Real Life Rock Top 10

Danny Fisher

Nighthawks Frank Black and Syd Straw enojy some Hopper-esque coffee

Related Content

• Yo La Tengo at First Avenue, 2/4/13
  February 5, 2013
• KPT: Dubstep just hurts my head after a certain amount of time
  March 12, 2013
• Powermad's Todd Haug on brewing Surly beer, Minnesota metal, and Dave Chappelle
  October 26, 2012
• Five utterly frustrating songs: Odd Future, Of Montreal & more
  March 26, 2012
• David Bowie's The Next Day marks the return of the world's greatest chameleon
  March 21, 2013

More About

• David Thomas
• Syd Straw
• Frank Black
• Robert Kidney
• George Wendt

The difference between Lynch's American towns and the decaying towns on and off Thomas's Lost Highway--the phrase repeated so often it finally fell somewhere between a prayer and a brand name--was that in the darkest, most dead-end actions Thomas orchestrated in Los Angeles, there was always the sense that they were a setup, that all together they made a story which, when you heard the punch line, you would understand as a joke. When on the last night the 49-year-old Thomas gave his all to Rocket from the Tombs' adolescent lament "Final Solution," it didn't end up so far from Dion and the Belmonts' "Teenager in Love." But the punch line never came, unless it was the last line of "Nightdriving," somewhere in Mirror Man, I think, as if Thomas was floating across all the chanting voices, incantations, and reverb guitar of the night before and the night to come: "See ya around, sucker!"--the second syllable of the third word cracking like a whip, like a grin as big as the room.