Bonus Tracks

If you have time or inclination to read only one music blog regularly, it should probably be Jefitoblog. (If I could read only one, that's the one I'd pick, and I write one, fer chrissakes.) Up now (among other things), the Complete Idiot's Guide to Mary Chapin Carpenter. She's one of my favorite performers, and now you can find out why. I'd sign off on most of Jefito's analysis, although I like Stones in the Road more than he does, and he likes Time Sex Love more than I do. The post has some some key MCC tunes to download as well. Be sure you get "Why Walk When You Can Fly."

Also from the music blogs, Rock Over Graceland has a sampler of Jerry Lee Lewis tunes, including four from his new album, Last Man Standing: Led Zeppelin's "Rock and Roll" featuring Jimmy Page, Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac" featuring Bruce (which kicks ass completely), "Just a Bummin' Around" with Merle Haggard, and a bonus track, "The Last Cheater's Waltz." The latter is available only when you download the album from Target.com. When the Rolling Stones made an exclusive deal a few years ago to sell a compilation CD only in Best Buy stores for a certain period, people lost their minds, but nobody seems to mind the idea of bonus tracks available only when the album is downloaded from certain specific retailers. (Last Man Standing also features appearances by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, John Fogerty, Eric Clapton, and Don Henley, as well as celebrity parasite Kid Rock. One of these things is not like the others.)

Because I love it when people send me stuff, I want to be sure to note that John Landecker is back on the air in Chicago, having been signed to do afternoons at True Oldies 94.7. (Two different readers e-mailed me the story.) Elizabeth Giangrego, who runs the website memorializing Real Oldies 1690 doesn't have much good to say about Landecker, but I'd agree with the Sun-Times' Robert Feder that it's a big deal for 94.7, especially at a time when plenty of Chicago listeners appear to be missing some of the city's legendary jocks. Landecker was format-changed out of a gig at another oldies station in Chicago three years ago, and for a brief time did weekend and fill-ins at WGN, trying talk for the first time.