MeFi points out that the entirety of Siouxsie & the Banshees’ 1983 concert and film Nocturne is available on YouTube.

You may or may not recall that, during this period, the Cure’s Robert Smith was part of the lineup.

From this Guardian piece, pointed out to us by BoingBoing:

In 1987, he was invited to a White House dinner by Ronald Reagan. Few of the guests appeared to know who he was. During dinner, Nancy Reagan turned to him and asked what he’d done with his life to merit an invitation. Straight-faced, Davis replied: “Well, I’ve changed the course of music five or six times. What have you done except fuck the president?”

Ahmadinejad Kind of Getting Back Into Old REM.

Two bits:

• From Chuck D:

Last night, I took a 14 hour flight to Sydney, Australia from LA, embarking on PE’s 80th tour in 25 years. I just landed to 65 texts with the news. Adam and the Boys put us on out first tour 25 years and 79 tours ago. They were essential to our beginning, middle and today. Adam especially was unbelievable in our support from then ’til now, even allowing me to induct them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I consider myself a strong man and my father says be prepared to lose many in your post-50 path of life. Still, I’m a bit teary-eyed leaving this plane.

It bears noting that, when Public Enemy and the Beasties first toured together, PE was the opening act.

• We watched the most recent, and now much more poignant, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction (fro April 14) on Saturday night. Chuck D was joined by LL Cool J for the Beastie introduction, and LL noted something I didn’t know: It was the Beasties who played his demo for Rick Rubin and launched his career. (BTW, Chuck D and LL’s full remarks are here.)

They may have been initially perceived as a joke or novelty act based on the frat-rock antics of “Fight for Your Right,” and if you tuned out or never paid any attention to real hip-hop, you might be forgiven for not realizing just how deeply important the Beasties were to the development of an entire genre of music.

If you, as we at Heathen Central, are baffled by how the band LMFAO — they of “Sexy and I Know It” — got a record contract, well, wonder no more:

LMFAO is an American electro pop duo consisting of rappers, singer-songwriters, producers, dancers and DJs Redfoo (Stefan Kendal Gordy, born September 3, 1975, age 37) and his nephew SkyBlu (Skyler Austen Gordy, born August 23, 1986, age 25).The group formed in 2006 in Los Angeles, California. Redfoo’s father, music mogul Berry Gordy, is SkyBlu’s grandfather.

In the event you are too lazy to click: the elder Mr Gordy is the founder of Motown Records.

Daryl Hall and Cee Lo Green played “Fuck You” together on Hall’s web show.

BoingBoing points us to a bunch of early photos of the Beasties by Glen E. Friedman.

Eight years ago, on Letterman:

It was bad news when Adam “MCA” Yauch was absent at their Hall of Fame induction last month. I’m afraid it’s worse news today. MCA died today at 47 after a three year battle with cancer.

Go watch this for old time’s sake.

What Amanda Palmer has just done with her Kickstarter campaign should make you very, very nervous.

She sought $100,000 in a 30 day campaign. With 29 days to go, she has raised (at this writing) $368,711 from 6,615 backers.

That sound? It’s the balls of a thousand greedy exploitative middlemen shrinking into their abdomens.

And, as Scalzi notes, it’s not the first of May without Jonathan Coulton.

Lyrics, it should be noted, NSFW.

Levon Helm died this afternoon. He was 71.

“This isn’t an obituary. This is a celebration.”

This morning, I found this video by The Band on one of my “coffee sites.” I didn’t realize is that this 1976 performance — from their Last Waltz farewell film — was the last time Levon Helm played “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but that’s the sort of thing you learn when you see a random video you enjoy, and start a little wandering on Wikipedia.

Sadly, I also discovered a bit of news that is almost certainly the reason the video was on Merlin’s Tumblr in the first place.

Yesterday, this was posted on Helm’s site:

Dear Friends,

Levon is in the final stages of his battle with cancer. Please send your prayers and love to him as he makes his way through this part of his journey.

Thank you fans and music lovers who have made his life so filled with joy and celebration… he has loved nothing more than to play, to fill the room up with music, lay down the back beat, and make the people dance! He did it every time he took the stage…

We appreciate all the love and support and concern.
From his daughter Amy, and wife Sandy

Godspeed, Levon.

Heathen Nation, put down your beverages and watch this.

How Wilco engages technology and the Internet stands in stark contrast to how the RIAA and labels see it, but the recording industry as a whole would do well to take a lesson here.

For years, I’ve enjoyed Sarah Hepola’s writing, so it’s no surprise that her very long meditation on her “career” of Waits fandom pleases me quite a lot. Pretty much Waits fans only, and even then only Waits fans over about 35.

In 1971, Ginger Baker — yes, that Ginger Baker — shot a few minutes of a Fela Kuti performance in Calabar.

This is worth your time, friends.

Those fuckers over at the Houston Press have the unmitigated gall to remind us that Number of the Beast was released thirty years ago this week.

Ow.

He’s right; this is completely awesome. Stay with it, and keep in mind they’re doing this in a van. On a highway. Driving to a “real” gig.

By the way, Bluhm and her pals have other songs in the Van Sessions series.

Is it time, I wonder, to rehabilitate Hall & Oates?

This is very, very good news.

More at the band’s site. Houston show is on 4/20 (heh) at, sadly, HOB.

..this six-minute video of an elderly, invalid man hearing “his” music again, via iPod, is really extraordinary. Ordinarily unresponsive, Henry positively comes alive when he’s given headphones — and the stimulation lasts after the music is taken away. He answers questions, names his favorite artist from his youth, and even sings a bit of his favorite song.

Amplifier god Jim Marshall — founder of the guitar amp company that bears his name — has passed away at the age of 88. If you love rock and roll, you know the sound his amps make, and what they look like onstage.

Until this moment, I had no idea that the founder and company are both British. More, of course, at Wikipedia.

The Joshua Tree was released twenty five years ago this month.

Previously and also here.

Apparently, Nine Inch Nails made a (lip-sync’d) appearance on something called “Dance Party USA” in 1990.

It seems unlikely this video will last long.

Le Petit Prince is an art project by Troy Gua wherein a certain Artist is rendered as a Thunderbirds-style marionette.

Do not miss this. It seems inevitable that the Purple One will be unamused when he finds it.

(Via MeFi.)

Here is Bruce’s 50-minute SXSW keynote. Enjoy.

From The Awl we get the altogether bizarre information that, in 1992, Ian McShane recording an album of mellow covers called “From Both Sides Now.” Included are such hits as “Really Love To See You Tonight” and, freakishly, “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” from Genesis.

Even worse, apparently at no point does the record include the word “cocksucker.” My head hurts now.

(Do I really need to tell you a link on the word “cocksucker” isn’t safe for work?)

Joey D has a version of Gimme Shelter with the vocals isolated. For immediate goosebumps, skip to 2:50, but the whole thing is worth your time.

This video about competitive dog herding would actually be completely fascinating even if the dog owner and narrator wasn’t David Lee Roth.

This is pretty great, but the best part may be the ref to a Slashdot commenter, who said:

Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music. Audiophiles use your music to listen to their equipment.

What is the most hauntingly beautiful song? (Widely linked.)

At some heretofore unknown time in the early 90s, Mr O’Shea Jackson — known to you, no doubt, as Ice Cube — experienced something known colloquially as A Good Day. And yet despite the many notable events — no smog, no gunplay, public endorsements by airborne advertising — scholars have been unable to determine the exact day to which Mr Cube refers.

Until now. It’s sad to realize we missed its 20th anniversary just 10 days ago.

Fiona Apple completely owns Elvis Costello’s “I Want You” in this clip; on guitar, of course, is Declan himself:

I wish I knew what this was from, and where I could get an audio copy (i.e., other than a youtube rip). It’s apparently from the VH1 Decades concert series back in 2006, whose concept was “classic artists and new artists together.” Hard to believe any combination was more successful than this one. More clips from the Costello edition are here.

Apparently, Little Earthquakes was released 20 years ago — in the UK, at least; it didn’t drop in the US until a month later.

Neil Gaiman as at this early TV performance as her guest, and has graciously shared it on his Tumblr.

I remember this Tori. That record was suddenly everywhere, even in Alabama.

Stop what you’re doing, right now, and call 719-26-OATES.

No, really. I’m serious.

(Via MeFi.)

(Explanation, sorta.)

Just watch.

Via Merlin Mann. BTW, if your name is “Dorman” or “Mantler,” you are doubly encouraged not to miss this.

Before they were gods, and long before they were wastrels, Van Halen did a record store appearance. Wow.

(Via MeFi.)

There is so much awesome in this picture.

The this New Pornographers video, the band is played by actors, and Wyatt Cenac eats a cocaine pizza. You can’t beat that. Also starring John Hodgeman, Horatio Sanz (whom you will not recognize), and John Oliver.

(Yes, I’m clearing out the backlog. Enjoy.)

Heathen favorite Joe Henry sat down for a Tiny Desk Concert over at NPR. 20 minutes, 3 songs, and full of delight. Go. Listen.

Radley Balko has a lovely entry in his Five-Star Fridays series this week. Mrs Heathen has been quite pleased with those folks since seeing them on the webcast of Newport Folk earlier in the year.

Joan Jett and the Foo Fighters did “Bad Reputation” on Letterman this week, reprising a surprise cameo from the Foos’ Madison Square Garden show on Sunday.

Letterman’s enthusiasm at the end is genuine. Recall he once introduced the Foos as “my favorite band playing my favorite song” on his first show after surgery in 2000.

Sinead O’Connor performing Troy, live at the Dominion Theater, London, 1988, alone with an acoustic guitar. She is all of 21 years old here.

Related and long-meant-to-blog: Isn’t Sinead O’Connor Overdue A Massive Groveling Apology From Absolutely Everybody?

(Via MeFi.)

The “Police Academy” sound effects guy has apparently been honing his craft all these years. This is just bananas. Seriously.

There are some great Robert Ellis covers of Paul Simon songs over at Aquarium Drunkard, and you should check them out.

It has come to our attention that there is a new documentary about Big Star.

Sadly, the web site seems to be completely devoid of information regarding screenings, or streaming opportunities, or even a mailing list. Awesome.

(For the uninitiated, the wikipedia entries on the band and its most famous member are useful; you almost certainly know at least one of their songs already, as a truncated version of “In the Street” was used as the theme song for “That ’70s Show.”)

In the “unusual covers” department, here’s R.E.M. doing “Wichita Lineman.” Enjoy.

R.E.M. have called it a day after 31 years, 15 albums (and “Chronic Town”!), and uncountable influence on popular music.

This makes us at Heathen HQ a little sad, but only in a nostalgic way. R.E.M. for ME is the sound of my teen years, rich with twang and jangle and pop, and full of joy, starting the moment I popped a cassette of Lifes Rich Pageant into a boom box in 1986. Twenty-five years later, I’m playing that album in my office as I write this, and some part of my soul is still 16.

While for most of my life, I wouldn’t have hesitated to list the Athens band as one of my all time favorites, in truth my devoted fandom extends only to the mid-90s; Monster is the last record I really and truly enjoyed, and it’s only the first five records that still have a hold on my heart. (I could, for example, never hear “Shining Happy People” again and be perfectly content.)

Consequently, Bill Berry‘s retirement in 1997 was sad to me, but also mostly irrelevant — I bought a couple of the post-Berry “R.E.M. as a trio” records, but never really connected with them in the way I did with other, earlier records.

Here’s five R.E.M. memories, in no particular order, from my own 25 years of fandom:

1. In late 1986, the aforementioned copy of “Pageant,” my Walkman, and the discovery of something I’d keep for a long, long time.

2. A fall afternoon in Houston in the late 90s, picking up longtime Heathen and un-indicted co-conspirator Eric from Pizzeria Uno on Kirby; as he gets in the car, the first bars of Murmur bubble out of the CD changer, and he comments that it’s like cool water. That’s still true.

3. January, 2009, I run into Mike Mills at Washington National Airport as we’re returning home from the Inauguration. Erin says I shouldn’t, but I approach him anyway to quietly thank him for making the music that’s been such a big part of my life. He doesn’t seem to mind.

4. September 15, 1995, at the Woodlands; Eric and I and many others we know see the band on the Monster tour. It is insanely hot and muggy and miserable, but somehow they transcend it and play a great show (the opener was a little band called Radiohead. Then we all pile back into our cars to catch a now-defunct act at a now-defunct bar. Ah, being 25.

5. Back when MTV used to play music videos, they’d sometimes hype a premier. On a fall afternoon in 1987, Eric and I rushed back to his parents’ house to catch the first showing of the clip for The One I Love, the first single from Document. Hilariously, I notice now that the director of photography was a pre-culinary-obsession Alton Brown, which makes geographic sense.

Good thing I work at home. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a loud, jangly, Athensy afternoon here at Heathen HQ. If’n you’d like some video nostalgia of your own, I note that the R.E.M. site has a full video catalog.

For more see the AV Club’s coverage. I love that there’s already a Thank You R.E.M. tumblr. There is of course a long and rewarding thread at MeFi.