Tonight, let's get musical. Awesome, amazing, stupendous, rocking live music moments. That's it. I'm taking my wayback machine to a magical concert in 1973 to get us started.

MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe wanted a one-stop music shop that would have included event ticket and merchandise purchases along with streaming audio and paid downloads. What he got were agreements from the four major labels for the streaming audio and a deal with Amazon to sell digital downloads. Which is something. Also, there's handful of big-name sponsors like McDonald's and Toyota, and MySpace certainly still has a huge user base of music lovers. Whether or not this is "the one" for the record industry remains to be seen. How's the service?Of course, it's highly-compressed digital audio, and therefore pretty crappy. But I have to admit, the offerings go well beyond the pop selected for the Jonas Brothers' playlist — while I'm sure the cashiers at Amoeba Records might still sneer at the selection's depth, my searches for everything from Os Mutantes to Gas Huffer, Blind Willie McTell to Mongo Santamaria came up with multiple tracks to choose from. Eventually. The site is currently running incredibly slow, which may be a good sign of interest or a critical fumble of the launch. Users frustrated in the process of creating playlists might just go back to Last.fm, Imeem, iTunes or any of a number of other places to preview and purchase tracks.

San Francisco artist Walter Kitundu's website is slammed today. The builder of the hybrid turntable/harp instrument he calls the phonokora — a kora is a West African instrument with 21 strings — has received a $500,000 MacArthur grant. Kitundu talked about his art with LAist last year. After the jump, a video demo of the phonokora.

The MacArthur Foundation announced its annual Genius Grants today—those no-strings-attached, five year, $500,000 awards that let the best among us pursue their science or art or writing free from the cares of the working world. And look who got one: Alex Ross, the classical music critic for the New Yorker! Ross is certainly deserving when it comes to smarts, if not to finance (he won't be quitting the NYer for a mere 100K per year). But genius knows no financial criteria, despite the jealousy of the poors! Ross says he'll use the cash to help him write his next book, upgrade his website, and "launch some home improvements." God, geniuses are the luckiest people ever. [FBNY]

"It becomes more of a mainstay and more of an institution than - pardon the pun - the new kid on the block." [AP]

Pink Floyd's keyboardist, Richard Wright, died at 65 of cancer yesterday. Which reminded us—well, not us, but the boomers who grew up getting stoned to the 'Floyd in the 60s and 70s—that someday, we are all going to die. Maybe sooner than we think. The baby boomer's rock and punk heroes from the sixties and seventies are starting to die off—and not in the blaze of drug mystique and tragedy that befell Hendrix and Lennon and the rest. Why is this more depressing than usual?1. "Doctor, there's something wrong with me/My health is not all that it used to be." -The Who They're dying relatively young, in early middle age-either as a result of a hard lifestyle or simply the unfairness of not getting to choose when you go. They're also dying of realistic and unfortunately common diseases: heart disease, cancer. Just like the rest of us! (Being like the rest of us sucks and is totally why you say, "Fuck that" and become a rock star in the first place.) Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramone died in their late 40s and early fifties. Beatles guitarist George Harrison kicked it at only 58. The Clash's Joe Strummer? 50. 2. "It's better to burn out/than to fade away." -Neil Young Yet, they're not dying so young that they're leaving a beautiful corpse, which totally breaks the Rule of Jim Morrison. Boomers aren't so old that their friends are dying, but their heroes are already checking out. Memo: there's less time than you think. What will this mean for the economy? The national savings rate? 3. "Time is on my side." -the Rolling Stones Yet, of all the rockers that are dead or about to die, at least we can rest assured that the Stones will never, ever go. Especially not Keith Richards. Dude is immortal.

The entire music industry is slowly becoming a simple extension of corporate marketing programs—but at least most companies are forced to pay a lot of money for their new pets. Taco Bell, though, has learned that it doesn't take that much to have an "indie" (Ha! Ho!) group cosign your company. The souls of musicians used to cost at least a bag of heroin; now, an entire band can be purchased for as little as a Chalupa value meal!

Hip hop mogul and sophisticated ball waxer Puff Daddy got a little embarrassed this week, when some journalist-for reasons still unknown-decided to fact check something that came out of Puffy's mouth. Specifically, a rant that the millionaire bad rapper spit on YouTube about how he had to stop flying on his own private jet due to high gas prices. Then a gossip guy at the Palm Beach Post actually combed the records and talked to secret sources and discovered there is no private jet registered to Puffy or any of his companies. But there is an explanation!

John McCain, Sarah Palin, and their campaigners, just won't take a hint—or a flurry of cease-and-desist orders from all the musicians whose music they keep stealing for their nauseating "maverick" campaign. Last week, Van Halen had to tell them to STFU when the campaign started using the song "Right Now" totally without permission. Before that, Jackson Brown and John Mellencamp had to force McCain's minions to stop blasting their tunes on the campaign trail. So what did the McCain morons think was going to happen when they tried to make Heart's "Barracuda" Sarah Palin's theme song without getting the band's permission? Well, what has happened is that the psycho-eyed Veep wannabe now has a nickname based on a song she can never play at a public event again. Ha!

Controversy: A magazine has published a list of "Overrated" things! Is their analysis correct? They certainly hope you will argue about it a lot! Blender's list of the most overrated things in music ends with a typically "provocative" #1: Deceased rapper Tupac. Former Gawker columnist Tionna Smalls has already started an online protest campaign! Problem, though: Tupac is the most overrated thing to hit music since the synthesizer craze. It's the mythology that did you in, Pac:

Is iTunes helping the music industry—or destroying it? That's the dramatic question we will answer for you in this post. Itunes is the single largest retailer of music in the US, period. It sells nine out of every ten digital song downloads in the country. And since it helped put the Tower Records of the world out of business, lots of artists think there's nowhere to go except iTunes. But how much money are (even famous) bands really making off all those 99-cent singles? Here's, uh, one perspective:

Did you know that Scion, maker of postal-truck-looking autos, has its own record label as a marketing strategy? Just like TAG Body Spray! One member of Scion's target demographic suggests an alternate use for those dollars: "Trying to figure out how to unfuck their hideous looking vehicles." [Animal]

Guns "N" Roses' "new" album Chinese Democracy-insert standard joke about album taking longer to happen than actual democracy in China-reportedly stands a good chance of being sold exclusively at Wal-Mart. This comes on the same day that AC/ DC announced that it will be selling its new album exclusively at Wal-Mart. Maybe because the soul-crushing retailer has been forced to accept a union at a store in Canada, it's now progressive enough for this to be acceptable? Either that or rock and roll is dead. [via Adfreak]

So here's the new way to get out of your record contract: just "repudiate" it! That's the sophisticated legal strategy employed by 30 Seconds To Mars, Jared Leto's group. His record label, EMI, responded to the band's novel move by suing them for $30 million. Free your mind from the shackles of commerce, EMI! On its website that won't allow you to turn off the god damn music, 30STM explained in a rambling fashion just why they decided to opt out: In California contracts can only last seven years? But they've had theirs for nine years? So they just quit it? No idea if this is legally sound or not.

One awkwardly rapping local television reporter might be written off as a crackpot. Two might simply be a coincidence. But six different videos of TV reporters breaking into rhyme? It's a trend that has spanned decades, but has only recently been teased out into the open by the hard work of YouTube skimmers. Complex puts together a definitive list of this painful but hypnotic media meme. We've included just one example for you after the jump: an apparently 17-year-old traffic reporter from North Carolina delivering her morning traffic report in the form of a spasmodic (drug-fuelled?) freestyle rhyme. Let's battle, girl:

This is the best news of the week! Sad-sack boomer troubadour Jackson Browne—Jackson Browne!—is suing John McCain. Why? Because McCain has been using "Running on Empty" in an ad without Browne's permission. Browne says McCain's use of the song misrepresents Browne's own political beliefs, not to mention McCain's age: the senator was pushing 30 in '65, not 17. Not since Loudon Wainwright sued Walter Mondale ETC ETC ETC [HuffPo]

It's an age-old question that will probably never be answered: Does Billy Joel suck, or does he actually rule? Impossible to say, really. But, whatever your stance, do not pal around with The Piano Man and pretend you're best buds when actually you're a nasty music critic who's going to go back to his office and trash the guy's work. Because Billy is not having it! "I had no idea when you interviewed me that you considered much of my later work to be `sentimental rubbish', or that you thought songs like 'Uptown Girl' and 'We Didn't Start the Fire' were `abominations'. And your back-slapping, buddy-buddy style of conversation betrayed no indication that you actually compared talking with me to `sleeping with an inflatable girlfriend'," Joel wrote to New Zealand Sunday Times-Star scribe Grant Smithies the other day.

Dr. Dre's loooooong-awaited new album Detox is allegedly dropping in the next 60 days, to coincide with the launch of a co-branded Dr. Dre cognac. The Loch Ness Monster is also scheduled to appear as soon as its own co-branded cognac launches. [Idolator]

We'll try to break this situation down for you as gently as possible so than any Australian members of our audience don't immediately begin tearing off their clothes and taking topless pictures of themselves, which seems to be a typical reaction to the following story amongst a certain demographic. Earlier this week, Gawker's sexy sister site Fleshbot tracked down a topless photo of Jessica Origliasso, a 23-year-old Australian pop star who sings in a group called The Veronicas with her twin sister. For ease of comparison, let's call her the Aussie Lindsay Lohan (they both like to kiss girls). Now people in Australia are going all WILD over this scandal and BARING THEIR BOSOMS. We must call for calm!

Ehud Olmert is resigning as premier of Israel due to corruption charges and a universal displeasure with his governance, but the real news from the holy land is that Morrissey has arrived. Oh, the things Obama could learn about pop superstardom from the Pope of Mope, who landed at Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday for his first concert tour of the region. Israeli newswire Ynet was all over the arrival, and already my in-box overfloweth with lines about the "Moziach." (Ask Krucoff, he'll know.) If you're a Smiths fan of the Semitic persuasion, this touch-down is especially significant as Morrissey is still shepherding some of us through the big-haired awkward years. [Ynet]