You invite Heather Mills and Paul McCartney to the music section’s dinner party, and we reward you with a Payback Time T-shirt, two CDs off the Straight ’s Top 50, and two tickets to a Live Nation club show taking place in Vancouver within the next four weeks. Here’s this week’s winning whine.

Dear Payback Time: This is for Rod Filbrandt, who was wondering in public about whatever happened to the glorious old rock songs about rockin’. Here’s what happened, Rod: once rock ’n’ roll fans figured out that rockin’ was usually a subversive euphemism for humpin’, the jig was up. So we, the true fans of rock music, collectively decided that rock songs should have more meat on them to be cool. The examples you gave—“Rock and Roll All Nite”?—are the epitome of uninspired words set to simple music. If you need a cool song about nothing in particular to rock along with in your mom’s basement, try “Overdose”, “Gimme Three Steps”, “Dragula”, “Paradise City”, or “Smoke on the Water”. I guarantee that after a few warm beers, you’ll be ready to move on to deeper subjects.

> Ryan Miller

Rod Filbrandt replies: Dearest Ryan—I’m not sure what you’re getting at here, man. Are you saying there’s more to rock than humping? No kidding. As a true fan of rock, you should know it’s also about the partying. Or are you saying we should form a rock band and call it Deeper Meat? Okay, I call keyboards. You know, like one of those stick keyboards you play like a guitar. Those are cool. Hey, how are you at banging a gong? Can you bang a gong? We gotta have a gong. Those are really cool. And hey, we’ll get a few beers. Those are cool too. Or wait—no, I guess they’re warm… Um, yeah… Deeper Meat!

Ryan Miller continues the cowbell-felchingly ignorant tradition of refusing to let us know which CDs and concert tickets he’d like. You can voice your impotent rage by snail mail or by sending an e-mail to payback@straight.com.