MUMFORD & SONS cover Neil Young's "Dance, Dance, Dance."

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

DARK DARK DARK stopped by The Current at the outset of their latest tour.

LIANNE LA HAVAS brings her British soul stripped down to WNYC Soundcheck.

JOHN CALE guest DJs the latest edition of All Songs Considered, which includes selections from the Beach Boys and Snoop Dogg.

RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS drop "Never Is A Long Time" and "Love of Your Life" as a single.

O'JAYS: "Backstabbers."

THE REPLACEMENTS: Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson cut four cover songs that will be released later this year as a limited edition 10-inch vinyl EP, which will be auctioned to benefit Slim Dunlap. Says Westerberg: "We still rock like murder."

BEN FOLDS talks to All Things Considered about the reformation of the Five.

TORI AMOS: Identity, Image, and Acting with Archetypes.

ANDY BELL talks to Drowned In Sound about the making of both Nowhere and Going Blank Again, to his disillusionment with music after disbanding Hurricane #1, to working with the Gallaghers and the questions everyone keeps asking; will Ride and Oasis ever reform and take to the stage one more time.

JESSICA SIMPSON's husband may be seeing his ex-wife, according tot the ever-reliable Star magazine.

NICKY MINAJ cussed out MARIAH CAREY during American Idol auditions. There's video.

RHIANNA & CHRIS BROWN ended up locked in a nightclub bathroom together?

RICHARD BELZER wasn't supposed to talk about anal sex, molestation or give the Nazi salute when he agreed to do a news interview on live TV... but he did anyway.

CAMERON DIAZ talks to Esquire UK about turning 40, among other things.

WOMEN IN HOLLYWOOD: Elle presents the eight leading female dramatists of showbiz, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

CAPTAIN AMERICA 2: Five actresses are in the mix for the sequel, which may also feature Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow.

JERRY SEINFELD riffs on recent NYT article. Really.

YEMEN: Security forces killed three "key" al Qaeda leaders in Aden.

SYRIA:  Damascus saw renewed fighting. Iranian, UN, and NATO officials warned Syria not to use its chemical weapons against anti-government rebels.

IRAN would enrich uranium up to 60 percent purity if negotiations with major powers over its nuclear program fail, an Iranian lawmaker said on Tuesday, in comments that may add to Western alarm about Iranian intentions.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: A sheep with an upside-down head.

SWISS COWS sext farmers.

A RABBIT is rescued from a third-story roof by Essex firefighters.

A PANDA gets the cake torture.

I'M HAVING A PERSONAL TECH ISSUE TODAY, SO NO PICS... but all the usual links.

THE SHINS play "No Way Down" and "The Rifle's Spiral" for Conan.

A.C. NEWMAN is advance streaming Shut Down the Streets.

THE DAREDEVIL CHRISTOPER WRIGHT stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

THE HEAD AND THE HEART stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

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

MADNESS drops "My Girl 2" ahead of Oui, Oui, Si, Si, Ja, Ja, Da, Da.

ADELE: Hear a snippet from her theme for the next James Bond pic, "Skyfall."

THE KINGSMEN: "Money (That's What I Want)," in glorious color

THE 1990s: When Alternative Music Became Mainstream.

GRIZZLY BEAR: What does indie-rock royalty buy in 2012?

THE WOODEN SKY frontman Gavin Gardiner talks to The Line of Best Fit about his early influences, touring, and rock n' roll history. (Thx, Chromewaves.)

YOKO ONO talks to Billboard about her legacy, politics and new album with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore.

BRITNEY SPEARS has been under a conservatorship for more than four years now, and as part of that, those close to The X Factor judge keep a close eye on her internet and cell phone use, according to RadarOnline.

GEORGE CLOONEY is reportedly cutting back on his time with Stacy Keibler.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON will put aside their personal lives in order to help promote the lives of Bella and Edward for the last installment of "The Twilight Saga." Shocka.

LINDSAY LOHAN is vowing to get her revenge on the congressional aide she accused of choking her at the W Hotel on Park Avenue South in the early hours of Sunday morning.

JOHN TRAVOLTA & OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN are reuniting for a Christmas album.

DANIEL CRAIG tells GQ he misses getting falling down drunk in public, among other things.

TEN CULT FILMMAKERS Who Went Mainstream. 

RUSSIA: A Moscow court ruled that a controversial anti-Islam film can be banned in Russia, as the film was deemed extremist and capable of inciting ethinic and religious hatred.

GERMANY: A classified report by Germany's foreign intelligence agency says that insider attacks against NATO forces are likely to increase, the Taliban reintegration program will be ineffective, Afghan and US peace talks with the Taliban will go nowhere, Afghan president Hamid Karzai is more likely to defer to insurgents than institute needed reforms, and a greater commitment of foreign troops will be needed to stabilize the country after 2014.

SYRIA: In Homs, government forces evicted thousands of residents and then demolished their homes. Fighting spread across the old section of Aleppo. Government forces shelled towns in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

AFGHANISTAN: With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal.

A MEERKAT warms himself by the fireplace.

STONER DOGS on the rise in Colorado.

PET MONKEY Under House Arrest.

A 25-LB DOG discovered in the engine compartment of a Chevy Silverado in San Clemente on Monday is doing fine, said to have survived a 110-mile journey on a hot autumn Southern California day with no apparent ill effects.

THE ALABAMA SHAKES play "I Ain't The Same" at Kinks frontman Ray Davies' Konk Studios in London.

NEW RELEASES from The Vaccines, Matt & Kim, Mountain Goats, Heart and more are streaming this week at Spinner.

THIS MANY BOYFRIENDS, with references to Talking Heads, Orange Juice and the Pastels, is streaming their self-titled debut LP.

MUMFORD & SONS stopped by World Cafe to chat about how they achieved success. And, of course, they perform songs from Babel.

HOLY GHOST TENT REVIVAL, recalling '60s and '70s classic-rock influences such as The Band and The Flying Burrito Brothers, contemporary indie-rock acts like Dr. Dog, and New Orleans brass-band jazz, get featured by World Cafe: Next.

THE MOODY BLUES "Ride My Seesaw" on French TV for Twofer "Tuesday Afternoon."

TRAMPLED UNDER FOOT: Barney Hoskyns' new oral history of Led Zeppelin is excerpted at The Quietus.

JAMES MURPHY talks to The Observer about the Velvet Underground, Bowie and Can, and what made him first want to make music.

TORI AMOS talks to The Observer about  playing the piano at two and a half, rage and big ears.

FRANKIE VALLI talks to Weekend Edition about the Four Seasons, his falsetto, hair products...

LINDSAY LOHAN called the police after she claims she was assaulted in her New York City hotel room. The charges were later dropped.

ANNE HATHAWAY finally got her fairy-tale ending when she married actor-jewelry designer Adam Shulman Saturday night.

DREW BARRYMORE and Will Kopelman welcomed their first child - a daughter — on Wednesday.

JUSTIN BIEBER threw up on stage. Video at the link.

ASHTON KUCHER & DEMI MOORE are legally married -- not just in a Kabbalah ceremony -- raising the question of why no divorce papers have been filed yet.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER was lying through his gap teeth when he claimed Maria Shriver knew he was banging other women during their marriage ... this according to multiple sources connected to Maria.

STANLEY TUCCI & FELICITY BLUNT went ahead with a formal wedding ceremony.

SEAN MacFARLANE will host the 85th Academy Awards.

SAUDI ARABIA: In the Saudi version of Ikea's annual furniture booklet, all the women who appear in the catalog published in other countries have been removed via photo retouching.

SYRIA: In Homs, government forces evicted thousands of residents and then demolished their homes. Fighting spread across the old section of Aleppo. Government forces shelled towns in the eastern suburbs of Damascus.

AFGHANISTAN: US military deaths have reached 2000, a cold reminder of the human cost of an 11-year-old conflict that garners little public interest at home as the United States prepares to withdraw most of its combat forces by the end of 2014.

BABY GOATS on a See-Saw.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A "small animal" is believed responsible for bullet train delays affecting 68000 passengers in Japan.

A KITTEN survives the spin cycle.

OSCAR the DOG goes globe-trotting to raise awareness of abandoned pooches.

PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page.  I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant.  The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

GRIZZLY BEAR drops a video "Yet Again."

TAME IMPALA is advance streaming Lonerism.

FREELANCE WHALES is advance streaming Diluvia.

LORD HURON is advance streaming Lonesome Dreams.

OKTOBERFEST:  NPR has your streaming playlist.

DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: "I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself."

CORIN TUCKER talks to Pitchfork about loving "Portlandia" and Fiona Apple, listening to Skrillex, wanting to work with the Roots, and women's rights.

TWO GALLANTS: Adam Stephens talks to Drowned In Sound about the state of music, musical duos and more.

KRISTY MacCOLL: Will the re-release of her first four albums finally get the great British pop singer-songwriterher due?

LEE HAZLEWOOD: The A.V. Club suggests points of entry for new fans.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Hotel Transylvania tops the chart with 43 million, a record opening for September.  A showing that strong sets up an interesting confrontation with Tim Burton's Frankenweenie next wekend.  Looper places with a strong 21 million (against a 30 million budget), showing audiences were willing to give Joseph Grodon-Levitt and Bruce Willis a chance with a complex premise and a quirky director.  Last week's champ, End of Watch, shows with 8 million, which is gravy against its low budget, especially given that the film was financed in part by both the Regal and AMC theater chains. Trouble With the Curve collects another 7.5 milion, holding pretty well (as I suspected last week).  House At the End of the Street rounds out the Top Five with an 7.2 million, off 42 percent, but still a pretty good hold for a horror movie.  Below the fold, Pitch Perfect (No. 6), on 335 screens, outgrossed Won't Back Down (No. 10) on 2515 screens. Ouch.

LOOPER: Director Rian Johnson brings us a movie we have not seen a million times before.  I say that despite the trajectory of the plot being predictable -- a certain amount of that comes with the time-travel subgenre.  But Looper is some old skool sci-fi, in the sense that it clearly aims to have the audience think about an issue larger than the plot.  As such, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bruce Willis and a blonde Emily Blunt are given much more to do than fire their guns, though they do that a lot, to ultra-violent effect.

KRISTEN STEWART & ROBERT PATTINSON: Amid reports that they were back living together, moving vans were once again spotted outside the L.A. area home they once shared.  Their friends don't believe it will last.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER admitted to having an affair with actress Brigitte Nielsen — while still dating Maria Shriver.

MALIN ACKERMAN and her husband Roberto Zincone are expecting their first child together.

BRITNEY SPEARS' former friend Sam Lutfi claims drug-sniffing dogs found a secret stash of crystal meth in her house during the dark months before her infamous meltdown.

JOHNNY DEPP made a surprise visit to the Comanche Nation Fair in Oklahoma.

RYAN GOSLING isn't the number one choice to play Christian Grey in the movie adaptation of  Fifty Shades of Grey.

LIBYA: The US intelligence community is finally coming around to the conclusion that the Sept. 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," and that "some of those involved were linked to groups affiliated with, or sympathetic to al Qaeda."

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders were in unison arguing that the West was hiding behind its defense of freedom of speech and ignoring cultural sensitivities in the aftermath of anti-Islam slurs that have raised fears of a widening East-West cultural divide.

SYRIA: After several days of fighting, a rebel offensive in the city of Aleppo made little progress against more heavily armed government forces.

AFGHANISTAN: The top US military commander in Afghanistan is being transferred and another Marine general will take over the war effort early next year as the United States and its allies shrink their combat role against the still-potent insurgency.

A NEW CAT helps kick off Rocktober.

A DRUG-SNIFFING DOG now is the only certified member of the police force in the small eastern New Mexico town of Vaughn.

A NEW SPECIES OF FISH is not to be messed with.

THE GREAT PUMPKIN: Rocktober kicks off with a world record 1845.5 lb specimen.

PATE REUNION WATCH: Conditions have created a significant risk of a band reunion occurring in early July 2013. Pate is looking for input from friends and fans via the Claude Pate Facebook page.  I have also set up and will monitor PateBlog on the Twitter, as well as PateBlog -at- aol.com for email (laugh at the aol, but why not be period?). We'll also be looking to set up additional lines of communication as needed and as plans warrant.  The last reunion was great; get involved to help get another one rolling!

...and now, our regularly scheduled programming...

THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

... with THE BYRDS! The turning of the seasons had me in the mood for this rare live threefer of "Turn! Turn! Turn!", "Bells of Rhymney" and "Mr. Tambourine Man", introduced by... David McCallum? There are more screaming girls, plus go-go dancers when they hit Shivaree for "All I Really Want to Do" and "Feel A Whole Lot Better."  There are even more dancers when they cover Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" for Shindig! on June 23, 1965, while I'm pretty sure that's Ed Wynn introducing "Chimes of Freedom."

REGINA SPEKTOR stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

THE WALKMEN played before a live studio audience in KUT's Studio 1a.

MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle recently dropped by WNYC Soundcheck to play a solo session at the piano, and to share the origins of his new music.

MOON DUO is advance streaming the psychedelic Circles.

PILOT works their "Magic" on TOTP.

PATTERSON HOOD sets the record straight about what his output means with PopMatters. And tells Straight.com that songwriting may have saved his life.

JOHN CALE talks to The Guardian about his love of hip-hop, why tangerines are more tempting than drugs, and why he doesn't feel bad about taking his anger out on pianos ... or chickens.

THE DECEMBERISTS' frontman Colin Meloy talks to the Salt Lake Tribune about his next children's book. (Thx, LHB.)

THE BEACH BOYS: Mike Love fires Brian Wilson, Al Jardine, and David Marks. So sadly predictable.

CUTOUT BIN: From Andy Williams to Teenage Fanclub, from Dubley Moore to Prince, from Los Lobos to Rose Royce, plus Waterboys, Glen Campbell, Nick Lowe, Susanna Hoffs 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: Hotel Transylvania, which is currenly scoring 47 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; Looper, which is scoring 92 percent; and Won't Back Down, scoring 31 percent.

SONS OF ANARCHY: Law enforcement sources believe Johnny Lewis was on PCP or meth when he allegedly killed a woman and then fell to his death. Seems like this story will keep getting worse and worse.

REESE WITHERSPOON is a mom for the third time.

TOM CRUISE: The ever-reliable Star magazine asks: Could Scientology's most famous ambassador be parting ways with the church?

AMANDA BYNES is reportedly going to great lengths to avoid Lindsay Lohan.

ERIN MORAN has hit some very unHappy Days; she's homeless and haggard.

HERBERT LOM, the versatile Czech-born actor who could play Napoleon Bonaparte or a witch hunter with equal aplomb but who was perhaps best known as Peter Sellers’s frustrated boss in the Pink Panther franchise (but was also great in the original version of The Ladykillers), died on Thursday at his home in London. He was 95.

THE UNITED NATIONS: Muslim leaders demanded international action to stop religious insults in a challenge to Pres Obama's defense of freedom of expression at the UN General Assembly.

TURKEY: Prime Minister Erdogan said he might be willing to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has been fighting for a separate Kurdish state since 1984 in a conflict that has killed over 40000 people so far.

SYRIA: Several thousand rebels fighters launched a "decisive attack" for control of the city of Aleppo. The Al Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the double suicide bombing of the Syrian Army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday. More than 300 people died in Wednesday's fighting.

IRAQ: Al Qaeda in Iraq launched a suicide assault on the Tasfirat prison in Tikrit; one guard was killed. Security forces detained a senior terrorist in Baghdad. US special operations forces reportedly have deployed to Iraq to advise and train security forces.

LAMB & DOG, cuddling together...Mass hysteria!

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant, self-immolating rodent ignites a grass fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

PYTHONS tour Rome. No parrot sketch.

POACHERS KILL TIGER... in a zoo.

VAMPIRE SQUID: Garbage disposals of the ocean.