rock and roll needs to come back

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Interesting timing on reading this... my playlist just cycled over and started with Eagles of Death Metal - I Only Want You. That, along with with 'Midnight Creeper' and 'Wastin' My Time' remind me of Country Joe & the Fish meets... Aerosmith-sort-of.
A lot of their other stuff is good as well, but those 3 stand out to me as akin to what you're looking for.

Here's what it is: LSD needs to come back and be in style in a big way. If that happens you'll start hearing some really good rock again. Until then though don't expect much.

First off, rock music is NOT dead. Just because the radio is infiltrated with the hummable chori of Southern Rap and the nauseous vocal stylings of Gwen Stefani-style pop, it does not mean that rock has suffered an irrepairable death.

Rock has simply crawled into a different niche. There is an immensely large amount of creativity going on in the American and Canadian indie rock scenes right at this moment.

Seein you're into classic rock, I'll gove you some '90s bands that might help you pave the way for further exploration of today's rock music:

Pavement - Pavement is god. Nothing more needs to be said. Go get Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain now... what, you're just staring there...?

The Flaming Lips - Their music has shifted in the past fifteen years from very quirky psychedelic pop to... uh... more serious psychedelic pop that borders on electronic. The metaphysical stuff that dots their releases may turn you off, though. At War With The Mystics, which was put out earlier in 2006, may be too electronic for you, but the ghost of Pink Floyd floats through the release.

Sonic Youth - When they've not gone all avant-garde on us, Sonic Youth delivers some great guitar rock. Check out their '90s classic Daydream Nation or their recent Rather Ripped; the latter contains tighter pop songwriting, where Daydream Nation contains longer, proggier jams.

I saw someone recommended Dinosaur Jr. here:

I strongly second that. You might also be interested in Lou Barlow's later band Sebadoh. Barlow was the bassist for Dinosaur Jr before he came into some sort of conflict with vocalist J Mascis... which split him from the band. Sebadoh's music is split between sappier, acoustic songs and psychedelic metal (complete with enough demonic screaming).

Some more recent bands that you might also like:
Spoon (Get Gimme Fiction)
Deerhoof (Get The Runners Four)
Yo La Tengo (Get I am not afraid of you and I will beat your Ass)
Broken Social Scene (get the eponymous record)
Tapes 'n' Tapes (Get The Loon - it's the only one they've got)
Some of these bands aren't terribly mainstream - Spoon is very inviting and accessible, as is Yo La Tengo, but the Broken Social Scene might alienate you unless you like either post-rock records or records that challenge genre boundaries already, and Deerhoof might confuse you the first few listens (the vocal can be annoying, otherwise it's pure pop music).

-aaron

I'd like to reiterate again that Rock n Roll isn't dead, it's just on vaction from the USA. Turbonegro from Norway have put out some great stuff in the past, though everything that I've heard since their reunion seems to have cheesy pop-punk harmony vocals for the chorus lines.


Japan on the other hand seems to consistently put out decent Rock n Roll.
Boris has a real heavy 70's British stoner rock sound, though they have their more ambient albums as well.

All the stuff that I've heard from Eternal Elysium has a heavy and bluesy 70's British Stoner sound as well.

Melt Banana play Noisy Spazzcore with piercing female vocals. --I refer to them as sounding like The Chipmunks playing Spazzcore for ADHD Muppets on Crack.

Guitar Wolf plays sloppy, loud and garagy Punk n Roll.

Boredoms basically traverse all Genres of Rock n Roll and invent their own genres only to then abandon them to create yet more genres. --Somewhat like the Japanese answer to Captain Beefheart, with updated technology.

Ruins play thrashy experimental stuff.

Shakuhachi Surprise are the Japanese answer to Arabonradar.

One of the problems is Major label record companies close collusion with Major Radio Networks like ClearChannel.