A cool story, to wipe out of the horrible taste of the last one

'Cause I need it.

It's old people who still know how to ROKK. And no, I'm not talking about Paul McCartney:

Fred Knittle wears his belt up high. His nose is tethered to an oxygen tank, and on stage he's confined to a folding chair. From this unlikely perch, he's turning rock 'n' roll on its head.

Singing Coldplay's Fix You, Knittle transforms the song into a powerful ballad about a grandfather's healing wisdom. It means something different coming from an 80-year-old retiree suffering from congestive heart failure.

Knittle is a singer for the Young@Heart Chorus, whose members range from 73 to 92 years old. Singing songs they shouldn't even know, at an age when they're expected to be sitting quietly somewhere, they subvert all accepted notions of old and young.

Songs by bands like the Radiohead, OutKast and Nirvana take on a new dimension when performed by these 23 foot-stomping senior citizens. Fix You or the Clash's Should I Stay or Should I Go become about life and death.

Though little known in America, the Northampton-based Young@Heart has performed from Australia to London, serenaded the king and queen of Norway, been discussed on The Daily Show, and been documented in an acclaimed film for British television. They're now recording an album tentatively titled Rockin' At Heaven's Door.

It may sound like a gimmick, but Young@Heart is no karaoke act. They're a cover band for the ages.

That's the coolest thing ever, huh? The story says they do a version of Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees," which must be unbelievably moving: a lyric like "I can't help the feeling/That I could blow through the ceiling/If I could just turn and run" would just destroy me coming from the mouth of an eighty-year-old. It's devastating enough from Thom Yorke.

And speaking of Paul McCartney, have you heard that new single of his? Yucky, yucky. All he's been through, all he's seen, and he all he come up with to say is "Everybody gonna feel all right/Everybody gonna dance around tonight"? You did write "Eleanor Rigby" and "Hey Jude," didn't you, Paul? What the hell?