1. Listen to your entire iTunes library, A to Z. Surely most of the readers of this site have 31 days' worth of music around their house, if not on their hard drives. (OK, a recent cull caused my iTunes timer to drop to 28.2 days, but I have more than enough CDs that I haven't yet imported to make up the gap.)

2. Travel through the David Archuleta corn maze. Sure, he's about as "rock" as the OneRepublic guy, but this maze, located in David's home state of Utah, has an undeniable appeal, thanks to kitsch factor of getting lost in his eyes being way too high. If some metal fan would like to step up to the plate and make, say, a maze out of the Slayer logo, I'll be happy to spend a chilly October night fighting my way through that instead.

3. A weekend getaway to Kate Pierson's motel. The rooms are pretty cheap (the six-person Lazy Lodge, which has its own swimming hole (!), will only set each of your friends back a hundred bucks), the toiletries are collected from Kate's jaunts around the world with the B-52's, and the kitchens have all the cocktail fixings you'll need. And the upstate New York location is especially good for those of us who missed All Tomorrow's Parties a few weeks back, cough cough.

4. Open a pool based around betting on which awful musicians with new albums coming out will warble "The Star-Spangled Banner" and "God Bless America" during the baseball playoffs. A glance at this page of upcoming releases reveals that baseball fans will probably be greeted by the vocal chords of Kenny Chesney^*, Chris Cornell, and the Hinder guy soon, while AC/DC and Oasis are among the "not bloody likely, but wouldn't it be awesome" contenders.

5. Spend all your waking moments obsessing over what music's "October surprise" will be this year. A year ago last night, Radiohead coined the phrase "the Radiohead model" by digitally releasing In Rainbows 10 days after it was done. A few weeks later, OiNK got turned into crispy bacon by the UK authorities. So what's going to happen this year? Will Kanye West, Bruce Springsteen, and the Arcade Fire announce a mini-tour in support of Barack Obama? Will Thom Yorke let the world know that he thinks Sarah Palin is "not all that bad, plus she's got right nice glasses"? Is Apple going to call the major labels' bluff and shut down iTunes? Or none of those things? Let's play futurist!

^* Trust me on this one. He's a lock. I would put down money on it in a heartbeat.

"Castanets" turned up on George W. Bush's iPod somehow, which prompted the song's removal from Escovedo's setlists until recently:

"Always a Friend", with Bruce Springsteen:

"Juarez" and "Rosalie":

Alejandro Escovedo [Official site]

1. The Beastie Boys
followed by...

Unwilling to repeat themselves after the left-field success of Check Your Head, the Beastie Boys wander through abortive sessions with Mix Master Mike, Lee Perry, Q-Tip, Miho Hatori, and others while promoting Tibetan Freedom Festivals, running Grand Royal, and raising families; Adam Horowitz's glitchy BS-2000 and the peculiar Country Mike's Greatest Hits make fans both curious and excited for what the group might eventually return with. Finally, after over a decade of waiting, Capitol Records and a nation of expectant stoners are blessed with... The Mix-Up.

2. Aerosmith
followed by...

Following the departure of Joe Perry during the recording of A Night In The Ruts, Steven Tyler descends further into chemical dependency, unable to complete sessions with new guitarists for several years. After his recovery from addiction in the mid-'80s, he is hesitant to return to life in the fast lane, preferring to raise his family and promote anti-drug campaigns. Finally, the original lineup returns with 1997's Nine Lives, where a new generation, unprimed by Wayne's World and Alicia Silverstone videos, is introduced to a group of decrepit transvestites screaming "Falling In Love (Is So Hard On The Knees)."

3. Grateful Dead
followed by...

Despite the success of Wake Of The Flood, things aren't the same for the Dead after the death of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, and the band decides to abstain from the touring circuit. Attempts to hone a new sound are hindered by a series of exploding keyboardists, but the group finally returns to the limelight with 1989's Built To Last. Then another keyboardist dies, and the band says "fuck it." Meanwhile, Trey Anastasio is happily playing in a Creedence Clearwater Revival cover band in Vermont, just happy that he doesn't have to hold down a day job.

4. David Bowie
followed by...

After releasing Pin-Ups (itself The Spaghetti Incident?! of its day), Bowie grows tired of his hard-rock Ziggy Stardust shtick and fires the Spiders Of Mars. Rumors leak that the rock star is obsessed with "soul" and attempting to maintain cultural currency by working with Brian Eno (the Moby of his day), but year after year and release date after release date pass. Finally, cleaned up and ready to play ball, Bowie, joined by Peter Frampton and Charlie Sexton, returns for a massive world tour to promote his new album... Never Let Me Down.

5. Prince
followed by...

Even after his Hollywood dreams fizzled, Prince finds it impossible to follow up the monumental Purple Rain, retiring to his Minnesota home; he's rarely seen after the failed non-musical version of Graffiti Bridge. Some say that the recluse won't even answer to his name! Always up for a challenge, Clive Davis signs the artist to a one-album contract, teaming him with a variety of pop stars that had followed in his wake. He then presents the world with... Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic. The world is not impressed.

6. Bruce Springsteen
followed by...

Darkness On The Edge Of Town, while a critical hit, isn't really the sequel to Born To Run that Columbia was looking for. So for years Bruce struggles with synthesizers and drum machines, hoping to craft a surefire hit. Off the road and not meeting supermodels and back-up vocalists, Bruce lives a long, lonely life before finally releasing The Ghost Of Tom Joad, after which Columbia decides this man is no longer the future of rock and roll.

7. U2
followed by...

Torn between their desire for fame and their belief in Christian humility, the members of U2 are more than happy to finely hone their follow-up to The Unforgettable Fire with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. But after a decade-plus of work, it becomes clear that they've lost the script. So instead, the band looks both to the past (their original producer Steve Lillywhite) and the future (Nelle Hooper and Jackknife Lee), creating How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, which the group promotes on an '80s Flashback Tour co-headlined by Simple Minds.

8. R.E.M.
followed by...

The Green tour takes a lot out of R.E.M., with the band first attempting to create a grand follow-up with mandolins and string sections before scrapping the sessions to try and regain their rock energy. Finally, with both producer Scott Litt and Bill Berry no longer involved, the remaining trio makes an album everyone is comfortable with. An album named Around The Sun.

9. Rolling Stones
followed by...

Let It Bleed is a surprise triumph after the loss of Brian Jones, but drugs overcome the band and it isn't long before replacement Mick Taylor is gone. It won't be until after the failure of Mick Jagger's first solo album, She's The Boss, that he'll get the old band together for a new album titled Dirty Work. While they knew Mick Jagger was capable of anything, it shocked fans of the enigmatic Keith Richards, long rumored dead, to see him dancing with cartoon cats in the video for "Harlem Shuffle."

10. Stevie Wonder
followed by...

With Motown refusing to let him run his own albums, Wonder boycotts his label following the release of For Once In My Life. When Berry Gordy finally relents in the early '70s, his concerns are proven tragically valid as Wonder toils unsuccessfully to capture his "inner visions," desperately trying to create songs "in the key of life." The singer could have been forgotten—but Gene Wilder gets in touch with him in hopes that he'll create a soundtrack for The Woman In Red. America is shocked as Little Stevie Wonder returns to the limelight with "I Just Called To Say I Love You," with Rolling Stone declaring it the Least Welcome Comeback of 1984.

There is one alternate history Axl could take heart in. If Paul Simon had waited fifteen years to put out an album after Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water, Graceland would have been even more of an impressive wtf than it was at the time. But will Axl Rose's adventures in the diaspora ("Madagascar!") have the same zeitgeist as Simon's?

Hell no.

THE GOOD: Thanks, EW, for pointing out the following Soulja Boy line that had somehow escaped me until this afternoon: ''Booty meat in my face, even when I be talkin'." Booty meat! That's so awesomely gross. It might turn me off asses^* even more effectively than that Bangers And Cash cover.
THE BAD:"Now infamously troubled, Amy Winehouse risks a total eclipse of the art." Can't decide if that deserves boos or kudos, really.
THE WHAAAA? Did Jennifer Lopez really "[bomb] by playing the hottie card with dance-pop tunes even Ashley Tisdale would've dismissed as too shallow" because Brave didn't offer "the kind of album people want to hear from a celeb of her stature... at least a smallish window into her soul"? Something makes me think that if she'd gotten the hooks right on those shallow dance-pop tunes the buying public wouldn't have really given a shit about being denied a peek into her inner life.

The Best

01. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
02. Amy Winehouse - Back To Black
03. Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
04. Radiohead - In Rainbows
05. Miranda Lambert - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
06. M.I.A. - Kala
07. LCD Soundsystem - Sound Of Silver
08. Paul McCartney - Memory Almost Full
09. Betty Lavette - The Scene Of The Crime
10. Lupe Fiasco - The Cool

The Worst

01. Soulja Boy - Souljaboytellem.com
02. OneRepublic - Dreaming Out Loud
03. 50 Cent - Curtis
04. Good Charlotte - Good Morning Revival
05. Jennifer Lopez - Brave

The Best (And Worst) Albums Of 2007 [Entertainment Weekly]

^* Yeah, probably not.

Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It's certainly what's helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.

It's not just Springsteen. There is no sign at major radio stations of new albums by John Fogerty or Annie Lennox, either. The same stations that should be playing Santana's new singles with Chad Kroeger or Tina Turner are avoiding them, too.

Like Springsteen, these "older" artists have been relegated to something called Triple A format stations — i.e. either college radio or small artsy stations such as WFUV in the Bronx, N.Y., which are immune from the Clear Channel virus of pre-programming and where the number of plays per song is a fraction of what it is on commercial radio.

While Friedman does raise a good point about the peculiarity of radio shunning the few artists who can actually sell records these days—and there probably is some sort of insidious "ew, they're old" attitude toward even the biggest-selling older artists—there's probably a much more simple explanation for Bruce's absence from these stations' playlists: the only major rock format that even plays artists like Springsteen—i.e., a guy who isn't constantly having tantrums about life/girls/what-have-you sucking over super-compressed tracks—is "classic rock," a format that seemingly adds two or three songs to its playlists a year. Maybe in 2012, "Radio Nowhere" will finally make it to these stations (if they still exist!), but I think the indifference Friedman is speaking to is more the result of scaredy-cat programmers who are afraid to upset the "getting the Led out" apple cart than ageism. Although if Led Zeppelin's new songs are also summarily ignored by these stations, perhaps his argument will have at least a little weight.

Bruce: Magic Refused Radio Play [Fox 411]

Biggest Debuts: The week's highest bow was elder-statesmen-of-emo Jimmy Eat World's labia-tastic Chase This Light, which entered at No. 5; Santana's latest attempt to cash in on his music-business connections, Ultimate Santana, bowed at No. 8. Meanwhile, soul stylist Angie Stone's Art Of Love And War came in at No. 11, and the new album from Thrice, Alchemy Index: V, entered at No. 24.

Notable Jumps: This week was a rough one—to put it in perspective, Josh Groban's Noel leapt from No. 10 to No. 4 by sheer virtue of his sales totals being only negligibly off from last week—but poppy MySpace sensation/Fleetwood Mac producer offspring Colbie Caillat saw sales of her debut album, Coco, jump 20% as it leapfrogged to No. 10.

Dropping Off: Pretty much everyone in the top 50, save Caillat and a few other notables (Rihanna, Sugarland, and our winner for this week's Nickelback award), took a hit this week. But none was more notable than the one Jennifer Lopez suffered—sales of her latest album, Brave, dropped 65%, and she plunged out of the top 20 and all the way down to the No. 38 slot on the chart. To put it in perspective: She sold fewer records than Alter Bridge did last week.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: The Beatle-ified soundtracks to the boomer blechfest Across The Universe , with the deluxe edition jumping from No. 45 to No. 30 on a 28% sales gain and the plain edition going up 11% and rising from No. 46 to No. 36. The two editions combined sold 43,000 copies—which would be enough to put them just ahead of Matchbox Twenty on this week's chart. Clearly, the demand for repackaged Lennon/McCartney tunes will never completely go away. Someone get that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Movie reissue on the fast track already!

The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (77,000)
2. Kid Rock, Rock N' Roll Jesus (77,000)
3. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good (70,000)
4. Josh Groban, Noel (64,000)
5. Jimmy Eat World, Chase This Light (62,000)
6. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (59,000)
7. High Schol Musical 2 soundtrack (57,000)
8. Santana, Ultimate Santana (56,000)
9. Kanye West, Graduation (54,000)
10. Colbie Caillat, Coco (50,000)
11. Angie Stone, The Art Of Love And War (45,000)
12. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (44,000)
13. Matchbox Twenty, Exile On Mainstream (41,000)
14. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, souljaboytellem.com (40,000)
15. Jill Scott, The Real Thing: Words And Sounds Vol. 3 (38,000)
16. J. Holiday, Back Of My Lac' (35,000)
17. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (34,000)
18. Nickelback, All The Right Reasons (33,000)
19. Sara Evans, Greatest Hits (31,000)
20. Eric Clapton, Complete Clapton (31,000)

Biggest Debuts: Like last week, this week's chart was full of first-time entries: Matchbox Twenty's super-defensively titled Exile On Mainstream entered the chart at No. 3, and Soulja Boy Tell 'Em's advertorially titled souljaboytellem.com came in right behind it. Meanwhile, Annie Lennox's unfortunately named Songs Of Mass Destruction debuted at No. 9. Trey Songz, Faith Hill, Brooks & Dunn, John Fogerty, and Dashboard Confessional all had top-20 debuts. And from the "what the hell" files, PJ Harvey's gorgeous, arresting White Chalk only sold 13,000 copies and entered the chart at No. 63? That's even fewer sales than the cash-in Dylan compilation. I am so ashamed of everyone.

Notable Jumps: There weren't many spikes on this week's chart (album sales overall were down 2% from last week). But the first Hannah Montana soundtrack did see a 4% uptick in sales, no doubt the result of parents trying to placate their kids after their utter failure to get tickets to this winter's Miley Cyrus concerts.

Dropping Off: Last week's No. 1, Rascal Flatts' Still Feels Good, took a 69% sales hit and fell to No. 2. Keyshia Cole was down 67% from last week, when she debuted at No. 2, and dropped to No. 6; other top-10 debuts from last week like the Foo Fighters and Jill Scott also saw their sales drop by two-thirds. And Feist's The Reminder saw its iPod-assisted chart ascent end, as it took a 30% sales hit and fell (gracefully and tastefully) from No. 28 to No. 39.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: We're at the point right now where the charts, for the most part, are pretty explicable: Big debuts and certain stalwarts holding steady around the top 20. But I will say that last week, I didn't expect the Matchbox Twenty greatest-hits collection to outsell the vision-obstructed Soulja Boy, whose single outsold his album by approximately 58,000 copies this week. (The new Matchbox Twenty song, by contrast, sold about 79,000 copies.)

The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses:
1. Bruce Springsteen, Magic (335,000)
2. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good (167,900)
3. Matchbox Twenty, Exile On Mainstream (131,000)
4. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, souljaboytellem.com (117,000)
5. J. Holiday, Back Of My Lac' (105,000)
6. Keyshia Cole, Just Like You (94,000)
7. Kanye West, Graduation (92,000)
8. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (80,000)
9. Annie Lennox, Songs Of Mass Destruction (78,000)
10. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (77,000)
11. Trey Songz, Trey Day (73,000)
12. Faith Hill, Hits (69,000)
13. Brooks & Dunn, Cowboy Town (69,000)
14. John Fogerty, Revival (65,000)
15. Jill Scott, The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 (55,000)
16. Foo Fighters, Echoes Silence Patience And Grace (55,000)
17. 50 Cent, Curtis (51,000)
18. Dashboard Confessional, The Shade Of Poison Trees (48,000)
19. Kenny Chesney, Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates (44,000)
20. Jagged Edge, Baby Makin' Project (35,000)

• "Springsteen's topical allusions are unspecific enough that Magic will remain enchanting after we get these American messes straightened out, in 5, 10, 50 years. Still, he does finally bring the war to the fore in the climactic 'Devil's Arcade,' and an album that began with Bruce yelling 'Is there anybody alive out there?' ends on real matters of life and death. This big, slow-building ballad finds a young woman visiting her beloved in a military hospital, whispering promises of an idyllic suburban future and finally repeating the line 'the beat of your heart' over and over, as if that very incantation could keep him tethered to the corporeal world. It's a moment that will break even a hardened rock fan's heart. But by then your resolve might already be melting from the realization that, three and a half decades into his career, Bruce Springsteen is back in the masterpiece business." [EW]
• "His boomer fans revere him also as a role model—of how to grow old with integrity, how to get rich without going soft, how to not lose all your hair, how to not get fat, how to not turn into someone who would embarrass your younger self. It's not eternal youth he symbolizes so much as a version of middle age that you wouldn't be afraid to look at in the mirror." [NYM]
• "Certain songs don't just echo the past, they openly mimic it. 'I'll Work for Your Love' rejiggers the 1973 romantic declaration 'For You.' And 'Livin' in the Future' swaggers like the second coming of the 1975 R&B rave-up 'Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.' But the comforting sounds are often deceptive. Election day rolls around on the latter song, and a menacing stranger arrives with 'the barrel of a pistol spinnin' round.' It makes for an album in which Springsteen and the E Street Band conjure the ghosts of their hardest-hitting music, 1975-80. But the singer's lyrics don't look back. They are about right now and a scary, uncertain future." [Chicago Tribune]
• "Artists like Bruce Springsteen face weighty expectations from fans and critics. Every album must either be a stunning return to form or a groundbreaking departure to pass muster. But sometimes a good record is just a good record, not life-changing or seminal. Springsteen and his longtime bandmates prove they still have plenty of cards up their sleeves, but they engage in a more practical kind of Magic this time out. Fifty years from now few aficionados will look to this disc as a major Springsteen work; for right now, though, it strikes a tone that feels just right." [Boston Globe]

In an effort to secure the number-one position on the Nielsen SoundScan charts across Canada next week, HMV is offering purchasers of the album a free video and ringtone download of Magic's first single, "Radio Nowhere," plus a limited-edition lyric booklet - and a personal money-back guarantee from HMV Canada president Humphrey Kadaner that they will love the album.

Blaine Schwingenschlegel, custom marketing manager for Sony BMG Canada, says the idea for the promotion came from Kadaner, a massive Springsteen fan. "Humphrey is so adamant about the quality of this record that not only will he offer a full refund, but he will also send a personal apology letter to anyone who returns it," he tells MiC. Kadaner has also pledged to donate $1,000 to the Daily Bread Food Bank in anticipation of the record soaring to the top of the charts. If it doesn't, he'll donate $2,000.

Listen Canada, don't think you can just buy back our affection with your kissing of our national treasure's ass and your refund guarantees and your weird socialistic "charity" after foisting the Biggest Rock Album Of The Century So-Far on us.

HMV Pres Sticks Neck Out For The Boss [Media In Canada via Coolfer]

Here's some shaky footage of the finale of last night's Bruce Springsteen tribute concert at Carnegie Hall, which featured Bruce, The Hold Steady's Craig Finn, and others pitching in on a huge "Rosalita" sing-along. While we can't speak for the clip's quality, we would like to point out that Finn's gesticulations along with the music are still clear as day, and that's enough to mitigate the presence of Badly Drawn Boy.

bruce & friends - rosalita [YouTube, via trouser mouse]

The NFL is apparently figuring that there's only one way to top this year's completely epic performance by Prince at this year's Super Bowl, and that's to bring in The Boss. From Variety:

Bruce Springsteen and Norah Jones are at the top of the list. The NFL is hoping the recent successes of Prince, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney can be used as leverage to bring in the Boss while Jones would be ideal to sing the National Anthem during the pregame ceremonies, according to NFL VP of programming Charles Coplin.

The league is starting to approach performers "earlier than ever before in our history," said Coplin. "The music business is going through some hard times. Performers care deeply about their album sales, and an appearance on the Super Bowl can move the needle dramatically."

Coplin points to the sales that followed Prince's performance at this year's Super Bowl. His overall album sales in the follow-ing week more than doubled to 31,000 and his digital downloads rose to 102,000 from 59,000.

While we're pretty sure that a performance by Springsteen would be nearly as epic as Prince's (maybe he can throw in a cover of "Big Me," just for good measure?), we have to wonder just what the NFL would decide to do for the next Super Bowl, because the "how-can-you-top-that" Monday morning chatter will surely be in full force should the Boss play. Clearly, the only solution to that speculation is the announcement of an endless U2/Prince/Springsteen cycle until at least Super Bowl L, when the downgrading of expectations from "extra large" to merely "large" will usher in an era where the 3-D Elvis concept becomes acceptable once again.

Inside Move: NFL on star search [Variety]

The best part of the story is a mention that Springsteen and Robert De Niro have been hanging out together, the very possibility of which must be every hacky impressionist comedian's wet dream.

"Bruce & Patti 'On The Rocks'" [New York Post]
MP3: Bruce Springsteen, "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City" [Link via The Smudge of Ashen Fluff]