THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THE BAND. Levon Helm, singer and drummer for the Band, died on April 19th in New York of throat cancer. He was 71. (And here's the NYT obit.)  Over Helm's objections, The Last Waltz was billed as a "farewell" concert after 16 years of touring, finding The Band joined by special guests including Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ringo Starr, Muddy Waters, Dr. John, and Neil Young. Martin Scorsese's 1978 documentary features concert performances, scenes shot on a studio soundstage and interviews by Scorsese with members of The Band. Surprisingly, the Wikipedia entry for the show is pretty good place to start for more background on the concert and the movie.  BONUS: Listen to Music From Big Pink and The Band (with 7 bonus tracks).

CULTS stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

ANDREW BIRD stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic and the KEXP studio.

FIRST AID KIT visited the KEXP studio with folk-pop from their second full-length, The Lion's Roar.

TODD SNIDER his streaming Time As We Know It: The Songs of Jerry Jeff Walker via the TM Daily Post. (Thx, LHB?)

THE 10 WORST SONGS of the 80s, playlisted by NME.

SUCKERS are advance streaming Candy Salad.

ARCTIC MONKEYS generate "Electricity" as the flip side of their Record Store Day single.  Because who cares what's on the flip side of a record? I do.

JOHN LYDON felt guilt about the burden of his childhood spinal memingitis on his parents.  And he has mixed feelings about the re-release of the Sex Pistols' "God Save The Queen."

JAMES MURPHY lists 10 songs that saved his life. Also, a click-through to an interview with GQ.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Life Giver to the Middle-Aged.

BOW WOW WOW: Leigh Gorman and Annabella Lwin talk to The Guardian about the beginning, the end, and Malcolm McLaren.

THE BEST SONGS of 2012 (So Far), according to Paste.

DICK CLARK: Idolator compiles 10 great American Bandstand interviews.

GREG HAM, flutist for the ridiculously popular early-'80s Aussie new wavers Men At Work, has been found dead of unknown causes in his Melbourne home. He was 58. And came from a land "Down Under."

CUTOUT BIN: and more  -- this Friday's fortuitous finds are streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases include: The Lucky One, which is currently scoring 29 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Think Like a Man, which is scoring 57 percent; and Chimpanzee, scoring 73 percent.

MAD MEL UPDATE: Gibson shouted terrifying epithets at his houseguests during a rampage at his home in Costa Rica in December.

LINDSAY LOHAN: Surveillance video reportedly shows was at The Standard Hotel on the Sunset Strip on the night of an alleged assault.

RYAN REYNOLDS & BLAKE LIVELY: House-hunting in Connecticut.

JASON SEGEL & MICHELLE WILLIAMS are taking their romance from the streets of NYC to red carpet events.

CHRIS EVANS tells Playboy what Captain America and Sir Mix-A-Lot share.

ANTHONY HOPKINS, in his Alfred Hitchcock makeup.

MICHAEL JACKSON: Still dead, but he may tour with The Jacksons as a hologram.

JONATHAN FRID, best knowing for playing Barnabas Collins on the 1960s supernatural soap opera "Dark Shadows," died last Friday of natural causes. He was 87. Frid's final acting credit will be a cameo in the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp film adaptation of the show.

20 of the BIGGEST SCI-FI MOVIE DISAPPOINTMENTS of the last 20 years, compiled by Den of Geek.

GAZA: Hamas is fast losing popularity, and recent surveys indicate that it would not win if elections were held in Gaza today.

YEMEN: The CIA is seeking authority to expand its covert drone campaign in Yemen by launching strikes against terrorism suspects even when it does not know the identities of those who could be killed.

SWIMMING WITH A POLAR BEAR: Let's go to the video.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: Sex-happy rodents are setting fire to cars, cutting electrical wires and causing power outages, and evading capture at a Queens co-op.

KANGAROOS have three vaginas. The More You Know.

BABY STEENBOK & LEOPARD: Not living together in harmony.

DICK CLARK, the youthful-looking television personality who literally introduced rock 'n' roll to much of the nation on "American Bandstand" and for four decades was the first and last voice many Americans heard each year with his New Year's Eve countdowns, died Wednesday.  He was 82.  This Is Your Life, Dick (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).  And here's the American Bandstand 30th Anniversary Special from 1982. BONUS: A strange moment.

FANFARLO stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set.

SUZANNE VEGA & DUNCAN SHEIK play together at WNYC Soundcheck.

PERFUME GENIUS stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

THE BAND, Live at the Palladium, Sept.19, 1976.

BUZZCOCKS ask Coachella: "Ever Fallen In Love?"

THE CLASH: Mick Jones and Paul Simonon talk to the BBC ffor an hour about the making of their seminal London Calling.

PATTI SMITH talks to the BBC about punk rock and the evolution of rock and roll.

DAN WILSON talks to PopMatters about Semisonic, Grammys, Adele and more... but not Trip Shakespeare.

TALKING HEADS: Read the first 23 pages of the 33 1/3 book on the band's Fear of Music LP. 

WHEN KEITH MET MICK: The Lord of the Undead writes his aunt Patty.

BRADGELINA: She cried when he proposed. Aw.

DEMI MOORE made her first official appearance since getting out of rehab -- and is looking to change her Twitter handle.

ANNA PAQUIN & STEPHEN MOYER of True Blood are expecting.  The child would be her first, his third.

KIM KARDASHIAN may run for Mayor of Glendale.

KATY PERRY wants Russell Brand back?

PIPPA MIDDLETON: Pics of the gun incident.

DARREN ARANOVSKY is developing a George Washington biopic.

TERROR in the UK: Radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada filed an immediate appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against the deportation order issued yesterday by the UK, delaying his possible deportation.

NORTH KOREA  said it was no longer bound by an agreement with the US for a moratorium on missile and nuclear tests.

PAKISTAN: Assistance from the US buys little goodwill. 

BOO: Cutest and fluffiest dog evah?

BABY PARROT NELSON could be the ugliest bird in the world.

FROZEN COWS could be blown up in a Colorado cabin. Cow-boom.

GERMAN BEAVERS come to liven up Mongolia.

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS drops a fan-generated video for "Reappear."

JACK WHITE is advance streaming Blunderbuss via iTunes. He talks about making the album at All Songs Considered.

THE TING TINGS played World Cafe Live; you can stream the whole gig on demand.

JOHN K. SAMSON stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set.

THOMAS DOLBY stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set. Yes, including that one.

BEACH HOUSE drops "Lazuli" ahead of their next LP.

THE PIXIES offer a Coachella EP for the price of your address. (Thx, Ken King.)

JOHNNY CASH: "After Taxes."

SPIRITUALIZED: Jason Pierce talks to the WSJ about (somewhat) simplifying things on Sweet Heart Sweet Light. He spoke to SPIN about where this album fits in the Spiritualized spectrum, the problem of mixing, and fake rock'n'roll. (Thx, Chromewaves.) And he talks to Morning Edition about marching on a volcanic eruption in a spacesuit.

WORLD PARTY: Karl Wallinger talks to All Things Considered about coming back from a brain aneurysm.

MAINSTREAM'S RESPONSE TO PUNK, surveyed by PopMatters.

LEVON HELM, a former member of the Band, is in the final stages of his long battle with cancer.

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA: "Who says artists have to make money?"

ASHTON KUTCHER & MILA KUNIS dating story denied.

HALLE BERRY finally confirms her engagement.

MILEY CYRUS was rushed to an emergency room Monday night, after she cut herself with a kitchen knife.

ALEC BALDWIN says he's still a fan of NBC despite tweeting angrily last week that he was "leaving NBC just in time" after a "Today" show crew camped outside his apartment building.

JOHNNY DEPP is being sued by a 52-year-old disabled woman who says she was roughed up and humiliated by the actor's bodyguards during an Iggy Pop concert back in December.

14-PLUS short-lived film-to-TV adaptations.  I remember almost all of them. Get off my lawn.

THE AVENGERS could score one of the biggest domestic openings of all time for a superhero pic, if not one of the biggest period, based on prerelease tracking numbers.

SAUDI AUTHORITIES banned university students from emulating ‘emo’ subculture according to a report in Al Riyadh newspaper.

SYRIA: International sanctions aimed at the Syrian government have cut its financial reserves in half, and pressure must be maintained on Damascus to stop its bloody crackdown on opponents despite a shaky five-day cease-fire, the French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, said on Tuesday.

AFGHANISTAN: About 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned after drinking contaminated water at a high school in the country's north, officials said, blaming it on radicals opposed to female education.  Meanwhile, the US is gearing up for what may be the last major American-run offensive of the war — a bid to secure the approaches to Kabul.

MAMA DOG rescues her puppy from a swimming pool.

MINIATURE PIG RACING is a hit with vistors to Pennywell Farm.

AN IBIS flies home for the first time in 400 years.  That's an old bird.

THE RALLY SQUIRREL appears on the World Series championship rings the St. Louis Cardinals received over the weekend. (Thx, Dad.)

FEIST played "The Bad In Each Other" for Leno.

NEW RELEASES from Janis Joplin, Daniel Johnston, Maps & Atlases, Dry the River, Horse Feathers, Moonface, the Forty Nineteens and more are streaming this week at Spinner.

SEA OF BEES is advance streaming Orangefarben.

DINOSAUR JR., reimagined in the electronic aesthetic of New Wave bands.

SPIRITUALIZED, Live in London, Dec. 9, 2007.

THE WALKMEN drop the title track to Heaven.

THE BYRDS: "I See You" is blurbed by Dave Marsh.

ANDREW LOVE, a member of the legendary Memphis Horns heard on Stax classics like 'Hold On, I'm Comin' ' and 'In the Midnight Hour,' died Thursday from complications of Alzheimer's. He was 70.

BOWERBIRDS: Phil Moore talks to SPIN about Paul Simon and parasites.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT talks to The Independent about managing to combine stardom with the commitments of fatherhood.

R.E.M.: Part 2 of The A.V. Club's history of the seminal alt-rockers.

THE ROLLING STONES: Ronnie Wood apologized to the band for the great crime of opinining that he wanted to get back to the studio.

LINDSAY LOHAN is telling friends she doesn't feel she did anything wrong by going to Coachella, because the festival is not a nightclub.

GERARD BUTLER, also post-rehab, was spotted grinding with a date at Coachella. What happened at the porta-potties?

ASHTON KUTCHER & MILA KUNIS? Could be that life imitates That 70s Show.

DEMI MOORE returns to Twitter post-rehab.

JASON SEGEL & MICHELLE WILLIAMS: More serious than anyone thinks?

PIPPA MIDDLETON faces possible arrest after a gun incident involving friends in Paris.

COURTNEY LOVE apologizes to her daughter for acting like Courtney Love.

MARILYN MANSON is not engaged to aspiring actress and self-described "independent occult filmmaker" Seraphim Ward.

TERROR in the USA: The trial of Adis Medunjanin, a co-conspirator with Najibullah Zazi and Zarein Ahmedzay in a 2009 plot to bomb New York City's subways, opened Monday.

THE UNITED KINGDOM: The Labour party suspended life peer Lord Ahmed for allegedly saying he would offer a bounty on President Obama and former President George W. Bush in retaliation for the US bounty on Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed.

MOROCCO: Demands for marriage reform present a particularly unwelcome challenge to Morocco's new Islamist government, which was elected in November on a promise to make Morocco more Islamic - not less.

AFGHANISTAN: Afghan officials said a Haqqani Network operative captured in Nangarhar admitted that his group was behind yesterday's suicide assaults in four provinces.

A CAT CROSSES A RIVER: Let's go to the video.

TESSA the DOG, ticketed by traffic police.

CATERPILLARS More Likely to Vomit Alone.

GEORGE the GOLDFISH develops a Hitler 'stache.

PULP: Stream their entire Coachella set.

SARAH JAFFE is advance streaming The Body Wins.

NORAH JONES reinvents herself a bit on Little Broken Hearts. 

GIRL IN A COMA, unpluggedy at WNYC Soundcheck.

DAR WILLIAMS previews her upcoming LP at WNYC Soundcheck.

THE SUPREMES: "Come See About Me."

NICK LOWE talks to Macleans about aging well and appealing to the young, among other things. (Thx, Chromewaves.)

NELLIE McKAY writes at the HuffPo that public radio is the last oasis of free and independent music.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS: Patterson Hood talks about the band's upcoming hiatus and his upcoming solo record with the Charleston City Paper. (Thx, LHB.)

LEONARD COHEN's former manager has been found guilty of harassing the singer by a court in Los Angeles.

ROBIN GIBB fell into a coma over the weekend, amid fears he has only days to live.

KEITH MOON was asked to appear at the London Olympics. I would watch that.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:  The odds again favor The Hunger Games, which sits atop the chart with another 21.5 million and cracks 500 million worldwide.The Three Stooges mildly beat predictions to take in 17,1 million against a 30 million budget.  The Cabin In The Woods showed with a 14.9 million debut.  Titanic 3-D drops to fourth on the 100th anniversary of the real event, taking in 11.6 million; its total is 44.4 million against 18 million spent to convert the 2-D original.  American Reunion rounds out the Top 5 with 10.7 million on a 50 percent drop from its debut; the latest slice now totals 39.9 million against a 50 million budget.

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS, co-written by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, Serenity) and director Drew Goddard, is generally not my genre, but this may be the smartest twist on the horror/slasher flick sice the original Scream.  Like that film, the Cabin plays on the audience's knowledge of the genre's tropes, but in this case upends them with the introduction of an entirely new and funny element (hence the involvement of Bradley Whitfield, Richard Jenkins and a surprise cameo).  However, the new element is not entirely funny, as it subtextually poses the question of why audiences watch slasher movies in the first place.  Perhaps the real ghouls are not on set.

BRADGELINA ar actually engaged this time.

AMANDA BYNES has another auto mishap.  She is still partying and declining rehab.

LINDSAY LOHAN: Another eyewitness, who is not a hotel staff member, has come forward in the alleged assault investigation involving claims that Lindsay Lohan shoved Marisa Dugas at a nightclub in The Standard Hotel, and has filed an official police report.

COURTNEY LOVE should be banned from Twitter, says daughter Frances Bean Cobain, in response to Love's latest rant about Dave Grohl.

JADA PINKETT SMITH speaks out on the rumors of marital trouble with hubby Will.

MARC ANTHONY held out hope for a reconciliation with Jennifer Lopez, but decided to file for divorce when she told him ... she's madly in love with bf Casper Smart.

RYAN O'NEAL, who successfully battled leukemia, has been diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer.

IRAN, the US, and five other countries began talks in Turkey over Iran's nuclear program, the first such meeting in one and a half years. The first day's meeting was described as "constructive," "positive," and "completely different" from the previous meeting.

SYRIA's ceasefire held for a third day, although some shelling was reported. The UN Security Council approved a resolution to send an observer mission to Syria.

EGYPT:  The body overseeing Egypt's presidential election disqualified 10 candidates from the race on Saturday, including the Muslim Brotherhood's Khairat al-Shater, former spy chief Omar Suleiman and ultra orthodox Salafi sheikh Hazem Salah Abu Ismail

AFGHANISTAN: Anxious to defuse tensions stoked by foreign male soldiers raiding Afghans' homes at night in what is a conservative Muslim country, Afghanistan has begun training elite female troops to join Afghan male soldiers on operations.

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A THIEF returns a stolen therapy dog to a 5-year-old blind girl.

A PET HAMSTER has been rechristened Jesus - after clawing his way out of a 2ft deep grave to come back from the dead.

RATTLESNAKE vs GOLFER: Who you got?

BABOONS are able to pick up the first step in reading.  The one called Bright Eyes is really smart.