Last night, the VH-1 Rock Honors show included Heart in this year's honored bands...it's just the latest example of a great band getting its due.

I was lucky enough to have older siblings that constantly played music when I was in grade school...so I got a cross-section of 70's Rock and Pop music as the soundtrack of my young life.  Among the many great bands I got educated on was Heart: a Seattle-based band with a pair of sisters anchoring other grade-A musicians in a Rock band with precious few rules.  This band carried a torch for-and essentially lit by-Led Zeppelin in their wide-ranging approach to music.  Want a heavy rocker?  Try "Barracuda", "Devil Delight", "Down on Me".  Acoustic?  "Dog and Butterfly", the intro to "Crazy on You", "Dreamboat Annie".  Even boogie-blues on "Straight On", speed rock on "Break", and great straight-ahead tunes like "Heartless" and "Even It Up" showed a band that wrote whatever they felt at that moment, and redefined their sound any time and any way the music demanded.

That freedom of expression in popular music is shamefully rare, especially nowadays.  It's also why I've been enjoying all the Heart on VH-1 Classic lately, between their "Classics Live" performance and this latest honor...and the occasional old video.  Here are a couple of women that provided the hub for a fantastic rock band by ANY standards...and people from Jerry Cantrell to Carrie Underwood to others are saying what some of us knew: Heart was as good as it gets, still is, and should be considered a true legend band.  Best part is, they still tour, still kick ass, and likely will do so somewhere near you in the forseeable future.

For those of you that can't get past Ann's size...man, it must really suck to be you.  You're missing out on sooooo much...like maybe the best woman's voice in rock, ever.  No, I don't stutter.  Joss Stone and Christina Aguilera both would get owned onstage by Ann...maybe by Nancy as well.

For those of you that don't belive women can play rock music...again, it must suck, to be locked up in that tiny, obsolete little world.  Maybe you hide there knowing that either Lita Ford or Joan Jett could beat you to a pulp.  Open your ears and your mind, maybe liten to "Mistral Wind" off of "Dog and Butterfly".

It's a fine thing to see musicians get well-deserved respect.  It's even better to have watched and listened to the musicians through thick and thin for most of your life...and it's incredible to know that they're playing nearby in less than two months.

Raise the glasses to Heart, a band built around two sisters that rock as hard as anyone!