Bobby said I had to come to his room to watch DVDs.

You see he’d been sitting at home, watching late night TV, and Guthy-Renker wanted to sell him some "Midnight Special" videos.  I’ve never purchased anything from a TV advertisement, in my mind "infomercial" equates to "scam".  But Bobby couldn’t resist.  He wrote down the phone number.  He called.  And for months, he’s been receiving DVDs.

But that wasn’t the only music he wanted to show me, we also had to watch "Hullabaloo"!

It was snowing like a motherfucker, actually, Bobby and Brandy had planned to go to a gig, but like teenagers in the seventies, we stayed home and watched DVDs.

While we were waiting for the hotel to deliver a deck, Bobby reached into a gym bag and extracted a handful of cases.  He asked me to pick what I wanted to see.  Scoping the titles, I settled on Heart.  Come on, you remember "Magic Man"!  I didn’t buy that album, or the one after that, but "Magic Man" and "Crazy On You" were FM staples.

So Bobby extracted the disc and inserted it into his PowerBook, so we would waste no time in our viewing experience.

My mind was fucking blown.  Were the Wilson sisters ever that young?  Was I ever that young?

You get old and you gain contempt for the late teens and early twentysomethings.  They haven’t lived, how good could they be?  But our heroes of decades past were just as young.  In these videos, Ann Wilson is 25, her sister Nancy is 21.  But if you were their parents, you wouldn’t let them out of your sight!

Fire up "Heart – Crazy On You".

Blow it up full screen (hit the icon in the lower right-hand corner of the player).  You gain new respect for Nancy’s chops.  But look at Ann!  She’s wearing those ethereal seventies stage clothes, which are anything but revealing.  Hell, her dress goes down to her knees!  And there’s not a line in her face!  If it weren’t for her throaty, powerful vocals, you’d think she’s a teenage girl as opposed to a woman.  And what vocals they are!  No melismas.  Just passion.  The band wrote this song, better than Clive Davis dreck, remembered to this day.  To think that a music star now is an "American Idol".

Youngsters might think this video hokey.  But you’ve got to understand, bands were not ubiquitous thirty years ago.  You had to go to the gig.  You lived to go to the gig, to feel the sound, to soak up the atmosphere, to feel alive!

You can watch the superior "Magic Man" here: Heart Live – Magic Man.  Not superior as a video, but as a musical experience.

Come on home girl, mama cried on the phone
Too soon to lose my baby and my girl should be at home
But try to understand, try to understand
Try try try to understand
He’s a magic man, mama, ah…
He’s a magic man

Mrs. Wilson had lost her daughters to rock and roll.  You want to talk about Hall of Fame inductees…  Heart deserves to be there, even more than Madonna.  They forged the path and they rocked!  This was not singer-songwriter stuff, these girls could hold their own with the boys!

Then we watched a little "Hullabaloo".  That truly made me feel old.  The seventies were more comfortable, in color.  The black and white "Hullabaloo" seemed to be from another century (actually, it was!)  With straight hosts like Sammy Davis and lip-synching.  But we did get to see Len Barry mime "1-2-3"!  Maybe elementary, but I challenge you to cut a record this good.

Then Bobby inserted a DVD from the U.K.  Of performances from the Jools Holland show.  All from this century.

I told him to fire up Zero 7, I wanted to hear "In The Waiting Line".  Bobby wanted to watch David Gray.  Massive Attack was fascinating.  Dido was the antithesis of U.S. posturing, she looked like she’d just rushed in from the tube.  But the most riveting clip, the one we had to watch from beginning to end, that we didn’t speak during, that we couldn’t take our eyes off of, was Antony and the Johnsons.

Someone e-mailed me about this act a couple of years back.  I downloaded a few tracks.  I didn’t get it.  But watching the clip, I was brought back to the sixties and Laura Nyro.  Both sounded not quite like anybody else.  You couldn’t put your finger exactly on their talent.  Neither was classically beautiful.  But you were touched in a way Top Forty radio never reaches you, you felt the power of rock and roll.

Go to: Antony and Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone {Jools Holland}

I know, you’re asking yourself…is this guy gay?  I mean what’s up with his hair?  Couldn’t he go on a diet?  Let go of your American preconceptions, just watch.  This completely live performance.

This guy isn’t doing it for the audience, he’s doing it for himself.  You believe he’s been tortured his whole life, criticized for being himself, so he holed up in his bedroom and wrote this song and nervously, he’s playing it for us live.

We didn’t see the intro of this clip on the DVD.  We had no idea of Antony’s history.  All we got was the music.  And that was enough.  Great music needs no context.

The business is tanking because everybody’s playing it safe.  They want surgically-enhanced stars, who don’t write their own material.  Who they can get commercials for, who they can get sponsored.  What Fortune 500 company is going to go into business with Antony and the Johnsons?  Public companies would run!  Top Forty radio would laugh at the prospect of playing the music.  The irrelevant rock formats are too caught up in oldies and formulaic hard stuff to take a chance.  So greatness languishes.  But greatness is out there, it exists.

Watch this clip in its entirety.  It will render you speechless.  If for no other reason than your brain will be unable to process it, will wonder what the fuck it is!

What this is is rock and roll.  Music that tests the limits that touches your heart.  Not pabulum.  Not entertainment.  Rather tuneage that demands your attention.  That enriches your life.

You wonder why the U.K. music scene is healthier than that of the U.S?  Because of shows like Jools Holland’s.  Where everybody plays live, where it’s only about the music.  Music still gets respect in the U.K.  Here, it’s just a tool of the man.