Fairfax, VA, USA. I find it comforting to know that Rock and Roll can still be threatening enough to have a performer banned from a television show.

Adam Lambert is neither the first or the last rock singer ever to be placed on the forbidden list by the powers that be. We can debate whether the ban was the result of Adam being out and gay or the result of a typical knee jerk reaction by the suits.

The facts are this: on the same television broadcast Janet Jackson grabbed a guy’s crouch without any particular uproar; Adam kissed a guy and he’s out of here. I will let you do the math.

I’m not particularly interested in Adam’s sex life. I’m not into gay guys, nor are they into me. He is, however, an attractive male, good looking with an undeniable stage presence.

What he does off stage is none of my concern but I find his music interesting and have spent some time thinking about his roots. What follows may not be entirely correct, but I think it a good platform for discussion. Start with the music on his first CD.

Fairfax, VA, USA. We Americans, you and I, spring from some Platonic conception of ourselves, forever remodeling our past even as we reconceive our multiple futures. The possibility of success, tempered by the memories our well accomplished failures, bedevils us until our dying days.

We worship a dual headed bitch goddess, pursuing fame, thinking it is success. [N1] In this, the early decades of a new millennium, we confuse our good intentions with actual accomplishment as if the act of aiming at a target is sufficient. [N2] We no longer actually have to hit the target to become famous. Being famous is enough, a well laurelled goal, in and of itself.

Success? Everyone wants success but no one admits to wanting it. If we achieve success, we are half apologetic that we climbed our own personal Mount Everest. The ideal American archetype is a Tin Star who, having just rid the world of the bad guys, responds to praise from the townspeople by casting his eyes down and mumbling semi-audibly Aw shucks, I was just doing my job.

Fairfax, VA, USA. Howdy-Doody, Crusader Rabbit, Kukla, Fran and Ollie, and Ding Dong School with Miss Frances: my roots begin here.

I am older than Rock and Roll but not as old as Dick Clark.

The Woody Woodpecker Song was at the top of the charts the day I was born. Little Richard was not yet 16, Elvis was 13, Jerry Lee Lewis only 12.

It would be four years until Bill Haley and His Comets would be formed, six until Rock Around The Clock would begin climbing the charts.

I am not as old as Little League Baseball but am still older than many of the nations on this planet and yet, I am little more than half way through all the things I intend to do with my life. The future lies wide open before me.

But it all starts in the past. I’m a child of the bastard marriage of coast to coast network television and the devil’s music - rock and roll. I would not be who I am without them.