If you are anything like me, the hair is greying, the midsection is expanding, and your tolerance for new bands seems to shrink in direct proportion to the number of wrinkles appearing each year.
That instinct is understandable, but it is also limiting. The current rock landscape is full of sharp, ambitious artists, and getting older does not require becoming culturally fossilized. Running this site has forced me to pay attention to what is happening now, and more than once I have discovered bands I would have ignored out of habit.
Every generation believes the music of its teenage years marked the creative peak. That belief is predictable, and usually wrong. Nostalgia is powerful, but it should not become a filter that blocks everything new.
So, in an effort to avoid turning into someone who insists that music was better in some mythical golden age, I spent time digging into the present rock scene and assembled forty-three tracks. Some of these artists are already breaking through, some are gathering serious momentum, and some may burn briefly before fading, as countless bands have before them.
What they share is quality. Pop rock, punk rock, hard rock, all of it driven by young bands with something to prove. Consider this a snapshot of contemporary rock as it stands right now.
And remember: if you don't get it, the problem may not be the band. Or, as Ted Nugent once proclaimed, if it's too loud, you're too old.
