• McCartney, Killers Top Coachella Lineup
• Bruce: “12-Minute Party” at Super Bowl
• Eli Manning: Bring on Springsteen
• Faith Hill Gets to Work at the Super Bowl
• Not Fade Away: Remembering Buddy Holly
• Dylan, Will.i.am Team Up for Super Bowl Ad
• Fricke’s Picks: A Gypsy Jazz Experience
• Lil Wayne Settles Lawsuit With Rolling Stones
• Graham Nash Talks Box Set, Performs
• Weekend Rock List: Bird Songs
• American Idol Auditions Wrap in NYC, PR
• Duff McKagan to Become Playboy Columnist
• Single Minded: Lily Allen, White Stripes
• News Ticker: Lennons, 50 Cent

Top stories from the last three days:

• U2, Kid Rock Added to Grammy Lineup
• Rolling Stone Kills Off Springsteen Betting
• Run-DMC Biopic Scores Notorious Writer
• Hear Fatboy Slim’s New Tunes With Byrne, Pop
• Kanye West E-Mails the Smoking Section
• “Solid Air” Singer John Martyn Dies
• Travers Reviews: Packed Scum Bucket
• News Ticker: White Stripes, Journey
• Lynyrd Skynyrd Keyboardist Billy Powell Dies
• Kelly Clarkson’s “Life” Video Yanked From Net
• Joaquin Phoenix’s Rap Career: Big Hoax?
• Swift is Tops as Indie Rockers Invade Chart
• Name Your Dream iPhone Application
• Breaking: M83
• Behind Rise Against’s “Audience of One” Clip
• Capitol Reissuing I.R.S. Records Digitally
• Bruce Springsteen Announces Working Tour
• Fall Out Boy Cover The Simpsons Theme
• Cop Urinates on Metallica Fan at Concert
• Inside Lil Wayne’s Rock Album Rebirth
• Zune Sales Plummet: Will Microsoft Save It?
• Metallica Reveal Guitar Hero Track List
• Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” Broadway Bound
• Steven Adler Is Scaring the Crap Out of Us
• Obama’s Secret Record Collection
• Grammy Faceoff ‘09: Artists Predict Winners
• The Band on Bruce: Their Springsteen

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

Anticipation is rising in Tampa. The tension is becoming palpable. Speculation runs rampant, and everyone has an opinion, a theory or a prediction about what will happen on Sunday night.

Yeah, we’re talking about Bruce Springsteen’s halftime set at Super Bowl XLIII.

There’s as much chatter and suspense on the ground around what Springsteen might have up his sleeve as there is for the game. NFL stars who’re more likely to rock Biggie than Bruce are being grilled about it. So far, Springsteen has only hinted that he’s putting together “a 12-minute party.”

In these quarters, there’s only one New Jersey resident with the same juice as Bruce — New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning. He brought his team to the Bowl a year ago and upset the allegedly invincible New England Patriots in one of the most dramatic contests the Super Bowl has ever produced. This year, he’s watching with the rest of us. But like any proud Jersey resident, Manning is eager to see what Springsteen has planned.

“I’m just looking forward to getting the boss back onstage,” he told us. “It’s a great band and should be a great performance.”

Follow our ongoing Super Bowl weekend coverage, and check out the best from our archives in our Super Bowl hub.

Photo: Halleran/Getty

As Super Bowl XLIII inches closer, Tampa feels like it’s divided into two camps — staging or showcasing. If you aren’t stepping in front of the lights right now, you’re probably busy preparing to do so.

Last night, Wyclef Jean and DJ Samantha Ronson had their moment, holding court under a sprawling tent in downtown Tampa at ESPN the Magazine’s pre-Bowl party. Playing for a crowd that mixed bone-crunchers, bombshells and beat-masters, Wyclef and Ronson worked through their sets under tarp stretched over a venue that, earlier in the week, was a parking lot. Benji and Joel Madden rubbed shoulders with retired NFL stars Shannon Sharpe and Cris Carter (”All athletes want to be musicians,” Joel said) under ESPN’s big top, while down the street, Jay-Z took over Club Underground for his demurely named “I Am Legend” pre-Bowl party. Searchlights slashed the Tampa night — DJ AM spun at Maxim’s exclusive event, Nelly and Jermaine Dupri took over MOSI while Diddy launched something called “The Good Life Experience.”

But while the parties raged, the work leading up to Sunday’s game — and the pageantry surrounding it — continued. We grabbed Faith Hill on Friday immediately after she ran through the rendition of “America the Beautiful” that she’ll deliver before the game. She was still riding high from rehearsals, deeming the dry run “really cool.” (more…)

Photo: Halleran/Getty Images

• Rock Daily had Las Vegas panicked when we revealed the winning answer to all those Bruce Springsteen Super Bowl Halftime Show bets, forcing most gambling sites to shut down all Bruce-related betting. We have the full story on that plus much more at our Super Bowl Hub — Rock Daily will be in Tampa this weekend to root on the Steelers and witness the Springsteen set.

• The music world was saddened by the deaths of Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell and Solid Air singer-songwriter John Martyn.
• The Grammys hired every gun possible to ensure people will tune in to this year’s show: Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Kanye West, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake were all announced as 2009 Grammy performers on Monday, then yesterday U2, Kid Rock, Plant & Krauss and Rihanna were joined the Grammy bill. Speaking of Macca, Sir Paul will go from The Colbert Report to Coachella lineup.
• Weezy revealed he’s making the jump from beats to electric guitars with Lil Wayne’s “real rock album” Rebirth, due out April 7th. Wayne also debuted his new single “Prom Queen” and settled his lawsuit with the Rolling Stones.

Photo: Truscello/WireImage

Brace yourself for the sight of Gene Simmons enjoying a special moment with Carrot Top.

Do we have an explanation for why the KISS merchandise-maniac and prop comic were hanging in Las Vegas? No, we do not. Perhaps they were talking about the relative merits of Canadian bands like Metric and the Dears, since Simmons is in the market for fresh indie talent for his new record label.

Thankfully, there was a lot more to this week’s Random Notes: Kanye West dropped in on a slew of Paris fashion shows, from where he ultimately fired off a lengthy caps-locked missive to the press (read Kanye’s full e-mail in the Smoking Section). The Kings of Leon prepared to take the stage at New York’s historic Madison Square Garden by taking in a Knicks game there (more on the Kings at MSG in the SS, too). (more…)

Photo: Getty

Our favorite headline of the year also spawned our favorite comment of the week, as “Massachusetts Cop Reportedly Urinates On Metallica Fan At Concert” brought out the best and the worst of our loquacious readership. While many debated whether or not the police officer in question actually urinated or just poured a beer on his fellow concertgoer, the mysteriously named Anonymous won Class Clown when he said:

“I didn’t know R. Kelly was a Massachusetts cop.”

Well done, Anonymous. Now go back to your battle against Scientology! (And for the record, R. Kelly was acquitted of doing that… to a minor.)

To celebrate the legacy of Lynyrd Skynyrd keyboardist Billy Powell and his legendary intro to the band’s “Free Bird,” this week’s Rock List is dedicated to Bird Songs. Whether it’s about an eagle, a pigeon, a double-crested cormorant… if it has wings and feathers, it’s applicable. Tell us your favorites, and on Monday we’ll tally the votes and reveal the Readers’ List. Here’s our picks:

• Lynyrd Skynyrd – “Free Bird”
• M.I.A. - “Bird Flu”
• David Bowie – “Dodo”
• The Beatles – “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)”
• Animal Collective – “Cuckoo Cuckoo”

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

Next Tuesday marks the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Holly’s friends, family and fellow musicians remember an artist who helped invent rock & roll as we know it today. Jonathan Cott revisits 1959’s Winter Dance Party, which would become known as rock’s Tour From Hell, as it wound its way across the frozen Midwest hitting places like Duluth, Minnesota, where a young Bob Dylan stood in the crowd. “Buddy, Ritchie and I used to sit in the back and jam together,” Dion tells Cott of the tour’s lengthy bus rides. “It was a little bit of heaven.” On February 3rd, fed up with the grind of the road, Holly, Valens, Richardson and their dirty laundry boarded a charter flight to Fargo that fell out of the sky.

To mark the tenth anniversary of the crash, Greil Marcus wrote a memorial for Rolling Stone in which he compared Holly to Dylan and took a closer look at Valens’ artistic accomplishments. “Traces of Holly’s vocal style, his phrasing rather than his insane changes from deep bass to something resembling soprano, pop up all through Dylan’s career: on an obscure 1962 Columbia single, ‘Mixed-Up Confusion,’ on ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie,’ on ‘I Shall Be Free No. 10,’ anywhere you look,” Marcus writes. “Dylan and Holly share a clipped, staccato delivery that communicates a sly sense of cool, almost teenage masculinity.”

• Ritchie Valens, J.P. (The Big Bopper) Richardson and Buddy Holly by Greil Marcus

Remember other rockers lost before they reached age 40 in our Not Fade Away gallery:

• Not Fade Away: Rockers Lost Before Their Time

Photo: Getty

Taylor Swift plots a 2009 headlining tour that’ll keep the chart topper on the road until October, Black Mountain travel the West Coast states and “It’s Not Unusual” to see Tom Jones performing in California and Florida these next few months. Full dates for all three treks are after the jump. (more…)

You rarely ever see Tom Waits on late-night television anymore, and perhaps this is the reason why: Here we have two different clips from Waits’ visits to Late Night with David Letterman, one from 1983 to support Swordfishtrombones and perform a kick-ass rendition of “Frank’s Wild Years” (above video), the other in 1986 during the release of Rain Dogs (after the jump). Waits and Letterman trade joke for joke, and it seems like Letterman has a real familiarity with the gravel-voiced singer, and for good reason: As you’ll notice in both videos, a much-hairier Letterman asks Waits the same questions, from being born in the back of a cab to living in his car when he moved to Los Angeles. Thankfully, Waits’ answer makes us laugh both times. (more…)

Photo: Photo by Gustavo Caballero/WireImage

You’ll have to forgive Tampa if it’s a bit giddy this week. The Bay town is playing host to a week-long carnival of music, beer and (eventually) football that will draw Bruce Springsteen, Faith Hill, Jennifer Hudson, Fall Out Boy, Rihanna, Lil Wayne, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and hundreds of thousands of fans.

The Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals are rumored to be here as well.

Super Bowl XLIII on Sunday will mark the culmination of a week’s worth of late-night parties and afternoon celebrity powderpuff games. Red carpets will sprawl, champagne will be popped and many stages will be rocked. (The first big show went down last night: Fall Out Boy and Rihanna pumped up fans at the Pepsi Smash Super Bowl Bash.) Holding court on the grandest of them all, of course, will be Bruce Springsteen, flanked by his E Street Band for Sunday’s halftime extravaganza (expected to be viewed by close to 100 million). It’s fairly light work for a man who just played Washington’s Lincoln Memorial to mark Barack Obama’s inauguration.

“It was a good warm up,” Springsteen told reporters on Thursday. “You’ll have a lot of crazy football fans, but you won’t have Lincoln staring over your shoulder.” (more…)

Photo: Kravitz/FilmMagic

With Velvet Revolver’s future uncertain, guitarist Duff McKagan, already a columnist for Seattle Weekly, will share his advice about all things business with the readers of Playboy.com as the site’s new financial columnist. “How the hell is it that I will to be writing about money matters for Playboy?” Duff asks rhetorically in the Seattle Weekly. “Well, over the last few years, I have been doing more and more TV and print interviews regarding some faction of finance. It started in 2004 when a writer for some music newspaper asked me about my experience going to business-school after my career with Gn’R.”

And just to show he means business, McKagan even name-checks Adam Smith, “the founder of capitalism.” “I do find how money works rather fascinating,” McKagan writes. “I think part of my mission statement for Playboy may be to perhaps try and shed some light and maybe even bring down some of the criminals on Wall St. Wouldn’t that be cool? Maybe be a voice for the people — one that can’t be bought (well, no one has ever actually tried to bribe me, but I’ll let you know if they do!).” (more…)

On his way to Rolling Stone headquarters in New York to talk about his new three-CD career spanning box set, Graham Nash began thinking about a song he wrote in the city more than 40 years ago. “I was seduced by a beautiful woman down in Long Island,” Nash says. “She was married. The song is a confession to a friend.”

Nash sang us an acoustic version of the track, “Right Between The Eyes,” for what he believes is the first time in 20 years (click above for the exclusive video). It’s one of 64 tracks on Reflections, which traces his career from the Hollies through the many incarnations of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to his recent solo work. “I went through 44 versions of the set before I settled on this one,” he says. “It was painful for me because I’m not for introspection or resting on my laurels. A lot of the musical soundtrack to my life is on this box set.” (more…)

Photo: Benc/Getty

Lil Wayne has settled the lawsuit the Rolling Stones’ publishing company Abkco slapped him with after the rapper’s Tha Carter III song “Playing With Fire” was deemed too similar to the Stones’ 1965 hit “Play With Fire.” Abkco originally sued Lil Wayne in July 2008. The lawsuit cited lyrical comparisons like the Stones’ original chorus “But don’t play with me, ’cause you’re playing with fire,” and Wayne’s line “But you can’t blame me if I set this stage on fire,” and also alleged that the public might assume the Rolling Stones approved of Wayne’s use of “explicit, sexist and offensive language” — because in no way would the Stones ever want to affiliate themselves with explicit, sexist and offensive lyrics. (See: Some Girls.)

While originally denying any wrongdoing, Wayne wisely removed “Playing With Fire” from all TC3 copies being sold through digital music services to avoid having to lose any royalties from online sales. (It was replaced by a track called “Pussy Monster.”) (more…)

I knew little about guitarist Stephane Wrembel when I caught his acoustic quartet, the Django Experiment — named after the Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt — opening for Patti Smith at New York’s Bowery Ballroom in December. The set was a revelation. The Parisian-born Wrembel studied Reinhardt’s fleet precision and soulful swing the hard way — playing in actual Gypsy camps — and Wrembel played his long, racing breaks at the Bowery with passionate concentration. Woody Allen knew all this long before I did: Wrembel’s “Big Brother,” from a self-released 2006 record, Barbes-Brooklyn, is featured in the director’s 2008 romp, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. That album wasn’t at the merch table at the Bowery, so I bought two others instead, including a fantastic concert document, Live in Canada (also self-released), which includes Wrembel’s generously extended versions of Reinhardt’s “Nuages” and “Minor Swing.” Something else I discovered that night: Wrembel lives in New York (he moved here after a spell at the Berklee College of Music in Boston), and the Django Experiment play around town almost nightly.
I will be back for more.