by Katie Baker

by Malcolm Jones

Geoff Muldaur is a reluctant headliner. You’ll find his name as the leader of the Texas Sheiks on the spine of the CD case, but the front cover of the new album just says “Texas Sheiks.” Likewise, while he is far and away the best and most unique vocalist on the album—this is the man who inspired Richard Thompson to say, “There are only three white blues singers, and Geoff Muldaur is two of them”—he seems more than content to equally share vocal duties with the rest of the band. He’s made his share of solo records, in a career that stretches back to the '60s, but they are outnumbered by the collaborations he’s been part of—with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band (a band that inspired everyone from the Lovin’ Spoonful to the Grateful Dead), with his former wife, Maria Muldaur, with a Woodstock ensemble that included Paul Butterfield, Ronnie Barron and Amos Garrett, and most recently as the arranger catalyst for a big band recreation/reinterpretation of the music of '20s jazz great Bix Beiderbecke. Oh, and many year ago, his definitive version of the song “Brazil” inspired and sustained Terry Gilliam on his way to making the film of the same name. Muldaur gets around, he just doesn’t seem to like to stand out.

Asked to appear on the Australian variety hour Hey Hey It's Saturday as a guest judge, Harry Connick Jr. sputters in disbelief when a Jackson 5 impersonation group entirely in blackface appears onstage. He first gives the group a 0 scorecard for the performance while the audience boos; later, at about 4:40 into the clip, Connick launches into an impassioned race-relations lecture explaining why blackface is a bad thing. "If I knew that was going to be a part of the show, I definitely wouldn't have done it," Connick declares on live TV.  The host appears genuinely surprised.

by Simon Barnett

As a Brit who has spent over half his life in the United States, I am frequently cornered by any number of Americans who gushingly admire the so-called genius of the British music scene. "The Beatles man, the best! The Clash, yeah man! The Kinks, that really got me! Morrissey, a true poet man! U2, I love that stuff!"

Right now I suppose it’s Coldplay, heirs to the most overrated band in history, U2. Aaah, Coldplay, the latest to regurgitate Sergeant Pepper's-like over production (this time even wearing the old military jacket), somehow duping Jay-Z into giving them urban street cred. And, be still my beating heart, that lovable front man Chris Martin, who does the slightly nervous, tentative, unsure of himself, somewhat creatively tortured, English intellectual thing that is so utterly affected. (I concede it clearly works though, he did get Gwyneth Paltrow. Score one for the lads!)

He's still got it. The upcoming movie Michael Jackson's This Is It, due out a full month from now, has blown past several sellout benchmarks, outpacing Harry Potter and Twilight in sold-out shows, according to a rep for MovieTickets.com. It's also walloping the Hannah Montana concert movie, per Fandango. Each site reports hundreds upon hundreds of sold-out shows—over 700 showings of the film are already sold out.

Pop Vox has the answers to five panicky questions you have right now:

When can I see it? Not until Oct. 28—which is what makes these sellouts so unprecedented. Most movies don't sell out 500-plus theaters until the last week before they're released (if ever). On MovieTickets, This Is It hit 100 sellouts on the first day it went on sale (Monday), and throttled up to 500 by Wednesday. "The ticketing trend shows no signs of abating," Rick Butler, Fandango's chief operating officer, said in an e-mail from the site.

How long is it out? Just for two weeks—a limited platform that's helping to account for some of the presale mass hysteria, the site analysts say. It's also being marketed as the biggest music event of the year. After initially slotting the "special, limited, two-week, worldwide engagement" for an Oct. 30 opening—a conventional Friday release—Sony moved the film to a Wednesday-night release, something typically reserved for huge blockbusters. Which, inarguably, This Is It is shaping up to be.

What the heck is this movie—a concert or a documentary? It's both. Parts of it are a 3D concert movie, showing clips from rehearsals for the 50-date tour that Jackson was set to start over the summer. And the rest is a kind of eulogizing documentary, with footage culled from more than 100 hours of film that AEG Live sold to Sony Pictures. (Those 100 hours were filmed during concert rehearsals throughout the spring and early summer.) 

Who's directing it? Kenny Ortega, the same man who brought you the High School Musicals and who was, at the time of Jackson's death, overseeing his tour. "As we began assembling the footage for the motion picture, we realized we captured something extraordinary, unique and very special," he said in August. "It's a very private, exclusive look into a creative genius's world."

Michael is big, but will he beat Miley? As her alter ego Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus holds the record for best-performing concert movie. Her Best of Both Worlds 3D movie earned $31.1 million, with a per-theater average of more than $45,000. And yet, to date, This Is It is outpacing Best of Both Worlds in presales quite significantly. Brace for an upset (or would it be the expected outcome?).

by Daniel D'Addario

The Material Girl has released a lot of material over her career, so it's only natural that she would release a greatest hits album. Or two. Or three.

Yeah, that's right. Today Madonna drops her third career-spanning greatest-hits collection, Celebration. The 36-track, double CD album covers just about all of her classics ("Like a Prayer," "Ray of Light," "Material Girl") and all of her reinventions (geisha, cowgirl, a brunette), and she even has some new songs. They are (are you ready for this?)  Celebration, a trying-too-hard disco track with a thin veneer of sex ("I guess I just don't recognize you with your clothes on," she tells a dance partner), and "Revolver," a double-entendre-laden collaboration with Lil Wayne.

But hold on! Madonna, you forgot to include some of your greatest hits on your greatest hits album. Even if you've rereleased some of these songs before, Celebration is supposed to be, well, a celebration of your entire pop star career. Here's what we would've liked to have seen included:

Cover image, Vanguard Press.

by Daniel D’Addario

The email arrived at 2:53 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17. The subject? "Pavement."

"I'm getting tickets tomorrow," wrote a friend, somewhat mysteriously. "Who wants?" For a moment, I was confused. Pavement, perhaps the best indie-rock band of the Nineties, broke up in 2000.

Luckily, a clarification landed in my inbox five seconds later: "Oh, right, details: Reunion show. Tue, Sep 21, 2010 07:00 PM. Not sure how much tickets cost."

That was all I needed. "Count me in," I typed. "Even though I’ll probably be getting married the weekend after."

The fact that my friend pitched the tickets without providing any information on price, location or, at first, timing--and that I agreed to purchase them almost a year in advance, despite what many people might consider a rather "important" conflict—should come as no surprise to fans of Pavement, whose members confirmed plans last Thursday to reunite in 2010 for a concert in New York's Central Park and a series of unspecified "dates around the world." Nor should it shock them that the Central Park show sold out instantly, forcing the band to schedule a second gig the following day—and then, when that sold out, too, to tack on an additional show the day after. As one headline put it, "Holy S**t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" People—especially 27-year-old yupsters like me—like Pavement. A lot.

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Jay-Z's new Blueprint 3 earned the rapper his 11th No. 1 berth on the Billboard 200 chart of U.S. album sales─enough to crush Elvis's record and become the solo act with the most No. 1 records in the chart's half-century history. Jay will also have the second-most No. 1 albums among all acts, ever─bested only by The Beatles, who have 19 No. 1 albums.

Coincidentally, the slew of remastered Fab Four albums (which we reviewed here) also saw major coups over the weekend. While the rerelease of 1969's Abbey Road had the biggest take, with 89,000 units sold, the total sales for all Beatles music through Sunday night was 626,000. According to Billboard, "Since SoundScan began tracking music sales in 1991, the Beatles have never sold less than 1 million albums in a year."

You're just over halfway there, Jay!