All rock music is palimpsest, every rock musician is a historian, every note played comes with an identifiable genealogy. It is miraculous that a spark of time, a slice of eternity is trapped and preserved every time a song is captured on cassette, CD, vinyl etc.
Once the ‘play’ button is pressed, a simultaneity of present and past occurs, bending time, exploding it and giving us access to not only asynchronous temporalities but also discontinuous spaces. One can see vivid examples of this every day when observing passersby walking along, earbuds firmly inserted in their auditory canals, as they tread zombie-like through unknown, alien landscapes. They share neither the same temporality nor the same space as their fellow men and women.
This is the miracle of recorded music. It is resistant to diachronic time, partakes of eternity and it is always untimely – it bursts the seams of historicity. When it comes to rock and roll, there is always a case to be made for bad timing…
