Commandment Five: You Gotta Have Your Mojo Workin'

Another thing we Holy Rock and Rollers ain't against is sex. In fact, it's awfully hard to stay in the fold if you're sexless (Attention Bob Dylan: better drop your drawers for a monkey gland shot or we're excommunicating you, pronto). Not that shameless exhibitionism without an equal level of rock and roll energy (Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, or, hell, Nashville Pussy: we're talking 'bout you) will get you front row seats for the Annual Howlin' Wolf's Birthday Mass and Seance, either. Elvis' voice was just as sexy as his (early) bod and his gyrations; Mick added whole layers of sexual innuendo with his phrasing and intonation. More importantly, one of the unwritten laws of The First Church is that extends to the scrawny (Patti Smith, Hank Williams), the chubby (Etta James), the homely (Polystyrene), the four-eyed (Buddy Holly, Bo Diddley), the downright unhygienic (Lester Bangs), the crippled (Ian Dury), the deformed (Little Richard), even the dead (Jim Morrison, Johnny Thunders, Gram Parsons) and the near-dead ('66 vintage Dylan, '69-'78 vintage Keith) the power of sexual magnetism. That's some major democratic shit, folks: when it comes to rock and roll, literally anybody, given a mic or an axe and (a big key) an unfettered personality, can awaken the desires of the unsuspecting listener or concertgoer. Don't need to tell you how thoroughly this contradicts your basic Hollywood/Madison Avenue-variety take on the (sexual) worth of your basic yob or yobbette, and which viewpoint is closer to God and America (fuck the apple pie).

We could go into the "rhythm," "soul," and "kicks" (even "laffs") aspects of this topic, but I've always felt the less said (and the more left to the reader/listener's imagination) the better. Except that, if you think holiness and sex aren't connected, you've never really heard Al Green. And you've probably never really had sex.