David Bowie performs “Five Years” live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, first broadcast in 1972.

Excellent live version of one of my favorite R.E.M. songs.

Who would’ve thought that I’d be sitting here on June 25, 2009, drinking to the memory of Michael Jackson?

Not me, that’s for goddamned sure. I’d been following the various stories about his upcoming residency at London’s O2 Arena, idly wondering if perhaps the outrageous number of sold-out shows might well inspire Michael to tour the States again. As it happens, my wife was pondering the very same possibility. She and I have our own informal lists of artists we’ve never caught in concert but hope to see someday, and he was a lock for both of us. That’d probably explain why, when I told her the news of Michael’s death earlier today, she burst into tears.

We have seen the Elvis Presley of our generation, and he was Michael Jackson.

You can’t overstate Michael’s importance to people who grew up in the ‘80s. Sure, his time with his brothers in the Jackson 5 during the ‘70s resulted in some damned fine music, and I’ll gladly trumpet the merits of his 1979 album, Off the Wall, as the second best thing he released in his career, but you know it and I know it: Thriller was the shit. It sold 26 million copies, it produced an unprecedented seven Top 10 singles, and it was the soundtrack to my teen years. No matter how “alternative” my tastes in music may have gotten, from the Sex Pistols to the Velvet Underground, Robyn Hitchcock to Social Distortion, I have never hesitated to acknowledge that Thriller is one of my favorite albums of all time. I get how people who didn’t live through the astronomical success of the record can’t conceive how you can know that Michael was accused of pedophilia and yet still declare that he was and, to a certain extent, always will be the King of Pop.

But it’s true. He is.

That’s not to say that his reign hadn’t been without its problems, obviously, and the problem with an album like Thriller is that, after the dust has settled, there’s only one question left to be asked: how the hell do you follow it up? It’s easy to say that Michael never came anywhere near matching that record, but, hey, I just listened to “Dirty Diana” and followed it up with “Smooth Criminal,” so don’t tell me that Bad doesn’t have some kick-ass moments on it, too. I don’t necessarily have the same level of love for Dangerous (although “Remember the Time” has definitely withstood the test of time quite well), but I do think that, had he opted to release the new-material disc of HIStory - known as HIStory Continues - separately rather than couple it with a best-of disc, a lot more people would be praising it today. I still think “Stranger in Moscow” is one of the best songs the guy ever did, and if you’ve ever been sympathetic to the plight of a young boy growing up in the spotlight and never getting a chance to be a kid, then the song and video for “Childhood” just might make you tear up…like it’s doing to me right now.

But I’ve got to be honest: Michael’s last studio album, 2001’s Invincible, didn’t do a whole lot for me (”You Rock My World” and “Butterflies” excepted), and I’ve spent most of the last five years doing nothing but criticizing the guy for not doing everything in his power to mount a comeback.

Back in 2004, Michael released his poorly named Ultimate Collection - a seemingly random selection of singles, album tracks, rarities, demos, and previously unreleased material from the vaults - and I took him to task for it. “With everything he’s gone through in his personal life in recent years,” I said, “what he really needs far more than anything else is to kick-start his musical credibility. The perfect way to do that would’ve been to put together a definitive collection of all of his hits, spread out across as many discs as it takes to do the job properly…and I’m talking somebody-shake-the-cobwebs-off-‘Farewell My Summer Love’ definitive.”

But he didn’t.

In 2005, he announced that he was busy producing an all-star charity single called “I Have A Dream” to help raise relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

But he never released it.

And when the 25th anniversary of his most iconic album rolled around, he celebrated the event not by taking the opportunity to release a new album but, rather, to drag a bunch of newer artists into the studio to either remix or re-record songs from Thriller.

At the time, I said…

It’s clear that Michael Jackson has brought in these younger and – let’s face it – hipper artists in order to make the statement, “Hey, world, I’m still relevant,” but, as ever, he just doesn’t get it. Nowhere is this more evident than on the DVD that’s included in this package, which provides the album’s three iconic videos (“Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and “Thriller”), along with the performance of “Billie Jean” from the “Motown 25” television special that serves as the 1980s version of the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He didn’t need to bring in a bunch of young upstarts; all he had to do was take this DVD and the original nine-song CD version of Thriller, hold them aloft, and say, “This is why you should respect me!”

But he didn’t.

What hurts the most about Michael dying now is that, finally, it looked like he was going to get off his arse and do something about reclaiming his legacy as a superstar of pop. He had these sold-out dates in the UK, and for once, despite all of the false starts he’d offered over the course of the last half-decade, it looked like he was actually going to come back.

And, then, he was gone.

I found out about Michael’s death just as I was walking out the door to take my three-year-old daughter along with me to the grocery store. She was already in the car, in fact, so when I went outside and got behind the wheel, I felt obliged to tell her why I’d taken so long.

I said, “Michael Jackson died, sweetie. That’s why I’m a little upset.”

“You liked him?” she asked.

“I did,” I replied. “He was one of Daddy’s favorite singers.” Then I hesitated for a second and clarified, “Well, maybe he wasn’t one of my favorite singers. But he was very, very important to me and Mama. We listened to him all the time when we were growing up. And that’s why we’re sad.”

And, then, my daughter - God bless her - put the whole thing in perspective by asking a single question: “But you can still listen to his music, right?”

Absolutely right. And that’s why, when we sat down to dinner at the Harris household tonight, we did so listening to Thriller.

Goodbye, Michael. Thanks for the memories…and the music.

Yeah, you see that right — it’s the Edge, Jimmy Page, and Jack White noodling together in a big-ass guitar summit, and someone was close by with a camera to capture the whole thing. That “someone” was Davis Guggenheim, who conducted interviews with the axe-gunning trio for his upcoming documentary “It Might Get Loud.” The “Inconvenient Truth” director spoke with each guitarist about his personal musical journey — and it culminated, of course, in a jam session. Watch the trailer below, and keep an eye on Bullz-Eye’s coverage for more!

As someone who once had a significant portion of his junior year of college ruined by a gentleman cranking “A Country Boy Can Survive” at all hours of the day and night, I’ve never been a big fan of Hank Williams, Jr., but when you grow up in the South, you learn to accept Bocephus as part of your life whether you actually like him or not. Plus, over the years, I’ve become a fan of his father (Hank, Sr.) and of his son (Hank III), so I feel like I ought to cut the good ol’ boy a little bit of slack.

Junior’s new album, 127 Rose Avenue, is due for release on June 16th, and although the first single - “Red, White, and Pink-Slip Blues” - is tailor-made for the old-school country audiences, you have to admit that it does indeed speak to the current economic climate, not just of the South but of the entire United States. Of course, given that this comes from a man who turned up at Republican rallies in Virginia Beach, VA, and crooned an excruciating little ditty called “McCain Palin Tradition,” you can imagine that most of the comments over on YouTube for this video involve assurances that the events discussed the song are all the fault of Barack Obama.

Whatever. All I know is that I like the dark twang of this track. Maybe you will, too.

We were admittedly late to the Metric party, but after hearing the band’s fantastic new album Fantasies, we are officially smitten. And how cool is this: they just made a video for “Sick Muse,” the song we’ve been putting on mix discs since the album’s release.

The clip itself is simple one: the camera stays still while the band members play, or dance, or sing, or whatever they feel like doing. And if Emily Haines doesn’t have the cutest dance ever, we don’t know who does. Swoon. And as a bonus, this player - which defaults to auto-play, grrrr - contains videos for “Gimme Sympathy” and “Help I’m Alive” as well, along with audio streams of the entire Fantasies album. Sweeeeeeet.

Ladies and gentlemen, the line for Single of the Year starts here.

I’m frankly shocked that these guys are from New York. American bands, particularly young ones, don’t write songs like this anymore, and they certainly don’t use arrangements like this. I had these guys pegged for a UK act all the way, with the Adam & the Ants-style percussion, hand claps and old-fashioned piano. Maybe the arrangement was producer Britt Daniel’s idea, who knows. His band Spoon isn’t exactly playing the American game, either. No matter who’s responsible for putting it together, it’s damn good, and had me racing for the band’s MySpace page. How about that, the other tunes are good, too. Time to hit up the publicist for a review copy. (The band’s album, It’s Frightening, comes out May 19.)

So the tune is definitely a keeper. Now about about the video? Tastefully simple, a rarity these days. The camera spins around - and sometimes above - a circular display of white lights that surrounds the band. That’s it. I bet they shot it in an afternoon, then hit the pub, while the director popped a couple Dramamines and went to bed. Nicely done, lads.

If you’re a fan of Fleetwood Mac, then you no doubt got more than a little bit giddy at the tail end of 2008 when the band - still holding strong with the fab foursome of Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood, and John McVie - announced that they’d be touring in 2009. Word on the street is that things have been going swimmingly thus far, and the tour will continue to roll on into June; you can check out the current dates rather easily, as they’re right on the homepage of FleetwoodMac.com.

In the meantime, however, if you’re on the fence about whether to go see them or not, take a gander at this clip of Lindsey Buckingham - recorded during a solo performance at Bass Performance Hall, which is available as a CD/DVD combo - as he takes “Big Love” and either makes you wish you could play guitar or makes you never want to pick one up again because you’ll never, ever be able to play it as well as he can.

We proles can’t possibly fathom the kind of pressure that Green Day must have felt when they were putting the finishing touches on 21st Century Breakdown, their first album since the multi-platinum - and game-changing - American Idiot. Perhaps that is why they played around with side projects like the Foxboro Hot Tubs (which was a damn good record, by the way), because it enabled them to get their yeah yeahs out without having to worry about commercial expectations.

Ah, but they could only put the world on hold for so long, and at last, they give us “Know Your Enemy,” the debut single from Breakdown. Does it raise the stakes of American Idiot? No, but that appears to be the point. There was no sense in even trying, so instead, they deliver something more akin to their “unplugged” album Warning, which is one of my favorites of theirs. Big choruses, hand clap-ready snare drums, and a no-nonsense performance video to promote it. It’s as if they’re asking us to forget that American Idiot ever happened, and while that makes sense, it’s just not gonna happen. Still, this definitely has me excited to hear the rest of the album. Only a couple more weeks…

Better than the 2003 collection that bears his name, this michelgondry.com-exclusive set of music videos is simply staggering. The beauty of Gondry’s work is that his methods are surprisingly low-tech (Beck’s “Cellphone’s Dead” being this set’s exception). He uses reflective glass to create the ghosts that haunt Paul McCartney’s house in “Dance Tonight,” and Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” is a brilliant stop-motion clip, using both real people and their string equivalents. Gondry assembles a couple of clever yet completely unique one-take videos with Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” and the White Stripes’ “The Denial Twist,” and his videos from the pre-CGI early ’90s, namely Thomas Dolby’s “Close but No Cigar” and Sananda Maitreya’s “She Kissed Me” (otherwise known as Terence Trend D’Arby to your older brothers and sisters), look as good as any video made today. The set comes with a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, a couple films featuring Gondry solving a Rubik’s Cube with various parts of his body (feet and nose, to be precise), and they also added the parody of Gondry’s video of the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button to Button” that appeared on a 2006 episode of “The Simpsons.” Genius stuff, across the board. If only he could replicate this consistency in the feature film arena.(ElektroFilm)

Click here to buy “Michel Gondry 2: More Videos Before and After DVD 1

…and “uncomfortable” is an understatement.

By now you may have heard about Thornton’s interview (along with his band, The Boxmasters) with a Canada’s QTV where he takes exception to the host mentioning his acting career in the introduction. If you watch Thornton during the intro, you can see him shake his head a couple of times. For the first six or seven minutes of the interview, Thornton acts like a petulant child, giving short, ambiguous answers to direct questions. Then he goes off on a tangent talking about a monster magazine contest that he entered as a kid. Finally, around the seven-minute mark, he tells the host why he’s acting the way he is.

Thornton keeps asking the host, “Would you ask Tom Petty that?” The thing is — Billy Bob Thornton is no Tom Petty. Thornton is best-known as an actor who sees himself as a musician. Tom Petty is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I feel for the host — he simply introduced Thornton and the rest of the band, and has to deal with pissy Billy Bob for the rest of the interview. He didn’t ask him any questions about his acting career and it’s completely understandable why he would mention Thornton’s history as an actor in the intro to give the interview context. It would be really odd if he just started the interview without mentioning it at all.

Thornton later says that Canadian audiences are like “mashed potatoes with no gravy” and canceled their two remaining Canadian shows after being booed in Toronto.

We’ll be honest: we’re not posting the clip for “Beyond Therapy,” the debut single from Los Angeles song bird Courtenay Green, because it’s a knockout song. The song is cute enough - though it doesn’t bear even a passing resemblance to the Hollies or New Pornographers, two bands to whom she’s compared in her press release - and Green is quite the fetching lass. Nope, we’re posting the clip for “Beyond Therapy” because the video is awesome, a throwback of sorts to early ’80s clips.

In fact, it’s rather fitting that she made a throwback clip for the song, because the song itself is a the kind of song that would have stood a much better chance of climbing the charts in 1981 than it will today. Green has good pitch, and she’s not flashy (thank God for that, as we have more than enough of those kinds of singers as it is), but her voice sounds wafer-thin compared to the girls currently dominating the charts. Not her fault, of course, but it’s definitely going to pose problems for her, which is why she was very smart to make a clip that will endear her to Gen X music lovers. We see Green singing the song in one of those karaoke bars where the songs have their own videos - not sure if anyone does these anymore, but they were all the rage in the early ’90s - and the video within this video is dead perfect. Star wipe, diamond wipe, heart wipe…yes.

Props to Green for playing to her strengths. Who knows, maybe we’ll eat the words above about her commercial prospects. Wouldn’t be the first time, and we would have no problem getting this one wrong.

Let us guess: your reaction was the same as ours when you saw the above headline. “Neil Young still makes videos?” Yes he does and, knowing the commercial prospects that a Neil Young video would have in today’s market, he made sure to keep things simple. No sense in throwing good money after bad on an elaborate video that the video channels will never play anyway, right?

Young actually shot two videos for “Johnny Magic,” the first single from his upcoming album Fork in the Road, both of which feature Young lip syncing the song in one take while driving his car. We’ve chosen the “Magic Sun” version, where Young brings his dog along for the ride. It’s a bit harder to watch since the sun literally washes out all images on the screen on more than one occasion, but come on, it has a dog. Gotta use the video with the dog.

Jon Stewart is a huge Springsteen fan, so naturally he treated Bruce a little better than how he treated Jim Cramer.

Bruce also performed a solid acoustic version of “Working on a Dream.”

Grab some beers and get ready for St. Patrick’s Day.