As examining physician charged with delivering the cause of death on this 229-page manuscript cadaver, I must accentuate the most crucial wound: “Rock is dead,” as found on page 1, paragraph 1, sentence 1, reiterated thereafter in subcutaneous permutations. Ancillary corpus characteristics including but not limited to the following: On page 9, chummy lyric hijacking: “Son (don’t call me Daughter), have I got a little story for you.” Throughout, Chuck Klosterman-inspired equivocating via phraseology, “kind of.” “Aging well” defined as Re-Released In Expanded Deluxe Edition (applied to discredit Singles on p. 99 and Dirt on page 157). Assertion made, page 189, regarding Live’s “Lightning Crashes,” that “you absolutely cannot dance to it, in any capacity, at all.” Myriad missed opportunities, from Creed’s Jesus freak-on dissolving pharmaceutically to Bush (the band) as the perfect gene splice of Nirvana and Pearl Jam. But I remain bound to deliver a primary finding for the death certificate. This flickering-witted zombie of a tome sneak-shuffles up behind a half-century old art form trying for a beer in a crowded saloon, to bellow, “SMELLS DAMN MAGGOTY TO ME!!!” Anyone confidently writing “rock is dead” simply doesn’t know Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55. Or Low’s Drums and Guns. Or Fountains of Wayne’s Traffic and Weather. Or Kinski’s Down Below It’s Chaos. Or Abra Moore’s On The Way. Or …

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