Last year, San Fran’s inaugural Outside Lands festival featured Radiohead, but also power outage issues. This year: No Radiohead, but abundant electricity. Trade-offs! While Thom was twisting words at the Reading and Leeds fests in the motherland, Golden Gate park welcomed three days of artists that cut a wide demographic swath, including smart hip hop by way of Q-Tip, fraternity fodder in Dave Matthews Band, vintage South American psychedelics in Os Mutantes, and the iconic panty magnet Tom Jones. The fest made news by inviting Jack Black and Kyle Gass step into Beastie Boys shoes, and having Fergie not pee her pants onstage. If you couldn’t make it, we sent photographer Paige Parsons to race through the pot smoke and abundant recycling stations and take lots of shots, and also there are these videos:

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Barack Obama was the eighth most frequently tagged “artist” on Stereogum in the past twelve months. That makes him even more popular than Animal Collective around here, and deservedly so: Animal Collective may have just released their finest album, but they are not ready to lead our country. Yet. In any case, you are no doubt gearing up for an exciting week of nonstop inauguration coverage and celebratory concerts. The partying started in DC last night on the eve of Martin Luther King Day, with legendary musicians and Jamie Foxx paying tribute to the President-Elect at the Lincoln Memorial, where the civil rights leader gave his “I Have a Dream” speech 46 years ago. Among the “We Are One” event performances: Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger singing “This Land is Your Land,” U2′s MLK-inspired “Pride (In The Name Of Love)” followed by Obama campaign song “City Of Blinding Lights,” and Sasha Fierce’s take on “America The Beautiful.” The air was freezing, and James Taylor had to strum with one eye, but it was a magical night. We’ve got a bunch of photos, and you can browse them in our fancy new gallery. Change!

This black and white Lex Halaby-directed clip finds Detroit’s own Bettye LaVette alone at the Lockeroom Lounge, blowing smoke, drinking too much wine, looking at photos, staring at the walls, and singing about what it’s like to grow old and having a graveyard for a friend. Her take is jazzier, smokier than Elton John’s version. It comes from last year’s The Scene Of The Crime, which as we mentioned, includes the Drive-By Truckers, Spooner Oldham, and David Hood as her backing band. In the video, though, it’s Bettye by her lonesome.

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No shortage of Bruce love ever, really. Recently, Jesse Malin and Arcade Fire wrangled the Boss for cameos. But even when Springsteen’s not in promo-mode, we always seem to be listening to his music.

April had that all-star live tribute and Ted Leo gave us a rockin’ “Dancing In The Dark” at the Callum Robbins Benefit Show in January. With Magic in the air, though, this fall’s brought a slew of new covers. That’s not counting all the “Thunder Road”‘s in karaoke bars across the world.

Springsteen loomin’ large…

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Never got around to collectively scratching our skulls over Janet Reno’s patriotic foray into album curation, but better late than never, so here’s the windup: Our nation’s former Attorney General has assembled a music comp, spanning three discs and 50 songs, telling the story of this great land through the collected works of folks like Devendra Banhart, Andrew Bird, Danielson, Freedy Johnston, Martha Wainwright, John Mellencamp, and Marah. Not quite “Janet Reno’s Dance Party“; actually, even better. The tunes on Song Of America are Reno’s picks of “songs focusing on key periods in American history,” as a sort of pedagogical exercise in the country’s past and an awesome bonding point for you and your Democrat dad. Since it came out this week, we figured we’d do our civic duty and provide some tracklist action, and even better, a standout cut from the comp: Bettye LaVette’s cover of the Boss’s “Streets Of Philadelphia.”

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The swaggering 61-year-old Detroit soul singer Bettye LaVette has teamed with our favorite Southern rockers for her forthcoming album The Scene Of The Crime: 45 years after recording “My Man ? He’s A Lovin’ Man” at the age of 16, a lifetime since her ’65 single ?Let Me Down Easy,? and 35 years after her official 1972 debut Child Of The Seventies was shelved by Atlantic before it hit the shelves, she’s happily following-up her breakthrough 2005 collection I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise, which had her reinterpreting material by 10 female artists, from Sinéad O’Connor, Fiona Apple, and Aimee Mann to Dolly Parton, Lucinda Williams, and Roseanne Cash.

On The Scene Of The Crime, the husky-voice LaVatte takes on everyone from Willie Nelson to internet abolitionist Elton John, imbuing even the stodgiest with soulful, jazz expressiveness. Hell, “You Don’t Know Me At All” manages to make Don Henley ballsy, transforming the balladeering Karaoke fodder of “You Don’t Know Me At All” into a defiant “fuck off.” Helping fan the fire, Drive-By Truckers lend the perfect blues-rock backdrop — here, and throughout the new record. Keyboardist Spooner Oldham and bassist David Hood (father of Truckers guitarist Patterson Hood) also lend instrumental assistance. David Hood’s not on this track, but LaVatte and the Truckers most definitely are.

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Biggest news in recent months from camp Drive-By came from the departure of Jason Isbell, with John Neff being promoted to full-time status in the band’s Southern-fried three axe attack. And since then, those crazy mother Truckers have been on The Dirt Underneath tour, an acoustic tour with Spooner Oldham along for the ride, showing off lots of new Cooley and Hood tunes. Nine Bullets has posted nine of those songs after trolling archive.org for live rips, and he seems psyched on D-BT’s direction, saying it’s “a much stronger crop of songs than they had on A Blessing and A Curse….thank god.”

In other Drive-By news, the Truckers and Spooner will be the backing band on Bettye LaVette’s new record The Scene Of The Crime, out 9/25 on ANTI-. We’ll get you a listen soon, and it’s nice to have all this activity on the Trucker front, but really it’s just reminding us that Bonnaroo ain’t gonna be the same without ‘em.