THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THE REIVERS! Or do you remember them as Zeitgeist? Trouser Press does: "Out of Austin, Texas came Zeitgeist, two guys and two girls making moody, melodic and occasionally stunning folk-rock with a deep debt to the '60s - although there's plenty of modern angst and a rootsy feel more western than country..." Let's start with the title track to their debut, "Translate Slowly" and "Without My Sight" from Club Lingerie, but follow it up with a vintage set from SXSW's Austin Music Awards.  Part 1 includes "Secretariat" and "Lazy Afternoon" (originally popularized by Barbra Streisand), while Part 2 includes their cover of "Blue Eyes (Cryin' in the Rain)" and "Things Don't Change."  I wish there was video of "Freight Train Rain," but you'll have to make do with audio at ReiversSpace.

AVEY TARE (Animal Collective) is advance streaming his Down There album.

THE MORNING BENDERS stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session. Chris Chu talks to the Mercury News about the band's name and vintage sound.

THE SECRET SISTERS stopped by the World Cafe for a chat and mini-set, including "Big River" and "Ring of Fire."

ALL SONGS CONSIDERED has launched a streaming Internet channel, accessible via web and iPhone app.

BRYAN FERRY drops "Song to the Siren" as an advance track to his cameo-laden Olympia LP.

HOLY F*CK drops the kitteh-laden video for "Red Lights."

FRANKIE ROSE & THE OUTS: Rose talks to the Village Voice about her band-hopping.

IMOGEN HEAP talks to The Telegraph about how Twitter, YouTube and video blogs have accelerated her record sales and built an intimate fanbase.

CHAPTERHOUSE: Stephen Patman talks to Prefix about the band's early years, why they got back together, and what they did during Chapterhouse's 17-year break. (Thx, Chromewaves.)

SOLOMON BURKE gets a great obit and tribute from Reason's Radley Balko. 

CUTOUT BIN: From C.W. McCall to James Brown, from Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood to She & Him, from Billy Bragg to Solomon Burke, The Feelies, The Beatles, plus great covers from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, The Jam, Marianne Faithfull, and Angus & Julia Stone 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 action-comedy Red, which is currently scoring 71 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; and Jackass 3-D, which is scoring 43 percent on thin reviews.

COURTNEY COX fell "in love" with a Cougar Town co-star, and the pair kept it a secret from everyone, according to RadarOnline.

CHRISTINA AGUILERA officially filed for divorce from her husband Jordan Bratman.

ANGELINA JOLIE has been barred from shooting her directorial debut in Sarajevo after a paperwork error and heated complaints from women's groups that alleged the film provides a "misleading history" of the conflict that tore the country apart in the early 1990s.

KANYE WEST has been embarrassingly caught with his pants down in a nude photo scandal, according to RadarOnline.

LINDA EVANGELISTA has split with billionaire Hard Rock founder Peter Morton, sources tell Page Six.

AFGHANISTAN: The French experience in Sarobi suggests that with a substantial number of Afghan troops, generous spending on civilian projects like schools and jobs programs and a local government that is not too corrupt, it is possible to create a measure of calm.

IRAQ: Violence in Basra is on the wane, and is being replaced by shops, cars and fun parks -- thanks to oil.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Don't put a dog in charge of the fireworks.

A TURTLE donated to a Panhandle aquarium by an 8-year-old boy proved irresistibly tasty to an alligator.

PIGLET seized in Russian debt collection.

A CREW OF EIGHT New Zealand rowers say a sea lion attacked and cracked their boat in two places before chasing them swimming back to shore.

A HUMPBACK WHALE broke the world record for travel by any mammal, swimming at least 6125 miles from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean... in search of a mate, natch.

THE XX got "Crystalised" on Kimmel.

THE DANDY WARHOLS stopped by OPB for an unpluggedy set in audio and video. 

EELS stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

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

KITTY WELLS: "The Queen of Country Music" is one of NPR's 50 Great Voices.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD covers "People Get Ready."

LOCAL NATIVES: Matt Frazier talks to OffBeat about creating Gorilla Manor, living with his band mates, and life on the road. (Thx, LHB.)

TEENAGE FANCLUB was profiled by The New York Times and performed for the site's popcast. Norman Blake was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune. (Thx, Chromewaves; I missed both!)

MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle's interview is captured on video at KXAN.

SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS loses singer-keyboardist Claudia Deheza.

LINDSAY LOHAN was caught trying to escape the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California, earlier this week, according to RadarOnline.

COURTNEY COX has barely split from David Arquette, but already got a million dollar offer to become the new face of a dating website for cougars. Meanwhile, the woman with whom Arquette claims to have had sex with "once ... maybe twice," is indignant, telling friends that's a lowball figure.  She also has a secret drug arrest, according to RadarOnline.

CHRISTINA AGUILERA's marriage fell apart after she went for a girls-only vacation with Nicole Richie and Samantha Ronson in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, last month, says the NYP.

GEORGE MICHAEL left his home in the early hours Tuesday - vowing he was going into rehab.

ROBERT DOWNEY, JR's comments about addiction to Playboy are excerpted by People.

MORGAN FREEMAN is on the wrong end of one of the worst divorce deals in Hollywood history, according to the ever-reliable Enquirer.

ALIEN PREQUEL may star Natalie Portman or Noomi Rapace, star of the The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Plus, deets on Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof's new draft of the screenplay.

SPIDER-MAN: The reboot's villain is reported to be The Lizard. And Dylan Baker loses out of the role.

THE MAKING OF THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: Vanity Fair has photos from the coffee table tome.

IRAN's defense minister called the Stuxnet worm "Internet terrorism," but claims it did not have any impact on Iran's nuclear program. As if he would say anything else.

AFGHANISTAN: Cash from the US military and international donors destined for construction and welfare projects in restive parts of Afghanistan is ending up in the hands of insurgents, a contractor and village elders said. US and NATO forces are helping top Taliban leaders sit down for talks with the US-backed government in Afghanistan as a step toward political reconciliation with the insurgency.

KITTEH dreams of grooming.

CURIOUS CANINES consuming cannabis.

PYGMY GOATS were found staggering around their paddock after gorging themselves on 'magic' mushrooms.

BADGERS are causing havoc in an ancient English churchyard by digging up the remains of people buried there for several hundred years. Are they... zombie badgers?

SOME DOGS are natural gloom-mongers while others have sunnier dispositions. It's science!

JAMES BLAKE covers Feist's "The Limit to Your Love."

DEERHUNTER played DC's 9:30 Club last night; you should be able stream the gig on demand today.

TITLE TRACKS: The latest band from John Davis (Q And Not U, Georgie James) did the four free songs thing for Daytrotter.

KELLEY STOLTZ is advance streaming To Dreamers, taking him in a more garage-psych direction than I remember.

LOWER DENS plays a Tiny Desk Concert at the offices of NPR.

LET'S ACTIVE: "Every Word Means No" (including a blatant use of puppies that would have made it an Internet hit 20 years later) and "Waters Part." It's like a vintage Twofer Tuesday, but on Wednesday.

OF MONTREAL frontman Kevin Barnes talks to All Things Considered about groove bass and its role on the new False Priest LP.

SUFJAN STEVENS talks to Drowned in Sound about thelast-minute, primitive nature of The Age of Adz, outsider art, personal dysfunction and psychobabble, experimenting with the long form, Woody Allen films - and what's wrong with civilization.  He talks to The Quietus about preparing to tour, faith, and more...

DYLAN IN AMERICA: Sean Wilentz's book is excerpted at PopMatters.

ONE-THIRD of new song downloads come from 50 songs.

EVAN DANDO: Truther. And junkie, apparently.

COURTNEY COX & DAVID ARQUETTE: Now that the split is public, Arquette called in to the Howard Stern Show to talks about their "trial separation," noting that they haven't had sex in 4 months.  His rebound woman has plenty of experience with celebrity men. Meanwhile, there are a number of rumors about Cox and her Cougar Town co-star Brian Van Holt.

DAVID SCHWIMMER has been secretly married to his British girlfriend Zoe Buckman for four months.

CHRISTINA AGUILERA has split from her husband, Jordan Bratman. The couple has been separated for a few months.

LINDSAY LOHAN's stage mom was warned by law enforcement seven years ago that Li-Lo was out of control in Hollywood, but did absolutely nothing about it.

CONAN O'BRIEN's longtime sidekick Andy Richter will join him on O'Brien's upcoming late-night talk show on TBS, which premieres on November 8.

MARISA MILLER has signed on as the new spokesperson for the NFL's 2010-2011 season.

BACK TO THE FUTURE: "The 25th Anniversary Trilogy" will have video of Eric Stolz as Marty McFly before the part was recast, five weeks into shooting.

TERROR in EUROPE: European intelligence agencies have growing concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack on the continent in the coming weeks or months. In France, attention is also turning to the potential danger to the country's expatriates and interests abroad, notably from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the group that recently kidnapped French workers in Niger.

AFGHANISTAN: Security forces killed and captured numerous Taliban and Haqqani Network commanders and fighters in Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Khost, Zabul, Paktia, Kunduz, and Nimroz. (Thx, LWJ.)

IRAQ: As Prime Minister al-Maliki inches closer to securing the parliamentary support he needs to keep his job, he's losing popular support and stirring alarm in Washington and Arab regional capitals.

KITTEH wants the coffee to go away.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant rodent diverted an oncoming car into a house in Beaver Dam, WI.

BLUE, CALICO & PUMPKIN LOBSTERS: The odds of seeing them together naturally are roughly 1 in 900 quintillion.

A POD OF DOLPHINS protected swimmers from a great white shark off the northeastern coast of New Zealand.

MYSTERY JETS drop "Show Me the Light" as an advance video from Serotonin.

NEW RELEASES: Albums from Belle & Sebastian, Antony and the Johnsons, Badly Drawn Boy, Moondoggies, Less Than Jake, Duran Duran reissues and more are streaming this week at Spinner.

BOB DYLAN is advance streaming The Witmark Demos 1962-1964.

EXTRA LENS: John Darnielle and Franklin Bruno are advance streaming Undercard: "Really, it's best to think of Undercard as a Mountain Goats record - it doesn't fall outside that band's continuum anyway, in terms of sound or overall quality."

ELTON JOHN & LEON RUSSELL are advance streaming The Union, which includes bits from Neil Young, Brian Wilson and Booker T. Jones, songwriter Bernie Taupin and producer T-Bone Burnett.

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

SONIC YOUTH: Pitchfork looks at the band's long, strange label trips in light of recent critical comments from Steve Albini.

TITUS ANDRONICUS: Patrick Stickles tells Pitchfork about the music that shaped his life at 5-year intervals.

ROCKY VOTOLATO talks to The Quad about his "living room" tour, songwriting and more... (Thx, LHB.)

BLACK MOUNTAIN keyboardist Jeremy Schmidt talks to Spinner about the creation of Wilderness Heart.

PHIL SPECTOR: Al Pacino will play the pop producer and killer in an HBO telepic written and directed by David Mamet.

LINDSAY LOHAN is doing a lot of thinking at Betty Ford, and she's already reached one big conclusion - she's in the mess she's in largely because of daddy Michael Lohan. Unsurprisingly, daddy blames mommy.

COURTNEY COX & DAVID ARQUETTE have separated after 11 years of marriage. The word comes after pictures have surfaced of David and a woman with whom he has been intimate.

MAD MEL UPDATE: Baby mama Oksana Grigorieva vehemently denies that she is the one who leaked all those wacky tapes of the actor.

GEORGE MICHAEL was released from prison on Monday after serving half of his eight-week sentence for drug driving.

BRETT FAVRE: A NY Jets masseuse bacomes the second woman to claim she got sexts from the veteran QB.

KATE MOSS's annual earnings have doubled from £2 million to £4 million since was she photographed snorting cocaine back in 2005.

THE 10 BEST GEEKY COMPUTER FILMS, according to The Observer.

MINKA KELLY is Esqure's Sexiest Woman Alive 2010.

TERROR in EUROPE: German authorities, responding to US intelligence reports, are stepping up efforts to investigate alleged terrorist activities of German jihadists in Europe and Asia, despite official doubts in Berlin about the urgency of the threat.

PAKISTAN: Washington's push on Pakistan to get tough on militants on its territory is prompted by worries about an attack on US soil, a concern the United States will press in talks with Islamabad later this month.

IRAQ: Faced with a shifting political landscape after months of impasse, the Obama administration has intensified pressure on the country's political leaders to form a broad coalition government that, while unwieldy, would marginalize a fiercely anti-American party now poised to wield more influence than ever.

HAMILTON WESLEY WIGGLEBOTTOM: Let's go to the video.

SQUIRRELS refuse medical care in Alexandria, VA.

ONE-LEGGED GOOSE CHASE: Alcohol was involved.

PET HOARDING: 77 cats in two vehicles in Bennington, VT.

BELLE & SEBASTIAN play songs from their new LP for Pitchfork's One Week Only feature. Stuart Murdoch talks to Morning Edition about Write About Love.

CARIBOU stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

THE BUDOS BAND stopped by KUT's Studio 1 for a chat and mini-set.

PETE YORN and BRAD (ft Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard) played the World Cafe Live on Friday; you can stream the gigs on demand.

JOHN LENNON: David Sheff talks to Weekend Edition Saturday about the three weeks of interviews he conducted shortly before the shooting.

SOLOMON BURKE has died of natural causes at the age of 70 in the Netherlands.  Here he is on Top of the Pops in 2003, with one of his soul signatures, "Everybody Needs Someone to Love."

GUIDED BY VOICES: Tobin Spout talks to the Chicago Tribune about the reunion tour.

SUFJAN STEVENS talks to the Irish Times about crisis, liberation and, er, knitting.

SMITH WESTERNS: Cullen Omori talks to Pitchfork about the band's new LP, the experience of jumping to a bigger label, and their favorite tourmates.

O-HI-O: A noisy, violent altercation and four pistol shots took place about 70 seconds before Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on antiwar protesters at Kent State University, according to a new analysis of a 40-year-old audiotape of the event.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: The Social Network (probably) repeated at No.1 with 15.5 million on a reasonable 31 percent drop that will keep its Oscar buzz alive.  TSN has taken in 46 million so against a 50 million budget.  Life As We Know It is the estimated No. 2 with a 14.6 million debut against a 38 million budget.  That's a very typical rom-com opening; Katehrine Heigl is about one more blah pic away from career problems. Secretariat shows with 12.6 million against a 35 million budget; whether it has Seabiscuit legs is definitely an open question.  Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole takes the fourth slot with 7 million; its domestic haul is 39.4 million against an 80 million budget.  Wes Craven's My Soul to Take rounds out the Top Five with 6.9 million against a 25 million budget.  Overall, a very soft weekend.

KIM KARDASHIAN got into a bar fight with a jealous girlfriend.

LINDSAY LOHAN's ex-con dad is reportedly leveraging a threatened conservatorship suit for family therapy.

BEN HARPER & LAURA DERN are divorcing.

DEMI MOORE & ASHTON KUTCHER jetted off to Israel for a a "spiritual journey."

KELSEY GRAMMER and girlfriend Kayte Walsh suffered a miscarriage.

JODIE FOSTER reportedly left a teenager battered, bruised and scarred after she allegedly clawed his arm during a confrontation in a Los Angeles parking lot.

GWYNETH PALTROW talks about the casting couch with Elle magazine.

DENISE RICHARDS is writing her memoirs already.

THE 50 MOST UNDERRATED FILMS, according to the Telegraph.

TERROR in the UK: MI5 is hunting a cell of British terrorists connected to an al-Qaeda commander who boasted of Mumbai-style attacks in Europe.

IRAN acknowledged Saturday that some personnel at the country's nuclear facilities were lured by promises of money to pass secrets to the West but insisted increased security and worker privileges have put a stop to the spying.

PAKISTAN: A senior al Qaeda leader who serves as al Qaeda's ambassador to Iran, and is wanted by the US, is reported to have been killed in a Predator airstrike in Pakistan's Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan two days ago. The report has not been confirmed.

COLUMBUS DAY:  I get it as a holiday, so I thought a few words might be in order. Over the course of my life, I have seen the image of Columbus swing from unvarnished hero to genocidal criminal. Columbus was certainly no sweetheart, but at the end of the 15th Century, it is fair to say that Europeans often did not treat each other all that well. Moreover, before the furriners showed up, Native North and South Americans engaged in tribal massacre, infanticide, scalping, human sacrifice, and the ritual skinning of slaves for their priests to wear. It was a far less civilized time all 'round. But the West is civilized today in part because of Columbus. Some four centuries-plus later, we all are still struggling to become more civilized, but focusing criticism o­n the more-civilized while giving the less civilized a pass is not particularly useful to that struggle.

A BABY SKUNK: Let's go to the video of the little stinker.

AN ESCAPED ALLIGATOR sobers up in a French drunk tank.

CAT SURVIVES HOUSE FIRE in Golden, Colorado. Was it the water?

HIP-HOP PIGS may combat poverty in Rwanda.