New York's The Mooney Suzuki roars with high-energy, British-Invasion attitude " a hefty dose of The Kinks and The Rolling Stones with light brushes of contrasting acoustic roots.

The key to a great show, front man Sammy James Jr. said, is to live in the moment.

"You can't preplan it out," he said. "You might be at soundcheck, you'll look at something and say, 'It'd be cool to climb up that,' then you try it out and it's too wobbly. Then, you're playing the show and you find yourself climbing up it and hanging upside down."

CHANGE
James pines for the time when artists like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles could release three albums in a year, and the songs they were singing onstage were only a couple months old, rather than a couple years. But James hopes and doubts the system will be in place much longer with bands able to make singles immediately accessible via the Internet.

"No one that I know is making money off record sales unless they're on a major (label)," he said. "A format of 11-12 songs in 45 minutes is completely arbitrary if no one is buying them." "Charles Martin