We’re getting awfully close to the long-awaited release of My Morning Jacket’s new album. MMJ played in Houston on Monday night, and Breakfast On Tour was on hand to capture a few of the new tunes. Unsurprisingly, I’m already smitten with the new songs. Especially the gorgeous I’m Amazed.

Let’s see what else is goin’ on this week:

• Stereogum offers scenes from the R&R HOF Induction Ceremony
• Superdee discovers why there were so many Jewish kids on Phish tour
• Rob Harvilla ponders whether he loves or hates Michael McDonald
• Public Enemy will kick off this year’s Pitchfork Festival
• The Van Halen tour is off again, possibly for good this time
• Spinner premieres the Budos Band’s video for Origin of Man
• Levon Helm continues to impress at every show he plays
• Neddy fills us in on the shows of the week

If you couldn’t make it down to Austin for SXSW, at least you can download the music featured at the event. Check out this link for access to 3.5 gigs of free legal music from the showcase artists. Sweet deal!

As you can probably tell, we love live music here at Hidden Track. But sometimes just seeing the music isn’t enough; we feel a nagging need to download the audio and video of shows we’ve either seen or wish that we saw as soon as we can.

Our favorite moments as music fans come when we stumble across recordings we didn’t think existed, or of shows we attended but had completely forgotten about. Just this week I had several “Holy Fuck!” moments when I came across three shows I never thought I’d see or hear. I’ll tell you all about them, and Paul McCartney’s “secret” show at the Highline, as we go Grousing The Aisles…

Steely Dan w/ Michael McDonald 08/12/2006 PROSHOT (DVD):

Nearly every shed in America these days has those screens that show video of the concert to people with bad views. Most of the footage from these screens either doesn’t get recorded or gets stashed in the archives of the venue or the performer. Once in a while, though, video from one of these concerts leaks onto the ‘net. The latest of these leaks comes from last summer’s Steely Dan tour, which featured special guest and longtime HT idol Michael McDonald.

The Dan was feelin’ it this night, rolling through magnificent performances of hits such as Hey 19, Green Earrings, and Josie. Mikey Mac adds his husky vocals to the last seven songs of the set, including the kickass My Old School closer. The Steely Dan Orchestra backing band is made up of extremely talented musicians. Keith Carlock is a revelation on the drums — at times there is so much going on that you wonder whether there are two drummers behind the kit. Backup vocalists Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery and Cindy Mizelle both look and sing beautifully.

The quality of this footage is unbelievably good, allowing a nice look at the ladies as they sing their hearts out during Dirty Work. The crispy soundboard feed that supplies the audio is also top notch, and worth the download by itself. I can honestly say that in my four years of collecting live concert DVDs, this puppy may take the cake as the best in my collection. It’s that good.

Read on for some more great downloads of Bustle, Macca and the Other Elvis…

I learned it from snorting you! Turns out, Keith Richards’ longtime manager claims the skeletal rocker was totally kidding when he said “I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.” Joke or not, the whole incident begs the question: Which dead person would you most like to cremate and snort? We’ll take Margaux Hemingway. Not sure why.

• Jack White: A to Z
• Paul Weller spits on Sting
• Rock Band: Guitar Hero folks branch out into other virtual instruments
• Springsteen set to release a live Seeger Sessions DVD
• Another new edition of Taper’s Section from the Grateful Dead
• They Might Be Giants are back with a new album and a tour
• An Aquarium Drunkard kicks down some CSNY demos from 1969
• A geography-related tour: Chicago and the re-united America 
• Some backstage stories from concert industry vet Bob Sullivan
• Thrillist reviews the new Highline Ballroom…briefly
• Heaven and Hell’s Radio City concert was recorded for a live CD/DVD
• Jake Krolick reviews the Cold War Kids recent Philadelphia performance
• Is GnR’s Chinese Democracy leaking? Probably not. Dicks.

Anyone catch this weekend’s bitchin’ Austin City Limits with Michael McDonald and Joss Stone (I’m told it’s pronounced ‘yoss’, like ‘yogging’)? There’s one more replay later this week, so set your TiVos. Serious Sweet Freedom action.  

Friend of HT Eliot Glazer has tremendously terrible taste in music. But he’s an adroit wordsmith, and he’s gonna try to convince us that the bad is really good.

I read Stereogum. I read Pitchfork. I even dabble through Spin and Rolling Stone from time to time. But even as a trained musician, I refuse to consider myself any kind of authority on music.

Granted, I’ve always harbored moderately good musical taste, relying on the talents of artists whose work usually finds success among critics and college students (hello, cred!). Naturally, I would mention my surprisingly short DMB phase in high school with an air of exasperation here, although I can’t begin to imagine the amount of hate mail under which I’d find myself buried.

But for every Cat Power, Flaming Lips, and Nick Drake listed under the Artists on my iPod is an Alicia Bridges, Babyface, and at least one American Idol contestant, and not even necessarily a winner. It’s sad but true: I love bad music. I crave it. And I want you to love it with me.

Read on for the rest of Eliot’s first installment of “I Love Bad Music”…

It ain’t quite Nudie Magazine Day, but I’ll do my best to fill the void tonight…

Sly & The Family Stone played a dominant role in both the musical background and musical discussion of our New Year’s Eve party. The band that most closely answers the test question “What group is the personification of chocolate pudding?,” Sly and his multicultural rascals produce a sound so penetratingly loose it can deflower a half-dozen virgins if played at the right decibel level. Shit, throw 100 College Republicans For Family Values in a room with a boombox and “In Time” on repeat, and after an hour you’ll walk in to a Bacchanalian orgy and post-coital protest planning. Long story short, these guys are pretty decent.

Here’s a newly added, nine-minute YouTube clip of Sly & The Family Stone’s rehearsal some time in the ’70s. It’s a little fuzzy, but the music is neat-o:

Onto the rest of this week’s video haul, as we go…Pullin’ ‘Tubes:

• We’ve been fluffingly fanning the festival flames of Langerado pretty briskly since the artist announcement materialized. But of all the ridiculous bands I’m excited to see for the first time down there, I’m probably most stoked about getting my first glimpse of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings. In anticipation of our clash, here’s a triple dip: Antones @ SXSW 2006, Conan O’Brien on 1/20/05, and Taxes at the Knitting Factory.
• While we’re dishin’ out powerful black females with a commanding presence and soulful voice, let’s give a little love to the woman Sharon Jones kinda reminds me of in some way. Here’s a cool clip of Etta James belting out I’d Rather Go Blind with an egg-shaped but awesome Dr. John.
• What’s not to love about Peg? That shit combines the songwriting genius of Steely Dan, the foxy backup vocals of Michael McDonald and a kickass beat. This clip has it all — at first you’ll think it has little to do with Mikey McD, but then it contains dangerously high doses: The Making of Peg.
• I’ve listened to the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot version of I’m the Man Who Loves You so many times in the past few months that this Lollapalooza 2006 performance kinda freaked me out. But I’m pretty sure it freaked me out in a good way. Like, for sake of analogy, seeing 6′9” Liverpool striker Peter Crouch do the robot after a goal.
• And if you didn’t see the link in today’s Hors d’Oeuvres department, check out the videos of Paul Green’s School of Rock kids playing Dead tunes like total pros — seriously, it’s wicked stuff.

Let Carlin end this: What tubes? Have you seen any tubes? Where are these tubes? And where do they go? And how come there’s more than one tube? It would seem to me, one country, one tube. But is every state all of a sudden have to have its own tube now? One tube is all you need. But a tube that big? Somebody would have seen it by now. [George Carlin, Back In Town]

It’s become moderately fashionable to over-appreciate and impersonate the genius of Michael McDonald. After living in the wayback of the public consciousness for the better part of two decades, the former Doobie’s legacy and career were resurrected by two important events: First came the Ain’t No Mountain High/Ain’t Nuthin’ Like the Real Thing MCI commercials pegged to his 2003 Motown album, then the 40-Year-Old Virgin brilliantly canonized that ol’ Yacht Rock image.

I’ve been a Michael McDonald fan forever. Well, more accurately, I’ve been an ardent supporter of giving him the business for as long as I can remember. I don’t think there’s a better ’80s tune than his Sweet Freedom, the theme song to the Billy Crystal/Gergory Hines vehicle Running Scared. His back-up vocals on Steely Dan’s Peg get my juices flowing. Takin’ It To the Streets gives me a semi-erection. Minute By Minute gets it up all the way. And don’t even get me started on the personification of greatness that is his duet with James Ingram on Yah Mo B There…

So when my buddy Curly Bamboo told me he’d just returned from a Rita Hayworth Award fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association where Mikey serenaded the lucky audience, I glazed right over the “They raised $3 million” crap and begged for a full description of the setlist, the atmosphere, the crowd reaction and the shape of his beard. Instead, I got this picture and word that he sang all his Motown stuff:

Bamboo added that McDonald was introduced by Dan Akroyd and Donna Dixon Akroyd, and attendees included Ivana Trump, Bryant Gumbel and Ahmad Rashad (no word if Michael Jordan’s cock was seated next to Rashad). Oh lord, I wish I could’ve been in the same room with such a blue-eyed soul brother, but I guess that’s for people richer and more charitable than me. Who’s got my Alzheimer’s miracle?

Related audio: For sticking with this post, let’s reward you with The Doobie Brothers at the Philadelphia Spectrum on 11/16/76. It’s fucking incredible.