R.E.M. “Man-Sized Wreath”
In a raw rock opus that evokes R.E.M.’s early days, Michael Stipe rages against the nation’s leaders and followers alike.
[Review]

Panic at the Disco “Northern Downpour”
If the Beatles lived to wear guyliner, they might have written a gorgeous, harmony-laden ballad like this.
[Review]

Moby “Disco Lies”
Moby wisely returns to his clubland roots on this track, celebrating the classic Nineties house sound, complete with diva hollers.
[Review]
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Alicia Keys and Ne-Yo fill arenas with a co-headlining spree, Be Your Own Pet spearheads a headlining trek and Oasis and Ryan Adams plan a quartet of very tumultuous shows together. Full tour dates — including the four lucky cities to experience the Oasis/Adams madness — are after the jump.
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• Slash has hinted that even if singer Scott Weiland decides to leave Velvet Revolver, the rest of the band may stick together. “There will be a third album,” Slash said, “We don’t know how or when but the core four guys will continue.”
• Video game Grand Theft Auto IV will feature a link-up with the Amazon Music Store that will allow players to download tracks from the game’s 150-song soundtrack via an in-game mobile phone. While the soundtrack listing has not yet been released, DJ Green Lantern will have his own radio station.
• Ska legends the Specials are talking reunion almost thirty years after the original lineup disbanded. “We’re still trying to put dates together,” singer Terry Hall said. “I think it’s taken me 30 years to realize we could do it really well.”
• Remember that strange Bjork photo we showed you last week? Check out those images in motion in Bjork’s colorful new video for “Wanderlust.”

[Photo: Getty]

For a complete gallery of photos from this show, click here.

According to Ron Wood, the four core members of the Rolling Stones are little more than schoolboys, with only their descriptors shifting (Keith being a “thieving” schoolboy, while Mick is of the “sly” variety). But this comparison to co-eds on the red carpet at last night’s premiere of Shine a Light was apt, as the Martin Scorsese-helmed concert film about the Stones’ 2006 two-night stint at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre paints the band as more youthful than collectives half their age: Mick swivels his hips; Keith lunges during skyrocketing riffs; Ronnie flashes his ripped biceps; Charlie thwacks his kit insistently.

Jagger wouldn’t unveil his secret for maintaining his high onstage energy levels, but he did reveal it has nothing to do with a health regimen. “I didn’t go to the gym and I had no vitamins,” he said of the days on which the film was shot. But perhaps Wood ingested some B-12 before the premiere, as the guitarist practically skipped down the red carpet gushing with excitement, gamely jawing with anybody who wanted his time. He even grinned while musing about Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, offering the starlets the following nugget: “You gotta go through it to get to it.”

Fashion mogul and rabid Stones fan Tommy Hilfiger may have been even more exhilarated than Wood. (more…)

Hip-hop singles are top sellers at iTunes, but the genre’s albums sell poorly online — only seven percent of hip-hop full-lengths sold are downloaded, versus ten percent of albums overall. Still, indie-rap fans are a different breed. “They’re buying complete albums — they have favorites, they can name the classics,” says Jay Andreozzi, general manager of Amalgam Digital. Below, a few new sites catering to indie-rap consumers.

Amalgam Digital

This indie label/retailer (amalgamdigital.com), which sells unprotected MP3s, makes deals with artists to offer albums with exclusive bonus tracks and videos. They recently signed ex-Def Jam MC Joe Budden (above) and released his digital-only album, Mood Muzik 3.5, with a cappella versions of all the songs. The site is also packed with intel for hip-hop heads, including interviews with artists such as Wale and Ill Bill. (more…)

Every week Poison frontman Bret Michaels searches for a worthy life partner on Rock of Love 2, while Rock Daily searches for ways to reference “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” in our Rock Reality Show Recaps. Here’s our take on episode ten:

Sixty Minutes of Rockin’ Reality in One Sentence: The final four women vying for Bret Michaels’ heart travel to Las Vegas for two extremely un-Sin City-like dates: golf and a steak dinner. Fortunately, Heather comes along to stir up drama (and the drinks), and by the end of the trip nobody trusts Daisy, and Michaels thinks Destiney can’t manage her anger and Jessica can’t handle hard living. Bottom line: more tears and Oscar de la Hoya references than last year’s pukey jaunt. (more…)

Former Kinks frontman Ray Davies took the stage of San Francisco’s soon-to-close Warfield Theatre Friday night with an aquamarine Fender guitar and launched into his self-descriptive “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.” This obscure 1966 B-side suggested that the first of his handful of rare solo shows would neither be focused solely on promoting the preeminent English songwriter’s new album Working Man’s Cafe nor dominated by the Kinks’ most familiar hits. Yet the crowd sang the chorus loudly without much prompting, a sure signal that this audience was comprised of serious Davies/Kinks fans, and that their hero knew just how to reach them.

Nearly every Kinks tune from Davies’ two sets — popular or otherwise — was met with a sing-along response that the unrepentant ham onstage was eager to encourage. “Where Have All the Good Times Gone,” “A Well Respected Man” and “Days” were all treated to arrangements that would prematurely stop and then build back up again in order to give the crowd a chance to clearly hear itself and feel the power of its collective voice. (more…)

For a complete gallery of photos from this show, click here.

Normally a preppy college town baked in desert heat, Tempe, Arizona was bathed in darkness Friday night thanks to the black-clad denizens who descended upon Tempe Beach Park for My Chemical Romance’s tour kickoff. The band eschewed their black-and-white Black Parade uniforms for casual street clothing and tore through a ninety-minute set that focused primarily on 2006’s The Black Parade. However, the New Jersey-based band, playing as part of the two-day Circle K Tempe Music Festival, went back to their 2004 breakthrough album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge for its opening and closing numbers: impassioned versions of breakout hits “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena,” respectively.

Frontman Gerard Way gains a little more confidence with each passing tour, and for this show he channeled the spirit of Mick Jagger: shimmying across the stage, stopping to wiggle his hips on a catwalk that projected into the mosh pit. During “This Is How I Disappear,” his bassist brother Mikey Way (wearing a fantastic T-shirt that announced, “Mikey Fuckin Way”) violently shook his head as Gerard encouraged the audience to raise their right hands. (more…)

Leona Lewis is reportedly poised to sign a record $100 million deal that will encompass albums and live performances, the U.K.’s Daily Star reports. According to sources, competing record labels could present the deal to her as early as this Thursday, which will effectively tear up the current $9 million, five-album deal she signed with Clive Davis’ J Records last year. Lewis, a former winner of The X Factor (an American Idol-esque show in the UK) and a current Rolling Stone Artist to Watch, became the first British singer since 1987 to top the Billboard Top 200 singles chart when her worldwide hit “Bleeding Love” reached number one last week, thanks in part to an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show. If the rumors of this new deal are true, the dollar amount would trump the current record-holding $80 million deal Madonna signed with Live Nation last year.

Related Stories

• Artist To Watch: Leona Lewis
• Clive Davis’ Biggest Hits: The Legendary Record Man With His Famous Artists
• Madonna Deal Done: Material Mom Signs With Live Nation

[Photo: Getty]

• Wolfgang Van Halen told People his dad, Van Halen guitarist Eddie Van Halen, is “doing great — seriously.” He also voiced his excitement about getting back on the road next month, starting with a just-added April 19th gig in Las Vegas.
• According to rumor care a New York DJ, AC/DC are reportedly gearing up for a farewell tour following the completion of an album later this year.
• Mos Def has joined the cast of Cadillac Records, the film based on iconic Chicago label Chess Records. He’ll play Chuck Berry in the film.
• The indie film soundtrack that could, Juno, will have a sequel on iTunes next Tuesday, featuring a track by the film’s star, Ellen Page. Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs will become available on other digital music stores May 13th, but no plans have been set for a CD release.

[Photo: Getty]

In a move sure to have a huge ripple effect in the music industry, worldwide concert promoter LiveNation announced this morning that they have agreed to a twelve year deal with U2. Unlike their contract with Madonna, the U2 deal only includes concert promotion, merchandising and the band’s website (U2 album distribution and publishing will still be handled by Universal Music Group, at least for the time being). The contract has not yet officially been signed and no dollar amount was named. Regarding the deal with the concert giant (who have handled most every U2 tour for the past two decades), Bono said “We’ve been dating for over twenty years now, it’s about time we tied the knot.”

[Photo: Getty]

• If Chinese Democracy does ever appear, we’ll all have Dr. Pepper to thank. The soda company offered free pop if Axl Rose ever released his long-awaited epic, which prompted a “thank you” from the reclusive Rose. Then, Axl signed with an elite management team, and even Slash was talking reunion. Next week, we hope Pizza Hut endorses a new Talking Heads tour.
• Speaking of soda, the Smashing Pumpkins sued Virgin Records over a Pepsi promotion, giving Billy Corgan the perfect podium to lash out at record labels and talk the future of music. Billy Bragg also spoke to RS about the industry’s future and Body of War.
• That whole “Diddy was responsible for shooting Tupac in ‘94″ story turned out to be a farce as the L.A. Times got rick-rolled by an imprisoned con artist with mad forgery skills. At least the Times apologized.
• We weren’t chained to our cubicles this week as we went backstage with Justice, sat front row at the Jay-Z/Mary J. Blige tour opener, hung out with Hawthorne Heights and prognosticated with Def Leppard.
• Over in the Capri Lounge, the Rolling Stone editors talked about the possible reunion of the comedy troupe The State, compared Isiah Thomas’ Knicks to George Bush’s presidency, tried to bring Tag Team back again and got an inside look at the glamourous day-to-day life of a Rolling Stone intern.

Though Scott Weiland and Slash seemed to have a disagreement over whether or not their band would be staying together this week, Velvet Revolver continued to tear up stages in Europe with their brand of sleazy, sexy rock and roll. For more of this week’s news in pictures, including the Jonas Brothers‘ visit to the White House, click here.

Jack White and Brendon Benson shocked everyone on Tuesday when they released the second album from their band the Raconteurs after announcing its existence just one week ago. The Rolling Stone review will appear in next week’s issue, but Rock Daily has the full text now. Click here for the review of Consolers of the Lonely, which Melissa Maerz says “comes together like a blissfully stoned conversation between White and Benson about their favorite bands: Led Zeppelin, the Who, Badfinger.”

Last weekend, Billy Bragg wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about his quest to redefine how musicians do business when it comes to royalties. Yesterday he spoke to Rock Daily about his vision for the future of business and music, while also touching on the problems of patriotism and the role of record labels. For the complete interview, click here.