STEVIE WONDER, TENACIOUS D, DEAD WEATHER TO PLAY BONNAROO

Bonnaroo announced their 2010 lineup today. Like last year, it seems like they are having four headliners this year (the festival will be on June 10 - 13): The Dave Matthews Band, the sort of overrated Kings Of Leon, Stevie Wonder and Jay-Z. Also on the bill: Tenacious D, Weezer, The Flaming Lips (doing their Dark Side Of The Moon thing), Damien Marley and Nas, Norah Jones, Michael Franti and Spearhead, John Fogerty (he should be a headliner!), newly minted Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jimmy Cliff, The Avett Brothers, Thievery Corporation, Tori Amos, Grammy-winners The Zac Brown Band, Les Claypool, John Prine, Steve Martin (yes, that one), Jeff Beck, The Dropkick Murphys, She & Him, Daryl Hall with a hip-hop duo called Chromeo (I gotta find out more about this), Jamey Johnson, Clutch, Kris Kristofferson, GWAR (what?), Tinariwen, The Gaslight Anthem, They Might Be Giants, Miranda Lambert, Calexico, Cross Canadian Ragweed and many, many more.

BEST OF THE 00's: RICK RUBIN

I have often expressed admiration of Rick Rubin 's production skills. If I were a producer, I'd like to be like him: hip-hop, metal, funk, punk, country, singer-songwriters, nothing is off limits, and he proved that again in the '00s.

He remained close collaborator of Johnny Cash, producing American III: Solitary Man and American IV: The Man Comes Around in the early years of the decade. I would argue that Cash's American series of albums are nearly as good as anything he'd ever done, obviously American IV's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" was one of the greatest moments of an incredible career. Rick also curated the incredible Unearthed box set, allowing fans to hear some of the incredible things that didn't make the American albums. He's also been the keeper of the Cash flame, releasing American V: A Hundred Highways, which featured "God's Gonna Cut You Down" (and now there's word that 2010 will see the final album from the American sessions, American VI: Ain't No Grave.

Rick started working with Tom Morello, who certainly was paying attention to Rubin's rap/rock/metal hybrids in the '80s. Rubin produced Rage Against The Machine's final album, the all-covers Renegades, as well as their posthumously released live album, Live At The Grand Olympic Auditorium (which turned out to be the band's final shows before reuniting years later). Rubin hooked Morello and Rage mates Tim Commerford and Brad Wilk up with ex-Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell and produced the first Audioslave album.

One of Rick's supposed talents is to discover new talent, and I don't know how much he's done that in the past decade, but one band he did work with early on is System Of A Down, who are one of the best metal bands around (even though they seem to be on hiatus at the moment). Rick signed them to his American Recordings, and has produced their albums, including (this decade) Toxicity (which, bizarely, hit #1 on 9/11), Steal This Album! and Hypnotize and Mesmerize.  Another younger band in the heavy guitar category he worked with The Mars Volta on their De-Loused In The Comatorium album.

He remained the go-to guy for The Red Hot Chili Peppers (having worked with them ever since 1991's BloodSugarSexMagik), producing the excellent By The Way and the maybe-too-long double album Stadium Arcadium. I really hope they work with him on the next one, which will be their first since guitarist John Frusciante quit (again).

He briefly returned to hip-hop, producing a cover of Ice-T's "99 Problems" for Jay-Z's "final" record, The Black Album. It may be Jay's finest moment. Less successful was his "Better Than I Ever Been" track that he produced for Nike, featuring Kanye West, Nas and KRS-One (DJ Premier later did a better remix which also featured Rakim).

Rubin also veered closer to the mainstream, producing Shakria's Oral Fixation albums, which included her huge hit collaboration with Wyclef Jean, "Hips Don't Lie." There was also The Dixie Chicks' album Taking The Long Way featuring the classic "Not Ready To Make Nice." And he tried to give Neil Diamond a new credibility by doing some American Recordings type stripped down albums with him. He also worked with Weezer, Wallflowers frontman Jakob Dylan on his first solo album, a new-ish Americana-type band called The Avett Brothers who I need to write more about, and The Gossip. And of course, Metallica's triumphant comeback album, Death Magnetic. He also produced some tracks with U2, but the full album he worked on with them remains in the vaults.  And he is apparently working with Crosby Stills & Nash and ZZ Top at the moment. Will he discover more LL Cool J's, Run-D.M.C.s, Public Enemys, Slayers and System of a Downs in the '00s? That's what will be interesting to see.

THIS WEEK ON OUTQ: CHRISTMAS ALBUMS!

For those of you who are new to No Expiration: every Wednesday morning at 9 am ET, I go on the SIRIUSXM channel OutQ and talk about music on the great show The Morning Jolt With Larry Flick.
Anyway, as I said when I wrote about Christmas music last year, I'm Jewish and not much of a Christmas music guy. That said, last year I came up with some great Christmas music: Little Steven's collection of garage rock Christmas tunes, The Reverend Horton Heat's christmas album We Three Kings, the We Wish You A Metal Xmas and a Headbanging New Year compilation and the all time classic, Phil Spector's A Christmas Gift For You. I won't even try to beat that lineup, and if you don't have those albums, go get them. But here's some other good stuff, starting with my favorite pick of this year:

I actually wrote about The Hives' holiday collaboration with Cyndi Lauper last year, but I didn't find out about it until after my OutQ holiday music episode. It's called "A Christmas Duel," and it is just as awesome as you would hope it would be. Trust me.

Next up is Bob Dylan's Christmas In The Heart, which I've written about. So much has been written about this album. Is he kidding? Seeing what he can get away with? The album is so straight - New York magazine compared it to Andy Williams! It's not far off - it's done very straight, so to speak. But if you listen to Bob's Theme Time Radio Hour on SIRIUSXM's here, you know that Bob loves that straight up old-school American pop music from the '40s and '50s. As big of a Dylan fan as I am, I didn't feel the need to get the whole record. But if you do, the proceeds go to Feeding America. Actually, having said that, now I feel guilty, maybe I will get it.

Pretentious time! Stewart Copeland must be having field say with this one. After a few years of reminding people of how cool he used to be with The Police reunion tour, Sting is back on the semi-classical music tip with his seasonal album, If On A Winter's Night. Actually, the album sounds like it was made to be made fun of, and of course Sting doesn't care. He can do anything he wants. The two songs I've downloaded, "Soul Cake" and "Christmas At Sea," are quite good, I like them despite myself.

Years ago, I saw Melissa Etheridge at a radio station Christmas concert at Madison Square Garden. It was more of an alt-rock thing with Green Day and Hole headlining. Melissa actually had her own sold-out headlining gig at the Garden the week after, so to make this show different, she did it solo acoustic. Which could be intimidating in a huge arena, in front of a crowd that may not be your crowd. Unless you're Melissa Etheridge. Truth to tell, she blew Green Day and Hole and everyone else away. She did a great cover of John Lennon's "Happy XMas." She's exactly who you want playing Christmas music. She's sometimes a bit too earnest even for me, but I have a soft spot for her. Her Christmas album, A New Thought For Christmas, came out last year, and I didn't get to it, but I figured I'd get it this year. "Christmas In America" is classic Melissa, a great song about someone whose loved one is serving their country overseas on Christmas.


Tori Amos has a holiday album, Midwinter Graces. I was surprised at that, given she's been a huge critic of religion over the years. On the other hand, her dad is a priest! While I haven't enjoyed Tori's last few releases, her first four or so albums are classics, and I am a fan for life. I like the song I heard from the new album, "Star Of Wonder." Will Larry let me discuss her? We'll find out tomorrow. He is not a fan.



Rob Halford has reunited his other band, Halford, for a holiday album, Halford 3: Winter Songs. It is hard to imagine Judas Priest doing this album, but it makes sense, kind of, for Rob. He's like an opera singer. It has elements of metal, but isn't a metal album really. Good for Rob to be able to stretch out between Priest projects.


Last year, Weezer released the EP Christmas With Weezer, and it had a version of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" which sounds just the way you'd expect, it's fun.


Here's a weird one: Eban Schletter's Cosmic Christmas. He does the music for Spongebob Squarepants, among other shows. I am bringing a thermin-based version of "We Three Kings," I don't know if Larry will want to hear it.


Also, if we get to it, the followup EP to last year's We Wish You A Metal XMas. It features Steve "Lips" Kudlow of Anvil singing "Frosty The Snowman," former Coal Chamber singer Dez Fafara singing "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer," Doro Pesch singing "O' Christmas Tree" and the reunited Girlschool doing "Auld Lang Syne."

THE GRAMMYS PRE-BROADCAST

When I used to cover the Grammys for VH1, I was lucky enough to cover the pre-telecast awards. I would be in our special press room, watching on closed circuit TV. I know that sitting through three hours of awards given to non-celebrities for music genres like classical and world music doesn't sound like fun, and it definitely isn't totally thrilling, but some parts are great. I got to interview the Blind Boys Of Alabama, and Lord of the Rings score composter Howard Shore, and Steve Earle, for instance. People who would never really make the telecast. A lot of the people who get their awards during the pre-tel, it really means a lot to them: they aren't just celebs on the award show circuit. These are often people who really have to think if it is worth it to pay for a fairly expensive trip to L.A. to maybe win an award in a non-televised award show where they may get two or three minutes to give a public thank you.

This year I watched the "pre-tel" on the Grammy's finally improving web site, and there were some great moments. George Carlin's daughter accepted his fifth career Grammy for Best Comedy Album for It's Bad For Ya. Dweezeil Zappa had a moving speech to a nearly empty house when his group Zappa Plays Zappa won Best Rock Instrumental for thier version of "Peaches en Regalia," which his father Frank Zappa wrote for him when he was born, 40 years ago. This category was a bone of contention between my wife and I: I wanted Metallica to win for "Suicide & Redemption," and she wanted Nine Inch Nails for "34 Ghosts I-IV." But I was glad that Dweezil won, it meant more to him. Apparently, someone who co-wrote a song for Lil Wayne died, and someone accepted for him and that was sad too.

Other cool awards: The Blind Boys winning thier fifth career Grammy, Weezer winning for their "Pork and Beans" video, Peter Gabriel winning for the Wall-E song "Down To Earth," B.B. King winning his 15th for his great album One Kind Favor, Alicia Keys winning her 12th for "Superwoman," Al Green winning his 10th and 11th for songs from Lay It Down, Duffy won one, Rick Rubin won Producer of the Year, and Robert Plant & Alison Krauss won their first two of hopefully many tonight (they won one last year also). Other than the Blind Boys, none of these people were there though. In fact, the only big names there were Carrie Underwood and Robert Trujilio of Metallica (who won Best Metal Performance for "My Apocolypse").

Other cool awards: Juno took best soundtrack, They Might Be Giants won for a children's record, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers won long-form video for Running Down A Dream, Pete Seeger won in the folk category for At 89.

Some lame upsets: John Mayer's "Gravity" beat Bruce Springsteen's "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" for Best Male Rock Vocal (I don't really think of Mayer as a rock singer), the Kings Of Leon beat AC/DC in a rock category, and country singer Jamey Johnson didn't win anything. But on to the main show! Good luck to everyone... but especially Robert Plant & Alison Krauss.