Though rock and roll doesn't end at the Id, it was undeniably born there. From its first breaths, when Little Richard and Elvis Presley thrust their groins upon a speechless world, rock and roll has spoken desire. These men were in our living rooms screaming for our daughters, for God's sake. They were acknowledging natural instinct, messy need, and raw biology like no other music ever had before, consequence be damned.

Enter the Ego. If the Id is desire, then the Ego is reason, or intellect; it solves problems. It was The Beatles who brought Ego to the rock and roll animal. They sculpted the primitive rock of desire into a statement, a compass to help the organism find what it screamed for:

All You Need Is Love.

Love is all you need. I mean, forget 30-speed blenders and golf bags with wheels, because here's the full package. It's hard to argue with innocence, and suddenly, rock and roll was a promising young child on two sturdy feet.

Enter the real world, where authority figures (Mom, Dad, Sister Mary) mete out reward and punishment based on a set of rules. Before we're seven years old, typically, we've learned how to stay out of trouble, and sweet-talk a trip to the toy store now and again. That's the Superego, the seed of conscience.

Being a problem child, it wasn't long before rock and roll decided the rules (black people fire-hosed for speaking their minds, little girls napalmed for no reason at all) didn't make much sense, so he borrowed some new rules from big sister Folk, plugged them in, and gave them a pair of balls. Bob Dylan, as much as anyone else, came to embody rock and roll's post-adolescent Superego, its developing and independent sense of right and wrong and the uncertainties of both: the answer is blowing in the wind.

And so, in fifteen short years, the gape-mouthed infant had matured into a free-thinking being.

Now, in fairness, I seriously doubt that I'm the first person to make this connection, so I extend apologies to anyone I've unknowingly bitten. I'd also like to confess that I'm full of shit, which is to say that if rock and roll could talk, it would laugh out loud at such acrobatic analogies.

But there's a reason why, for all of his desire, people grew bored of Elvis Presley's stagnant yearning. There's a reason why, for all of their brainpower, computers won't ever write a song that touches us. And there's a reason why, for all its good intentions, morality-soaked Issue Rock leaves us cold as ice.

Rock and roll, when it's good, is part desire, part reason, and part conscience - balls, brains, and soul. In short, and with a tip of the hat to the good Doctor, it's us.

After Widespread Panic delivered a freakishly powerful first set on Halloween night, a friendly Spreadhead in front of us spun around and caught my shit-eating grin. "See, man," he said, "that's why I love Panic. Phish is for the mind, but Panic is for the soul."

I didn't say anything. To be fair, his is a common view, and I held it too until I asked myself why I kept finding a tear in my eye during songs like "Divided Sky," "Slave to the Traffic Light," and "Reba." And what I realized is that while the brains in Phish music shines from the Byzantine lyrics and song structures, the soul in Phish's music is a slice under the scaley surface. It's alternately nestled in the quiet moments, simmering, then screaming from the peak of a glorious "Harry Hood" jam. It's there, defying explanation, marveling at life.

It'd be an equal slight to accuse Widespread Panic of mindless soul. From the intricacies of songs like "Conrad the Caterpillar" and "Impossible" to the placid philosophies of "Pleas," Panic's music radiates cool intelligence alongside its fiery urgency.

The "versus" debates I see too often on the internet -- Phish vs. Panic! Dead vs. Phish! -- baffle me. I've said it before: this isn't the NFL, and unless two teams are playing on the same night, you don't have to pick. Just as the Id-drenched FIGHT CLUB, the wildly intelligent MATRIX, and the soulful AMERICAN BEAUTY take radically different paths to celebrating the Self, there are infinite permutations for musicians to say the same thing.

The journey is the reward, and there are so many worthy journeys left to take.

During the second set on Halloween, as Widespread Panic tore The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" to tiny ribbons, that guy in front of me turned around again and just smiled. He didn't have to say anything, because I knew what he was thinking.

God, I love rock and roll.