It’s not much of a secret that a healthy number of musicians are pulling for a certain Junior Senator from Illinois to get the Democratic Presidential nomination. As the continuing primary slug fest enters another week, we get a couple more concert/rallies in support of Barrack Obama. This time Arcade Fire and Chapel Hill’s own Superchunk will team up for a pair of shows in Greensboro and Carrboro, North Carolina, on May 1 and 2. Tickets are being distributed on a first come, first serve basis at some of the locations listed in this article.

The Obama campaign is also making a statewide push to encourage voters to take advantage of North Carolina’s first-ever One Stop Early Voting process, which allows voters who are not registered or who have never voted before to register and vote at the same place, on the same day, all at once. So make sure you go and exercise your right as an American. And that’s one to grow on.

If Rockin’ The Vote ain’t you thing, then maybe one of these tours will be for you:

• Here’s one for Ace: Silver Jews announce a European tour (begins: 05/07)
• Despite calling Phish “God-awful” in the latest issue of Spin, we still think you should go see the Black Keys (begins: 05/12)
• Los Lonely Boys and Los Lobos team up for the Brotherhood Tour (begins: 07/12)
• Get your lighters ready for Sister Christian, as Night Ranger celebrates their 25th anniversary (begins: 05/11)
• Dead Confederate bring their sludge-tastic rock to a town near you (begins: 05/23)
• Boy George will be playing his Culture Club hits and beyond (begins: 07/10)
• Indie-popsters Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are playing small clubs over the next month (begins: 04/25)

Finally, Ozzy Osbourne has ditched the touring metal-fest that carried his moniker if favor of reviving the single day Monsters Of Rock festival that was staple for over fifteen years. The all day fest will take place at the McMahon Stadium in Calgary on July 26th and will feature the likes of Judas Priest, Serj Tankian, Hatebreed, Shadows Fall and of course the Prince of Darkness himself.

When news surfaced of Live Nation’s ban on tailgating for some concerts at NJ’s PNC Bank Arts Center we thought we’d ask our resident cynical-curmudgeon Chilly Jackwater to weigh on in the issue, with what we hope will be more then a one-shot. So after months as a HT commenter, here’s Chilly:

[photo via pinkfloydz.com]

In the wake of news that Live Nation will crack down hard on tailgating at O.A.R., 311, and John Mayer shows this summer, we’ve come up with a few MORE ways that they could alienate their customers:

1. Banning residents of Chelsea from attending Madonna concerts
2. Prohibiting Hawaiian shirts at Jimmy Buffet shows
3. Announcing that Poison cannot play Every Rose Has Its Thorn this summer
4. Banning horn-rimmed glasses and facial hair at Arcade Fire shows
5. Prohibiting any use of cell phone cameras at Animal Collective concerts
6. Making the age limit at Umphrey’s McGee shows 30+
7. Making the age limit at Rolling Stones shows 20-
8. Enforcing a “Smooth Jazz Performances Only” edict at McCarren Pool

Here’s a tip for any of you who work in big business in ANY industry: At this point in time, following the example of record labels and the RIAA – which is EXACTLY what Live Nation is doing – is not exactly the recipe for success. Essentially Live Nation is taking away tailgating, a major aspect of the summer show-going experience, from a humongous group of customers who kinda sorta like that stuff: College-aged fans.

READ ON for more of Chilly’s warm feelings for Live Nation…

Roger Daltrey of the Who was quoted as saying, “the last thing the planet needs is a rock concert…the questions and the answers are so huge I don’t know what a rock concert’s ever going to do to help.” This week, LoC is going to examine music festivals and their impact on politics. No, I’m not talking about Bonnaroo, Woodstock, or the South Park Hippie Jam Fest of 2005…

I’d like us to take a look at festivals that are put on for the sole purpose of pushing an issue or supporting a specific cause. So here we go…

Last weekend the Green Apple Festival took place in eight cities across this country. The purpose of the Green Apple Festival is to “[present] a wide variety of organizations and educational displays on the theme of environmental awareness.” The event is also produced with the smallest carbon footprint as possible.

READ ON for more of this week’s Land of Confusion…

This has been a busy week for seeing our favorite acts perform on late night TV. On Wednesday night, Radiohead visited Late Night with Conan O’Brien via satellite. Thom and the boys played House of Cards, after taking a shot at President Bush.

Vampire Weekend also performed on Wednesday night, when they played the delicate Cape Cod Kwasaa Kwasaa with a full drum line on Jimmy Kimmel.

Let’s see what else we missed this week:

• Sly Stone tells the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot all his crazy secrets
• It’s clear the folks at Pitchfork can’t hide their disdain for the Biscuits
• We bet you’re familiar with some of Jim Parkinson’s memorable fonts
• The Clash’s Mick Jones wrote a song about Mr. “Don’t tase me, bro”
• Spinner speaks exclusively to Girl Talk’s Greg Gillis about his new album
• A reunited Jane’s Addiction kicked ass at the NME Awards in Los Angeles
• Neddy calls me a thief during another fantastic episode of Nedstalgia

Finally, we’ll end by pointing you in the direction of a free download from Nine Inch Nails. And the new track, Discipline, actually contains vocals. Woohoo!

Does anyone have any inside info on who Mike Gordon has picked to perform at his Magic Hat Summer Variety Show in Chicago? Care Bears on Fire?

[Thanks to The Inlaw for the tip]

• Previously on HT: Where’s Cactus? Being Heard, Blending In

Musicians aren’t usually known for having the best memories, so when they plan out which songs they want to play on a specific night they usually have their stage manager write down the setlist and tape it to the floor in front of each band member. Most of the time these stage setlists wind up in the hands of rabid fans after the gig, and other times they are lost forever to the garbage dump.

Recently scanned images of stage setlists from artists throughout nearly every genre have made it onto the ‘nets. Over the past few years photo and image search engines on the web have become much more sophisticated and include millions of new pictures each day. We spent all day yesterday using these search engines to find 60 stage setlists from our favorite acts. We’re gonna present 20 of these lists over three segments of the B List.

Here’s part one:

1. The Derek Trucks Band 06/24/07 Vancouver, BC:

[via Rock Music Daily]

Ross over at Rock Music Daily checked out the DTB at the Commodore Ballroom last summer and came back with the most beautiful stage setlist I’ve ever seen. Who has time to make something so visually stunning while on tour?

READ ON to check out stage setlists from U2, TLG, Springsteen, Cold War Kids, The Band, Arcade Fire, the Beastie Boys, Gov’t Mule, Metallica, Eric Clapton, Malkmus, Grace Potter, Kiss, GNR, LCD Soundsystem, and more….

As if we needed another reason to hate Yoko Ono, we’ve got another one to add to our list. The widow of the late John Lennon is looking to block World Wide, a consortium of Beatles collectors, from releasing the film 3 Days In The Life.

Clocking in at over two and a half hours long, the film is said to include scenes of Lennon smoking pot, writing songs and discussing putting LSD in President Richard Nixon’s tea. The film was culled from over nine hours of footage of Lennon and Ono shot weeks before The Beatles broke up by Ono’s ex-husband.

• Stereogum gives us the Premature Evaluation on MMJ’s Evil Urges
• Heather has a 30-song Coachella mix to get you ready for this weekend
• Cover time: Colin Meloy and Brit Daniels each tackle a Sam Cooke tune
  
• Learn how to make your own Judd Apatow movie in 5 Easy Steps
• Smoke On The Water tops the list of the Best Guitar Riff Of All Time
• Heart On A Stick started listing 53 Reasons To Hate Vampire Weekend

Finally, we let 4/20 pass without a cheap joke or thinly veiled drug reference – shame on us. Picking up the slack though was Coventry who celebrated the day with a ton of posts dedicated to all things 420, including a stellar mix of some memorable versions of 2001 from the Phab Phour. Nice work boys.

Since it looks like we’re finally in the clear after Ma Nature pinned Old Man Winter for a three count, it’s time to extend a warm welcome to the spring. We all have our sunny day favorites, like the Allman Brothers, Paul Simon, and of course the Tuff Gong, but nothing quite encapsulates the feeling of spring fever and festival season like some good old fashioned bluegrass music.

So, for this week’s Bust Outs, we have assembled a list of some cheerful, rollicking bust outs from some of Telluride’s finest offspring:

The Tony Furtado Band – 9/8/2001 – Stagger Lee

The key to being a fan of the pickin’ is to find the songs you love and then craft some good bluegrass daydreams while you listen. This remarkably original version of Stagger Lee is perfect for a ramble down the endless stretch of Highway 80 through Nebraska in your 18-wheeler. Get on your CB radio, call up your road buddy “Youngblood” for a smoky report (i.e., police check) and cruise off into the sun. The outlines of those long-awaited Rocky Mountains will arrive in no time.

READ ON for five more bluegrass bust outs…

Filmmaker Ang Lee has already showed us the softer side of cowboys with 2005′s Brokeback Mountain. For his next project, Taking Woodstock, Lee will return to a gay-centric story based on Eliot Tiber’s memoir. Here’s some info…

“Taking Woodstock” centers on the colorful life of a Greenwich Village-based interior designer and part-time Catskills hotel manager who headed the Bethel, N.Y., Chamber of Commerce. He issued the permit for the legendary 1969 concert on his neighbor Max Yasgur’s farm.

It is based on Elliot Tiber’s 2007 memoir “Taking Woodstock: A True Story of a Riot, a Concert, and a Life,” which he wrote with Tom Monte.

If you’re discussing the most taper-friendly non-jam band, you’re probably talking about the Smashing Pumpkins. When the Pumpkins got back together last summer they issued a clear declaration of our their open-source taping policy in which everyone is welcome to tape at SP shows in whatever capacity they see fit.

So it’s no surprise that the Pumpkins have teamed up with a fansite to start Livepumpkins.net, a site full of free audio, video and photos from the band’s career. Why can’t more bands be as fan friendly as the Smashing Pumpkins?

• Johnny Cash – 07/25/1964 SBD [via Double Parking]
• 12 Discs Worth of Woodstock Recordings [via T.U.B.E.]
• Drive-by Truckers – 03/27/2008 DAUD [Live Music Archive]
• The Beatles – The Lost Paris Tapes [via My Blog Too]
• Eddie Vedder Solo – 04/07/2008 DAUD [via T.U.B.E]
• A Belated 4:20 Mix [via Licorice Pizza]
• Queen Bootleg Mega Post [via Music-hole]

Does NYCTaper ever rest? Just this week he shared his fantastic recordings of mum and Hot Buttered Rum. Check out the Hot Buttered Rum show for a scintillating sit-in from TLG’s Trevor Garrod on Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.

You don’t have to wait until tomorrow’s press conference to find out what the Grateful Dead will announce tomorrow. The members of the band have struck a deal with UC – Santa Cruz for the university to house 30 years worth of correspondence, business records, merchandise and memorabilia, including stage backdrops, a large Blues for Allah stained-glass artwork a fan gave the band in 1978 and some of the life-size skeletons of the band members for the 1987 Touch of Grey video shoot. No word yet on whether Jerry’s teleprompter, Bobby’s jorts or Phil’s Team USA wristband will be included in the archives.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle there wouldn’t be an archive to share if it wasn’t for GD super-employee Eileen Law. Law, who started her long tenure with the Dead organization in 1972, kept nearly everything:

She also kept press clippings dating back to the band’s inception in ’65, photographs, tickets, back stage passes, handbills, promotional materials, business records, stage backdrops, posters, T-shirts and other Grateful Dead merchandise, issues of the band’s erratically published ’70s newsletter and the more regularly published Grateful Dead Almanac that began in the ’90s, copies of all the band’s posters, vinyl albums, CDs, videos, all the awards and the books written about the band, show files, cassette tapes of the hot line messages announcing tour dates, publishing information, thousands of fan-decorated envelopes mailed to the band’s ticket office, even all the guest lists that went to the venues the band played.

After the Dead moved the vault to Rhino’s Headquarters in 2006 they needed to do something with the rest of their physical archives. The band has close ties to UCSC, so they decided to allow the school to house the archives despite bids from Cal Berkeley and Stanford. When UCSC’s new library opens in 2009 it will contain a reading room, tentatively named Dead Central, featuring exhibitions of material from the archive. So, I guess this means I shouldn’t be expecting the Terrapin Station museum to open anytime soon. For much more on the Dead’s deal with the Banana Slugs check out this article, and be sure to watch the iClips simulcast of the press conference tomorrow at 2PM. [Tip of the hat to Terry O.]

I’m only 34 years old but there are certain occasions where I feel very old. Last month, my wife and I went ice skating in Central Park. As the young whipper-snappers zipped around the ice and bounced back from falling with a smile and a shake (all as I lay there holding my throbbing knee and aching back), I felt old. When I can’t stay up till midnight on a Friday night, I feel old. And when I look at the Billboard music chart, I really feel old.

This week’s Top 5 songs are:

1. Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
2. Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major – Lollipop
3. Jordin Sparks Duet with Chris Brown – No Air
4. Usher Featuring Young Jeezy – Love In This Club
5. Mariah Carey – Touch My Body

I have to confess – I haven’t heard any of those songs once. And other than Mariah Carey; I couldn’t pick any of the artists out of a lineup. I don’t watch American Idol. I gave up on MTV 10 years ago and I never listen to the radio. So I guess it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the top songs in the country are foreign to me.

Read on to find out who topped the charts 20 years ago…

Has reunion-mania finally peaked? Turns out that promoters grossly overestimated the draw of ’90s Brit-rockers The Verve, as select tickets for their April 28th and 29th shows at the WaMu Theater At MSG are now being sold for 50% off.

Maybe it’s just me, but did they really think that many people were getting excited about this tour and wanted to pay 50 plus buck just for the opportunity to hear Bittersweet Symphony again? Aren’t people sick of their ubiquitous hit already?

When the ACL lineup was announced last week there was a curious act on the bill – Connor Oberst & The Mystic Valley Band. It turns out that Connor, who is better known as Bright Eyes, assembled the band for the recording of his solo debut. Oberst’s self-titled album hits stores August 5. Here’s some more info:

This recording was made in Tepoztlán, Morelos, México during the months of January and February 2008. In Tepoztlán, a place known for Aztec Magic and Extra-Terrestrial Sightings, a temporary studio was created in a mountain villa called Valle Místico at the outskirts of town. It was produced by Conor Oberst with much help from engineer and long-time associate Andy LeMaster. A special band was assembled for the recording, known amongst themselves and to friends as The Mystic Valley Band. It was there at Valle Místico that Conor and the band lived and worked for that time in near perfect harmony, often unaware of the hour or the day.

In other Oberst news, Rolling Stone named him the Best Songwriter in their just released Best Of Rock issue. The magazine also named The Word as the Best Jamband – which we’re still scratching our head over. Sadly, we were not mentioned as the Best Music Blog. We demand a recount!

Just a reminder that the presale for Wilco’s show at the McCarren Pool in Williamsburg begins this morning at 10 AM. Jeff Tweedy and Co. haven’t played NYC in over a year, so we expect that the band’s allotment of tickets will go fast.

Of course we also expected Death Cab For Cutie’s gig at the pool to sell out quickly, and that hasn’t happened. Be sure to sign up for Wilco’s ticketing service before 10 AM, so you’re all set to go when the presale starts.

Now that we’ve enjoyed that clip of Wilco playing I’m Trying To Break Your Heart from an appearance on Rockpalast in 2002, let’s all get our precious ducats.