Why I love Rock Music SO Much-From The Beatles to Aerosmith to Foo Fighters (Updated on 6/3/14)

I have loved Rock Music since I was a kid. I distinctly remember playing Frisbee in the street at our annual Block Party in suburban Houston and grooving on the rock which was blaring from the speakers that a neighborhood teenager had placed outside. It actually made me feel cool. Feel energized!

I became familiar with The Beatles after the group had broken up. I borrowed the blue “Greatest Hits 1967-1970” Double Album from a friend and was absolutely stunned by what I heard. I knew then, as I know now, that this is the greatest rock music we will ever know. While I never saw the band perform live, I am privileged to have enjoyed both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr in concert multiple times. I miss the late great John Lennon (my favorite Beatle) and George Harrison, as do all fans of the band, and I mourned their untimely passings almost as if I had lost a family member.

As I got a few years older I found that I was really drawn to hard rock, and the bands who cranked it out in my era and before. I fell in love with Bad Company, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Styx, CCR, Hendrix, Foghat, The Who, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent and Van Halen. I started to play guitar and try to emulate these groups I idolized so fervently.

Over the years I’ve also become an enthusiastic supporter of brilliant musicians such as R.E.M., Tom Petty, Son Volt, Wilco, The Tragically Hip, Carbon Leaf, Counting Crows, Foo Fighters and Pearl Jam, to name just a handful.

But why do I love rock as completely and enthusiastically as I do? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the music simply makes me feel good. Rock music creates a good mood. It turns a crummy day around. Listening to rock is almost always an active pastime for me. I sing. I gyrate. I play drums on whatever happens to be nearby. I strum air guitar. I do this weird vocal sound that sounds like power chords being hammered out. I do a mean imitation of a bass. Basically, I behave like a silly doof. But I don’t care. It is entirely natural, even instinctual. And it comes from deep within my soul.

Music of any kind has never been just background noise or atmospheric sound for me. And rock music is the supreme example of this. Rock is to be actively participated in. It is to be experienced in a practically totally involving sense. It is to be embraced. And not with a limp handshake. With a full on BEAR HUG! In short, Rock is happiness. And it is mandatory for me to feel truly alive. In fact, I genuinely can’t imagine my life without rock. The great thing is, I don’t have to!

To paraphrase the prodigious rock poet laureate, Pete Townshend, “LONG LIVE ROCK! I NEED IT EVERY DAY!”

Boy, do I ever!