Critical adoration gone amuck; trying to reasonably explain why Uptown Sinclair is truly the World's Greatest Rock Band even though you may have never heard of them

Some motherfucker punched me in the nose! I was hanging around watching Uptown Sinclair - only the greatest live rock and roll band currently roaming the earth (I am very serious about that) – and checking out all of the sweet honey’s they’d attracted like these kind of swaggering, buzzing rock god bees tend to do. Anyhow, this fine blonde thing was up near stage front shaking her stuff around like she wanted me to do the big swoop down. I mean, Uptown Sinclair is infectious as hell, but this chick was talking to me with those hips I’m telling ya. So swoop I did, right out there center stage with my seductress, moving in a la Pat Swayze for a little bump and grind with my very own Baby. And this motherfucker gets all wound up about it, "Hey, that’s my girl" he says. "Are you sure?" I wink back. THWACK! Next thing I know my own blood is washing away the sweet beery aftertaste I’d worked so hard at achieving. Not to mention the faucet-like draining of crimson life from my nostrils all over my snazzy, recently purchased Polo brand Hawaiian print shirt. If I weren’t such a fucking coward I’d have given that asshole a little of his own medicine. As it were I had to groove to the Uptown boys while holding a fucking paper towel to my face. You can break my face, but you can’t stop me from reveling in the rock and roll revival glory that is Uptown Sinclair! There’s just no fucking way that anything was gonna sour a night with the best goddamn live rock and roll band I’ve seen in ages.

What a night, what a story, what a bunch of shit too. No one hit me (although I’m sure someone probably wanted to at some point); I was with my wife, not checking the babes (at least not so obviously wink-wink, but the babes were there); Hell, I don’t even own a Polo anything, let alone a Hawaiian print shirt. But all of the rest is right on the goddamn money! What’s left you ask? What’s left?! Only the pure, unadulterated essence of rock and friggin’ roll damn it! That's what's left! The very idea that this band could get up onstage in this tiny venue and triple (no…. quadruple!) its capacity for rock and roll largess was unconditionally mind-boggling. But they did it! They really did, they did it and more. You don’t think for a second that I could even approach the kind of scenario I’d fictionalized in this story’s lead if this had been just another routine rock program do you? That's foolish, of course not! This was an evening on which four fellows who always knew rock (our protagonists - Uptown S.) finally got around to the other part of the promise and really slammed the adoring crowd with the all-but-forgotten-ever-important ROLL! Rock AND Roll, see how that works? Maybe you don’t, and that’s not your fault so don’t feel bad, but Roll has always been an implied part of the equation – which is why it’s there. Unfortunately, too many of your high-falutin’ rock band types nowadays have let slip the whole Roll ideal and settled into the laziness of just being "Rock".

Now, hear me out, I don’t have nothing against rock, or rock bands, or just rocking in general. And I have been known to rock an awful lot myself ("dude, you ROCK!" has been uttered in my direction more than a few times), but rock is pretty much just attitude and style sans the roll. Now ROLL - there is something special! Roll is where you get the sweat, the bodies a-movin’, and the wild sexual tension that this whole rock and roll thing has always been famous for. Without roll, you’re just another rock band - and that’s just being half of what you can be. Now, isn’t it? Of course it is.

It may all seem very complicated, but it isn’t really. What you need is a good example of what I’m talking about, and fortunately I’m here to offer you one: Uptown Sinclair! I knew you knew I was going to say that, but hey, the truth is de troot, right? Yes it is (don't let me muddle things here and confuse you ok?). But the sad fact of the matter is, you don't get the whole package much anymore, you don't get Rock and Roll as it was intended to be. Oh sure, you can find your everyday garden-variety rock, that's everywhere. And you may find your share of isolated hip-shaking roll (hip-hop is a pretty good place to start for you fancy dancers). But the promise was always something more, something that combined the two antagonizing forces into one MASSIVE MIND AND LIFE-ALTERING EXPERIENCE. And I know this feeling because I spent the evening a few night ago at a quaint little rock shop being massively mind and life altered by none other than the aforementioned Uptown Sinclair. I too had forgotten what a kick ass band that focused on rock AND roll could do to a person's soul. I too had forgotten the reasons to live that music had always given me. I'd forgotten that it could be filled with hooks that you can hum in your car on your way to work. I'd forgotten that it could be filled with roaring and insanely brilliant guitars. I'd forgotten that the lyrics could be spat, cooed, howled, or caressed. And I'd really forgotten that it could groove like a motherfucker with a bass and drum battery that swings, sways, and swallows you up. I'd become unhinged and jaded I guess, but one night with those boys - Tim Parnin on guitar doing flying leg kicks like some sort of lost kung-fu film extra and just flat-out searing the songs with his fret-work; bassist Bill Watterson bopping his head so relentlessly that someone thought a bat had flown into his hair (also doing some super-swift taking-the-bass vertical type moves and dropping nice background vox in here and there); drummer Rob Pfieffer clock steady with the sticks pointing the way toward solos and always pushing the songs around like a thug; and the head honcho Dave Hill singing, playing and lifting his guitar, and seducing the crowd (he even mouthed "I love you" to some lucky crowd folk at times) - was enough to bring me back to rock and roll's side.

I had been listening to the bands "demo" disc ad nauseam prior to the superb live experience (actually every day since it arrived in my grubby little hands) and I love the thing. The songs strike fast and hard and bring back the sense of songs being just that again - songs. No preachiness, no bullshit gooey lyrics suggesting sensitive boys trying to "get in touch" with anything, nothing of the sort that permeates the medium today, just great fucking songs that have big, giant hooks that hit you again and again and again. Songs that have a badass groove that makes you want to bop your head, shake your ass, and get laid. And believe me, there's nothing wrong with that, no matter what the politically correct climate is. They didn't call it rock and roll because it was about feelings; they called it that because it was about the physical. It was about seeing girls shaking it and boys oogling them and the two intertwining and sweating and being the real freak they wanna be. Uptown Sinclair knows this and they want to help you know it once again also. Listen to them, watch them give you what you really need in a live rock and roll presentation, and then go out and get ROLLIN' again. Because life ain't worth shit in the standstill. And Uptown Sinclair ain't gonna let you forget that; they sure as fuck don't.

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