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"Buzz" is an odd commodity. Generally, buzz is a word-of-mouth phenomenon: something has fired imaginations or booties away from the inexorable grind of publicity machines and hype maestros. It spreads more like ooze and less like a prairie fire, finding its receptors and relays at its own pace. Sometimes buzz filters into the underground `zine press and occasionally seeps into the mainstream. Then buzz becomes hype, and the race is on. The spin doctors of Madison Avenue are fairly hip to the power of buzz and will frequently seek to create it in lieu of large and expensive ad campaigns. What better pedigree can a band have than rising from the streets? 2002 saw lots of buzz, both the real (The White Stripes, The Hives) and the manufactured kind (The Strokes, The Vines), around the resurrection of guitar bands, DIY garage types that have periodically slain the globe (the "British" invasion, punk, grunge) and set mainstream rock, usually preoccupied with slick production and careful packaging, on its ear.

Garage rock remains a come-and-go occurrence largely because it's generational. As yesterday's angry, young rockers pass thirty and go classical or limp, today's kids thrash it out in the basement--crudely, loudly with a megadose of upthrust middle finger attitude. Consider, if you will, that the Red Hot Chili Peppers, not so very long ago the avatars of ska surf punk anger, are now just a bunch of over-forty guys whose sound has, well, mellowed. Our guitar bands this ish are a bit older than high school--well, some of them--but far from Dino land. The buzz about them swelled into a tsunami of mainstream recognition which will eventually dull their sensibilities and cause them to be shoved aside at some point for the next angry, angst-riddled wave. But for the nonce, let's have some fun, relax, and celebrate the noise, the penchant for self-destruction, and that fickle mistress called rock'n'roll.