Biggest All-Time (Rock/Pop, at Least) Music Rivalry Left Untouched: “Beatles vs. Stones,” maybe because too many readers would find the answer wrong no matter which author wrote which verdict. Finest Speaker of Truth: Richard Hell on “the Rolling Stones vs. the Velvet Underground,” where the irregular rock star and underrated scribe nails serious, subtle points heretofore undiscussed and to boot pulls back the curtain on that “front man” phenomenon (“The lead singer is a cunt. When a person needs to have that power—a godlike power enabling him to confer a feeling of immortality to his audience… that driven self-certainty will make him a creep.”) Trickiest Argument: Melissa Maerz on “Trent Reznor vs. Marilyn Manson,” where the shadings within Manson’s fakery ultimately trump Reznor’s not-too-carefully hidden naked urge for niceness. Could Have Had a Serious Point: Russ Meneve on “Bruce Springsteen vs. Bon Jovi”—Meneve comes right to the edge of convincing me the “Wanted Dead or Alive” guy trumps the “Born to Run” guy, but settles for the funnyman rhetoric marking his day job doing stand-up. Most Missed From a New Orleans Stance: Nobody essayed “MGs vs. Meters,” a.k.a. “You want your beats solid and irrefutably snappy as the gaps between freight cars glimpsed at the railroad crossing, or slippery enough to suggest, as you listen awestruck, cosmoses, multiverses, vast complex systems dreamt between pops on Zig’s snare?”