In this year’s Best American Non-Required Reading, edited by Dave Eggers with a charming introduction by Sufjan Stevens, there is a short non-fiction piece by Scott Carrier, called Rock the Junta, about the most popular rock band in the severely fucked military dictatorship of Burma. It’s a great story; I would call it required reading, but…you know. The story contains a paragraph that might be the most concise, poetic history of rock’n’roll ever written (forgive me, I’m channeling Charles Mudede this morning):

When I was seven years old, in 1964, I went over to a friend’s house after school. He had a teenage sister, and we were in her bedroom, and she put “I Want To Hold Your Hand,” a 45, on her little box record player. She hung her head and swayed back and forth so her hair bounced off her cheeks. Then she started dancing with her arms up in the air, twisting her ass, jumping up and down. I’d never seen anything like it, but I knew it was dangerous.