Remember the rumor that Sheryl Crow was going to be joining Fleetwood Mac for a world tour? Fortunately, it’s not gonna happen. Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham squashed those rumors during an interview with Gary Graff of Billboard, but admitted it had been discussed. According to Buckingham, after a nearly five year layoff Fleetwood Mac plans to get back on the road for a tour early next year sans Lance Armstrong’s ex-girlfriend. The Mac will head into the studio after the tour.

Here’s some other news of interest from the week that was:

• The Houston Chronicle lists four mistakes that killed the record industry
• Evan Levy of WNEW interviewed Andrew Bird at the Mile High festie
• Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour preps a new CD/DVD release, Live in Gdansk
• An Oregon man was busted for bringing 14,000 hits of LSD to Camp Bisco
• Gregg Allman seems happy and healthy after a long battle with HepatitisC
• Dinky Dawson profiles longtime Rolling Stones crew member Andy Topeka

Finally, HT Contributor Randy Ray sat down with Tea Leaf Green’s Josh Clark to discuss the band’s new album (Raise Up The Tent), the progression of their music, the effect of high gas prices and the beginning of the “Reed Era.”

It seems that the folks at Ticketmaster aren’t going to let Live Nation get away with starting their own ticketing service. According to Billboard, Ticketmaster is teaming up with Cablevision to purchase 49% of AEG Live, the second largest promoter in the world. We’ll see how Live Nation likes a taste of their own medicine. Regardless of the increase in competition for the giants, we’re sure concert goers will still wind up with the short end of the stick. As usual.

Here’s the last batch of links we’ll dump on you this week:

• Expect to see Beatles songs on upcoming episodes of American Idol
• Andrew Bird throws in with Obama at a fund-raising concert in Chicago
• Radiohead said no to Glastonbury due to environmental concerns
• Fortune profiles newcomer RCRD LBL, the first free online music label
• Rolling Stone lays out the Beastie Boys return to the studio
• Perpetual Groove broadens the approach of jambands
• Air’s Moon Safari gets the re-release treatment after ten years
• The New York Times profiles booking agent Bill Bragin

Finally, the lineup for the soundtrack to NBC’s Heroes seems pretty damn good to us. Besides the fitting title track from David Bowie, the album also features killer tracks from a slew of artists including Wilco, Nada Surf and My Morning Jacket.

Like Deacon Jones’ sacks and Bill Russell’s blocks, I didn’t keep my live show-going totals as an official statistic this year for the first time since the early aughts. But, conservatively, I saw probably no less than 106 and no more than 147 bands in 2007, many of which made my smile both downstairs and up, and only a few of which made me want to go home and cut myself.

We’ve already offered up our comprehensive Year in Review, and yesterday we posted our 10 Favorite Albums of 2007. So as we continue our late look-back at the Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand Seven, you’ll find my 10 favorite live performances of the year after the jump. We start out with a hint of old-time nostalgia — the triumphant returns of Stevie and Levon — but I’m pretty damn thrilled by how many bands on this list I saw for the first time just last year. And only one prototypical jamband? Fuck, man, what a hipster doofus I’ve become.

But whatever your pleasure, here’s to another wonderful year of music, one that’ll consistently bring out the uncontrollable smile in you, one that’ll make you mumble to yourself while the lights blind you and the smoke gets in your eyes…

Like all well-intentioned abstinence pledgers, we wanted to wait. Some call us ‘lazy,’ others call us ‘prudent,’ and our mothers call us ’special.’

But when it comes down to it, posting any kind of Best Of list after only 11 months seems rather hasty and foolhardy — everyone would’ve been sorry had Radiohead surprisingly released another kickass, unannounced album on December 31st, after their lists had emerged. So on the heels of our comprehensive and grandstanding 2007 Year in Review, we offer up another year-end superlative for you to devour on this feels-like-a-Monday Wednesday.

After the jump you’ll find my 10 favorite albums of the past year, and at this juncture I must stress the word ‘favorite,’ which is not necessarily interchangeable with ‘best’ (though I do adore myself so much that I may have deluded myself into thinking my personal faves were indeed the best — I also masturbate exclusively in front of a mirror to videos of myself, but that’s not important right now).

Some are obvious, but some will surprise you, and I hope my explanations make more sense to you than they did to me when I wrote ‘em with a wicked hangover. As always, we want to know what you think, so weigh in with your thoughts or suffer stiff backhands to the face, neck, breast, chest and head…

Live Nation moved one step closer to an imminent showdown with Ticketmaster by forging a partnership with CTS Eventim, a global ticketing technology platform. The artist formerly known as Clear Channel Entertainment poses the first real threat to Ticketmaster’s reign of terror since the long lost days of Ticketron.

We’re sick of paying $2.50 for the honor of printing our own tickets, so we welcome any relief competition gives to the consumer. Then again, Live Nation isn’t quite the Ralph Nader of the entertainment biz, so maybe we will just have two companies sucking us dry. Yeah, that’s the more likely option. I sense we’re gonna get the fingercuffs from both ends on this one.

So let’s get the Friday before Christmas started with a hearty batch of links:

• Jack White’s working on three new albums; don’t ask him what’s on ‘em
• Led Zeppelin Rumor of the Day: Headlining Glastonbury
• The Smashing Pumpkins offer four new tracks exclusively via iTunes
• Look for Rush to return to some familiar venues next summer
• Del McCoury and High Sierra Music team up to announce DelFest
• January will bring us unusually worthwhile re-issues of Beck’s Odelay and Van Morrison’s first six albums
• The SNL cast stages another strike show at Comix on January 7
• Stream Andrew Bird’s breakout performance from Bumbershoot, courtesy of KEXP

And the long-awaited 11th episode of Yacht Rock debuts at the Knitting Factory on December 27. What soft rock all-stars are they gonna skewer this time?

Andrew Bird didn’t play my favorite song on Friday night, but that’s about the only thing he didn’t do. That man is a fucking genius, plain and simple. And since I’m still mesmerized by his act, I asked my partner-in-crime Neddy to fill you all in…

A few years ago, when I was first coming around to the fact that I could discover new music by grabbing free mp3s from these newfangled “web-logs” and the like, one of the very first tunes I downloaded was Lull by Andrew Bird.

For the sake of revisionist history, it may very well have been the first mp3 to make it to a hard drive of mine [thank you Internets, I easily found the place I grabbed it from]. As my encoded catalog was minuscule at the time, I must have listened to that song a few dozen times in the background of doing this or that on the computer, until it was me who was in a lull, totally hypnotized and won over by the song, and by extension, Bird. Now that song is deeply embedded in my subconscious, both because it’s good and because he’s got hooks. That’s the way Andrew Bird’s music is, and that was the ways and means of Friday night’s show at the Beacon Theater.

Bird seduces you with his charm, gives you the proverbial “I love you” gaze into your eyes with wicked songwriting and then lulls you into a hypnotic state with sheer talent. Just like listening to that mp3 over and over, the night had a cyclic nature to it: repetitive, looping riffs and phrases churned underneath each song, while, from tune to tune, a basic structure repeated over and over again.

Number after number, Andrew would start off on the violin, or maybe whistling something, and set up some samples and loops (as would his bassist/guitarist and drummer/keyboardist) and out of that soup of sound, songs would emerge and develop. Although this is not to short change what was going on — it’s more like saying every house that’s built starts with a foundation, every painting starts with a blank canvas or that every pizza starts with a crust. Read on for more…

Of all the great bands and musicians of whom I’ve become a big-time admirer this year, first-class whistler and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Bird may top the list. Just take one look and listen at his A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left and tell me that’s not a wonderful example of originality and genius in a sea of raw sewage. I’ve been swimming in raw sewage, and I love it. (Frank Drebin, 1988)

Pitchfork’s got the scoop on Bird’s new eight-song EP, Soldier On:

Along with a handful of outtakes, alternate mixes, and early versions of Bird classics, the disc sports Andrew’s cover of Bob Dylan’s “Oh Sister”, his contribution to the Janet Reno-curated Songs of America compilation, and a tune from the dance project he cooked up alongside Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak. There’s a new track, too, the somewhat improbably titled “The Water Jet Cilice”. The disc is currently only available at the Birdman’s gigs, but should head into wider availability early next year.

If the combination of a stupendous live show and some new tracks aren’t incentive enough to get you to a show, then you may or may not deserve to be kicked in the junk. Just sayin’.

Keller Willams has once again assembled his WMDs for a series of east coast dates in November. While we enjoy Keller’s creative, albeit gimmicky solo work, we love seeing Keller lead a band. The WMDs are guitarist Gibb Droll [Marc Broussard], Keith Moseley on bass [SCI], and drummer Jeff Sipe [ARU, Trey Anastasio]. Keller and the WMDs kick off their tour on November 2nd in Baltimore.

We’ve got our usual dose of heady links to help you get over the hump:

• The Daily Swarm did some nice digging to find the message board post behind the Meg White sex tape debacle
• Andrew Bird has announced a slew of new tour dates
• Les Claypool’s movie Electric Apricot: Quest for Festeroo will finally hit theaters on November 9th
• Paul Westerberg returned to the stage for a performance and a Q & A in Minneapolis on Sunday
• Record companies are trying to shutter free lyric websites
• The Village Voice examines the unorthodox road to fame for Sharon Jones
• Jimmy Page has a long history of re-inventing rock and roll
• A woman claiming to be James Brown’s kin wants a piece of his estate
• YesButNoButYes lists the Top Ten Best Live Aid Performances
• Randy Ray concludes his three-part interview with Tom Marshall and Trey Anastasio
• Pearl Jam side project Brad featuring Stone Gossard will reunite for a benefit at Webster Hall on October 17th

If we missed anything, or if you just want to talk about Bob Dylan’s return to the Tribe, leave a comment below…welcome back, Uncle Robert.

I’ve been trapped in a little bit of a bubble for the past five days, so I really have no clue what’s going on in the music world. As such, I’m stickin’ to what I know.

Even a cursory search of The YouTube will provide you with tons of videos from the Austin City Limits festival that just rocked my shit this weekend. Most of them are audience-shot, choppy and fairly brief, though there are some gems from Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket and Wilco, among countless others.

I’m glad someone captured Andrew Bird’s A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left, definitely one of the singular highlights of the festival for me. Watch it here, and even though it’s a shaky video, feel free to marvel at the performance:

• Click here for pages and pages worth of clips from the ACL festival
• Yet another plug of our daily ACL coverage — click here to read up

Wait, you missed our full coverage of Day One? Click here to get the skinny…

I’d love to look back and say all 16 acts we caught on the second day of Austin City Limits brought the heat, but instead it was the equatorial Texas sun that did the job. It was the kind of day that can convince even the laziest lardass to shed a few pounds. At one point the front of my lower legs from knees to ankles were drenched in sweat, which is something I never knew was possible. At least this festival is teaching me the basics of human perspiration.

Day Two of ACL lacked the sense of intensity and must-see urgency that the Friday session delivered, but that first day was admittedly tough to top. Still, only four of the 16 sets managed to truly floor me, with the rest of the day’s performances ranging from generously mediocre to only fairly impressive. Those four, though — Dr. Dog, Paolo Nutini, Andrew Bird and Arcade Fire — validated the entire afternoon and evening, even if we’re still a little pissed at the White Stripes for pulling out of the Saturday headlining spot against Quebec’s finest.

That introduction to the second day’s festivities shouldn’t imply a complete lack of good times at Zilker Park. But sandwiched between the instant reminiscence of Friday’s spectacular beginning and the eager anticipation of Sunday’s jam-packed lineup, the middle-day quasi-letdown was only natural. In any event, read on after the jump for a full recap of the day’s events, including our second straight photo gallery supplied by our photographic genius, Danfun.