Pete Townshend had it right years ago: “Rock is dead, they say… long live rock!”

Now there’s a good essay — “For The Last Time: Rock Is Not Dead, You’re Just Not Paying Attention” — by Steven Hyden. Read the whole thing. It builds inexorably to this excellent conclusion:

All music should be appreciated on its own terms. Pop shouldn’t be a zero-sum game, in which you’re either an uber-famous celebrity or an irrelevant nobody stuck in a dead genre. Maybe we can find a little more room to praise the pop star and lionize the underground hero.

In the meantime, this pile of great new undead rock records isn’t going to play itself. Let’s dive in.

Prog on, chillun!