THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE...

...with ROCKPILE, a band that featured old pals Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds cranking out the rootsy pub rock. Let's start with "Teacher, Teacher" and "I Knew the Bride," along with this clip of "Heart," featuring Billy Bremner, which is odd at the start.  And here's the band rolling through Lowe's "So It Goes," and "Heart of the City," plus a cover of Elvis Costello's and "Girls Talk," which many associate more with Edmunds.

FLEET FOXES' Robin Pecknold plays World Cafe.

MIKE CAMPBELL (of the Heartbreakers) visits World Cafe.

THE CURE, Apeldoorn, Netherlands 1980.

GANG OF FOUR's Hugo Burnham talks about the band's legacy at Brooklyn Vegan.

BLACK PUMAS: Who are they, and why are they Grammys darlings?

R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe and Mike Mills talks 30 years of Out of Time.

POWER POP: Endless online debates about a beloved genre.

MEGXIT: The Queen is to extend a personal olive branch to Harry and Meghan as she takes charge of the fallout from their bombshell television interview.

MATTHEW McCONNAUGHEY says he is seriously considering a run for Texas governor.

KANYE WEST & KIM KARDASHIAN are not talking following their divorce — after the rapper changed all his phone numbers and told her she could only contact him through his security.

THE FALL OF ARMIE HAMMER: A Family Saga of Sex, Money, Drugs, and Betrayal.

THE GRAMMYS ready their pandemic show.

JUSTICE LEAGUE gets another teaser.

CLAIRE FOY & PAUL BETTANY have been cast in the lead roles of “A Very British Scandal."

THE BOYS spinoff at Amazon is nearing a series order. 

PEE-WEE HERMAN is getting an HBO doc by the Safdie Bros.

A VULTURE hitches a ride with parasailers.

A MAMA COW shows off her calf.

A "HOT PIGEON" puts NYC's flock to shame.

CHEETAH attacks Columbus Zoo employee.

ALL SONGS CONSIDERED has a SXSW 2021 preview!

COURTNEY BARNETT, Live at the Corner Hotel, Jan. 2020.

4AD AT 40: The Breeders, Bradford Cox, Big Thief, Jenny Hval, Bing And Ruth, Future Islands, and more cover songs from the label’s storied history.

BLACK SABBATH: The Dio-era "Slapback" has surfaced.

LOU OTTENS, who is credited with not only inventing the cassette tape but also helping develop the CD, died at his home in the Netherlands village of Duizel this month. He was 94. 

TAYLOR SWIFT & PHOEBE BRIDGERS are among those featuted in the annual NYT Magazine Music Issue.

PAUL McCARTNEY appears to be teasing something with St. Vincent, Beck, Josh Homme and a number of other artists.

THE NUMBER ONES looks at Los Lobos' smash version of "La Bamba," the first all-Spanish single ever to top the Billboard Hot 100.

MEGXIT: Meghan Markle made a formal complaint to ITV following Piers Morgan's incendiary comments about the duchess, the U.K.'s broadsheet newspapers have reported.

JENNIFER GARNER: The Queen of Nice, on returning to acting.

JUSTICE LEAGUE: The winding history of the Snyder Cut.

ADELE won't be cutting monthly checks to her ex-husband now that they've finally reached the end of their divorce case ... and they'll be sharing custody of their child.

BRITNEY SPEARS can file a motion to terminate her conservatorship "any time," but hasn't in the 13 years it has been in place, according to her dad's counsel.

AVATAR is getting a surprise re-release in China. 'Member when James Cameron congratulated Marvel on Endgame becoming the largest grosser ever? He does.

A PUP, dreaming with his lamb chop doll.

WORKIN' AT the Dog Wash, yeah.

CHARLIE THE CHIPMUNK stores up.

SEA SLUGS that can sever their heads and regrow entirely brand-new bodies. 

HARRY NILSSON: "Everybody's Talking" on Swedish TV, circa 1969.

JULIEN BAKER plays for WFUV.

WEEZER plays a wide variety of covers for WFUV. No Toto.

LUCY DACUS shares "Thumbs."

THE HOLD STEADY's Craig Finn and Franz Nicolay talk to InsideHook.

THE FRUIT BATS Eric Johnson is featured at American Songwriter.

ALAN CARTWRIGHT, who played bass in Procol Harum in the mid-'70s, has died at age 75.

MEGXIT: Piers Morgan has left his role as a presenter on Good Morning Britain after receiving 41000 complaints for his comments on Meghan Markle's Oprah interview.

COCAINE BEAR: Elizabeth Banks is set to direct, based on a true story.

JEFFREY WRIGHT's Gold Mine. Literally.

THE BAFTA nominations went to these folks. Congrats!

TRACY MORGAN is playing Louis Armstrong in a self-financed biopic.

STEVEN SPIELBERG is directing an auto-biopic?

KEMP POWERS: Awards Season's Most Valuable Screenwriter.

ZACH BRAFF & FLORECE PUGH putting a ring on it?

KATHRYN HAN, on WandaVision.

ROGER MUDD, the Peabody Award-winning journalist who spent a quarter-century at CBS News and NBC News and came close to becoming a No. 1 network anchorman — not that he wanted that, anyway — has died. He was 93.

BISCUIT & WAFFLES, in the sidecar.

THE LOOK of regret.

TAKING TURNS on the lead.

THE FEELIES: The Jonathan Demme-directed "Away" and a live take on "Deep Fascination" for Twofer Tuesday.

GRANDDADDY's Jason Lytle brings The Sophtware Slump on a Wooden Piano to World Cafe.

DAVID NANCE covers Bonnie Raitt and Mindy McCreedy for a Lagniappe Session.

HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER shares “If It Comes In The Morning.”

FOXING brings WHY? along for “Speak With The Dead.”

JULIEN BAKER, on the Art of Trauma and a Million Other Different Thoughts.

RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE's Tom Morello opened up about his unlikely friendship with rocker Ted Nugent.

JAPANESE BREAKFAST is Working the Pain Away.

ANDREW BIRD & JIMBO MATHUS: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview.

THE NUMBER ONES looks at Madonna's "Who's That Girl," a hit song that came out of a movie-star misadventure.

MEGXIT: The Queen holds crisis talks after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell interview with Oprah. Around 17.1 million people tuned in for it.

THE CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS went to these folks. Congrats!

PEPE LE PEW, the controversial french skunk from Looney Tunes, will no longer appear in Space Jam: A New Legacy.  Director James Gunn had thoughts about it.

ANGELINA JOLIE: Godmother of Bees.

ANDY SIRKIS got pretty Method playing Gollum.

WANDAVISION: How Jac Schaeffer took a premise from the films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the pages of the publisher’s comic books and shaped it into a tale of trauma, grief and shout-outs to “The Munsters.”

FARGO: 25 years later, the movie stands as a pseudo thesis of the things the Coen Bros have been interested in all along.

A BABY RHINO loves a good brushing.

NOPE, I wasn't sleeping.

THERE ARE TWO types of dogs.

NEW RELEASES: Paste will point you to Jimbo Mathus & Andrew Bird, Adult Mom, Arab Strap, and more.

BIL'S INDIE BASEMENT has Fake Fruit, Jane Weaver, Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard, and more.

RILO KILEY's Jenny Lewis & Blake Sennett reuinited for a charity gig.

FOO FIGHTERS covered Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing” for the same gig.

RYLEY WALKER shares “Axis Bent.”

BRUNO MARS has spoken out about the cultural appropriation claims he has faced during his career.

ALICE COOPER disputes GENE SIMMONS on the state of rock.

BONNIE TYLER credits her age-defying looks to regular Botox sessions — but lockdown has put them on hold. 

THE NUMBER ONES looks at U2 's stately, devotional hymn "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE? Raya and the Last Dragon tops the chart with 8.6MM, with little word on how it did on Disney+.  Tom & Jerry placed with 6.6MM on a 53 percent drop from its debut.  Chaos Walking showed with a 3.8MM debut.

MEGXIT: Queen Elizabeth II didn't stay up to watch the "circus" of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Oprah interview Sunday night.

TONY HENDRA, a humorist whose wide-ranging résumé included top editing jobs at National Lampoon and Spy magazines and a zesty role in the mockumentary “This Is Spinal Tap,” died on Thursday in Yonkers, N.Y. He was 79.

DANIEL CRAIG & MADS MIKKELSEN revisit Casino Royale.

THE WIRE's EP David Simon and producer George Pelecanos are working on an HBO limited series based on We Own This City: A True Story of Crime, Cops and Corruption.

WANDAVISION's songwriters reveal their secret melody.

A MURMURATION OF STARLINGS, in the shape of a bird.

A HUSKY naps through Guard Dog training.

A HUGE TURKEY causes chaos after crashing into a California dental office.

THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS DONKEY lives in Palo Alto?