He's the first and last name in rock & roll -- a passionate, fiery performer who redrew the boundaries without breaking a sweat, setting standards of performance so impossibly high that entire decades of artists have been straining just to get within touching distance. To put it simply: it often seemed as if the guitar was invented just so he could play it. But Hendrix was more than just a gifted guitarist: in his songs lived whole worlds of sound, and he was a genius at blending bristling blues with aching R&B and fistfuls of funk. It is music that contains within it all other music -- the very definition of Classic Rock & Roll.

Like Hendrix, Bad Brains never encountered a musical style they couldn't make their own. But where Hendrix pulled primarily from the blues, Bad Brains - the quartet of HR, Dr. Know, Darryl Jenifer and Earl Hudson - found their fire in reggae, drawing on classic Jamaican sounds and lighting them afire with punk rock urgency. Their music is fierce and visionary, hardcore ardor instilled with the social consciousness of roots music, the sound of revolution happening at ten million miles a second. From their blitzkrieg percussion to their rapid-fire machine-gun lyrics, no one does it with more fire, or more perfectly-calibrated brutality.

Without Peter Tosh, there could be no Bad Brains. First taking flight as part of Bob Marley's legendary Wailers, Tosh quickly grew unto a personality unto himself, his music matching all of Marley's political passion, but clinging harder and faster to an uncompromising Rastafarian worldview. If Marley was the clear-eyed hopeful, Tosh was the firebrand militant His music was punk, if not in style, than in content: over a dank, unmistakable groove, he railed against injustice and oppression, views that found him under the constant, watchful eye of Jamaican government. Decades on, his powerful music stands as a testament to both the man, and to the power of deeply-held convictions.

If there's anyone that knows the value of deeply-held convictions, it's Sharon Jones. Bad Brains and Jimi Hendrix may have vaulted from the gates fully-formed, but Jones is a testament to the power of dedication and hard work. She spent years working as a corrections officer, taking session jobs and waiting for the right person to notice her jaw-dropping tornado of a voice. These days, it's unbelievable that she could have gone undiscovered for so long. She is, without a doubt, one of the most thrilling performers ever to grace a stage, pouring every ounce of herself into her smoldering soul songs, turning heads and winning hearts with her bottomless charisma and stunning bravado.

Sharon Jones commands attention with her larger-than-life voice, but Thao crams the same amount of power into songs that are decidedly smaller. What makes her so effective is her knack for big statements, presented in miniature. Her songs are built from little more than her adroit, nimble guitar work and crisp, whip-crack percussion, yet they contain whole universes of emotion: loss, fear, hope, doubt and belief. She is a gifted, insightful student of the human heart, and she lays out her findings over a dizzying latticework of guitar - imagine the panache of Hendrix delivered with a quiet, unshakeable confidence and you're getting close.

The Walkmen also know something about unshakeable confidence, but if Thao delivers her songs with a whisper, the Walkmen are all swell-chested bellowing. Their songs barrel forward like bar brawls, with Hamilton Leithauser's ragged holler soaring over the top. Dusting delicate piano over black-and-blue guitars and riding hard-driving rhythms from sudden jumpstarts, through hairpin turns to clattering conclusions, the Walkmen restore to rock and roll the same sense of danger Hendrix summoned when he set his guitar alight. But hidden beneath the tough veneer is a surprising vulnerability and world-weariness. The Walkmen are the street toughs who talk loud and carry a big heart.