It seems fitting that Patti Smith was the last voice heard from the stage at CBGBs. Thirty years earlier, she whirled around that small stage, like a rock & roll Rimbaud, with her poetry detonating the blasts of three-chord, sweaty New York rock, blazing a trail known as punk. Like many daring and artistic writers, from Blake to Burroughs, Ginsberg to Dylan, she mastered the written word and, like Dylan, she offered it in song, unadorned and in her own unique style. She never really sought fame. In fact, she walked away from public life more than once, most notably, seeking solace after the untimely death of her husband, MC5 guitarist, Fred “Sonic” Smith. Yet, as the new century dawned, Patti re-emerged, releasing some her finest art to date in books and music.

We have an image of Patti Smith as the laureate of the Bowery, but for many years, she lived a rural life with Fred in the Midwest which influenced a good deal of her recent music. On Jubilee, she conjured visions of the heartland as an idyllic metaphor to a nation frightened and confused after 9/11. She invited us to “be a jubilee,” and revel in the glad land of ripe fields and open sky while ever watchful of the hawks circling above.

When he was 18, John Hiatt, already a bar band veteran, left Indianapolis and made a beeline for Nashville to try his hand at songwriting. He brought with him a resolve to maintain his individuality and be true to the music he loved: the blues, country, folk and straight-ahead rock. It took some time, but he drew the attention of artists like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, and most notably, Bonnie Raitt, who have all covered his work. It’s not surprising, since Hiatt’s songs cut directly to the bone in straightforward lines of love and life. His is an altogether American style: part Midwestern common sense, part Southern hospitality, a little Hollywood romance mixed with East Coast muscle.

Songwriting is only half the picture. Hiatt is an extraordinary player and performer with peerless guitar skills and a craggy voice that sounds as honest as the day is long. When You Hold Me Tight finds Hiatt taking the simple feeling of holding his lover and turning it into a blazing rocker that leaves no doubt that his feelings go down to the bone.

His solo career took off in Austin where he remains something of a cultural icon. As an artist, he’s stretched beyond rock & roll into playwriting and string ensembles — a renaissance man with cowboy boots and a tube amplifier.

Rolling Stone has called his music “his own genre”. It’s confessional without ever losing the ability to rock, filled with stories taken from the pages of his life: marriages ending, lovers’ suicides, and his father’s influence. All told in a very honest and personal way, that resonates with anyone who hears them. And when he rocks, he has few peers. Castanets, takes the uncomplicated joy of watching the woman he loves simply walking, and orchestrates it with a fuzz-tone fanfare, part Chuck Berry and part John Lennon on “Revolution.”

Life on the road nearly took Alejandro’s life — ignoring a diagnoses of Hepatitis C, he collapsed one night and wasn’t expected to live. But four years later, he’s back, clean and fresh and very much alive artistically, emotionally and physically.

Chuck is one of the most gifted guitarists and songwriters around. After making his mark as the guitarist for L.A.’s Green on Red, a band that heralded the alt-country movement, he has defied genres and created his own style as a solo artist. His music is deeply inspired by roots rock and blues, but not confined to them. He touches up his songs with eclectic skill, such as the Moog synthesizer intro to Automatic Blues. It’s fitting for a song that laments the loss of human touch in this mechanized world we share. A brilliant guitar riff and loose, well-placed horns reflect the sentiment.

It’s a groove that Chuck describes as, “a little grown up and a little juvenile, full of ugly truths and beautiful lies, like a jug band backed by a Mattel drum machine, a world where Dr. Dre and Charlie Feathers would both feel comfortable.” — Be that as it may, this aint no jug band music.

Joe Strummer was like the Che Guevara of rock music, fervently exposing indignity and oppression, calling out for it to be overthrown. But unlike Che, he wasn’t a fugitive attacking from the wilderness. From a world stage, he snarled and bellowed the plights of the underdogs through fiery, stripped down rock. To pigeonhole him as “punk” would be trivial. Because while many could cop the attitude of punk music, few were able to create art through it the way he could. In the Cold War, Apartheid world of the early 70s, punk music was the anti-voice of the day, and Joe used it to cut to the bone about things that mattered.

Nearly 30 years after punk, Joe was still holding true to his values with songs of oppression, whether by others or by oneself. In Arms Aloft, Joe urged a friend not to dwell on the dreary, but to remember the good times. And he did it brilliantly, with tender empathy for his friend’s sadness, followed by a joyful, sonic blast account of the good times they once shared. A line from the song seems poignant after Joe’s untimely death, “...stars can’t see their rays/nor can they count their numbered days...”

The Queen of England opened the doors of Buckingham Palace to the music industry in 2005, to celebrate its contribution to British culture. Among the musicians attending was Richard Thompson. He was introduced to the Queen as a singer and songwriter. Her Majesty remarked, “Oh! How lovely for you!” He told her, “I hope it was lovely for everyone else as well.” A proper rock & roll reply for such a highbrow event, but maybe not as tongue-in-cheek as it would seem. For although Richard justly earned that invitation to the Palace by being one of the founders of British folk-rock (starting with Fairport Convention in the late 60s), he’s never been a really top-selling artist. Which is a mystery. Richard is one of the best guitarists around. When he rocks, he displays a rare subtlety of tone and volume.

Richard’s double gifts for songwriting and guitar playing are brightly displayed on Cooksferry Queen. The song, based on a fellow Richard knew, is the story of a a violence-prone thug, who hates everyone but himself All of that changes when he falls for a beautiful woman who softens his heart and opens his mind with a little help from modern chemistry.

Listen to Rollin’ & Tumblin’ and you’ll journey into 21st century blues, guided by the late and great R.L. Burnside, a full-time sharecropper and part-time juke joint king for most of his 79 years. With a style akin to John Lee Hooker’s, he filled the juke joints of Northern Mississippi on a thousand Saturday nights (save for a brief stint in Chicago in the 1940s and six months in a Mississippi jail after shooting a man he said was trying to turn him out of his home.) "It was between him and the Lord, him dyin'," Burnside remarked in a 2002 New Yorker article. "I just shot him in the head."

It was with that same sort of boldness that R.L. moved into uncharted territory in the 1990s, mixing the blues with techno and hip-hop and gaining critical and commercial acclaim at the tender age of 65. R.L.’s Rollin’ & Tumblin’ slams with a non-stop dance beat, cat-scratch guitars, effects loops and D.J. mastery, while his simple bottleneck guitar line invites the ghosts of Muddy Waters and Fred McDowell to join the party.

So these two British schoolboys try out for the choir because they heard that the choir would be performing for the Queen — something of a twist on the classic motivation of wanting to be in a band in order to meet girls. But it seems typical of Turin Brakes, the name they gave their duo, and which they claim has no real meaning. Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian are sensitive and non-threatening, with their near falsetto vocals and big acoustic guitars. They are about accentuating the positive through songs that immediately wrap you in a blanket.

That’s not to say that they don’t rock. On Jackinabox, a double acoustic guitar intro — something of an upside-down, inside-out version of Clapton’s signature line on “Crossroads” — barrels through the song. But instead of heading to a meeting with the Devil, Turin Brakes is civilly telling you that while “life ain’t no piece of cake,” they can handle it.

“We don’t come from a scene,” Gomez’s Tom Gray told Rolling Stone. “We don't have an identity to defend. In a way, we’re anti-identity.” Indeed, this five-piece band from England is difficult to pigeonhole. Their music—layers of clean and distorted guitars, world percussion and tight drums, synth pads and flat bottom bass—is a unique and compelling sound made even more amicable with gravelly vocals and harmonies from Gray and Ben Ottewell.

After winning Britain’s prestigious Mercury Prize with their first album, Gomez survived the slings and arrows of early fame, but their follow-up albums needed the kind of support their tiny record label was unable to give. Ultimately, the label folded and Gomez was left in the lurch. But these young men, who have been friends since grade school, stuck it out and continue to make incredible music together.

As if a premonition of things to come, Get Miles is a song about knowing when to move on, even from the comforts of home. The song bathes you in a sea of rolling sound as they sing, “I love this planet, man, but this planet is killing me...”

There’s no denying it... Robbie Robertson is important. His devotion, passion, imagination and frankness have been ringing from his vibrato-bar-laced guitar for decades, beginning in the 60s as the creative force of The Band. Robbie’s songs are filled with characters who live in a timeless America—maybe a century ago, maybe a week ago—telling of their struggles over love, pride, corruption and deception with salt-of-the-earth candor, accompanied by a soundtrack which is unmistakably Robbie’s own. From “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” to “The Weight,” he helped create an American mythology and he made it rock.

In recent years, Robbie, who is half Mohawk, began merging the music of the tribes into his own, creating songs that portray the powerful dignity of his other people. Making A Noise is one such song. It’s a Native American’s in-your-face pronouncement that he intends to make a noise in this world, singing the song that was given to him by his creator.

In one of those strange moments when your focus crystallizes and you have no peripheral vision, when all that is being received is a single sight, you see a slender man, loudly tapping a heartbeat groove on a djembe drum. With eyes closed, he sings, “Trouble is what trouble does/When the stakes are high and that simple kiss comes to shove/I can see why you would sell me out when you could/Your soul was getting lost and the money was getting good/But I did not draw that line for you to cross over.” And then the singing stops while the djembe beats on, allowing you to meditate on your own anecdotes of betrayal, stored in a sad part of your memory.

That is what Christopher Williams does. He causes you to listen, but lets your mind hear.

On record, Did Not Draw takes on a different power. With drop-dead drums and bass, and exceptional guitar work from Christopher and Jars of Clay’s Steve Mason, the song is made more urgent and searing by the backing vocals from Ashley Cleveland.

When Bob sings about a little monkey who crawls on his back and makes himself at home, you can’t help but draw the conclusion that Jingy is about a drug habit. Maybe. Or maybe it’s about any number of habits we all have, internal or external, which we’d like to bury away. Heady as that may be, this is not an introspective sounding song. Bob wails about burying his demon away while the band plays at full tilt. We hear that demon pounding on the locked door screaming to be released. By the end of the song, we know that the demon is locked out, but not overcome.