For how many decades in how many used bookstores have I seen "Horn of Africa" standing steadfast, a Rock of Gibraltar compared with the mere boulders of Ken Follett and Sidney Sheldon?
"As the sands of culture shift and the tides of politics ebb and flow," oozed David Cameron, "Her Majesty has been steadfast – a rock of strength for our nation, for our Commonwealth and, on many occasions, for the whole world".
After one album of steadfast hard rock, the group has added some variations on its new one, "R" (Interscope), which leaps from punk to psychedelia without losing the traction of its guitar riffs.
In songs modeled after Fleetwood Mac's steadfast, chiming rock, both the men and the women sang promises, like the come-on in "Novocaine" — Make you numb to the pain" — though the women also got feisty in songs like "Good as Gone".
M. C. Taylor, a scraggly-voiced songwriter who used to live near the Haw River in North Carolina, leads this measured, steadfast roots-rock band: one that can pick lilting folk-rock tunes, give its lead guitar a Celtic bite, make its fiddle hint at Appalachia or Bollywood and find the gravity in a waltzing ballad like "Cheerwine Easter," which advises, "This is the day of reckoning".
Working with leading Jamaican producers like Bunny Lee, Winston Riley, Prince Buster, Leslie Kong, Byron Lee, Lee Perry and Coxsone Dodd, he recorded hundreds of songs from 1963 to 1973 at a time when Jamaican ska was giving way to the leaner, more steadfast rhythms of rock steady and reggae.
Other "fighting" names include Mordecai (warrior), Bill (strong willed warrior), Harry/Aroldis (army ruler), Jimmy/Jake (supplanter), Hector (steadfast), and Pedro (rock).
Southern rock, that steadfast relic, wheezed into New York this week.
The Tattoo the Earth Tour, which arrived at Giants Stadium on Thursday, was organized to illustrate a longstanding concept in rock: the steadfast commitment of serious devotees to life beyond the norm.
The story, of the lost grandeur of a hotel that is restored and perpetuated by way of a book, is also the story of a tradition of personal nobility — a severe and self-imposed code of conduct that proves, in the face of historically terrifying and catastrophic trouble, to be a rock of steadfast decency.
