The music didn't die 50 years ago yesterday. Well, not entirely anyway. The music continues to die every day. That isn't a jab at "American idol," Miley Cyrus, or most of music made in the 1980's (that would be just too easy). Rather, it's the celebration of an icon built by iconoclasts; it's the monkeys running the zoo. It's artists that built by destroying musical barriers, social norms, and even themselves in the process. Look, I'm sorry Buddy Holly bought the farm, but rock 'n' roll in particular needs to die in order to live.

It was with this murderous adulation and suicidal adoration that I drove my Chevy to the levy and mounted the stage to crucify Holly's "Not Fadeaway" with Too Tall and The Howlin' Mercy Blues Band for its bi-monthly open blues jam at The Dinosaur. The band was on fire, funky, big, and loud. Too Tall dwarfed the stage and his guitar. It looked like a flyswatter on him as he wrung the life out of it, its strangled notes dying in the rafters. Another night for the music to die... and it was beautiful.