You’ve heard your parents reminisce about going to Woodstock or about Rolling Stones’ concerts et cetera.

They tell you how amazing it was, and how it’s a shame our generation can’t experience what it was like back then.

For our generation, Coheed and Cambria is the band to go hear and see. A Coheed and Cambria concert is not just a show; it’s an experience.

“After hearing Coheed and Cambria, your entire outlook on music will change,” says Virginia native Dave Cheatwood.

Hailed as being one of the undisputed top live acts touring today, Coheed and Cambria has a unique style that sounds like an eclectic mix of… Coheed and Cambria!

Certainly, the music is influenced by the punk rock, heavy metal and epic jam band realms of music, but the end result of front man Claudio Sanchez’s creative output is something utterly unique, and essentially beyond his contemporaries today.

While songs like “The Suffering” and “Devil in Jersey City” prove they can stand with the best of standard pop rock fare, these tracks are relatively rare in the band’s live repertoire and general song writing, and certainly don’t capture the essence of the band’s genius.

The music can, in the space of a single track, range from the most deliriously optimistic pop sound to furious, epic rock and roll.

A shortcut to their best, most outrageous walls of sound can be found by listening to the eight-minute “In Keeping the Silent Secrets of the Earth 3,” in 2005’s “Welcome Home,” or in Led Zeppelin-esque show-stopper “The Final Cut.”

However, a listener with patience will discover still more brilliant musical treasures, often buried in minutes of intensely complex guitar runs and lyrics.

These minutes of buildup serve as a staging point for Coheed’s best, most powerful and most outright beautiful orchestration.

Case in point is fan favorite “The Crowing.”

To the unsuspecting listener, the first nearly four minutes of the song sound only average, reminiscent of the gradual gathering of energy found in Tool compositions, but with an infinitely better payoff.

Because when the fourth minute of “The Crowing” unleashes, it blows everything you ever thought you knew about music out the window.

Even hearing it for the 100th time will launch you from your seat; in a car you will bust the speed limit, but live – live is like hearing it for the first time all over again. Live lights your soul on fire!

So why, if Coheed is truly this good, has the band not caught fire earlier?

The first reason is Claudio Sanchez himself, and his unique vocals.

Blessed with perfect pitch and a five-octave singing range, Sanchez more often than not raises his voice to pitches rarely heard, and even more rarely heard in tune by male singers.

Often, people are put off by his singing because it differs from today’s norm.

It is, after-all, as high pitched (though in far better tune and tenor) as New Found Glory’s vocals.

Ironically, it is this very voice that both distances him from universal approval and makes him (coupled with Hendrix-quality guitar playing) one of the undisputed best musicians today.

Another factor is that in an age where Gwen Stephani and 311 hold dominant positions in popular music, the average consumer is not necessarily interested in ferociously competent musicianship, only in easy-listening beats that will fall into the background of whatever else they are doing.

Coheed and Cambria does not fit this bill. The band has far, far too much happening musically to fade into the background.