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pluses. I'm not a real intelligent intellectual and I don't have a big vocabulary and I don't know a lot about music, and I don't play an instrument , so basically what I was able to do is kind of put it in plain language other people like me could understand. I'm not really into the whole analytical part of it that much, because as a reader I wasn't into the Greil Marcus style, I was more into Lester Bangs, go-for the-throat . . . So I used the music as a launch to write about other things. I think music is like that. It's sort of like the God Puzzle. God is everywhere, he's inside of all of us, he always has been and always will be, well, I think in a lot of ways you can apply the same thing to music, it's all-knowing and all-powerful. I think music is very knowing, it's like when you break up with somebody and you're driving in your car, the song that sums it up will come on, and you think, "Well, how did they know that?" I think all the attributes they give towards God you can also give to music. It's very uplifting and spiritual and it's joyful and it makes people feel more alive. You feel like a part of humanity. I try not to take it too seriously, because I think it's a real noble thing, to play music, I think it's a great calling, and probably the worst part of my job is when I have to criticize somebody, and they read it. That's never fun. Like, the Asylum Street Spankers, I wrote a kind of a negative review of them. It really isn't that fun to write negatively about people you know or that you're going to run in to, that are going to see it, and then all their friends are going to see it, so I always try to apply a very light touch to it. I think people should find out about their own kind of music. They shouldn't read critics and decide what to like. There's so many ways to find out about music that I pretty much see my role as kind of an entertainer. I'm trying to complement the music, I'm not trying to define it. I guess that's pretty much my style. I never think that a person's opinion is more important than the way it's presented. I think it's more important to be a good writer and be wrong every once in a while. A lot of times I am wrong, it turns out.

What first got you passionate enough to write about it?

Probably the Rolling Stones were my first love. Actually, my first love is the Jackson 5. No, My first love is the Monkees, okay? I went from the Monkees to the Jackson 5 to the Rolling Stones and they were my big band for many years. I think it was them, because, see, for them it wasn't just music, it was the whole lifestyle. It was drugs and it was sex and it was wild and it was violent. It was in your face and it had all these other connotations, and you just look at a picture of Keith