So of course, the moment you do get anywhere, giant slimy Bugs from outer space gotta take over the whole planet.

I'm really good -- we were really good, too. And that's the kicker; it never matters how good you are. I've seen the most awesome bands break up after years of sweating it out with A&R. After a while you don't care, and you go get a job selling shoes, or office supplies by phone.

So this was our life. We make these demos, see, and spend everything we've got sending them to absolutely everybody who's anybody. And I do mean everybody, from the president of the record label to the stock clerks (hey -- a lot of those stock clerks end up in A&R, you know?) We send them to radio stations -- from the Program Director to the DJ's. Publishers, music critics, whatever. Everybody in the whole world.

OK, our music is a bit weird, but we figure these are weird times. Mostly we don't hear from anybody. We just practice and play our gigs. We have a loyal and growing following: the black-tights crowd. We get lots of form letters saying, basically, that they didn't listen to our music and didn't like it anyway.

And then, one day ...

Andy, our vocalist, who styles himself the true artiste in the band, shows up to rehearsal late (no surprise there) with a large, mysterious plain envelope, and a look like he knows Jim Morrison really is alive, and exactly where he's hanging out. Before we can ask, he tells us.

"We did it, dudes," he says, somehow managing to look both sarcastic and elated. Knowing he has nothing better to do than yank our chains, we satisfy his expectations of us by looking dumbly at him. He grins his most feral grin (you can almost see the lights in the room grow dimmer and redder) and carefully enunciates, "We - have - a - deal."

We lose it totally for a moment. Like, Billy jumps into the air, over his monolithic blue-sparkled drums, and practically lands on Andy's shoulders, shouting something like a pig call. Brad, our bass player (and probably the only dude in all rockdom named "Brad") blasts a giant, muddy blue chord and screams, "All riiiiiiiight!"

I am the only one still cool. Anyway, it turns out some nowhere outfit named "Rock Hard Records" wants to release our stuff on vinyl. Vinyl! The letter says vinyl is making a comeback. We call the dude, and I do the talking. The story is: no major label distribution or affiliation; no advance; no guarantees; a pretty meager royalty agreement; and he wants 100% of the publishing income! This was like the deal from Hell. One of those music-shark contracts in which you really end up paying about 120% of all the label's expenses for your record release before they pay you a dime. Totally designed to take advantage of desperate, success-starved rockers who just might end up (might!) making somebody a fortune.

We sign, of course. Six months later, we have the top playing album on U.S. and European radio, and we've hit platinum sales. Of course the only money we've seen is the barest living expenses. Rock Hard's tour director set up all the people and equipment for the tour, and that's gotta come out of our royalties -- if we ever see any. But we're excited anyway. The parties, the press, the babes. We kick off our tour with a huge splashy two-pager in Rolling Stone. Rock Hard is sparing no expense (i.e. our royalties) on this promotion.

We do two shows, both in Germany, to crush-jammed crowds. Then the world-as-we-know-it ends.

I'm sitting in what passes for a first class hotel in Berlin, strumming my guitar and letting the T.V. prattle in Deutche, when all of a sudden the whole building does a little hop. It just sort-of jumps -- not enough to do any serious damage, but a picture slides down the wall and crunches to the floor.

The dude on the newscast is suddenly hunched down with his arms spread wide, gripping the edge of his desk, looking like some high-strung cat that's just been startled by a loud noise. The camera momentarily tips slightly, then rights itself, causing the image to roll back and forth like a boat crosswise to the swell.

In an instant, there's a pounding on my door, and I let Billy and Brad in. Andrew, my room-mate, hadn't come back from last night at a bar where he'd met chick.

Anyway, Billy and Brad are stammering all kinds of dumb speculations and questions. No, it wasn't a nuclear bomb. No, definitely not a sonic boom. Brad points to the T.V., and we look over and just shut up. A voice is yelling in German, and the picture is showing a huge, silvery matte object in the sky, slowly growing. It's shape is not round, but more flattened. I dub it "wok-shaped", and Billy tells me to shut up.

You know at least some of the rest. After the ships got into position, there was about a 15-second pause in worldwide communications; telephone, radio, video, computer, etc. Then most of it resumed, unaffected. Most of the T.V. stations continued on. Telephones worked, and some radio. If you wanted to hear Mel Tormé or Lawrence Welk, you could find that on the dial with no problem. Big band, jazz, new age, country, "soft hits", religious, talk, folk tunes (lots of polkas in Germany), classical.

Like I said, some radio. About the only thing missing was Rock, in all its forms. No Sex Pistols, no Pretenders, no Beatles, no Elvis, no Doors (!!), no Van Halen, Pearl Jam, Rap (not that I missed that); no Alanis. It just didn't arrive at your radio. The really weird thing was that you could pop a CD into your player, and no Rock would come out. All other kinds of music were fine, but Rock just didn't "work" anymore.

Certain moral guardians of society self-righteously proclaimed this a just and long-deserved action. No more hidden devil-messages recorded backwards for you, Sonny, no siree!

The Bugs met with High Government Officials. It seems the Bugs lived very far away and had, for the past few years, just started hearing broadcasts with Rock in them. They'd been enjoying most of our other stuff, thank-you-very-much, but this new music concerned them. Then it bothered them. Then it worried them. Then it offended them.

Then it outraged them.

Who knows what it was? Some irreverent lyric; some discordant clash; some evil insinuation. I don't know. Bugs are not people, and something in some song had gotten their backs (wings? carapaces?) up, the entire species.

They had immediately sent an envoy to Earth to complain. On the way, the envoy picked up more recent broadcasts -- much more quickly than his pals on Bug World would get them. He was horrified. The Bug envoy claimed that his action of cutting out the offensive music was really an action designed to save Earth from certain destruction. He'd already sent back a message saying all was now well, and suggested that we all cross our antennae in the hope that his communiqué would be received before his world responded to the broadcasts (which would arrive before his “all ok”.) He said that without the corrective action the response would be the annihilation of all humankind.

Sales of our record vanished. Suddenly, our dude at Rock Hard couldn't return our phone calls, and we ran out of money. We were stranded in Germany with people looking at us rather accusingly, like it was our fault personally that the Bugs took over Earth.

It is not a good thing to be a member of a group considered to be the sole cause of all of society's problems. A couple of girls still hung by us, and they occasionally translated news for us. The papers ran daily articles describing how Rock had actually been the cause of all international incidents, inflation, recession and bad breath since World War II.

We worked in kitchens for a couple of weeks, denying any connection with Rock music. We had almost lost hope of finding Andy, who we hadn't seen since the night before the Bugs arrived. Then Billy's girl found him through a friend of a friend. He was singing American folk tunes in a local beer bar at night. Really great stuff, like "Shanendoah" and "I'm A Lonely Cowboy".

Laying low was getting to be a drag because it seemed like the whole world had just gotten on the wagon without a whimper. I almost had enough saved for a red-eye back to New York when Güdren, Brad's chick, told us something amazing.

Live Rock was still alive. Somehow, the Bugs could handle the music coming out of one source, like a radio or a CD player, but when the individual instruments played live, it all worked fine as long as the separate parts weren't being all mixed together and played through an amplifier.

We went with her that night to a well concealed basement in the country-like suburbs and heard the heavenly strains of heavy metal once more. We didn't lose any time.

Other local Rock musicians were willing to lend us their instruments. We booked a gig! The word got around that we would be playing, and we expected the basement to be jammed. As we practiced for the gig, other similar places became known to us.

Our only problem was getting a singer. None of us could do the things that Andy did, and at last I had to go to the lounge where he was singing and try to convince him.

I expected him to tell me to get lost -- Andy could always find a good reason why anything he did was right. I told him what was up, and he sat there. A few tears slid down his face and he said, "let's go."

So we played the gig, and I mean we played. Billy's drums were Thor's thunder; Brad's bass was the voice of Odin; my guitar wailed like a thousand trapped demons and Andy sang -- he sang like no one in Rock has ever sung. He pleaded and cried for understanding; he screamed and demanded to be heard; he stomped and insisted on freedom; he glowed and crooned about love; he burned and laid damnation upon us all.

And then it was over, and the next band played. We didn't hear them. We didn't see our fans, or feel their bodies pressing against ours. We looked at each other and saw the truth of what we'd done. We knew the Bugs and the press were wrong. We knew a lot of things.

But we didn't know about M.E.X.

Of course it was stupid to think the Bugs didn't know about live Rock. If they could abort the broadcasts of all forms of Rock, they certainly could discover something about these performances. But Rock has that brilliant/stupid thing ingrained into it. Geniuses who kill themselves with drugs, etc. While this was going on, the Bugs informed the High Government Officials of the fact of Rock's continued existence. They had already prepared a solution for this.

You or I would see a M.E.X. strolling down the road and immediately know it for what it was -- a robot. It looked like a robot, right? Even though we've never seen a real robot before, we know one when we see it. But the Bugs assured us that the M.E.X. were not robots, but were actually "Mechanically Encapsulated Xenopsyche".

According to a public relations firm hired by the Bugs, this meant that the life force of a Bug had been placed in the machine-like mobile structure of the M.E.X. to carry out its assignments physically. Bugs themselves did not like the gravity or atmosphere of our planet, and this was their standard answer to this problem. Some people spelled it "mechs", but the same sound was gotten from the acronym -- so, "M.E.X."

And what was the M.E.X.'s assignment? To halt all forms of performed Rock music, of course. This was an extension of the "save the Earth / for your own good" philosophy, but it finally seemed a bit extreme to some people, who hadn't minded the loss of Rock, but sure didn't want to rub elbows with Bugs. These people argued that since such material could only be played live, into the open air, and since Bugs didn't live in or care for our air, that these live performances could not possibly influence the Bugs. The Bug envoy countered that many Bugs were now so fanatically hateful of Rock that the mere fact of its ongoing performance could result in an unstoppable act of destruction.

For an instant, and for the first time since the Bugs had appeared, there was almost a moment of equilibrium and indecision on both sides. And then the press somehow got hold of the news which sent this delicate balance crashing into pieces.

The story spread quickly, and the silence from Bug PR gave it instant credibility. All of the Bugs' actions of controlling our broadcasts, of sending down the disliked M.E.X.'s, had been based on the information that Bugs were made crazed by Rock music, and would uncontrollably use their most deadly weapons on us all simply to stop it. Our whole planet had handed over a small part of their freedom in their agreement with the Bugs.

But the truth was: not all Bugs hate Rock; some Bugs felt that humans have a right to their own forms of expression, disgusting though these may be to Bugish sensibilities. These Bugs suggested that all Rock broadcasts be labeled with a carrier signal announcing that the music is offensive, puerile, disgusting and anti-social. That way, Bugs who didn't mind hearing such things could do so at their own discretion (although of course no Bug would). Also, Bugs could then pretty much leave humanity alone, a thing which all Bugs seemed to feel was a good idea.

In the meantime, lacking anything better to do, the M.E.X.'s broke up live gigs. They were impervious to cat calls, fists, boots, beer bottles, sticks and stones and the occasional gun shot. People were hurt trying to hurt M.E.X.'s. For a heartbeat it seemed like Rock would never roll again.

Then we were dealt an even harder blow, and not by the Bugs. The German government, long believing in action before thought, figured that they could head off a disaster by creating a worse one of their own. Goaded on by Interpol, all of the promoters of live gigs were arrested on various charges. The police just broke into their homes and carted them straight to prison. A lot of musicians were arrested, too. We were just deported. Good bye, Güdren!

Back at home we didn't hear too much about the German goings-on. It seems some small theater owners in New York had hosted live Rock shows, and were now charged with various crimes including public nuisance, endangering national security and obscenity. That last one must have been an attempt to make the Bugs happy, because the groups that had played at that gig were far from obscene, playing mostly "boy/girl love/grief" songs. Unlike the quick action in Germany, the legal stuff just dragged on, with most of the trials taking place in the newspapers only.

Some citizens organized the "Rock Patrol", which swept through various neighborhoods, listening for practicing bands and lustily destroying the instruments and amplification equipment. The occasional Rock musician was injured in fits of public interest on the part of various Rock Patrol members.

This was a very confused time. Some radio stations broadcasted Rock music with a disclaimer carrier as described by the Bugs, and in a spotty fashion some of these broadcasts even got through. For a while, M.E.X.'s were only rarely seen carrying out their duty. Then the tide would turn and for a while a “new wave” (joke) of conservatism would choke off our music again.

And now it seems that there is enough confusion amongst the Bugs themselves to possibly halt their ban. A strong faction wants Rock stopped NOW, permanently, before it damages the Bug mental balance. Other Bugs say we humans have the right to create our own music for our own planet, as long as we warn them of its content. I've even heard of the secret defection of a Bug to Hunter S. Thompson, who is supposedly hiding the Bug somewhere in the Appalachian wilderness and feeding information back to his editors via carrier pigeon. Who knows?

But our music is a state of mind -- one that Andy, Billy, Brad and I fully realized that night of the basement gig in a German suburb. It's not just noise, sweat and evil messages. No. Rock is power and freedom -- intense communication. Where are these things now? Kicked in the head, maybe unconscious, maybe comatose. But it's still there.

Not Fade Away.