Hey, you turkeys. Listen up. I need you to listen for five minutes. I'm going to impart a little wisdom. You can take it or leave it. For what it's worth, I'd rather you took it.

The advice is this: David Bowie's "Hunky Dory" is a perfect album, and, since perfect albums are a rare commodity, it is worthy of deep and repeated listenings.

I'm listening to "Hunky Dory" as I write this. How many times have I listened to this, my favorite record? Like a million? And it never gets old.

I discovered "Hunky Dory" by accident. I was a sad, lonely little kid. Eleven years old and obsessed with Joan Jett, another artist I imagine you kids would enjoy. Back then, the radio was still a real thing that people listened to, believed in and learned from. I stayed up past my bedtime one Saturday night during the Christmas holiday to listen to a weekly show called "The King Biscuit Flower Hour" featuring a concert by my secret girlfriend, Joan Jett. At the end of the set, she played a cover of a song that would forever change the course of my budding musical tastes, "Rebel Rebel." As it turned out, "Rebel Rebel" would never be one of my favorite Bowie tunes, but I could detect, within its lyric, a narrative voice to which I could relate. Like really relate.

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There's something happening here, but you don't know what it is — do you, Mr. Draper? One year later, Rolling Stone magazine will make its debut, followed soon by "Rock and Other Four Letter Words."

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That’s a guy named Michael Pless singing “Something’s Got to Give.” Even without hearing the song, you can surely imagine the essential elements: Plaintive acoustic strumming, an earnest vocal, and an air of polite outrage to match the stilted syntax and hoary platitudes. Welcome to "Occupy This Album," the collection of protest-minded songs released by Occupy Wall Street. Sprawling across four CDs and a slew of bonus digital tracks, this behemoth set includes 100 (why not 99?) new and previously released tracks from artists representing a range of generations, genres, backgrounds, settings, and styles. Folkies join hands with rappers; ominous post-rock marches alongside peppy radio pop. There’s spoken-word poetry, tribal percussion, earnest singer-songwriter fare. Even a bit of jazz.

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Her family released a statement Thursday saying Summer died and that they "are at peace celebrating her extraordinary life and her continue legacy."

Summer gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s, and released a number of albums that have reach gold or platinum status, including the multiplatinum "Bad Girls" and "On the Radio, Volume I & II." Her No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits include "Hot Stuff" and "MacArthur Park."

Her sound was a mix of genres, and helped her earn Grammy Awards in the dance, rock, R&B and inspirational categories.

She released her last album, "Crayons," in 2008. She also performed on "American Idol" that year with its top female contestants.

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In the words of noted musicologist Steve Jobs, "It was the chemistry of a small group of people, and that chemistry was greater than the sum of the parts. And so John kept Paul from being a teenybopper and Paul kept John from drifting out into the cosmos, and it was magic. And George, in the end, I think provided a tremendous amount of soul to the group. I don't know what Ringo did.”

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The days of the Fraternal Order of Police suing the Crucifucks, Tipper Gore taking on the Dead Kennedys, and black metal goblins burning churches are long past. Punk is now no more a social threat than some leftist fringe group selling poorly designed newspapers. And yet, with three of its alleged members now imprisoned and facing seven-year jail sentences, the pastel-balaclava-wearing, sloppy-guitar-playing riot grrrls have become an icon of a brewing cultural revolution in Russia.

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Yet not since the halcyon days of smooth harmonies and awkwardly choreographed moves known as the '90s has the boy band enjoyed quite a moment like this. There's U.K. import the Wanted. There are Nickelodeon stars Big Time Rush. There's even the classic do-they-or-do-they-not-qualify-as-a-boy-band boy band Hot Chelle Rae. And smiling nonthreateningly near the top of both the Billboard album and single charts, there is the inescapable, planet-dominating One Direction (who, it was announced this week, will soon be getting their own Hasbro dolls).

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What’s wrong with me?

Like many music connoisseurs whose tastes were forged in the ‘90s, I’ve long admired Built to Spill, the rare rock band that’s spent its entire career basking in the adulation of critics and fans. The New York Times once compared singer/guitarist/founder Doug Martsch to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. The band’s devotion is deserved. Even as its members settle comfortably into middle age, Built to Spill remains emblematic of a certain post-adolescent longing. Their sound is catchy, twisty and inventive, and their lyrics burst with wit and humanity. There’s every reason to like them if you like complex arrangements and blistering solos. (And if you don’t, who needs you?)

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The collision of Lethem and Talking Heads makes perfect sense. Both can't escape being identified with New York – or, in Lethem's case, Brooklyn – and despite working in disparate modes, each brings the formalism and precision of the high arts to popular forms. Lethem fans already know of his love of the band – composed of David Byrne (vocals and guitar), Tina Weymouth (bass), Chris Frantz (drums) and Jerry Harrison (keyboards, guitar) --  from his essay “The Beards.” There, he connected his love of  "Fear of Music" to the aftermath of his mother's death from a brain tumor. “I have an obvious predisposition to handling the material of 1978 and '79 with an exaggerated, personal intensity,” he told me. We spoke via Skype, Lethem from his office at Pomona College where he is the Roy E. Disney Professor in Creative Writing.

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His friend Andres was also there. Did I mention that? Well, I admit I didn't want Andres to be there, even though I loved him (but not in that way). Still, Andres did kind of love me in that way, so there we were, a trio of thwarted desire lying in our separate beds, and that's when Jon introduced me to Tom Waits.

It might be more accurate to say he presented me with Tom Waits. There was enough buildup for British royalty. Shhh. Stop moving. Listen to this part. Did you hear that line? I wish I could remember the song, but I suspect it was early lounge singer Tom Waits. Funny and broken and three sheets to the wind.

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The debate has played out on the band’s Facebook page ever since the band's induction was announced weeks ago. Jubilant congratulations alternated with fans imploring Axl Rose, the lone remaining member from the band’s late -’80s “classic” lineup, to reunite with his former bandmates to mark the occasion. Specifically, the diehards pleaded for the five ragtag hellraisers behind 1987’s landmark debut, "Appetite For Destruction" — Rose, guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler — to set aside their differences for at least one night.

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But the people claiming to be the truest hip-hop fans only seem to prefer half of the artist, namely when she claims to be playing an invented male personality named Roman. This is often dissonant with her feminine aesthetics and Lady Gaga-influenced wardrobe, part of why she’s celebrated as such an original. So why does a rapper as self-evidently talented as Nicki have to recast herself as a man? Well, to get respect.

Minaj has spent much of her career playing up an image of traditional (almost cartoonishly so) girliness. One of her earliest mixtapes was called "Barbie World" and “Harajuku Barbie” is one of her many nicknames. On the "Pink Friday" CD cover she intentionally resembles a lifeless, leg-lengthened plastic doll. Her near-literal hourglass figure is widely assumed to be unnatural. In videos and album art she’s bedecked in pastels, shades of rainbow and, yes, pink.

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I wasn’t eating popcorn: One year after a surgery that removed a portion of my jaw, I could barely chew. This was just one of the small humiliations that had accumulated after I had been diagnosed with terminal thyroid cancer, undergone extensive surgery and testing, survived a recurrence of the cancer, and traded a death sentence for the murkier and far less glamorous reality of a rare genetic disorder. My neck was sliced halfway round, my jaw riddled with holes, and I had been diagnosed with a second, separate and distinct, type of cancer. The treatments had just started to remove the skin cancer ravaging my torso. Over the next three years I would have nearly four hundred biopsies.

I sat with cold hands tucked into each armpit, only half-awake until the movie started, and my perception of the world shifted in a sudden and irreversible way.

The film offered something that made every hair on my body stand on end: a glimpse of a world that might be out there somewhere — urban, messy, lawless; with cool, caustic boys on scooters, careless girls bedecked in ripped vintage clothes, and enormous empty warehouse apartments.

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Justin Vernon included a nearly a cappella cover as a B-side to “Calgary,” gently mashing it up with Raitt’s “Nick of Time.” The choice proved provocative and divisive among fans, almost as though he had consciously picked the most unlikely source material imaginable. But his enthusiasm seemed genuine: “She’s one of our greatest ones, for sure,” he told Jimmy Fallon just before he performed “I Can’t Make You Love Me” on “Late Night.”

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These days, a happy-to-be-alive Levon Helm presides over what he calls "midnight rambles" -- concerts in his Woodstock, N.Y., barn, where he's surrounded by musical friends and family, including his daughter, singer Amy Helm. His voice may be raspy, but his energetic drumming and high-beam smile can warm the coldest winter night. Following rousing versions of "The Weight" and "Ophelia," Helm invites Marco Werman into his house for after-midnight conversation.

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The two-day open-air festival, planned for May 12-13 (purposefully, just in advance of Chicago's NATO summit), is being organized autonomously by a group called Solid Clarity LLC, but won the endorsement of Occupy Chicago. Yet-unnamed "top international, national and local" musicians are slated to play across three stages. Half the profits will go to Occupy Chicago -- who will get the rest isn't clear.

Festival organizers made an embarrassing early move (aside from using cringe-inducing phrases like "music - the heartbeat of our cultures"). They advertised VIP passes, with access to a private lounge, special viewing areas and more. An Occupy event with VIP tickets: The idea is truly laughable. Evidently, public responses made this more than clear. Just over a day after the VIP passes were announced in a press release, they were scrapped.

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Nothing much happens in the video, but its muted color palette, patient pace, and most of all that looming threat make it unusually effective. With its piercing guitar theme and the subdued production courtesy of T Bone Burnett, the song reflects that mood, even as it gives so much time over to lyric-less passages. Swift may be better casting than even Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the heroine Katniss Everdeen in the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’ young-adult novel. The 22-year-old singer-songwriter is arguably the most successful musician of the moment, and her two songs — “Safe and Sound” and “Eyes Open” — will ensure that the “Hunger Games” soundtrack will sell very well.

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For new initiates, a brief history: The Punch Brothers were formed six years ago, when mandolin prodigy Chris Thile decided he’d reached the end of the creative line with Nickel Creek, the Grammy-winning acoustic trio he’d joined when he was eight years old. (That’s not a typo.) He recruited a group of similarly fresh-faced virtuosos — Leftover Salmon banjoist Noam Pikelny, Infamous Stringdusters guitarist Chris Eldridge, fiddler Gabe Witcher, and bassist Greg Garrison — to help him record a four-movement, 40-minute “folk-formal” suite titled “The Blind Leaving the Blind”; before they wrestled that beast to the ground, they released in 2006 Thile’s solo album, "How to Grow a Woman From the Ground." (Garrison has since been replaced by Paul Kowert who, at age 25, is one of the few musicians in the world who can make the rest of the band feel old.)

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