced angry, exhilarating music that made me feel empowered and provided me with a therapeutic outlet for my nebulous teen angst. I'd slip on the headphones and just tune out the ickiness of the world. Remember that age where it felt like you'd be angry forever? You weren't even sure what it was you were angry about, whether it was The Man, war, world hunger, or that mean girl who picked on you in band class (Kristy, I'm looking at you). But thrashing along with "Battery" somehow made you feel you were part of an important subversive movement; it filled a niche in your soul that was probably inhabited later by punk and alternative music (which was admittedly more intelligent and had more of an ethos than your standard "I'm doing lines of coke and I'm mad about it" song). Maybe I'm lionizing the boys of Metallica more than they deserve. According to my own testimonial, their music is essentially juvenile, their songs all laments for the trials of troubled youth. But there was something real about their music, too—something flinty and unbreakable that we all wanted to identify with. That quality, whatever it was, has been thoroughly eroded through the years until the band has become the goofiest possible caricature of itself. I hate it that they've been reduced to this. I hate it that they were on the fascist side of the Napster debate. I hate it that they released a CD called "St. Anger" (the pronouncement of which should always be followed by a Gomer Pyle guffaw), and that, to use an artistic metaphor, their music has gone from Francisco de Goya to Thomas Kinkade. Most of all, I hate it that they've been so thoroughly neutered that DJs feel not even a frisson of danger dropping them into the classic rock lineup. That's the really sad thing, that they belong on that station.

So in the first instance, we have a case of mistaken identity (Bowie, where no Bowie would dare to go), and in the second, we have the inevitable product of years of musical and ideological decay. Can it be long before we hear Nine Inch Nails or The Cure on this station, wedged between Dire Straits and Deep Purple? Is there, perhaps, a point to any of these musings? Not really, I'm sorry to say. No point. Just...wow.

A new production at the Russian Bolshoi Theatre is igniting controversy in certain circles. It's an opera called "Rosenthal's Children" (with libretto by postmodernist writer Vladimir Sorokin), and it's about a scientist who clones five classical composers—Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Mussorgsky, and Wagner. When the scientist dies, the musicians end up on the street. Mozart ends up falling love with a prostitute, and the other geniuses turn to alcohol to cope with their new life, for which they are woefully unprepared. Some members of the Russian Parliament have deemed the work pornographic, mostly because of the street language and the depiction of revered composers as drunks and junkies. (After seeing the film Amadeus, this behavior doesn't seem like much of a stretch, at least for Mozart.)

Needless to say, I wish I'd written the thing.

In describing the production, critics have also used the word "vulgar," which is amusing to me because it literally means "of the people," as in the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible writen by St. Jerome. Shakespeare, too, was considered "vulgar" in his time. Sure, he made plenty of lofty ontological observations, but he also included a healthy serving of bawdy dialogue in order to keep the commoners entertained long enough to hear and process those observations. Of course, the Russian Parliament members may not have used the word "vulgar" at all. Translations are only approximations, really, so maybe what they actually said in Russian made more sense. It's also possible that the production isn't any good, that it's one of those mediocre works that occasionally soars into success on the wings of scandal. Still, it sounds good, doesn't it? I like the idea of depicting these beloved geniuses as human beings with flaws and problems, even if the larger statement being made is about cloning. How does a person come to terms with being a genius, let alone the clone of a genius? That's got to rate some serious therapy.

And then there's the issue of cloning. Like everything, this premise reminds me of Blade Runner and the question of consciousness. What does it mean to have a soul? Think of Roy Batty's quoting of William Blake: "Fiery the angels fell. Deep thunder rode around their shores...burning with the fires of Orc." Think of the speech he makes to Deckard before dying: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain." At the end of his life, this replicant—this manufactured person—becomes a poet. For those clones who started off as poets, like Mozart & Company, would they be able to express their genius in a satisfying way? Would they feel forever eclipsed by the legacy of their earlier incarnations? A person's character is shaped by the genes we were born with, but it's also shaped by opportunity and experience, both of which would be dramatically different in the case of a clone. How could we be sure they would be composers at all? Maybe Tchaikovsky II would be a factory worker. Wagner II might end up in an institution, incapacitated by his talent and the impossibility of using it, while Verdi II slugged out his days at the corn dog kiosk in the mall. Who's to say?

At any rate, I love it that art is dealing with messy issues like this and doing so in a playful way (although some will always choose to view this playfulness as blasphemy, like when the audience walked out on Stravinsky's first performance of "The Rite of Spring"). And I hope that this Sorokin dude keeps cranking out relevant, provocative work. (I'd like to see an opera based on the life of Hunter S. Thompson—hint, hint.)

For a while now, I've been seeing lots of red plaid pants, black sweaters with safety pins, and mass-produced handbags with the Sex Pistols logo emblazoned on them. I hate to say it, but punkness has become trendy. Suddenly, everyone is a fan of the Ramones and the Clash. Black Flag bumper stickers have re-emerged with a vengeance, and everyone can sing at least one line from "God Save the Queen" (although it's usually the titular line). So how come no one seems interested in new punk music? There are a number of groups around who feature punk elements: the Donnas, Green Day, the Ataris, Mars Volta, etc. (Sorry, kids, I don't count Mediocre Charlotte—they're a bit overproduced for my taste.) And for every one I can think of, there are thousands I don't know about, floating around in local clubs and cranking out great energetic music without commercial acclaim. In my book, even Wesley Willis could fall into this category. But no one seems interested in these guys as ambassadors of punk. Maybe it's because they don't really know or care what punk is about.

I'll admit it, trying to attain anything like a comprehensive view of punk music is a tricky thing. By nature, anti-establishment music thrives under the radar, and many high-minded punk bands today are committed to distributing their music without a profit. They don't care if you know who they are; making a principled stand for (or against) something is more important to them. And then there's the issue of purity of form. Many former punk types are experimenting with other types of music. A prime example is Neko Case, who has been counter-culturing the bejeesus out of country music for years now. So unless people are good listeners or particularly gifted at tracing the rhythmic ancestry of artists, they don't recognize what they're hearing as punk derived.

So why are so many unlikely people today striving to emulate that Sid Vicious sneer and stitching skull appliques onto all of their clothing? Maybe it's because they've all hired their own full-time punk consultants:

Shall I slick my hair to points? Do I modify my speech?

I shall wear plaid flannel trousers, and mosh upon the beach.

It's a little absurd—the appropriation of Outsider-dom—but I suppose it's no worse than when high school poseurs like me donned tie-dye and peace signs in hope of invoking some of the fervor and broad-mindedness of the 60s. As for the music itself, it can only be a good thing that more people are exposed to it. I'm glad that people have discovered the Clash. They're better people for it, I guarantee. But there's something about having that music removed from its original context that makes it a little less meaningful to your average Barry and Jill. What Barry and Jill seem not to realize is that punk, even in its hey-day, was never what could be described as popular. In a time of white blazers, pastel undershirts, and sockless boat shoes, it was definitely not popular to be a punk. Kids with spiked hair and "Anarchy for the UK" t-shirts were mocked mercilessly in school. Just like the Goths. Just like the skaters (who have also experienced a somewhat amnesic resurgence of popularity). Just like anyone else who expresses disdain for the mainstream culture, even if in doing so they embrace a homogeneous culture of a different sort, with its own costume and expectations. But that's a much lesser offense in my book. The initial defining of self is what's important, because eventually all these kids realize that it doesn't matter what you wear on the outside. Punk is a state of mind, and clothing is the least of the tools at your disposal for expressing it. More effective tools include embracing satire in all forms, embarking on anti-corporate campaigns, writing zines, supporting struggling artists, and volunteering to transform your community into someplace that represents your values.

But back to the issue at hand. To me, the public's recent enthusiasm for punk is just like anything else. Society rejects the phenomenon when it's new and dangerous, then later—when it's no longer in danger of accomplishing any real subversion—romanticizes it into oblivion. But that's where society is mistaken, because genuine punk cannot be castrated by commercialism. It's still there, in the alleys and clubs, in the unexpected heroic acts of individuals. It's like a superhero you can't kill. It may be forced to shed its title, but that very loss of nomenclature is what may allow it to penetrate the culture more thoroughly. In its insidiousness, it will be that much more powerful. With any luck, we'll be on our way to a punk renaissance.

And now, please bow your heads with me as we recite a few choice lines from the Dead Milkmen:

"Punk rock girl give me a chance,

Let's go slamdance,

We'll dress like Minnie Pearl,

Just you and me punk rock girl."

So I guess Elvis would have celebrated his 70th birthday last Saturday. He was born in 1935, and were he still alive, his appearance would now be approximately how he was portrayed in Bubba Ho-tep. Over the weekend, a whole onslaught of fans descended on Graceland for the occasion (or just outside, since they weren't permitted on the grounds). They sangs songs and cut a 'Happy Birthday' cake, which the celebrant couldn't enjoy because he was dead.

When asked about the purpose of the festivities, one of the fans made this messianic statement, "You have to always think of what would Elvis want. He would want us to love each other, bond together as a family and be kind and giving. We're Elvis family, not just fans."

Wow.

Sorry to break the news to you, Elvis enthusiasts, but you really are just fans. As much as you'd like to cling to the King's great dead sequined coattails, you're not his family. Not in the genetic sense, not in the mafia sense, not in the drag queen sense—not in any sense. Graceland is not where you go when you die. Furthermore, this is not the way normal people behave, at least when they are taking their medication in an appropriate fashion. I adore John Lennon—even made a pilgrimage to the Imagine mosaic in Central Park, as you might recall—but I'd never presume to say I was part of his family. That is, unless the term 'part of the family' doesn't mean what I think it means. If it actually meant "one who stalks a dead person," then they might be onto something.

It's not that I don't get the power of music. I'm listening to Pink Floyd's Animals right now, and it's making me feel like I could conquer the world if I wanted (don't worry, I won't). But to confuse the art with the artist is a dangerous prospect. It's why so many young ladies who go backstage at concerts end up with social diseases. It's why people condemn Ezra Pound's poetry when they should be restricting their criticism to the man himself. (Not long ago, the city of Lawrence tried to name a creek after William S. Burroughs, who lived here for the last years of his life. They failed, because reactionary city council members protested that Burroughs was 'a degenerate' and shouldn't be lionized in any fashion.)

Is it ketchup on my dress that makes me so digress?

Look, Elvis had a gift. Of course he did. He may even have been a visionary of sorts. But these individuals with their Elvis fetishes strike me as a little too David Koresh for their own good. Like one day we'll read in the papers that a bunch of them shared a compound in Tupelo, Mississippi, and committed mass suicide after a hearty meal of peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

Then again, maybe I'm just confusing the idiocy with the idiots. Maybe I should just stop criticizing and let the Elvisites have their fun. After all, I like to think I'm part of Erik Estrada's family, and my therapist says there's nothing unhealthy about that.

I'm sitting in the coffee shop, working on some piece or another, when Johnny Cash's cover of "Solitary Man" (penned by Neil Diamond) pipes through the speakers, warm and gravelly, sounding almost as if he's in the room. This was always his strength, I think—the intimacy of his voice, and how it seems private and personal, even from a crowd of thousands, even from the grooves of a vinyl disc. This coincides with my reading of his biography which, although written with a professional author, sounds like it came right from the horse's mouth. And I think, nobody has ever had a voice like that. No one will ever have a voice like that again.

I grew up listening to my parents' LP of Folsom Prison Blues. As a child, this album was a delectable novelty. I was mightily amused by the morbid humor of songs like "Twenty-five Minutes to Go" and "Flushed from the Bathroom of Your Heart," but there was more to my fascination than just his blunt, backwoods lyricism. Cash had a distinct sound, an authenticity I'd never heard before. Not that country music was new to me—there was plenty of country music in my small town, but it was all of the twangy, soulless variety, and I didn't much care for it. Cash transcended the limitations of country. He was meta-country, if you will. In the dark age of my childhood, when every song nearly buckled under the weight of synthesizers (much like Giles Corey with his pressing stones), I welcomed anything that sounded different, anything that seemed to cut through the crap of existence and get right to the soul of things. And Johnny Cash fit the bill. To a tee.

As I entered my angst-fueled teen years, I liked this guy more and more. Here was someone who seemed just as irritated about society as I was. Here was someone who noticed that sometimes people fell through the cracks. And as I began to undergo a bit of musical training, I came to a more complex appreciation for the music itself. It was astonishing, all those deftly orchestrated chord progressions that evened out into something like simplicity, but were in fact anything but simple.

For a long time, I thought I had discovered the Man in Black myself. No one else I knew had ever heard of him (I never asked the grown-ups, of course—children are often on a desert island of their own creation). Same with Arlo Guthrie and the Doors. Same with Jefferson Airplane and Grand Funk Railroad. In my parents' record collection, I had this little treasure trove of artists jamming just for me. But Johnny Cash, especially. He was all mine.

Sometime when you're feeling that all the joy has passed out of the world, just listen to Cash sing his version of "Danny Boy," with that melancholy pipe organ backing him up. I promise, it'll break your heart and mend it all over again.

It's official. They'll make a Broadway musical about anything. I have recently learned that The Last Starfighter—that campy, outrageously bad 1984 film—has been converted to a musical and will debut on Broadway within the next few months. It's a shame Robert Preston is dead, because he's the only one of the original cast who actually could have reprised his role from the original. In the spirit of this bizarre endeavor, here are some other oddities I dreamed up (free for the taking!):

Blue Velvet: The Musical
Bodhisattva Superstar
Taxi Driver Get Your Gun
American Psycho Express
Gremlins of the Opera
Barbarella on a Hot Tin Roof
Mad Max of La Mancha
Thoroughly Modern Scarface
The Superman from Oz
Kiss me, Nosferatu
Little Shop of Amityville Horrors

My friends and I went to see David Byrne—formerly of the Talking Heads—at the Uptown Theatre last Wednesday. The evening started off as a challenge. One thing I hate about Westport is that parking is a disaster. Everything is either privately owned (with tow trucks idling nearby, just waiting to haul away offenders), or charging exorbitant sums for a spot that is barely wide enough to squeeze in a Mini Cooper. Plus, whenever you manage to find a place, you will inevitably have to walk the gauntlet of panhandlers to get to your destination. (One told me he was trying to raise a down payment for a cheeseburger.) We finally arrived at the designated pub, ate a mediocre pre-show dinner, and then made our way to the theatre.

There was a buzz of excitement—and other evidence of onomatopoeia—as we located our seats. We were restless. We asked each other over and over again what we thought he would play. But no bets were placed. If there's one consistent thing about David Byrne, it's that you never know what he's going to do.

Then came the man himself, all decked out in brown shirt and trousers like a punk UPS man. His hair was a ghostly white, and if it had been a little longer he might have been the spitting image of Andy Warhol. He acknowledged the crowd with a brief bow and began to sing. O brave new world that has such voices in it! When you've heard his songs on the radio for years and years, you can sort of forget what an amazing voice he really has. There's a resonance to it that is elusive; recordings don't do it justice. And so much energy! The man was all over the stage, dancing in that weird lurching way of his, flinging his leg around like a pinwheel or swinging his skinny hips. Sometimes he was simply jumping up and down. It reminded me of an already manic child who's just eaten an entire sack full of Halloween candy.

On several songs, Byrne combined operatic pieces by Bizet and Verdi with Latin rhythms. The result was unimaginably cool, if slightly surreal. Playing with him was the six-piece Tosca Strings group from Austin. These operatice pieces were interspersed with some of his earlier work, and there was a goodly amount of Talking Heads material, so even people who'd never heard his solo stuff couldn't walk away disappointed.

To my immense delight, he employed plenty of his trademark eccentric banter between songs. He prefaced one of the Italian arias with a story about how a guy and a girl in his office (what office would that be exactly?) had a little romance, and he wrote this song to the girl. "I don't think they know the song's about them," he said, totally deadpan. "But they may know." This is just the kind of bizarre palaver you might have seen if you watched his guest spot on Space Ghost Coast to Coast a few years ago. If you saw that episode, you'll remember David with his long, black hair, gravely explaining that, much like foam packing material, croutons were often used to inflate the size of a salad. If you didn't see it, then you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that it was damn funny.

I was sitting next to a Baby Boomer couple through most of the night. The male part of this duo was almost as entertaining as the show. Just imagine every stereotype you've ever seen of the sweetly dorky 50-something dancing to the music of his youth. He was swaying all around, shouting "Whoo! Whoo!" every so often as his beer sloshed over the sides of his glass. He nearly injured himself undulating to "Psycho-Killer." This fellow wasn't alone, either. Between songs, the crowd periodically burst into sustained applause and cries of appreciation that went on for upwards of two minutes at a time. David would just stand there smiling graciously, maybe giving us his little-boy bow, and wait until we were finished.

My conclusion?

He's the same as he ever was, same as he ever was.

But better than ever.

A year after the fact, I finally feel I am brave enough to tell the story of Lollapalooza 2003, Bonner Springs stop. The show was held at the amphitheater formerly known as Sandstone, and the musical line-up included the Donnas, Incubus, Jurassic Five, Audioslave, and Jane's Addiction. I was excited about the Donnas, but my raison d'etre that day was to hear Audioslave (I loved their musical ancestors, Soundgarden and Rage Against the Machine) and Jane's Addiction (I've been crazy about them for more than half my life).

There is no shade at the amphitheater formerly known as Sandstone. No shade at all. The structure is built at the bottom of a hill, so there is no breeze either. What there is—and in great abundance—is profiteering. Cheap t-shirts were selling for $50. Hats were going for even more. Most spectacularly, bottles of water were $4, and if you wanted a cup of ice, you had to pay an additional $4 (the price of a soda). Keep in mind that this was all occurring on a hundred-degree day in July, and that the bands started playing at noon.

And so the fun began.

My friend and I sat and listened to the Donnas while the sun scorched down on us. Some nearby frat boys heckled them, indicating they should stop playing and remove their clothing at once. They were just intimidated, though, because the Donnas rocked. Anyway, other groups came and went. It got hotter and hotter and hotter.

I had not eaten much since we'd been there, mostly because the typical concert venue fare (e.g., pizza, pretzels, nachos) did not sound digestible. At six o'clock I had a Mr. Goodcents sandwich, which I suspected had been thawed and refrozen multiple times.* My friend and I sat on a grassy knoll, looked for Kennedy, and fell into a weird, overwhelming lethargy. After a while, I noticed that my fingers and toes had plumped up like Ball Park hot dogs. I also had a headache that began as a dull ache and progressed to a discomfort akin to having a scorpion crawling around inside my forehead. And then, the nausea set in.

I sought out the first-aid station, which was a little encampment attached like a barnacle to the amphitheater fence. When I described my symptoms to the EMTs, they were convinced that I was simply dehydrated. I kept telling them this wasn't possible. I had consumed a great deal of water in the past eight hours, and when I tried to drink any more I wasn't able to keep it down. But instead of acknowledging this, they ushered me over to the little revival tent beside some industrial fans, a mister, and an orange cooler of water. Every few minutes, I rushed over to a large trash can and expelled a portion of my insides. It was not pretty. Not only did I lose my lunch that day, I lost my lunches from the previous two or three weeks as well. I came to know that trash can intimately—the peculiar pattern of wear on the rubber handle; the strange way the bag rose up into a plume in the back, like a little wisp of white smoke. And this was the extremely unenviable position I found myself in when I realized that Audioslave had taken the stage. They sounded amazing, but I don't think I'll ever be able to rid myself of an intense, visceral reaction to "Show Me How to Live." Every time I hear Chris Cornell's voice, I think of vomit.

Eventually, one of the EMTs actually started listening to me. He asked what I'd had to drink (one margarita at noon-thirty; eight bottled waters since then) and eat (a pretzel and that frost-bitten Goodcents sandwich). He asked about the headache, the lethargy, and the swelling, and then he told me that my problem was hyponatremia. Hyponatremia occurs when you lose too much of the salt and nutrients in your body, either by extreme exercise (happens to marathoners) or by excessive fluid intake (happened to me). He said I should leave immediately, and that I should stop somewhere where I could get a jug of Gatorade.

"How much should I drink?" I asked, weakly lifting my head off the picnic table.

"Drink it until you feel better."

I did, and it worked. Half an hour after I chugged as much red sports drink as I could get down, I felt almost entirely better. Except, of course, that I missed Jane's Addiction. To this day I have not heard them in concert. I have not stood in a sweaty crowd and let the high, keening voice of Perry Farrell drift over me like a hallucinogenic breeze. And it's all because of hyponatremia, the Silent Stupefier. So let this be a lesson to anyone attending outdoor concerts this summer. Sometimes alcohol really is better for you than water. Bottoms up.

FOOTNOTE:

* While we waited in line for the sandwiches, a pseudo-Goth girl glanced at my cowboy hat and made a little tally sign to her friend. "That's twenty-seven," she said smugly. If I had felt a little less like a lobster being boiled slowly in a saucepan, I might have pointed out that wearing a hat that shaded my face was a damn sight smarter than wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and pants when it was a hundred degrees outside. That's not social protest—that's just stupidity. I mean, what was she doing, protesting the sun? Oh, look at me, I'm attending an extremely commercialized music event, but I'm going to demonstrate my superiority over all earthly creatures by protesting the sun!

Idiot.

Neutral Milk Hotel is a now-defunct psychedelic folk band composed of Jeff Mangum, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane. I've been immersing myself in their In the Aeroplane over the Sea CD, and it's too good not to share. Here's a mnemonic acronym to help you remember much they rock.

M—Melodies. NMH has simple, engaging melodies that are infused with a sense of nostalgia. They are melancholy, meandering and, at times, masterful. The song "10" evokes the dreamy, lilting groove of "Flying" from The Magical Mystery Tour. Then there's "Oh, Comely," which is essentially a seven-minute acoustic dirge. In anyone else's hands this would be a disaster, but the band's varied chords and structures keep you anticipating what will come next. Like great books, you find it difficult to imagine a time when these melodies didn't exist.

I—Instrumentation. NMH is essentially an acoustic outfit, but unlike many such groups, NMH complements their folky sound with a variety of less-typical instruments, including the flugelhorn, accordion, banjo, and euphonium. The song "Ghost" uses a singing saw to great effect, conjuring up that elusive, undulating Scooby Doo sound. And "Holland 1945," probably their catchiest song, features an accompaniment that exists in a weird crawl space somewhere between polka and industrial mariachi.

L—Lyrics. NMH's lyrics make each of their songs a little surrealist gem. It's like if you suddenly found yourself in Wonderland—with Tori Amos as your tour guide. The words hang around you like strange, glittering insects, their bodies forming impossible landscapes in the air. It's beautiful, even if you're never quite sure what any of it means.

"The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes,
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just a sister at her side
And just a week before the guns
All came and rained on everyone.
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames,
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come."

What does it mean? That his soulmate was born and died too early, then was reincarnated as a child prodigy? Who knows? But it's fantastic, isn't it?

K—Killer vocals. Jeff Mangum's plaintive, bleating voice is a huge part of NMH's appeal. He's low and gruff when he needs to be, and high and insistent the rest of the time. His voice is unpracticed enough that it breaks in places, and this makes every note sound raw with emotion. Mangum is like an alternative everyman, an ordinary guy who just happens to be the spokesperson for all of our hearts.

Sadly, Neutral Milk Hotel is a thing of the past. Their heyday was 1996-1998—ancient history in the music world—and the members have all gone on to do other projects. But they're not dead if we still remember them, right? So help keep the dream alive—next time you're loitering around in your favorite independently owned music shop, be sure to ask for MILK. It does a body . . . well . . . you know.

The time has come for me to put my foot down. I was not raised to be a doormat, and I will no longer tolerate the duality of your affections. It is time for you to make a decision. Will it be me, a living-breathing woman with love in her heart, or will it be the King, who has been dead for nigh upon 30 years? You will notice I have nailed this to our door, as Martin Luther did with his 95 theses, and I will not be darkening the doorway again until I have heard your answer. You will be lonesome tonight, for I am staying at the Heartbreak Hotel.

I understand his charms, his tacky seductions. I understand that every word and movement is designed to lure others to him. But do not be fooled that you are the only one for whom he sings. Elvis has sung for millions, and he will sing for millions more, whether or not you are in thrall to him. He does not love you. His is an idyllic siren song, and giving over to him will only result in unendurable obsession and, eventually, madness.

Too long have I endured your slights. Do you recall the night I came home early from an evening with my girlfriends, and found you there on our own sofa—the one we bought together in the city—listening to the Elvis gospel album? You simply laughed when you saw my face. You found it funny.

How can you be so cruel to a heart that's true? How can you play his records in front of me? It is enough that I know you are doing this, that you are listening to him on breaks at work and even in the car. I have been hoping against hope that this is just a phase, a quarter-life crisis of sorts. I have continued to love you despite your inconstancy. But my patience is at an end. You must decide. Do not forget that I, too, am a hunk of burning love.

Love me tender, or do not love me at all.

Oh, and either way, that velvet portrait over the bed is totally coming down.

What is going on with Bob Dylan these days? First, he was in that freaky Victoria's Secret commercial (he's NEVER done commercials before), and now I hear that he's going to be a guest judge for American Idol. What happened to Mr. Antiestablishment? I confess, I feel hurt and betrayed. I feel like shouting "Judas!" just like at that Manchester concert where Dylan switched to electric guitar, and his gentle folk fans were driven into a foaming, self-righteous rage.

Don't get me wrong, here. I love Dylan. I love the tangled beauty of his lyrics and the unexpected chord progressions and that scratchy, gloriously imperfect voice (which has only gotten more glorious and imperfect through the years, like an old-as-dirt Delta blues singer). His protest songs are compelling, and he has penned some of the most original lyrics about love and longing I've ever heard:

"Your cracked country lips, I still wish to kiss, As to be by the strength of your skin. Your magnetic movements still capture the minutes I'm in."

I also know that Dylan's greatest strength is that he has never allowed himself to be pigeon-holed—he's always reinventing himself and his music. If you've ever been to one of his concerts, you know that each song is less a fixed blueprint and more an organic entity that is transformed from show to show. But it's this very transience that gives the songs a depth and a corporeality that they would never have otherwise, because what you're hearing is being done for the first time. It has never existed before that night. One night he may play a slow bluesy version of "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," and the next night it may sound like Jerry Lee Lewis. Yes, reinvention is the name of the game for Bob. But why, I wonder, would he want to reinvent himself as another box of sugar in the cotton-candy mainstream? Is it because it's the last thing we would expect?

After all these years of railing against the soullessness of commercialism, why is he suddenly so eager to scrap his hard-won credibility and promote crappy ladies' underwear? I've heard that he's dating one of the VS models (this is the kind of age spread I'd love to see in reverse—not the paltry few years Demi has on Ashton, we're talking Judi Dench and that kid from Malcolm in the Middle), but could he really turn his back so easily on 40+ years of being an anti-corporate maverick? And while I'm loth to blame the woman (please stop this nonsense about Yoko—she was an artist in her own right, and John would have left the band even without her influence), I'm hard pressed to imagine another explanation for this weirdness. Unless, of course, what we're seeing is the first evidence of senility.

Perhaps this American Idol thing is an attempt to re-establish his relevance in today's musical scene. I won't begrudge him that, but I think it's profoundly misguided. He's always been relevant—ask any musician who was inspired by him (and most of them were at some point). I do understand that to be considered an icon is to be limited by that label. That was the chief message of Masked and Anonymous, after all. It's as if Dylan has been given the lifetime achievement award by the music world, and he'd just like to remind us that his life and achievements are not all in the past, thank you very much. But to stray so far from those radical roots that you end up back at the conformist plantation, sitting on the porch and drinking mint juleps with The Man . . . well then . . . I just don't get the point of having left in the first place.

Maybe at this point in his life, these kinds of career moves simply feel more honest to Dylan. (Like he said, "you gotta serve somebody.") Maybe commercialism is an inescapable, Iago-style ghoul that hounds you and whispers in your ear until you are in thrall to it. Or maybe—just maybe—all the man needs is a good acetylcholinesterase inhibitor to straighten out those funky brain waves.

Just kidding, Bob. You know I love you. But seriously—what gives? Is this sky, too, folding under you? Is it all over now, Baby Blue?

To a large extent, the success of any given band can be deduced from the reaction of the crowd. For some reason, most concerts in Lawrence are painfully low-key—people just stand around with their arms crossed, as if they're too cool to move, as if they didn't actually come to hear the band at all but were merely on their way to the kitchen to fix a broken dishwasher or something. Very little dancing occurs, and when it does, it's usually a lone hippie, undulating in a rotary fashion so that her dreadlocks swirl into the air like little Medusa serpents. (Then again, this could be DTs.) But either way, it's nothing like the crowd response I witnessed at the good Reverend's revival last Saturday night at the Bottleneck. People were jumping up and down, throwing their bodies around, and crowd surfing. There was a genuine mosh pit. Remember: this is a rockabilly band we're talking about, but there was just so much drive to the music, so much punk energy, that it was physically impossible to keep still.

A little old man with white hair was doing the twist.

Hailing from East Dallas, Texas, the Reverend Horton Heat is composed of three members. There's "Jimbo" Wallace, thumping a massive upright bass; Scott Churilla reviving the lost art of the drum solo; and the Reverend himself (Jim Heath) on guitar and vocals, all spiffed up in a green suit with purple flames on it. They sing songs about cars, booze, women, bales of cocaine, and the $400 their girlfriends never paid back. These are clever, free-living fables, and at times the lyrics are hilariously raunchy. The members of RHH also demonstrate extreme musical versatility—one moment they sound like Link Wray & His Ace-Men playing "Rumble," and the next they sound like the Sex Pistols. But it works. Boy howdy, does it work.

They played a solid set, including a cover of the Johnny Cash classic, "Folsom Prison Blues," which had the crowd gleefully shouting along ("I shot a man in prison . . . just to watch him die.") But everyone knew the words to the Reverend's songs, too. With the first few chords of each song, there would be an uproarious surge of voices as the fans recognized it, then shouted the lyrics in the kind of delirious cult chanting phenomenon that I've only ever heard in two other contexts—any given bar playing that damn "Margaritaville" song, and Bible camp.

The fans venerate them, especially upright bass extraordinaire Jimbo, who has become something of an icon in his own right, what with the popularity of the band's song about him ("the Jimbo Song"). Before the show started, we sat next to some die-hard Reverend enthusiasts who were doing the John the Baptist thing, trying to prepare the way for the band by raving about what we were in for. One of them was quite drunk, and he explained repeatedly (with the kind of earnestness that can only come from considerable inebriation) that anyone who heard the Reverend would be a fan for life. Later, amid the mephitic vapors of cigarettes and sweaty bodies, with the psychobilly anthem "Martini Time" ringing in my head, I realized he was probably right.

Verily I say unto you, these guys are the holy trinity of rock.

Bizarre sidenote: There was a bit of excitement when some stoners at the next table misplaced the CDs they had just purchased. Because my friends and I had a couple of CDs stacked on the edge of our table, the head stoner (whom I shall call Geraldine Garcia) made the assumption that they were hers.

"Which ones did you get?" she asked, looking us up and down.

"We got the five dollar ones."

She nodded, and then one of the guys in the group came up with a flashlight, shining it under our table like an FBI agent carrying out an investigation. The flashlight came to rest on our CDs, and the guy started to pick them up.

"No," we said. "Those are our CDs. We didn't see where yours went."

"Oh."

Flashlight Guy seemed to accept this, but then the group of them stood around at the edge of the table, glancing furtively in our direction and muttering unintelligible things. All at once, Gerry Garcia began to cry, and Flashlight Guy made another few sweeps under the table. They glanced at us again, but were apparently too pacifistic to make any further accusations.

"No seriously," we said. "These are ours."

The stoners then decided to leave, and Flashlight Guy took the opportunity to comfort Gerry. We could almost hear her muffled sobs as she rested her head against his shoulder, crushed by the sorrows of the world.

Hey, Gerry, wherever you are. Why didn't you check in your hemp-woven, patchouli-soaked backpack with the marijuana leaves embroidered all over it? Did it occur to you that maybe your CDs fell off the table during one of the seventeen times you knocked over your bottles of Bud? I'm just asking, that's all.