Like listening to young DJ Kazu, who strings together hard-rock records from the late '60s through the '70s. Kazu ordinarily works as a fashion stylist for camera shoots--a job you might better associate with music more, er, refined. But there's no one I know who can rock a club like Bar Aoyama or Orange with a better-chosen, more macho set of T. Rex, Johnny Winter, Iggy Pop, Hendrix, The Kinks--et al. Kazu also packs a mighty air-guitar routine from behind the turntables (plus blowing sax through his thumb), and often turns up to clubs with a few of his styling apprentices in tow; boys who dance with blundering joy like the young punks they are--age 20-something, heavy boots, jeans, crew-cuts and pierced body parts.

Heart-felt, hard rock is back. The celebratory riffing of '70s power-chords and favorite solos ring out in hair salons, clothes shops, record stores, clubs and at parties. Not maudlin heavy-metal or weepy pretend-stuff, but the real, sweaty article. It's not mere nostalgia, for kids who are too young to have grown up with the music are plunging into it as if it extends their youth back a decade or more. Many, I guess, have turned to it through grunge--it's only natural that inquisitive fans will trace Nirvana's debt to The Stooges or John Lennon, or Soundgarden's to Zeppelin, just as those before them went back to Robert Johnson or Willie Dixon.

And somehow it's all new again. This time, the context accommodates biker leather and straight-edge singlets, heavy-metal bouffant hair, business suits, camouflage, Nikes, glam leopard-print pants and Cuban-heeled boots. Real rock goes beyond fashion--sure it has style, but that comes from an attitude that doesn't change, a welcome reassurance in the face of the obsessive self-consciousness of the dance-jazz scene or the opiated detachment of ambient house. For me, the vicarious kick that Ray Davies' "You Really Got Me," or Bolan's "20th Century Boy" delivers when pumped through a powerful club system in a predominantly young venue is not unlike the pleasure of showing a friend your favorite, hidden spot for the first time. The best thing about the '60s-'70s comeback is that a good DJ can now span three decades and make it all sound contemporary. I've got new ears now. Thank you.