Mendelsohn: I just realized that after the Rolling Stones’ Aftermath, we won’t be talking about another Rolling Stones record for the next several years. I’m a little saddened by that, Klinger. The Stones have been such a fixture on the Great List that you can’t spit at the Top 100 without nearly hitting one of their records. Plus, as rockers go, the Mick and Co. don’t shy away from the nitty gritty and I like that. Aftermath, however, is a bit tamer than, say, Sticky Fingers, but I guess for a record released in 1966 it was probably as shocking as they come. Right off the bat though, I notice that the first four songs deal strictly with the fairer sex. “Mother’s Little Helper” is an indictment of housewife drug abuse (talk about the pot calling the kettle black), “Stupid Girl” is a derisive sendoff to women with “Under My Thumb” coming in a close second, while “Lady Jane” is probably the sappiest love ballad the Stones have ever recorded. I’m sensing a little sexual frustration. So I guess I can see where they album would speak to the socially inept music nerd.

This week Canadian trio Rush will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. For those Rush fans who care about such a thing, it’s about damned time, too. Having sold more than 40 million albums worldwide since 1975, Rush ranks only behind the Beatles and the Rolling Stones for the most consecutive gold or platinum albums by a rock band. Not only that, but they married heavy rock and progressive rock like no other act in the ‘70s, incorporated New Wave and pop into their music in the ‘80s, and continued to put out vital music well into their 50s, still proving to be every bit as potent a live band as they ever have.

Still, to some there’s always a stigma when it comes to Rush. Only guys like it (explored with great humor in the 2009 film I Love You, Man). It’s pretentious. It’s about technique and gear rather then songwriting and nuance. The lyrics are verbose and silly. The singer shrieks all the time. The fans are all gigantic nerds. Of course, all gross exaggerations (except for us fans, we embrace our nerdiness), but they always seem to stick whenever a Rush fan tries to get someone he or she knows interested in their favorite band.

Sometimes it’s funny how fame works in the music industry. You start out as a critically beloved act who influence a whole generation of rock bands, and when one of them blows up and invites you to be players on its MTV Unplugged special, suddenly you’re on everyone’s radar.

Yet while it’s easy to quickly associate the career of the legendary Meat Puppets with that of their successful progeny Nirvana, the truth of the matter is that the Meat Puppets’ career is one of the most compelling in all of rock music, stretching across 13 epic albums with a 14th—Rat Farm—out this year.

The opening 28 minutes of Together We’re Stranger (or 30 if you include “(bluecoda)”) form the most exhausting thing No-Man has ever put to tape. In just half an hour, this emotionally turbulent suite covers nearly every aspect of grief and suffering; it manages to say a book’s worth of things about these topics in an economically-minded set of lyrics. On its own, these five tracks could have formed a long EP or short LP in their own right; however, the story of Together We’re Stranger is not yet finished. Whereas the suite comprises a complete, self-contained narrative, “the remaining three pieces [are] more akin to short stories in song”, to use Tim Bowness’ words. The first of these stories, “Photographs in Black and White”, hints at some of the themes explored in the aforementioned suite, but the overall direction has now shifted, resulting in the most epic individual track on Together We’re Stranger; at ten minutes, it’s its longest. In its sharply drawn duality, it highlights the light and dark sides of nostalgia. It’s the story of flipping through the pages of photo albums and realizing all the unresolved ties that build up over the years.

“Photographs in Black and White” opens with one of Together We’re Stranger’s recurring motifs: “the city in a hundred ways”. Bowness sings of this unnamed, unidentified city atop gentle strums of an acoustic guitar. There’s a longing in his voice; with lines like “Your eyes against the midday light / Your eyes when they still have the fight”, he’s clearly observing someone whose better years have since faded. However, the music backing him suggests a pastoral tranquility that’s comforting to the person being observed.

Klinger: As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, a big part of my musical edumacation came about through my involvement with my college radio station. I began as a DJ in the late ‘80s and eventually finagled my way into a Program Director position. After college, as I loitered around that cozy little backwater for a few years, I remained tangentially involved through friends and friends of friends, even as I started to chafe at their indie dogmatism. In many ways, college radio was a Bizarro world where popular groups were routinely shunned in favor of the willfully obscure, and so it came to be in my mind that for a brief period, Pavement was just about the biggest band around.