THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with THE B-52s!  The quirky combo from Athens, GA, has had a long and storied career, but we'll stick to the early stuff this weekend.  So, from the self-titled debut, classics "Planet Claire," "Rock Lobster,"  "Lava," and "Dance This Mess Around." And from the sophomore LP, Wild Planet, "Party Out of Bounds," "Give Me Back My Man", "Private Idaho" and "Dirty Back Road."  BONUS: "Song For A Future Generation," because it's the first song I heard them play live. DOUBLE BONUS: "Deadbeat Club," because get off my lawn.

EMILY HAINES (Metric) advance streams Choir Of The Mind.

THE LONE BELLOW advance streams Walk Into a Storm.

MICHAEL McDONALD advance streams Wide Open.

PARTNER advance streams In Search Of Lost Time.

THE SMITHS share some previously unreleased live tracks.

OF MONTREAL backed actor Paul Rudd and actor-director David Wain on Boston's classic "More Than A Feeling."

THE NATIONAL: An Oral History of Boxer.

HENRY ROLLINS eats spicy wings and talks Black Flag, The Stooges, and more.

RANDY NEWMAN tells The Guardian he would never skip "You've Got a friend in Me" live, which is less perverse than I thought he'd be.

WALTER BECKER... and Spinal Tap. Really.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases include Stephen King's It, which is currently scoring 89 percent on the ol' Tomatometer; and Home Again, which is scoring 29 percent.  Look for the creepy clown to do big biz.

MICHAEL FASSBENDER & ALICIA VIKANDER reportedly are getting hitched next month.

JARED LETO, the  Oscar-winning actor who is also a tech entrepreneur, stadium-filling rock star, fashion icon and successful Silicon Valley investor, is profiled by the WSJ.

EVAN RACHEL WOOD and her fiancé and bandmate Zach Villa have ended their engagement.

KATE WINSLET talks to the New York Times about two vastly different upcoming movies, career longevity, and more.

DANIEL DAY-LEWIS broke his arm in a motorbike accident.

JOAQUIN PHOENIX, profiled by Bret Easton Ellis. He's playing Jesus and digging Moana.

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL may be headed to the small screen. 

A SEAGULL steals a bag of salt and vinegar chips from a store.

DOGGO rescued from a vent.

THE 55 HEMINGWAY CATS are being guarded as Hurricane Irma approaches.

TED LEO shares a throwback video for "Can't Go Back."

THE NATIONAL played their new LP live in Philly.

DAVID GILMOUR stopped by World Cafe to chat and share tracks from Live at Pompeii.

SMALL CIRCLE streams their debut LP, Cyclical.

U2 shares “You’re The Best Thing About Me,” the first official single from the new LP.

ST VINCENT follows up "New York" with the 80s-tinged "Los Angeles."

BRIAN WILSON shares the previously unreleased 90s track "Some Sweet Day."

MARGO PRICE shares "A Little Pain."

PRIMUS shares "The Scheme."

ISSAC HAYES croons "Walk On By".

X look back on 40 years of Punk iconoclasm.

LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III excerpts his memoir at The Oxford American.

CHARLES BRADLEY's cancer has spread to his liver, forcing the cancellation of his tour. Eff cancer.

HOLGER CZUKAY, co-founder and bassist with pioneering German rock band Can, has died aged 79.

KIM KARDASHIAN & KANYE WEST are expecting a third child via a surrogate.

SCOTT DISICK recently was involuntarily hospitalized for being a danger to himself or others.

GEORGE CLOONEY talks to The Hollywood Reporter about his new life off-camera, his newdirectorial effort,his tequila windfall, and more.

JAMIE FOXX & KATIE HOLMES finally went public.

CHRISTIAN BALE is supersizing to play fmr VP Dick Cheney.

MOTHER!: Darren Aronofsky's latest, a thriller starring galpal Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem, is getting great early reviews.

GATORS enjoy a Louisiana freshwater diversion plan that sends fish directly to them.

THE BIRDS: Magpies enter "swooping season" in Australia.

ATTN, P. PARKER: Parachutes could one day soon be made out of spider webs, according to researchers in Italy and the UK.

URBAN CHIPMUNKS might be healthier and happier than rural chipmunks.

PETRA HADEN covers Michael Sembello's "Maniac."

HUSKER DU advance streams the first dsc from Savage Young Dü.

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

FAITH HEALER advance streams Try

THE GODFATHERS: "Birth, School, Work, Death."  Post-Labor Day, school starting... we got the middle covered.

WALTER BECKER: A previously unpublished interview.

SPOON: Britt Daniel talks about the 10th anniversary of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga at Vulture.

THE NATIONAL: All five members walk TLOBF through the new LP.

PRINCE's favorite color may have been purple, after all.

STAR WARS: EPISODE IX loses its director Colin Trevorrow.

MEGHAN MARKLE is Vanity Fair's cover story.

THE X-FILES is returning in January.

JAMES BOND plans to marry? That always ends well...

LEO DiCAPRIO as The Joker? I'll believe it when I see it.

REESE WITHERSPOON talks about rethinking rom-coms, and more.

HARMONY KORINE shares the soundtrack of his life.

NETFLIX is selling weed.

SHELLEY BERMAN, the famed "sit-down" comic who recently played Larry David’s father on Curb Your Enthusiasm, has died. He was 92.

RICHARD ANDERSON, who simultaneously played Oscar Goldman, leader of secret government agent the OSI, on both The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman after a long career as a supporting actor in film and TV, died on Thursday in his Beverly Hills home. He was 91.

A MOOSE wrestles with a tire swing in a backyard in Spokane, Washington.

DOGS can recognize their own scent.

A NINE-FT GATOR was removed from a Houston home post-Harvey.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A militant rodent commandeered an Uber to a wildlife center.

STILL A VERY SLOW "NEWS" PERIOD, but:

WALTER BECKER, the guitarist and songwriter who made suavely subversive pop hits out of slippery jazz harmonies and verbal enigmas in Steely Dan, his partnership with Donald Fagen, died on Sunday. He was 67. From the NYT obit: "Steely Dan’s lyrics were far from straightforward, depicting cryptic situations and sketching characters like addicts, suicidal fugitives and dirty old men. 'You can infer certain things about the lives of people who would write these songs. This we cannot and do not deny,' Mr. Becker deadpanned in an online interview with the BBC."  Fagen wrote his own remembrance.  Some of the Dan's finest are surveyed by The Guardian, while Pitchfork finds Becker's influence in his guitar work.  The Record salutes his understatement.

ALSO: It's, you know, "September."

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: The overall box office was supposedly 1.5 percent better than last weekend's "worst since Sept 2011" performance? Odds are these estimates are inflated.  Anyway, The Hitman's Bodyguard treepeated atop the chart with 13.4MM. Annabelle: Creation placed with 9.3MM and a roughly 91MM totalagainst a 15MM budget. Wind River showed, climbing one spot with 8MM and 20MM domestic against a 11MM budget.  Leap! slides to the fourth slot with 6.6MM, but most of its take is overseas (80MM so far). Logan Lucky rounded out the Top Five with 5.6MM and its 22MM domestic total creeps toward its 29MM production budget.

THE DUKE & DUCHESS OF CAMBRIDGE are expecting their third child together.

That should do it for today. More tomorrow, I would think.

THE LABOR DAY WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with CHEAP TRICK, live at ChicagoFest '81! Can you honestly tell me you forgot? Forgot the magnetism of Robin Zander, or the charisma of Rick Nielsen? Your set list includes: "Stop This Game," Hello There," "I Want You to Want Me," "On Top of the World," "Reach Out," "Baby Loves to Rock," "Gonna Raise Hell," "Dream Police," "Ain't That a Shame," "Surrender," "Just Got Back," "Day Tripper" and "Goodnight." You can access the individual songs from the link, or let the whole thing roll.

ALVVAYS advance streams Antisocialites.

NEIL YOUNG advance streams Hitchhiker.

GREGG ALLMAN advance streams Southern Blood.

JULIE & THE WRONG GUYS advance streams a self-titled LP.

LCD SOUNDSYSTEM is streaming American Dream.

THE DREAM SYNDICATE's Steve Wynn shares his Sonic Speakeasy Playlist Vol. 2.

FIRST CLASS: "Beach Baby" may fall into that category of summer song Oliver Wang once described "tinged with fragility and marked by melancholy."  It's even more true of the long version, with those French Horns and choral vocals in the c-section...

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS' Stephin Merritt talks to ClashMusic about earplugs, songwriting, heis musical memoir and more. (Thx, Frank Yang)

NEIL FINN talks to The Guardian about livestreaming the recording of his new LP in his crowded house.

POLITICAL BEATS: From National Review(!), Scot Bertram and Jeff Blehar discuss ask guests from the world of politics (journalists and analysts, so far) about their musical passions.

OH SEES: John Dwyer, interviewed by Henry Rollins.

THE SHAGGS "reunion", reviewed by The New Yorker.

NOW SHOWING: After the worst weekend since Sept. 2001, there are no wide releases this weekend.  But Close Encounters of the Third Kind returns for a week on 700 screens, and Tulip Fever debuts on 600 screens.

BESIDE BOWIE: THE MICK RONSON STORY has a trailer online.

BLADE OF THE IMMORTAL is the craziest trailer you will see this week.

GWYNETH PALTROW got candid about her past love life in a recent podcast interview.

RAISING ARIZONA: Peak Nic Cage?

COWBOYS wrangle cattle across a flooded road in Crosby, Texas.

HOW A CAT NAMED TIGER wound up in prison.

A BEAR crashes a birthday party, enjoys cake.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: Crafty rodents are luring bears to their deaths on the railroad tracks.