Fear and loathing in Las Vegas are in notably short supply during Gym Class Heroes' show in late June at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. "I've had problems with pharmaceuticals for ten years, and I stand in front of you four and a half months sober, and I feel good as fuck!" exclaims frontman Travis McCoy to the roaring crowd.

With casual androgyny now as common as rehab and pop-star poetry a recurring joke, it's hard to imagine how strange Patti Smith must've seemed when she exploded out of New York with Horses 33 years ago. Defiant, literary, and rocking, Smith's debut, and the albums that followed, weren't only great pieces of art, they were life-changers. Just ask Michael Stipe or Courtney Love.

"I only do TV interviews nowadays," Ali Youngblood jokes backstage at Manchester University's Academy 3. A breathless monsoon of innuendo, wisecracks, and drawled chuckles, the 24-year-old keyboardist for one of the most talked-about bands of 2008 doesn't seem fazed by the attention.

On a Sunday in April 2006, Gary Harris pulled up to D'Angelo's large starter mansion outside Richmond, Virginia, in a limo. Harris, the A&R man who'd first signed D'Angelo in the early '90s and who had overseen his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, was on a mission: to escort the singer to Eric Clapton's Crossroads Treatment Centre in Antigua.

Kamaal "Q-Tip" Fareed is the leader of Queens, New York–based group A Tribe Called Quest, whose innovative first three albums are perhaps hip-hop's most universally beloved -- by both fans and critics. Tensions plagued 1996's disappointing fourth, Beats, Rhymes and Life, and the trio split in 1998.