How do you feel about the existence of a so-called "Rock Canon?" Do you think there is more than one? Do you think of it as an ideal or a detraction? Do you create your own individual canon, or do you just listen to things you like whenever you feel like? If you support a canon, do you find yourself liking most selections from the canon?

Lots of questions to ask honestly, so I'll just turn it over to you guys after dropping my two cents to get the ball rolling:

I think the existence of a Rock Canon is a very real thing if we're discussing music from ~1964 - 1991. Thankfully, imo, from there, things got a lot more confused, and by 2001 or maybe even earlier I think the idea of canonizing rock was well and dead in American culture, and the new mainstream pop and hip hop music had no desire to have itself canonized by any sort of "visionaries" like Christgau or the Rolling Stone crowd. If my adverb didn't tip you off, I find the existence of the canon to be a bad thing. The fact that most everyone with any more than topical interest in music will be approaching the same pieces in rock music is destructive to its long-lastingness, because I feel like there are too many different directions rock aims that would be completely lost on new listeners past a certain age. Impressionable fifteen year olds can be sold on The Beatles; Albert Ayler fans at 30 years old can't necessarily be swayed.

I find the existence of sites like Rate Your Music and last.fm to be a very strong 21st century force in the way of demolishing the canon (though the former unfortunately revels in creating its own for reasons unknown) and I hope this positive development allows for a gradual removal of the Jack Black-esque rockist antics of yester-century and open up the floodgates for a mass Toopian de-territorialization.