“We Are The World” is in the air. We caught a pretty good whiff of it with Jimmy and Ben, but this footage from Japanese television takes USA For Africa to the next level. In fact, the footage you’re about to see is so true-to-life that it got us thinking about a post we did some time ago on the 20th anniversary of the “We Are The World” recording session. It very much rings true, even in Japan:

All the celebs turned on their most extreme personalities because each person only got to sing a line or two. So Cyndi Lauper is so unusual, Bruce Springsteen gets all super Springsteen-y, and Michael Jackson is like, “I’m so famous I won’t even be in the same room with you people.”

There’s just one crucial difference…

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Take our ink-stained hands and join us at the OldStand, where Jon McMillan goes to remind everyone what an honest-to-goodness music magazine is supposed to look like.

We got such a positive response to our post about a recently-excavated back issue of Rolling Stone, that we thought we’d dig a little deeper in the nostalgia pile, all the way down to October 24th, 1985.

RS No. 459 features Billy Crystal, an environmental disaster, a long interview with cover-mogul Steven Spielberg, and a glowing writeup of a RHCP album (debut full-length Freaky Styley), making this strictly a déjà vu affair. There’s also a snarky takedown/recap of the second annual MTV Video Awards, which reads suspiciously like a blog (“Someone performed fellatio on someone else in the hall, but nobody cared — they weren’t famous”). Ouch.

After the jump: portable turntables are all the rage, E.T. blanches Spielberg’s netherparts, and Ray Charles ends a sentence with a preposition. Unknown vandals swiped the Table of Contents and the charts (along with pictures of the Eurythmics), so you’ll have to settle for a context-free graphic that details a big-money showdown between The Boss, Luther Vandross, Wham!, and anyone lucky enough to be on tour with the Scorpions. May the best band win!

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The music mavens at the venerable Time magazine have compiled their list of the “ALL-TIME 100″ albums — unranked and broken down by decade. We’re not sure what’s better: that only five albums of the past five years are among their 100 greatest, or that four of those five were by people who were dead before the ’00s even began. Whatever. Anyway, here’s the list in reverse chronological order (via NY Post):

2000s
Hank Williams – The Essential Hank Williams Collection
Kanye West – The College Dropout
Sam Cooke – Portrait Of A Legend 1951-1964
Elvis Presley – Elvis: 30 No. 1 Hits
Muddy Waters – The Anthology, 1947 – 1972
Radiohead – Kid A
Outkast – Stankonia
PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP

1990s
Elvis Presley – Sunrise
Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels On A Gravel Road
Radiohead – OK Computer
The Notorious B.I.G. – Ready To Die
Bob Dylan – Time Out Of Mind
DJ Shadow – Endtroducing…
Oasis – (What’s The Story) Moning Glory
Hole – Live Through This
Mary J. Blige – My Life
Pavement – Slanted And Enchanted
Dr. Dre – The Chronic
U2 – Achtung Baby
Nirvana – Nevermind
R.E.M. – Out Of Time
Various Artists – Phil Spector, Back To Mono (1958-1969)
Garth Brooks – Ropin’ The Wind
James Brown – Star Time
A Tribe Called Quest – The Low End Theory

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