They sang about love troubles and general paranoia, but the beat turned it all into good-time music.
Outside strongholds like Chicago, they survive largely as generic good-time music for a night out, living up to their image in beer commercials.
The group specialized in good-time Saturday-night music.
The festival also threw in other forms of good-time music.
What both groups played, then and now, was also good-time music, from a time when protest and pleasure merged.
But its main purpose is to be good-time music; while the lyrics ponder and preach, the beat keeps the audience literally jumping.
No one at the festival, even those playing the happiest good-time music, pretended that the hurricane hadn't happened.
It's primal good-time music, and once it revs up there's no stopping it.
It's good-time music that hasn't lost its function.
But he wasn't there to play good-time music.