It’s been a busier week than I’d like, meaning:

I missed the opportunity earlier today to take a bus trip to Santa Barbara to watch former blond reggae rocker Sting perform all the songs that will comprise his soon-to-come, self-composed Broadway musical—dudes, this is not fiction!

I awoke to a suggestion that Miley Cyrus’s new “risqué” single artwork was one of the biggest music stories of the day!

And, perhaps mostly, we decided to start up a list of musicians we thought were likely to die soon and assign their obituaries so that we could get ahead of the news when, er, that fateful day comes!

All told? Another exciting day in the world on music journalism—a craft that has never been more exciting or more certain to spread joy throughout the world since I got my degree in social media in the ‘80s!

Also: It’s now hip to make stuff up just for personal kicks!

Queens Of The Stone Age: …Like Clockwork (Matador) It’s not that easy to describe exactly what it is that makes the Queens Of

There are weeks when one can look at new album release lists and wonder who in their right mind would buy any of these?

This, however, is not one of those weeks.

I don’t know if anyone might’ve guessed ten years ago that contemporary country music would become one of the hottest genres going, but here we are. New releases by Lady Antebellum, the Pistol Annies and the Dixie Chicks’ own Natalie Maines are among this week’s most hotly anticipated albums, and all of them—however far removed they may be from the works of Hank Williams and Patsy Cline—represent where the public’s taste resides at the moment, and that’s not a bad thing at all. Because while each signals a deliberate move forward from the strict traditionalism of what some would call classic country, none are particularly blatant examples of crass commercialism, none appear to be specifically aiming at “crossing over” to pop at the expense of art, and all of them are actually quite interesting.

And then there’s that new Gatsby

I’m embarrassed to admit that—though it was only a meager car ride away—I skipped attending this year’s celebrated Coachella Festival last week! And though it’s happening again next weekend, I’ll probably be skipping that, too!

And it isn’t just because I could stay at home and watch the proceedings on my completely wired home entertainment system and avoid the pesky body odors and bothersome tattoos accompanying the masses of humanity that might theoretically be attending the festival in order to witness the Red Hot Chili Peppers!

Nor is it because I could merely walk into my kitchen and pour myself the finest of today’s bottled liquors at my leisure while sparing myself the troublesome expense of gas money, Coachella tickets and excessive carbohydrates!

Sadly, I must report, I didn’t attend simply because I didn’t have a thing to wear!

Plus, I needed to pick up some creme rinse at Costco!

Fall Out Boy: Save Rock And Roll (Island) I think most of us have been frantically aware that

It struck me the other day that the human brain only has so much space inside it--only so much room for a music fan like myself to dutifully store the name of the bass player in Spooky Tooth, or the correct chronological sequence of all those Peter Gabriel albums with the same title, or the name of each rapper in Bone Thugs-n-Harmony—before it folds into itself. And then come the data leaks.

Within the last week: 1) I forgot the PIN number for the checking account I have had since 1992, 2) Every night when I drive home and reach the intersection of Beverly Glen and Mulholland Boulevards I think of the phrase “atomic douchebag” and have no idea why, and 3) I spent most of this afternoon humming the melody to a Hellman’s mayonnaise commercial I used to hear a lot in the early ‘70s and probably haven’t heard since.

I mention this only because I plan to formulate an opinion about the new album by Tyler, The Creator in a few short paragraphs--and, sadly, am already hazy about which end of a