A recent post on my Twitter-feed posed the following question: If you could only listen to one musical artist for the rest of your life, who would it be? The immediate, instinctive answer for me is REM, without doubt. U2 is a close second. And The Police, including all the solo efforts of the band members, would certainly come in third. These bands could be on an endless loop throughout my life, and in some ways they already are, as each time a song comes up on the radio or Pandora or other playlists, I feel a ripple of memories and feelings from a journey in a musical time machine. The range and development and innovation and reinvention of these musicians are on par with major musical developments throughout the ages, certainly of the past forty years, and it’s impossible to understand the latter half of twentieth century pop culture without a nod to the collective work of Stipe, Bono, Sting, and the boys. Truly, the sounds of post-punk, power pop are the soundtrack of my Gen X life.