Once more, with Heart

One of my secret dorky music indulgences, entirely sentimental and wholly authentic, is the 70's rock band, Heart. They were no more a part of my growing up than dozens of other bands.  But where so many others have fallen away into sweetly impotent memory, Heart has somehow grown in power and significance for me.  I never would have predicted that, 30 years later, I would exalt Ann and Nancy Wilson -- the sisters who founded and fronted the group -- as among the most personally inspiring figures in rock and roll. Yet, every 18 months or so, I find myself hours into a refreshed immersion in both the music and the energy of the women who made it.  I sit -- as I have done tonight -- watching them on video, listening to the power chords, beguiled by the physical commitment, and reverberating with the declarative high notes. Nancy is perhaps the most compelling female rock guitar stage presence ever (albeit among an admittedly, and sadly, small field), and Anne dishes out one of the most gripping rock voices of her generation -- the bastard child inheritor of Janis Joplin and Aretha Franklin. I just sat here and watched six different live performances of the song "Crazy On You", back to back.  They were recorded 25 years apart. But, each time, at exactly the same point in the song, my whole body shivered. I cannot watch the Wilson sisters without thrilling in the beauty and power of their brand of femininity. "We didn't want to be the girlfriends of the Beatles. We wanted to *be* the Beatles."  Nancy Wilson