So there you go – rock’n’roll is not dead.

Don’t be fooled by our name, Pop Lifer bows to nobody in our love of rock’n’roll. Not even Joan Jett. So you can imagine how relieved we were to see this t shirt on our tube journey to work this morning and realise that rock’n’roll is definitely not deceased.

But then a sense of unease set in (one not entirely explained by the fact we’d just tried taking a sneaky photo with our iphone and clearly been spotted in the act by a scowling man in a suit). Firstly, the underlined not. Isn’t that a little bit defensive, we thought? Isn’t it a bit “I did not have sexual relations with that woman?”

Then there was the demeanour of the t shirt wearer himself. Despite his earphones presumably being plugged into purest, hardest rock’n’roll, he was half asleep, a little depressed. He looked very tired. He looked, in fact, like someone  sat at the bedside of a dying relative, waiting out the hours until they are released from their mortal pain.

And then we thought, “when was the last really great rock’nroll album”? Really good, pedal to the metal, full throttle, adrenaline-racing rock’n’roll? Our minds went blank. We even briefly considered Kasabian or The Vaccines, before we started giggling to ourselves and had to pretend we were coughing.

Basically, we’re worried. Rock’n’roll may not be dead, but what if it is finally dying? It is at least 80 years old, you know and it has been showing increasing signs of advancing dementia, with inexplicable, self-humiliating behaviour like The Darkness covering Radiohead’s Street Spirit, the musical equivalent of soiling yourself in public. Prove us wrong, rock stars. Give us a new “Nevermind” or “Definitely Maybe” or “Exile On Main Street”. Christ, even an “Only By The Night” would reassure us a little.

But if the worst comes to the worst we know what we’ll wear to the funeral.

The King. With wings.