Late last year, Oklahoma’s favorite psychedelic rockers The Flaming Lips released their unique, acid-drenched take on Pink Floyd’s seminal album – Dark Side Of The Moon – with help from Henry Rollins, Peaches and Wayne Coyne’s nephew’s band Stardeath & White Dwarfs. The album, which was the band’s second release of 2009 along with Embryonic (which landed at #5 on our Top 25 albums list), was re-released this weekend as part of Record Store Day on limited edition sea-foam green vinyl and was one of more buzzed about must-have items of the day to snatch up.

The band, who will be performing Dark Side in its entirety at select dates this summer, will kick the tour off in a major way with a special late-night set at Bonnaroo – which will feature a full set of Lips music, followed by a full rendering of the classic album sometime around 2:30 AM. To celebrate the special vinyl release Coyne & Co. with stopped by Late Night with Jimmy Fallon last Friday to perform their enthusiastic take on Breathe…

The Flaming Lips kicked off a short spring run, which will focus more on material from Embryonic, last night at the famed Barton Hall and will hit the stage tonight for a sold out show at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, NJ.

Welcome to the 2010 edition of Cover Wars – March Madness. We are taking our efforts from last year and doubling them: this year we’ve got 32 covers in the running for the Championship. Over the past year, we’ve had six different artists win Cover Wars more than once. For these winners, we have paired them up against each other in the first round. For example, if you were going to vote for Trey Anastasio because of your loyalty to him – now you have to decide if he plays a better O-o-h Child or Sultans Of Swing. We have also paired up original artists whenever possible – Did Joan Baez or The Grateful Dead do better justice to their Bob Dylan cover?

All of the winners’ audio/video has been embedded for you and we have linked back to the corresponding Cover Wars that led to each artist’s victory. We have enjoyed running this piece for you every week (or maybe, three times per month?) and hope you enjoy Cover Wars March Madness. My personal highlight would have to be us running The Ballad Of Curtis Loew edition in early May and seeing Phish pull the cover from deep off the shelf three weeks later at Fenway Park. Let’s look at the first eight matchups…

1) Cortez The Killer (Built To Spill) vs. The Maker (DMB)
2) Sultans of Swing (Trey) vs. O-o-h Child (Trey)
3) Will It Go Round In Circles (The Bridge) vs. Godzilla (GUTML)
4) Ballad Of A Thin Man (GD) vs. A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall (Joan Baez)
5) Sweet Virginia (Phish) vs. Everybody Wants To Rule The World (Clare & The Reasons)
6) You Can’t Always Get What You Want (Max Creek) vs. Eminence Front (MC)
7) Naive Melody (Perpetual Groove) vs. Time (Flaming Lips)
8) Lenny (Umphrey’s McGee) vs. Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ (UM)

For bout number one, we’ve got Built To Spill covering Neil Young’s Cortez The Killer vs. DMB’s cover of Daniel Lanois’ The Maker…

Built To Spill – Cortez The Killer

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Dave Matthews Band – The Maker

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READ ON to place your vote in this matchup and to check out and vote on the other seven March Madness bouts in this part one of our Round of 32…

While we won’t officially know who will be playing the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival until a week from today (February 9), when Superfly and AC Entertainment unveils the initial line-up, it seems as if Wayne Coyne couldn’t quite wait that long to let the cat out of the bag. Earlier today the enigmatic and always well-dressed Flaming Lips front man revealed to Spinner that his band would be returning to Manchester, TN for the third time in the fest’s nine year history for another late night throw down.

Though it may seem like the psychedelic-rockers would have a hard time topping their epic 2007 appearance that featured a spaceship on stage along with their usual mix of theatrics, Coyne let it slip that the band will be upping the ante this year on Friday night/ Saturday morning around 2:30 AM. After a full set of Lips tunes they will be tackling Pink Floyd’s seminal classic Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety – which the band recently recorded released as an iTunes exclusive, and debuted live this past New Year’s Eve.

The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival will take place from June 10 – 13, with tickets going on-sale for the first time ever on the very same day as the line-up announcement.

This year at Hidden Track, we concocted a little experiment for our year-end Best Albums of 2009 list. Instead of picking the old fashioned way – subjectively – we opted for something a little different: a collaborative, collective list that incorporates the opinions of everybody here at HT.

To begin, we devised an all-encompassing list of around 100 nominees and populated it in a Google spreadsheet – essentially anything that anybody who writes for Hidden Track liked at all, made the list. Then we invited our crew of writers to independently vote on the whole list (omitting anything unfamiliar) on a scale of 1 to 20 (20 = five stars). We ended up with 33 voters with varying degrees of familiarity with the nominees; some folks voted on just about everything, while some just a few. From there, we eliminated anything that did not receive at least three votes, calculated the average scores, and sorted it. We took the top 25 scores and presto: the Hidden Track 25 Best Albums of 2009. No bullshit, no big opinions; just the results.

We’ve come to the end of our week long countdown, let’s check out our Top Five…

5) The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Key Tracks: Evil, Gemini Syringes, Watching the Planets, Powerless

Sounds Like: Trent Reznor, Mars Volta

Skinny: Beware Yoshimi fans, there’s a lot less beautiful stuff this time around. Alternatively, what the Flaming Lips forgo in placating, they more than make up for with dark themes, mayhem and a heavy storyline. While at times Embryonic gets weighed down by knobs and buttons (see Aquarius Sabotage), with some fatty basslines, a heavy dousing of effects and a deeply cynical overarching theme, the Lips provide more to think about and less with which to sing along. If there’s a credit to Wayne Coyne and crew, it’s an ability to push way beyond the conventional, while somehow getting through to the conventional.

READ ON to see the final four albums of our Top 25…

Time is the fourth track on Pink Floyd’s 1973 release Dark Side Of The Moon. Well, this song called Time is anyway. Let me tell you, rounding up the renditions for this week was no easy task as: a) There are lots of other songs simply called “Time” and b) There are thousands of songs with the word “time” in them, and you can’t always make search terms do exactly what you want them, no matter how hard you try.

The Contestants:

Dream Theater: According to the 3,585 comments there are on YouTube for this video at the time of publication, this cover is both the best ever and fucking awful all at once. The YouTube comments section is an interesting cross-section of humanity. Anyway, one very frequent comment is that guitarist John Petrucci really rips, and that is hard to deny. Couldn’t tell you the date of this video, I read about 50 of those 3,000+ comments and nobody mentioned it.

READ ON for the rest of this week’s contestants.

This rock epic was originally released in 1975 on the Queen Album A Night At The Opera. According to allmusic.com, the album was the most expensive rock record ever made at the time. They also have this to say…

The first single from the record, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” became Queen’s signature song, and with its bombastic, mock-operatic structure punctuated by heavy metal riffing, it encapsulates their music. It also is the symbol for their musical excesses — the song took three weeks to record, and there were so many vocal overdubs on the record that it was possible see through the tape at certain points. To support “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Queen shot one of the first conceptual music videos, and the gamble paid off as the single spent nine weeks at number one in the England, breaking the record for the longest run at number one.

The Contestants:

California Guitar Trio: Leading off this week is our only instrumental rendition. Bohemian Rhapsody is a very popular cover and there were many other instrumental versions out there, but of the few I listened to – this one is the best. Source: Echoes

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Some video of California Guitar Trio:

READ ON for the scoop on the rest of this week’s contestants…

The Flaming Lips are no strangers to concert theatrics – an average Lips shows features everything from Wayne in a bubble to hand puppets to confetti cannons. For their upcoming New Year’s Eve Freakout gig at the Cox Convention Center in their hometown of Oklahoma City, the psychedelic-rock band have have decided to up the ante in a big way by covering Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety after the midnight countdown. Tickets for what is sure to be quite the spectacle are still available, starting at the low, low price of just $10.

If you can’t make it to Oklahoma for their New Year’s gig, than maybe you’ll be able to hit one of these recently announced tours…

• Weezer and Paramore to headline the Bamboozle Festival in ’10
• Bill Cosby brings his comedic stylings to a town near you
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club line up a lengthy world tour
• The lovely ladies of Those Darlins put together a 19-date run
• Singer-songwriter David Gray hits the theater circuit next year
• Former Soul Coughing front man Mike Doughty heads out

Finally, just weeks after her fourth full-length album The Fall hit stores, singer-songwriter Norah Jones had revealed plans for a lengthy cross-country tour. Kicking off in March, Ms. Jones will hit the road for a 36-date tour dominated by theater appearances that stretches into mid-May.

The Flaming Lips – I Can Be A Frog

This weekend marks the moment we’ve been waiting for since we said goodbye to summer last year, as we officially say hello to Summer ’09 (or the Summer Of Jam as we’re calling it around these parts). With a nice long weekend ahead, we know you’re probably just counting down the minutes till you can go and enjoy it. With that in mind, this week’s mix tape is dedicated to the summer, literally with six tasty tunes with the word summer in the title, so sit back and relax and let’s get you in the right frame of mind…

We kick things off with singer-songwriter Josh Rouse ode to the warmer months Summertime from his Subtitulo album. Next up, we’ve got some sunny psychedelic music, first up is Animal Collective with Summer Clothes from what may be a lot of people’s album of the year Merriweather Post Pavilion (though I’m not convinced), and Yeasayer with the sitar infused Wait For Summer off of last year’s All Hour Cymbals. From there we’ve got the recently reformed Jane’s Addiction with Summertime Rolls from their 1988 classic Nothing’s Shocking. Then we’ve got It’s Summertime from The Flaming Lips mainstream breakthrough album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. Finally, we close things out with The Boss’ ode to maybe my favorite part of the soaring temperatures to come – Girls In Their Summer Clothes – from his Magic album. Enjoy the weekend!

• CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THIS WEEK’S MIX TAPE

While Jimmy Fallon may still be trying to find his voice as the new host of Late Night, his house band The Roots seem to be killing it on a nightly basis. The Philly-based hip-hop collective will take a break from their late night duties when they host their 2nd annual Roots Picnic in their hometown on June 6.

The band has already recruited a diverse roster of acts to join them which will include – The Black Keys, TV On The Radio, Santigold and Jazzy Jeff – who will spin between sets. Also joining the bill will be Public Enemy who will perform their legendary album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back in its entirety while backed by The Roots and afro-beat act Antibalas.

• List Time: 75 Albums Every Man Should Own
• Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise album gets the remix treatment
• Cover Alert: Flaming Lips tackle Madonna
• Blender Theater will once again be called the Gramercy Theatre
• All Virgin Megastores to close their doors in the coming months
• GDL declares their love for Dead shows from 1970

Finally, on the heels of the 20th anniversary remaster of Paul’s Boutique the Beastie Boys will again dip into their vaults for a collector’s edition version of their rap-rock record  Check Your Head – which is set to drop in variety of formats first digitally on March 30 and then in brick and mortar stores on April 7. The hip hop trio which is hard at work on their next album which will be released later this year along with an Ill Communication remaster.

The demise of former ultra-hyped blog buzz band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah may have been a bit exaggerated by the same sources that had previously hailed them. The Brooklyn-based band had supposedly played their “final” gig at BAM last month before going on an indefinite hiatus, that was until Wednesday when the newly reunited act stopped by NBC’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to debut their new song Statue.

While CYHSY have made no promises about their future, they have made the new tune available as a free download via their website.

• List Time: Top Ten Songs About Break-Ups
• Feist collaborated on a song with Wilco for their new album
• Cover Alert: The Avett Brothers tackle The Boss
• Daft Punk will score the soundtrack for Tron 2.0
• Do You Realize was named Oklahoma’s official state song
• Will Shef teaches high school kids the art of song writing

Finally, former New York Yankee center fielder and classically trained guitarist Bernie Williams will release his sophomore effort Moving Forward on April 14. The 14 track mostly instrumental album features a  “mixture of classical and jazz guitar topped-off with additional Latin rhythms” and includes a special cover of Glory Days featuring Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa on vocals. The one-time Allmans collaborator will celebrate the release with a special show at NYC’s Nokia Theatre on April 18, with tickets currently on-sale.

While Ryan Adams‘ future performing live may currently up in the air, the prolific singer/songwriter celeb dating-blogger will release an iTunes exclusive EP in time for Valentine’s Day. The seven track set titled Extra Cheese features some of Ry-Ry’s “best” love songs like Two, Answering Bell and My Love For You Is Real. The digital release also includes the unreleased track Hey There and Mrs. Lovely – a leftover from the Destroyer Sessions. Extra Cheese will be available on February 10 for download for just $3.99.

• List Time: Things That Need To Stop Happening In Music News
• Spinal Tap to release new album this year
• Cover Alert: Jeff Tweedy tackles Radiohead
• Flaming Lips contribute new song to doc on mushrooms
• 33 1/3 book series to get audio book treatment
• ’60s rockers Flamin’ Groovies to reunite for fest appearance
• Rolling Stone predicts who’s next for the Super Bowl

Finally, the Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis rockers The Hold Steady will release their first-ever live album A Postive Rage on April 4. The CD/DVD combo contains a 17 song set from October 31, 2007 – the second night of two-night stand at the Metro in Chicago from the band’s Boys & Girls In America tour – along with a 53 minute documentary chronicling the tour. The band,  who has recently relaunched their website, has also contributed a cover of The Boss’ Atlantic City to a indie-rock charity comp, Heroes.