Michael Jackson’s random crap has, much like the pop star himself, been biding its time in Las Vegas since late last year, arriving in Sin City by way of a bizarre and circuitous path that included courts and controversy. Jackson no longer owns the boxes of clothing, documents, pictures and toys that are being auctioned off at the Hard Rock Hotel, but a legion of fans were lined up early to see this mountain of memorabilia from the Gloved One’s past. Nineteen-year-old Rachel Regner came from all the way from Texas just to witness the stash firsthand, and was there when the doors opened. “I would never buy any of this,” she says. “It belongs to Michael.” Right or wrong, everything from Jackson’s MTV Moonman for “We Are the World” to his gold record for Off the Wall were up for grabs. But these were the highlights — many of the items for sale were not nearly so glamorous. Below, an exclusive report back in time through of the weirdest reign in the kingdom of pop. (more…)

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, perhaps the most written-about, celebrated, feted, honored and generally praised album of all time. Lord knows we’ve written about it enough (among other things, we put it at Number One on our list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). But we’re not sure that we’ve heard from you. So here’s your chance: Submit your own review and correct forty years of reviews by critics who just didn’t get it. Not like you get it. Show us.

Those of you adept at navigating the internet’s seedy file sharing sites may find the entirety of the White Stripes new album Icky Thump online. The leak appears to have sprung when DJ Electra at Chicago’s Q101 radio station played the thing in its entirety and it was instantly bootlegged by resourceful listeners. This really, really pissed off band frontman Jack White, who apparently called the station from Spain, scolded Electra and asked her if she was sorry for what she’d done, which she isn’t. “Someone gave us a copy of a record that we were really excited to play,” the shaken DJ wrote on her blog. “The whole experience was an hour-long lovefest for him and his band.” White’s outburst may have forced Electra to consume massive quantities of room temperature Bud Light, but her sacrifice was for a good cause as many of you are no doubt currently treating your ears to the melodious sounds of some rocking bagpipes.

• Prince has declined an invitation from Michael Jackson to rule arenas the world over on a joint tour. We imagine that after complaining about Prince’s snub at the Sultan of Brunei’s son’s birthday party (which netted The King of Pop $10 million just for showing up), a vindictive Jackson swore he’d spend the appearance fee on buying the rights to Prince’s music.
• Graduation is coming a half-semester early as Kanye West has pushed the release date for his forthcoming album up to late August.
• Listen to clips from Clive Davis’ favorite album of 2007, Kelly Clarkson’s My December.
• Marilyn Manson has been reading way too much UsWeekly (which is a good thing…) When he’s not out gallivanting with his 18-year old girlfriend and carrying around pictures of Justin Timberlake, Manson likes to discuss that time Lindsay Lohan showed him her “fire crotch.”
• MTV Unplugged is being reborn. The concert series that brought us iconic acoustic performances by Nirvana and Bob Dylan back when MTV still showed music programming is back with acts like… Bon Jovi and Kenny Chesney. As mentioned earlier, The Police will tape one as well.
• Just in case you didn’t hear him the first million times, Johnny Marr reiterates that there is no way The Smiths are reuniting.

They tried to make her tame her beehive, but she said, no, no, no! Amy Winehouse’s honey of a hive is the summer’s most influential rock & roll hairdo—check out your favorite sleazy punk rock bar, and you’ll find a half-dozen plain Janes who learned from Amy they can quadruple their starability by ratting their hair into something fierce. (And the Winehousian 1940s party dress seems to be this summer’s gym shorts/cowboy boots combo, although we’ll see when the weather heats up.) You can’t beat the beehive for glam punkette attitude. So in honor of Amy, here are the top five rock & roll beehive anthems. Yes, yes, yes!

1. The Ronettes, “Be My Baby” — Amy learned it all from these New York dolls. In 1964, Ronnie Spector’s hair was taller and meaner and scarier than all four Shangri-La’s combined, plus the drummer from the Honeycombs. You just know her rat-tail comb was a switchblade.
2. Prince, “Sexuality” — Have you listened to “Sexuality” today? If not, you are wasting your summer and it isn’t even June yet. “Stand up! Organize!,” the Joe Strummer of orgasms commands his army of hair-hoppers. Revolution hair style now!
3. The B-52’s, “52 Girls” — Kate and Cindy, glamorous girls of the U-S-A, rise out of the South to give the world a bouffant headbutt.
4. Dusty Springfield, “I Only Wanna Be With You” — Born Mary Margaret O’Brien (same as my grandmother, just switch the first two names), the Dust Sister proved Irish girls knew the score: if the hair is big enough, you can hide a lot of sin under it.
5. Mari Wilson, “Just What I Always Wanted” — Beloved by new wavers for her fab 1983 album Showpeople, Mari was an MTV cocktail princess who sang sticky Aqua-Net ballads like “Glamourpuss” and “Cry Me A River.” Better than Tracey Ullman, not as good as Alison Moyet, about even with Voice Of The Beehive. Finally, respect to Priscilla Presley — she never made her own music, but her barely-legal teen hive was hot enough to rekindle Elvis’ sex drive years after it seemed dead, inspiring the King to rise for the raging-boner blues of The ’68 Comeback, Tiger Man and From Elvis In Memphis. As Amy Winehouse knows, one taste of honey makes you want the whole beehive.

*Come back tomorrow for exclusive photos and excerpts from our Amy Winehouse cover story by Jenny Eliscu.

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY: Dr. Louis Pena, the medical examiner who ruled Lana Clarkson’s death a homicide, was back on the stand again, this time under cross-examination by the defense. Spector’s lawyers attempted to poke holes in Pena’s homicide theory, insisting that Pena is not a forensic expert. They also said that the forensic experts Pena did refer to in his testimony are now witnesses supporting the defense’s suicide theory. The judge was forced to order multiple recesses due to the gruesome content of the testimony.
IS THIS GOOD OR BAD FOR PHIL: Good and bad. The defense scored points by showing Clarkson had no Spector DNA on her hands (an impossibility if she fought him off) and by getting Pena to admit he can’t definitely prove who was holding the gun. But the defense is still straining to prove convincingly that Clarkson’s death was a suicide.
HAIR AND WARDROBE UPDATE: Spector wore a large-collared gray shirt under a sleek black suit jacket; his hair was still sculpted into that Day-Glo bob.

• Now that they’ve begun their tour, the Police are apparently already making plans to add to their current schedule with a performance at MTV Unplugged. Rumor has it that the show will take place in Miami on July 13th.
• Michael Jackson already owns a big chunk of The Beatles copyright, and with his purchase of Famous Music LLC from Viacom Jackson has acquired the rights to Eminem’s “Without Me” and “The Real Slim Shady,” in addition to songs by Shakira, Beck and Bjork.
• Sony BMG’s new film development devision is producing a movie about the lives of legendary Chicago bluesmen Muddy Waters, Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf. The film will be called Cadillac Records and will be directed by Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God,) who also wrote the script. Sony BMG’s expects to cast some of its artists in major roles.
• This Sunday a collection of guitarists of all ages and levels, will attempt to break the record for the world’s largest ensemble performance of the same song. The event will be hosted by a Kansas City radio station and will involve an estimated 2,000 people playing Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” all at once.

UPDATE: Some tech bloggers have noticed that DRM-free tracks downloaded from iTunes Plus are encoded with the buyer’s user name — just like the old DRM tracks — which would allow Apple to track down people who upload the songs to file-sharing sites. You can still copy the new tracks onto any device, burn them onto a CD, use them for any personal use — which was the point of stripping DRM, right? And if you really want to, the tracks’ user info can easily be stripped by coverting them to mp3 — which someone should tell Bob Lefsetz before he has a stroke.

This morning, Apple launched iTunes Plus, a new version of the music-download service that sells higher-quality tracks without copy protection for the premium price of $1.29. So far, only EMI and a few small indie labels have made a deal with Apple to sell songs without DRM (digital rights management), but since the EMI’s catalog includes Pink Floyd, Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, and Coldplay, it’s a good start. (The Beatles and Radiohead are also on EMI, but neither has agreed to sell music on iTunes). So, how is it? (more…)

Long Island emo outfit Brand New delivered an excellent conclusion to their run of hometown gigs with last night’s performance at New York’s Gramercy Theater. The show was the last in a string of four shows the band played at small clubs around the city, and were a far cry from the group’s appearance at the mammoth Bamboozle festival earlier this month, where they played before a literal cast of thousands. And so ended the emo boys’ North American tour.

The band’s live show gives equal weight to their loud, distorted numbers and their whispery acoustic tunes — a rarity in a genre that’s all too often either-or. While their repertoire includes more delicate acoustic guitar-driven numbers (”Play Crack The Sky”), Brand New’s sound — and success — is drawn from the songs that build up momentum to a perfectly executed explosion. When the moment arrives in songs like “Luca,” “Sowing Season (Yeah)” and “Degausser,” it is electric. (more…)

As you all know Amy Winehouse and her impressive beehive are on the cover of our current issue (on stands everywhere on Friday). Though you may not have your hands on the magazine yet, you probably know something about this spitfire, who recently got married and whose album Back to Black became the highest-charting U.S. debut ever by a British female. Our editors summed her up in one lonely cover line: “The Diva & Her Demons.” We challenge you to do us one better with your own snappy headline. Ready? Go!

WHO: Graphic design school drop-outs Matt Beringer (vox) and Scott Devendorf (bass) recruited Devendorf’s brother Bryan, plus fellow Ohio natives (and twin brothers) Aaron and Bryce Dessner to play music together after relocating separately from Cincinnati to Brooklyn in 1999. The fivesome started recording tunes on a lark, crafting orchestral anthems that drew sonic inspiration from Guided By Voices, The Smiths, The Replacements and Violent Femmes. Eight years and four albums later, the quintet has arrived, first with the release of 2005’s Alligator, an indie-rock blockbuster that sold more than 60K, and this month with the critically loved Boxer — a strings-bolstered collection of epic blue-collar yarns. Read a live review of the National’s NYC Bowery Ballroom show here.

HEAR IT NOW: Feast your ears on boozy ballads like “Fake Empire” and “Mistaken For Strangers” on their Myspace page.

>> Watch every episode of our weekly New Breaking Artist video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Wednesday, an exclusive video profile of an emerging artist will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

• As promised, here’s Amy Winehouse gracing the cover of the next issue of Rolling Stone, on stands nationwide this Friday. Come back tomorrow to get all the smoking details from our definitive profile.
• Billboard Roundup: Linkin Park’s one week reign has ended at the hands of Maroon 5’s It Won’t Be Soon Before Long, which debuted at #1 with 429,000 copies sold. Linkin Park came in at #2 despite a 68 percent sales decline for their album Minutes to Midnight. Three more debuts made the Top 5: Ozzy Osbourne’s Black Rain, U.S.D.A.’s Cold Summer and The Used’s Lies For The Liars. Maroon 5 also set the record with most digital album sales in one week with 102,000, beating the record Linkin Park set last week. Despite the big debuts, album sales were still down 16.7 percent over the same week last year.
• Not satisfied with already owning The Beatles, Michael Jackson has staked his claim in both Shakira and Eminem.
• Katherine McPhee feels she’s not being allowed American Idol visitation rights.
• Check out this video of the Arcade Fire covering indie-favorites Clinic’s “Distortions.”
• Babyshambles are hard at work in a London studio, working on their next album. Maybe that’s why Pete Doherty didn’t show up for a DJ gig last night.

WHAT HAPPENED YESTERDAY: Dr. Louis Pena, the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Lana Clarkson, testified, making jurors gag (really) with step-by-step desciption of how he extracted Clarkson’s bullet-grazed tongue from her mouth. He then explained why, in his opinion, the gun was shoved into Clarkson’s mouth in a violent way; described resistance bruises on Clarkson’s forearms and wrists; and testified that the gun in question had been wiped clean.
IS THIS GOOD OR BAD FOR PHIL? Bad. Dr. Pena’s testimony makes it hard for the jury to buy Clarkson’s death as a suicide
HAIR AND WARDROBE UPDATE: Phil was dressed in a funereal black ensemble, which brought out the fluorescent glow in his blonde pageboy.

We love Ryan Adams because he’s a consummate rock geek trapped in the life of an alt-country troubadour. The guy has released eight albums (not including Easy Tiger, out June 26th) filled with delicate, lonesome country ballads and down home jams but when he’s rambling wasted at four in the morning on his blog or fucking around after hours in the recording studio, it’s his love for hardcore, punk, and metal that emerges. Check out the deep cuts on this list of Adams’ top five hair metal songs, which he has posted on his MySpace page. Here are his picks:

1. Kix - “Don’t Close Your Eyes”
2. Slaughter - “Fly To The Angels”
3. Dokken - “Dream Warriors” (From the Nightmare on Elm Street III Motion Picture Soundtrack)
4. Vinne Vincent Invsion [sic] (With Mark Slaughter of Slaughter on Vocals) - “Love Kills”
5. Ozzy Osbourne - “Over The Mountain”

We’d nominate Cinderella’s “Shelter Me” or White Snake’s “Here I Go Again.” Any additions?
Also, make a note of Adams’ recently announced June tour dates.

Reports surfaced yesterday that eternally young-ish Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler was contemplating leaving the band because his bandmates — sniff — “don’t appreciate him.” According to one of those shifty-eyed anonymous sources we all love so much, Tyler’s daughter Liv was overheard saying that her pops was fixin’ to split due to his unfair treatment. Not so, counters Liv’s rep Steven Huvane. (We knew Joe Perry was a gentle soul!) Huvane told the Post, “Liv never said anything about her father leaving Aerosmith.” So boo-yaa.