THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

... with NEIL YOUNG! Live on the Beeb, circa '71. Your setlist includes: "Out on the Weekend," "Old Man," "Journey Thru the Past," "Heart of Gold," "Don't Let It Bring You Down," "A Man Needs A Maid," "Love in Mind," and "Dance, Dance, Dance."

REAL ESTATE stopped by WNYC Soundcheck for a chat and a pair of new songs.

LAURA CANTRELL stopped by WNYC Soundcheck for a chat and a pair of new songs.

LUCIUS plays a full set and does an interview for WFUV Live.

HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF stopped by WFUV's Studio A for a chat and mini-set.

ST VINCENT drops "Prince Johnny" ahead ofher self-titled fourth LP.

THE OLD 97s drop “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive” ahead of Most Messed Up.

BECK drops "Waking Light" ahead of Morning Phase.

WE ARE SCIENTISTS; "After Hours." For the weekend.

PRINCE: The artist who hides in plain sight.

THE BEATLES: Be grateful they broke up. Rolling Stone compiles video from '64.

EFFIN MENUCK (Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, Godspeed You! Black Emperor) talks to PopMatters about the spirit of Punk, Montreal and more.

INXS meant more to Australia than just sex, drugs and Kylie Minogue.

CUTOUT BIN: From the Sex Pistols to Joan Knight, from U2 to Pianosaurus, from Jeff Beck to the dB's, plus Warren Zevon, John Lee Hooker, POP Etc, Urge Overkill and more -- this Friday's fortuitous finds are streaming from the Pate page at the ol' HM.

NOW SHOWING:This weekend's wide releases are The Lego Movie, which is currently scoring 99 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; The Monuments Men, currently scoring 30 percent; and Vampire Academy, which  went unscreened by critics.

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN will be CGIed into at least one unshot scene for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. Aaron Sorkin says PSH's death may save 10 lives.

DYLAN FARROW talks to People about her open letter claiming Woody Allen molested her as a child, as well as the backlash it created.

SELENA GOMEZ ignored the advice of medical professionals and waltzed out of rehab just 14 days into a 6-week program ... over the strenuous objections of the rehab staff.

ASHTON KUTCHER issued a “public plea” to Charlie Sheen to stop trashing him on Twitter. And Sheen suggested he will.

VANITY FAIR's 2014 Hollywood Portfolio.

IRAQ: US Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Brett McGurk said suicide bombings in Iraq have tripled over the past year, and that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham is using a "global network" of jihadists to supply the bombers, who are often foreigners; he also accused Iraq of not doing enough to stop Iran from sending military equipment to the Assad regime in Syria.

SYRIA: The Islamic Front, led by Ahrar al Sham, and the Al Nusrah Front, jointly assaulted Aleppo Central Prison, reportedly freeing hundreds of detainees. The Islamic Front and Al Nusrah had announced the operation called "Truthful Promise Approaches" in Aleppo. The battle of "Fak Al-A'ani" to liberate the prison started with an Al Nusrah suicide bombing that killed at least eight regime soldiers; some 16 Al Nusrah fighters have been killed, including Chechen commander Saifullah Shishani, head of the Al-Khilafa army and leader of the operation. Rebels are now said to control at least part of the prison.

LIBYA: A car bomb wounded a political activist in Benghazi, and the office of two TV stations in the city was bombed.

PAKISTAN: US officials said US drone strikes in Pakistan are being curtailed in deference to Pakistan's wishes and in view of logistical constraints as the US winds down its combat role in Afghanistan; the officials denied recent reports that the change was to allow Pakistan to negotiate with the Taliban.

MARU the BOX CAT battles Hana.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: The Russians are always the first to break team.

THE SNOWY OWL that was hit by a bus in DC may have become anemic from eating the District's poison-laced rats.

DISCO CLAMS: I think I saw 'em at Pitchfest.

NEKO CASE & CALEXICO teamed up on her "Ragtime" for Conan.

MODERN BASEBALL streams You're Gonna Miss It.

TOTAL SLACKER is streaming Slip Away.

CHEATAHS stream their self-titled album.

DIANE BIRCH performs pared-down renditions of songs from her album, Speak A Little Louder, in the WNYC Soundcheck studio.

MARGOT & THE NUCLEAR SO & SOs drop "Hello, San Francisco," ahead of Sling Shot to Heaven.

BLEEDING RAINBOW drops "Images," ahead of Interrupt.

BILLY PRESTON: "Nothing From Nothing."

BROKEN BELLS: Danger Mouse and James Mercer talk to Drowned In Sound about After The Disco. 

SLINT: David Pajo and Brian McMahan talk to Pitchfork about the way history has distorted their small-town origins and slowly turned them into unwitting post-rock legends.

MOGWAI guitarist Stuart Brathwaite talks to PopMatters about the band's new album Rave Tapes.  

ROBERT POLLARD talks to MAGNET about throwing a no-hitter in college.

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: Cops raided a Manhattan drug den Tuesday night and arrested suspected dealers who may have been the ones who sold heroin to him. The autopsy was inconclusive; more tests are required. Screenwriter David Bar Katz denies accounts that he and the Oscar-winning actor were romantically involved.

JUSTIN BIEBER and his father were “extremely abusive” to a flight attendant as their private jet flew from Canada to New Jersey; the jet was so full of marijuana smoke that the pilots were forced to wear oxygen masks. Note that NBC News had four reporters on this story.

SELENA GOMEZ went to rehab last month, and blames it on Bieber.

WOODY ALLEN has asked for, and may get, a chance to respond to the revived child molestation story — in an Op-Ed piece in the NYT.

ELIZABETH HURLEY & BILL CLINTON? Tom Sizemore says yes; Hurley says nah.

KIM KARDASHIAN & KANYE WEST have decided to push up their wedding date.

CHARLIZE THERON & SEAN PENN are already talking about getting married? Too awful to check.

LADY GAGA became very depressed at the end of 2013.

EVANGELINE LILLY may co-star in Edgar Wright's Ant-Man.

ARTHUR RANKIN, the producer of the classic Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman animations, died of undisclosed causes Jan. 30 in Harrington Sound, Bermuda. He was 89.

LIBYA: The army said it has not been ordered to move against forces blockading the eastern oil ports.

SYRIA on Wednesday missed a deadline to hand over all the toxic materials it declared to the world's chemical weapons watchdog, putting the program several weeks behind schedule and jeopardizing a final June 30 deadline. Shocka. Failure in Syria may doom any nuclear deal with Iran. The Suqour al-Sham, an Islamist brigade in the Islamic Front, agreed to a truce with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham; the Free Syrian Army-linked Syrian Revolutionaries' Front, which has clashed with the Islamic Front, condemned the ceasefire as illegitimate.

IRAN: The Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran told semi-official television the current nuclear negotiations only extend the moratorium on not injecting gas into their centrifuges for another six months. Iran’s Chief nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi says that Iran will not give up the Arak reactor.

IRAQ: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham killed 23 people in four bombings in Baghdad. Two of the attacks used suicide bombers, and both occurred near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

LIL BUB & ANDREW W.K. rock out.

A POOCH chewed his way through his owner's £80,000 Aston Martin. And is now available for adoption!

VULTURES take up residence in South Daytona. It's a bit early for Spring Break.

A CAT missing for three years has been found fatter than when he vanished - after hiding out in a pasty factory.

BROKEN BELLS covers "And I Love Her" at the Ed Sullivan Theater for Beatles Week.

MAYER HAWTHORNE stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic.

THE AUGUSTINES stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic.

BELL X1 stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set.

JAKE BUGG plays songs from his new record, Shangri La, in the studio at OPB.

THE NATIONAL covers Perfume Genius's "Learning" as a B-side.

PHANTOGRAM drops "Bill Murray" ahead of their forthcoming album Voices.

GENTLE FRIENDLY drop "Autumn Nite" ahead oftheir next LP.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD covers "People Get Ready."

BOB DYLAN's 115th SELL-OUT: Michael Moynihan sorta nails it.Frankly, I dout Dylan would have done a hyper-American ad if it hadn't been for an Italia-owned company moving to the Netherlands.

MARK KOZELEK talks to Pitchfork about the harrowing backstories, both true and slightly fictional, behind the vivid, emotionally raw new Sun Kil Moon album.

PETULA CLARK talks to CBS about her new album, John Lennon, and more...

CONOR OBERST interviews OSCAR ISSAC about Inside Llewyn Davis. 

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN will be remebered at a private funeral in NY. Police are reviewing his personal diaries in the hopes of finding answers. CNN tried to piece together his final hours.

PAUL WALKER was worth 25 million when he died and there seems to be some possibility of a family conflict.

WOODY ALLEN was defended by Barbara Walters, and his attorney, who suggesteed the child molestation charge made by Dylan Farrow was fabricated. Slate notes that a court had a different opinion of the lawyer's claim.

JUSTIN BIEBER will be dogged indefinitely by customs.

GWYNETH PALTROW: Graydon Carter gives his story of Vanity Fair's feud with Goop. If you believe it.

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO & JONAH hill will re-team for a film about Richard Jewell.

RICHARD BULL, who was known for his role as shopkeeper Nels Oleson on the 1974-1983 show ‘Little House on the Prairie', died on Feb. 4 at age 89.

SYRIA: Last year's agreement to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons left President Bashar al-Assad in a strengthened position, and there appears little chance rebels will soon force him from power, the U.S. intelligence chief told Congress on Tuesday. The first UN report on the fate of children in Syria over the past two years details "unspeakable" abuses, including torture by government forces and the use of child soldiers by the opposition.

LEBANON: A judge issued an arrest warrant for Sunni preacher Omar Atrash, suspected of links to al Qaeda car bombings and attacks on Lebanese forces.

EGYPT: The Foreign Ministry requested that Qatar hand over Islamists who have fled to the Gulf power.

OFF THE GATOR'S HEAD is a tough shot.

AN AMOROUS PIG was called in as suspected domestic violence.

100 CHICKENS were stopped in a small SUV in Grand Island, Nebraska.

CHUPACABRA sighting near Houston, allegedly.

THE LOVE LANGUAGE produced a minimalist version of "Faithbreaker" for the video.

CIBO MATTO is advance streaming Hotel Valentine.

TINARIWEN is advance streaming Emmaar.

ARCTIC MONKEYS stopped by WFUV for a chat and mini-set.

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

THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS: "Fall" and "Sleep Comes Down" for Twofer Tuesday.

U2: Bono tells USA Today the band returned to listening to music from the late '70s for inspiration on their upcoming LP...but may not sound like it.

ROBERT CHRISTGAU: The 2013 Dean's List.

DUM DUM GIRLS:  Dee Dee talks to Pitchfork about the soundtrack of her life. 

BRIAN WILSON's Secret Bedroom Tapes. Post-Smile. 

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN: Law enforcement authorities at the scene of his death found 49 full bags of heroin, 23 empty bags of heroin, four bags of white powder believed to be cocaine, as well as various prescription drugs.  It is yet unknown whether the heroin was tainted. Investigators are looking for the drug dealer, with attention on surveillance video of an ATM.  The NYT's A.O. Scott essays Hoffman's gallery of characters. Cameron Crowe wrote about PSH's work as Lester Bangs in Almost Famous.

JERRY SEINFELD & GEORGE COSTANZA: The full episode teased during the Super Bowl.

MILEY CYRUS does her shtick for W magazine.

JUSTIN BIEBER, caught on strip club video.

CHRIS BROWN: Prosecutors want him jailed immediately.

VANITY FAIR unveils this year's Hollywood cover. No American Hustle?

SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's 50 GREATEST SKETCHES, according to Rolling Stone.

EGYPT: The head of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with 50 others, was referred to trial on charges of inciting violence.

LIBYAN and US officials said all of Libya's remaining chemical weapons have been destroyed during a secret US-led operation over the past three months at a site in the Libyan desert.

SYRIA: After al Qaeda disowned the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham, a prominent pro-al Qaeda Saudi cleric called on ISIS members to defect. An Islamic Front official praised al Qaeda's move, and claimed ISIS is now "without cover or co-sponsor ... totally stripped after al Qaeda and the people abandoned it."

IRAQ: A series of attacks in and around Baghdad, including a spate of car bombings, killed 24 people Monday as Iraqi forces pressed an assault against militant-held areas of Anbar province.

AL THE CORGI: Let's go to the slo-mo.

FRENCH KITTEN TOSSER faces jail time.

RATS could become bigger than cows. It's science.

RESCUE DOG: Really rescued.

NEKO CASE played on Prairie Home Companion last Saturday. 

TEMPLES advance streams Sun Structures.

ERIC CHURCH advance streams The Outsiders.

THUMPERS advance stream Galore.

U2 dropped "Invisible" ahead of their next LP, icymtsb.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS drop "Made Up English Oceans" ahead of English Oceans. (Thx LHB.)

NEIL YOUNG: "The Needle and the Damage Done." RIP, PSH.

THE BLACK LIPS talked to SPIN about their forthcoming album, Underneath the Rainbow. 

BEATLEMANIA: The Fab Four's arrival in America, 50 years ago, surveyed by the New York Times.

GREEN DAY: Dookie turns 20. Srsly, get off my lawn.

ANNA GORDY GAYE, the sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy and former wife of the late Marvin Gaye, with whom she co-wrote songs for his "What's Going On" album, died at her home in Los Angeles early Friday morning. She was 92.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Ride Along threepeats atop the chart with 12.3 million, reflecting H'wood's conservatism on Super Bowl weekend. Frozen moved backup into the second slot with 9.3 million after releasing a sing-along version. That Awkward Momentopened with 8 million -- not bad against an 8 million budget (indeed, the pickup cost was really 1.5 plus marketing), and better than Zac Efrons last few films...but it will likely die when better movies arrive next Friday. At No. 4, The Nut Job is stillmanagging to business in a Frozen world, taking in another 7.6 million. Lone Survivor rounds out the Top 5 with 7.1 million as it crosses the 100 million mark.  Below the fold, Jack Ryan ekes out sixth place, but crosses the 100 million mark worldwide. Labor Day debuted in seventh place with 5.3 million, so good thing the budget was only 18 million.

PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, perhaps the most ambitious and widely admired American actor of his generation, who gave three-dimensional nuance to a wide range of sidekicks, villains and leading men on screen and embraced some of the theater’s most burdensome roles on Broadway, died of an apparent heroin overdose Sunday at an apartment in Greenwich Village. He was 46. Mediaite collects clips from his remarkable body of work (missing Doubt, too).

MAXIMILLIAN SCHELL, the ruggedly handsome Austrian-born actor who won an Academy Award for his role in Judgment at Nuremberg, died early Saturday in Innsbruck, Austria. He was 83. He was alsoan Oscar-nominated director, not to mention the villain in The Black Hole.

DYLAN FARROW described being allegedly molested at age 7 by Woody Allen.Asked about it after a Knicks game, Allen pretended to fumble with his phone. Allen's rep says he found it untrue.  Variety reminds us court appointed independent experts found no credible evidence of molestation; People reminds us the prosecutor thought he had probable cause to charge Allen, but did not due to the child's fragility.

JUSTIN BIEBER and a pal double-teamed a stripper during a party at an L.A. recording studio. NSFW pic.

KANYE WEST will not be prosecuted for assaulting an 18-year-old who allegedly hurled a racial slur at West's wife, Kim Kardashia.  West's monetary settlement with the man almost guaranteed this.

OWEN WILSON welcomed a second son, with personal trainer, Caroline Lindqvist.

JESSE EINSENBERG has been cast as Lex Luthor in Batman vs Superman. Yes, really. And Jeremy Irons as Alfred.

THE UNITED STATES: t the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel called on European allies to step up their participation with the US in facing joint political and security challenges. Kerry rejected charges that the US is disengaging from a leadership role.

LIBYA: Authorities said 55 inmates escaped from Tripoli's Bawabat Al-Jibs prison after overpowering the five guards on duty. The jailbreak reflects the instability plaguing the country; in July over 1,000 prisoners escaped from al-Kweifiya prison near Benghazi.

EGYPT: A jihadist group behind a wave of spectacular attacks poses a serious threat to Egypt's stability as political turmoil triggered by the Islamist president's ouster rocks the country, analysts say.

AFGHANISTAN: Pres. Hamid Karzai admits that he has not spoken to Barack Obama in seven months as he reveals the complete breakdown of trust between his country and the United States.

ALICE the FRENCH BULLDOG reacts to her own Tube video. So meta.

MEATBALL is a 36-lb cat in a Phoenix shelter.

A SNOWY OWL was taken to the National Zoo for treatment after reportedly being hit by a bus in DC.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: Appeasement.