I thought rock music was dead. Then I heard Big Wreck.

This band will make you love rock 'n' roll again

Big Wreck, 2013.
(Image credit: ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo)

Nostalgia is a funny thing.

It inclines us to romanticize the past, elevating our memories of people, places, and events to a level of excellence that surpasses our original experiences of them. It's nostalgia that turns a middling movie from the mid-'90s into a "classic" that you watch fondly every time you stumble on it while flipping through the cable channels. You didn't much like it at first. But now it's somehow better than it used to be. Put that dollop of nostalgia together with lots of other happy little memories, and the past itself can begin to seem better than the present. Suddenly you're living through an era of decline, sliding down a well-greased slope toward a mud puddle of mediocrity.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.