If you readers had your way, your unsung rock heroes would not stay underappreciated for long. We got a veritable shitload of comments in response to this weekend’s rock list: Most Underappreciated Artists. Now it’s time for us to unveil our official list. With your help we’ve come up with Rolling Stone’s 25 most underappreciated artists ever. Enjoy.

1. Tom Waits
2. The Replacements
3. Cheap Trick
4. Sonic Youth
5. Warren Zevon
6. Big Star
7. The Pharcyde
8. Roxy Music
9. Talking Heads
10. Bob Seger
11. Fugazi
13. The Cramps
14. The New York Dolls
15. The Band
16. The Cars
17. Pogues
18. Alice Cooper
19. Dinosaur Jr
20. Sleater-Kinney
21. Husker Du
22. Devo
23. Wilco
24. Tom Petty
25. Ween

On Friday April 27th, John Mellencamp performed an intense hour-long set at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, DC — one day after visiting with wounded soldiers. The facility has been at the center of a political storm since this past February, when the Washington Post revealed that many of the patients were receiving sub-par care in severely deteriorated buildings. Many of the soldiers were happy to see Mellencamp (one even played guitar while Mellencamp sang “Pink Houses”). Some maintained it was hypocritical of the singer to visit, citing his staunch anti-war position. “I say if you’re not supporting what we’re doing you’re not supporting me,” said Mike Shaw, a combat engineer from Corona, California who broke his back in Iraq last month when he was hit by an IED.

Originally Mellencamp was scheduled to perform two songs with Joan Baez and be interviewed by Dan Rather, but Walter Reed officials refused to give Baez or Rather clearance. In an e-mailed statement, Walter Reed spokeperson Steve Sanderson said the requests for Baez and Rather were submitted just two days prior to the concert. “These additional requirements were not in the agreement/contract and would have required a modification,” he said. Mellencamp said that he was heartened to have met with and entertained the soldiers, but was extremely disappointed Baez and Rather weren’t allowed to join him. “Joan had her plane ticket and hotel booked,” he told us. “They didn’t give me a reason why she couldn’t come. We asked why and they said, ‘She can’t fit here, period.’ Joan Baez is a sixty-six year old woman and the sweetest gal in the world.”

For our fortieth anniversary, the editors of Rolling Stone have interviewed twenty artists and leaders who helped shape our time. For another two weeks, we’ll be debuting the final ten installments of exclusive audio clips from the Q&As, giving you unparalleled access to some of the most important personalities in history.

Today we present the woman who helped shatter rock’s glass ceiling, punk’s priestess and poet laureate Patti Smith. Smith’s career has seen her writing Horses, befriending every cool New Yorker ever and, this year, being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In fact, she’s the 47th Greatest Artist of All Time, according to us. Being interviewed by Rolling Stone’s resident rock expert David Fricke in our Fortieth Anniversary Issue, Smith opens up about being born in the same year (1946) as George W. Bush, why she and Bush Jr. are so different ideologically and the days leading up to Horses, which included a gig writing for Rolling Stone. For the entire profile, check out the issue on stands now, and for a sneak peak, check out these audio excerpts: (more…)

“Everyone knows you can’t do anything with an English degree,” Lou Reed told me when asked to reminisce about his days as an undergrad at New York’s Syracuse University. Perhaps Reed, Syracuse Class of 1964, is the exception to the rule: Thursday night at the W Hotel in New York City, he was honored by his alma mater with the George Arents Pioneer Medal for Excellence in the Arts. Rock stars that included Bono — who called Reed New York’s equivalent of Dublin’s James Joyce — and David Bowie, trustees and pointy-headed academics got together and chanted “Loooooooouuuuu!” and the guest of honor, not exactly an emo man, was genuinely moved.

“Who would have thought it would have come to this?” Reed asked from the podium as the university announced the Lou Reed/Delmore Schwartz scholarship for creative writing undergraduates, worth $8,000 a year for four years. Schwartz, the New York poet who penned the 1937 short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilty,” taught at Syracuse from 1962 until his death in 1966. His name is institutionally tethered to Reed, a former student who immortalized his professor in The Velvet Underground’s song “European Son.”

As an English professor at Syracuse who put Reed up for an honorary doctorate, I’m in a unique position to appreciate how the “Sweet Jane” generation has assumed cultural power: Lou could very well become Dr. Reed. “Well, maybe I could teach a master class or something,” he said.

• Courtney Love has decided to sell most of Kurt’s belongings, then donate the proceeds to charity. “My daughter doesn’t need to inherit a giant…bag full of flannel…shirts,” Love said. “A sweater, a guitar and the lyrics to ‘(Smells Like) Teen Spirit’ — that’s what my daughter gets. And the rest of it we’ll just…sell.” Though a date has yet to be set for the auction, Love claims that her decision is widely supported. “Everyone’s been positive and behind me on it,” she said.
• Green Day’s take on John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” will be released through iTunes tomorrow, May 1st. All proceeds go to help people affected by the situation in Darfur.
• The Foo Fighters are hard at work on a new album “We’ve been in the studio for the past month and a half, and we’ve got about another month to go. We’ve been recording with our friend Gil Norton,” Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl said. “He worked on our second record (The Colour and the Shape), he’s a good guy and he makes amazing albums. So we’re making a really big powerful record, which I’m very excited about…I can’t wait to jump on stage and do this stuff, it’s gonna be great.” Grohl also said that the record “sounds like a Foo Fighters album, but it’s definitely moving in a few different directions.”
• Legendary Chicago-based indie label Touch & Go will launch an online store sometime this summer, Billboard reports. The site will make accessible both Touch & Go’s current and catalog roster, plus serve as the only source for downloads of songs by any of Steve Albini’s bands Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac. The site will carry music in the non-DRM MP3 format, and will sell singles and full albums for the familiar 99 cents per song/$9.99 per album price. Nice.
• Check out one of Interpol’s new tunes “The Heinrich Maneuver.” It sounds … like a new Interpol tune. They are reliable that way and it’s comforting.
• Apparently Britney has already cancelled her dubious-sounding comeback gigs, scheduled for later this week. That girl is such a tease.
• Participate in a feverish debate over whether Madonna’s new look makes her look old or chic.

For once, ruthless German efficiency is used to save lives, as 873 people are evacuated off a massive Airbus A-380 in a mere 77 seconds. Don’t worry, it’s only a test…

This whole Jesus and Mary Chain reuniting thing is going even better than expected. Not only is the band reportedly not sucking live at all, but they’ve recruited both Giant Drag’s potty-mouthed punk rock Lolita Annie Hardy and aspiring crooner Scarlett Johansson to sing “Just Like Honey” with them. (Hardy joined the band during a pre-Coachella warmup gig, while Johansson performed with the Reid brothers at Coachella). You are with the Reid brothers tonight. They’re making up their list of prospective indie credible princesses with whom they’d like to next sing. As usual they can’t agree. You step in as the rock collaboration moderator. Who goes on the list and what song do they perform with the band? (We’re voting for Feist or Becky Stark from Lavender Diamond.)

“Good evening,” Zack de la Rocha said on Sunday night, looking out at the 50,000 or so people gathered in front of Coachella’s main stage. “We are Rage Against the Machine, from Los Angeles, California.” With that, guitarist Tom Morello — wearing a baseball band emblazoned with the word “Unite” — kicked into the winding riff of “Testify,” beginning Rage’s first concert in seven years. De La Rocha rapped with so much force that his microphone distorted as he enunciated every word of the lyrics, which were written about the first Gulf War but sounded eerily current: “Baghdad is burning… The war is right outside your door!”

There were signs that this reunion may be fragile: the band didn’t display much affection for each other on stage, with Morello and de la Rocha never quite making eye contact. (more…)

• Britney Spears was supposed to play a couple of secret shows last week but canceled. Her big secret show-fueled comeback is now on for this week. Rumor has it that the pop star and her various wigs will be performing the House of Blues in San Diego on May 1st, Anaheim on May 2nd, as well as the House of Blues on Sunset Strip on May 3rd all under the name The M + M’s.”
  
• Mick Jagger could use your help discerning an interesting medium through which to tell his life story. Jagger reportedly started working on his autobiography, but stopped because he found the process too boring. “I was offered a large sum of money, which I found tempting and I started writing,” the rocker told Rolling Stone in the most recent issue. “I was sitting around talking endlessly about the past, living in it. And I found it rather dull. I’d love to find another form to do it in. A book form, but not in the accepted showbiz memoir.” Suggestions?
• Paul McCartney next studio album, Memory Almost Full, contains 13-tracks and will hit stores June 5 via Starbucks’ new Hear Music label. It will also be the first McCartney album to ever be available digitally.
• A new Jefferson Airplane biography, Take Me To A Circus Tent, sounds like it’ll be the perfect beach read for this summer, which marks the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Peace out.