Enlarge Dominick Mastrangelo/BrooklynVegan

Greg Dulli at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City Wednesday night.

Dominick Mastrangelo/BrooklynVegan

Greg Dulli at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City Wednesday night.

In the midnight hours after the Afghan Whigs brought down the Bowery Ballroom Wednesday night, I got an email from my date for the show. "I feel like I stole something that was so good," he wrote. Mind you, ours was an innocent tryst. We were just old college friends out to catch the rebound of some stars of our youth. But the deeply embodied complexities of a great Afghan Whigs show always feel illicit. The music's sexual pull and the cruel urges uncovered in the lyrics doing something that rock — 1990s alternative rock, anyway, with its progressive sheen and its homosocial core — wasn't supposed to do.

"We're from the future, where the present is the past," Dulli quipped after the band set a furious mood with the opening song, "Crime Scene, Part 1." Cynicism has always been a defense mechanism for this most over-sharing of '90s rock frontmen, but his comment hints at a deeper truth. The Afghan Whigs feel relevant now in ways that some of their peers cannot. It's because of what they do musically, and how Dulli rides the band's blend of R&B insinuation, hip-hop cool and hard rock invasiveness into corners of experience where few rockers of his generation have rested.

I am talking about sex, the subject matter of nearly every Afghan Whigs song. Spiteful sex, irresistible sex, sinful, heartbreaking, just plain wrong sex. Romanticized it is — but not in the usual way of pop songs, even sad ones. Whigs songs call up the spirit of sex (one early great they performed Wednesday is called "Conjure Me") in its demon form, as a force grounded in weakness and confusion rather than pleasure and hope.

Enlarge Markus Shaffer

The author in the pit.

Markus Shaffer

The author in the pit.

For one long weekend at the end of May, nearly every hotel, hostel, B&B and flophouse in Baltimore is booked up. Traffic gets brutal, the sidewalks fill and locals are more than a little miffed by all the clueless tourists. Many of them are in town for Maryland's high school lacrosse state championships, but for plenty of others, a stay in Charm City promises the polar opposite of all the good clean fun going down at the stadium. These visitors are ready to sweat too, but they've come for something quite different: feedback, blood and distortion.

Each year for the past decade, Memorial Day weekend has belonged to Maryland Deathfest, a now four-day music festival focused in and around the Sonar club that takes over a good chunk of real estate in the city's cracked heart. The juxtapositions the two events cause can be startling, and sometimes comical; hotel corridors are the site of many an awkward encounter (lacrosse moms sharing elevators with hungover crusties, camera-toting granddads shuffling past doors left ajar and blasting out Nasum) and the strip clubs and fried chicken joints around the corner from the venue see a significant spike in long-haired business.

This year's edition of the festival, which starts today, is the biggest and most sonically and internationally diverse yet, featuring bands from as far away as Chile, Finland, Japan and Australia alongside the homegrown talent. The event — perennially shortened to "MDF" — will summon forth thousands of the denim- and leather-clad from all over the world for a weekend of fun in the sun, beers in the parking lot and metal of death. The organizers' billing of MDF as "America's biggest metal party of the year" hits the nail on the head. It is more than our Woodstock, our Bonnaroo, our Lollapalooza. This is our Mecca.

All Songs Considered

It's Gonna Get Sweaty: A Maryland Deathfest Preview

Who are these blasphemous pilgrims? Ever since Tipper Gore's PMRC went after Twisted Sister and two boys shot themselves after listening to Stained Class, mainstream society has regarded our ilk with suspicion, confusion and derision. The stereotype of the Cro-Magnon underachiever with long greasy hair and pentagram tattoos is pervasive (thanks, Airheads and Brenden Fraser) but skewed. Throwing a thriving, global subculture under the bus because some jerk in a Megadeth shirt once called you a sissy isn't only unfair, it's a damn shame. We are legion, and we love our black band shirts, but we are definitely not all the same.

One of the MDF organizers has spent years traveling the world and teaching English to Eastern European children in between booking bands like Mortuary Drape and Autopsy for the fest. Mike Scheidt, of Oregon doom troupe YOB, works at an organic herb dispensary, spends time with his children and teaches self-defense classes when he's not crafting world-crushing riffs. One of the members of NYC-based black metallers Castevet studies at the New England Conservatory. Scott Hull, from grindcore iconoclasts Pig Destroyer, works for the government.

Enlarge Michael Becker/Fox

American Idol finalists Phillip Phillips and Jessica Sanchez on stage with host Ryan Seacrest on the Fox TV show Tuesday night.

Michael Becker/Fox

American Idol finalists Phillip Phillips and Jessica Sanchez on stage with host Ryan Seacrest on the Fox TV show Tuesday night.

Tonight, when Ryan Seacrest announces who has won the 11th season of American Idol — when the confetti falls and Jennifer Lopez sheds a perfect dewy teardrop and Randy Jackson's thought bubble explodes with "Dude, that was a moment moment MOMENT" and Steven Tyler purses his immortal lips in that vampire-connoisseur way he does, smelling the perfume of another sweet young victory — I will be out to dinner with friends, far from the agony and ecstasy finalists Jessica Sanchez and Phillip Phillips will endure. After six seasons of following Idol as a critic and unashamed enthusiast, I've finally found myself truly bored while watching the show. Not even the soul ministrations of my latest favorite, third-place finalist Joshua Ledet, could cure my disaffection.

Monkey See

Your New 'American Idol' Is (Surprise!) A Laid-Back Dude With An Acoustic Guitar

I'm not alone. Since this season's first episode — the least-watched in the show's history — this year's Idol story has been the program's wilting status, a symptom of a larger loss of interest in the singing competition format. Interest is flagging across the board: Erstwhile Idol honcho Simon Cowell's English import, X Factor, tanked spectacularly enough that he dumped his loyal sidekick Paula Abdul for the riskiest stock on the market, new judge Britney Spears. The Voice, a show with cooler celebrity panelists and better song selections, briefly threatened to out-buzz Idol but then suffered a ratings drop. Variations keep surfacing — the latest is Duets — but none has captured the public's full imagination.

Commentators usually cite the same reasons when discussing the Idol fade. The judges don't really judge; the same kinds of contestants always win; the song choices are predictable. (I talked about these particularities on Morning Edition today. You can listen by clicking the audio link.) These are merely symptoms, however, of an overall failure of purpose.

Enlarge Courtesy of the Smithsonian

Song 1 in operation at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Courtesy of the Smithsonian

Song 1 in operation at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

The National Mall in Washington, D.C. is a lonely place at night. The museums and monuments close to the public at dusk; nearby businesses, with no one to serve, follow suit. But if you happened to be walking in the area after dark this spring, you may have heard something striking — a familiar tune, floating above the usual nighttime static of passing cars.

Follow that sound to its source, and you'd find a bigger surprise: an assembly of giants. Projected on the circular, nearly windowless face of the Hirshhorn Museum, many times larger than life, were images of people. Depending when you got there, you may have seen the businessman first. Or maybe it was the waitress, striding gracefully with a pot of coffee. You might have seen the two dancers, flailing their limbs to a rumbling beat, or the two tuxedoed singers, snapping their fingers and smoothing their ties. Or perhaps it was the pale-faced woman in the white robe, looking over the city with a serene half-smile.

No matter which one you saw when you first arrived, you heard the same thing. As one giant vanished and another appeared, that familiar tune remained constant. The businessman, the waitress and the rest — all of them were singing along to the same song. And if you stayed a moment, you might have looked around and seen other people noticing it too.

Pop singer Donna Summer, whose long career began in the 1960s and reached its apex in the disco era of the '70s, died of cancer on Thursday at her home in Naples, Florida. Summer was 63 years old. According to Billboard magazine, the singer born LaDonna Gaines had 32 singles that charted in the Hot 100. Fourteen of them made it into the top 10. To hear Sami Yenigun's appreciation of Donna Summer's life and career, as heard on All Things Considered, click the audio link.

I didn't know that Donna Summer was close to the end of her life when, this past Tuesday, I brought in one of her great 1970s collaborations with the producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte to play for the students at a friend's college seminar on songwriting. I did know that the course featured ballad singers from Woody Guthrie to Joni Mitchell, and that I meant to argue that rhythm and production are as central to the construction of great pop as are poetic phrases and a pretty melody. I did talk about the pulsating beat and the arrangement's enveloping power. But Summer's voice took me over, and I realized that she was offering a songwriting lesson in five sexy words.

The kids squirmed a little in their seats, absorbing the eroticism of 1975's "Love To Love You Baby," but I remained distracted by the details of Summer's brilliant reading. Here was a vocal performance as subtle and rich in meaning as anything in pop. Summer dropped from an ethereal soprano into a thrilling low moan that seemed to teeter just on the edge of control. Her voice became a feather, teasing the listener; then it went rough, exposing the unpredictable and often frightening impulses that surface within desire. All this in a song that most critics dismissed as a titillating artifact of the swinging '70s.

Chuck Brown, the guitarist and singer most associated with the Washington, D.C.-based genre go-go, died Wednesday after a long hospitalization. Brown, a monumental figure in the D.C. music scene for more than 30 years, died in Baltimore from sepsis after multiple organ failure, says his manager, Tom Goldfogle. Brown was 75 years old. Listen at the audio link for the remembrance that aired on Morning Edition.

Chuck Brown: Tiny Desk Concert

It took a lot of work getting an interview with Chuck Brown. There were people to go through, and people who had people. It took a lot to get to the guy, and when we finally hooked up, we spent an inordinate amount of time talking about shoes.

Chuck Brown got his start in music shining shoes on the streets of Richmond, Va., in the early 1940s, and then around the corner from the Howard Theater in Washington D.C. Chuck was possibly the only person to have bootblacked for both Louis Jordan, the early king of rhythm and blues, and Hank Williams, the country star who was the first person to tip Chuck a whole dollar. He asked questions, listened to their music and everything else on the radio. And by the time he had made his way in the world, Brown could say he had done one amazing thing that those two giants never had: invented a whole new music by himself.

I needed to talk to Chuck for a book I was writing about James Brown. There were few folks alive who could speak more knowingly about funk, as a music and a state of mind, than Chuck. And, like James, he'd had a huge influence on George Clinton and hip-hop, from his gold tooth down to his popping bass. Both Browns grew up poor, Southern, both had gone to prison as kids, heck — both shined shoes.

LANGUAGE ADVISORY: This video contains profanity.

Maroon 5's "Payphone" is the most irritating song on the radio right now. With a hook as insidiously intrusive as your officemate's ringtone, a Wiz Khalifa rap so disconnected from the main lyric that it seems like an accidental cut and paste, and a martial beat that replaces this L.A. band's louche funk with Coldplay pomp, "Payphone" just does not make for satisfying listening. Yet the song broke the record for first-week digital sales and seems like an inevitable summer pop staple (It's no. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart). Adam Levine's stint on The Voice certainly helps, but can't be the only reason there's a line in front of this "Payphone." What's the lure?

Maybe it's the song's ever so slightly new twist on nostalgia. The phone booth, once a landmarks as common as McDonald's golden arches, is vanishing — according to the trade organization the American Public Communications Council, the number on American streets is down 75 per cent since 1989. London's familiar red telephone boxes are being transformed into Wi Fi hotspots; U.S. booths are going on EBay for about a hundred bucks. In the pricey video Maroon 5 has made for its new hit, Levine goes for the antiquated reach-out only after his cell has been demolished in a fiery car crash.

Enlarge David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images

Donald "Duck" Dunn onstage about 1990.

David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images

Donald "Duck" Dunn onstage about 1990.

Donald "Duck" Dunn played bass with Booker T. and the MGs, who backed many of the hits Stax Records put out in the 1960s. He was 70 years old when he died Sunday in Tokyo. At the audio link, you can listen to a remembrance of Dunn's life and career that aired on All Things Considered.

For the third time in a month, the marquee at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music is eulogizing a fallen alumnus: On April 12, it read "R.I.P. Andrew Love." May 1, it marked the death of wah-wah guitarist Skip Pitts. Today, it pays tribute to Duck Dunn, the bassist who, as a member of Booker T. and the MGs, laid the foundation for so many of the hit records that put Stax on the map.

Although I've lived in Memphis since the mid-1980s, I came late to the MGs. I knew Dunn first from The Blues Brothers; despite the fact that I'd heard songs like "In the Midnight Hour" and "Try A Little Tenderness" thousands of times, I was a straggler to the party that is Memphis soul. Anchored by equal parts blues, country, gospel and jazz, Memphis soul music is more fatback than lean, typified as "gutbucket" in comparison with its sophisticated counterparts in Philly or Detroit. Dunn's finger-poppin' instrumental oeuvre — created with guitarist Steve Cropper, drummer Al Jackson Jr. and organist Booker T. Jones — led, in a roundabout way, to my career as a freelance music journalist.

Interviewing musicians made for an incredibly fun gig, but it was also nerve-racking to ask tough questions of my idols. Calling Dunn was easy — like talking to a neighbor who just happened to be a living link to the world beyond the microcosm of the Memphis soul scene, a compatriot of The Beatles and Neil Young. Dunn was a source I relied on. We'd talk fishing, then make an easy segue into the topic of the moment: Jerry Wexler, the revival of Stax Records, Otis' legacy, or the mysteries of Dylan. When it came to music history, Dunn was the uncomplicated, almost goofy man in the midst of the maelstrom, and he always offered an unfettered point of view.

"The Beatles came to the club we were playing in, the Bag O'Nails in London, and bowed to us," Dunn remembered with a chuckle when I quizzed him about the Stax-Volt Revue's triumphant 1967 European tour. "It made me feel like a million dollars, I guess. To tell you the truth, when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, the Dave Clark Five appeared the following week, and I turned to my wife and said, 'Now there's a good band.' She was going crazy over the Beatles, and I didn't want to like them."

Enlarge Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty Images

Talking Heads.

Richard E. Aaron/Redferns/Getty Images

Talking Heads.

"In the summer of 1979, in New York City, a fifteen-year-old boy sitting in his bedroom heard a voice speaking to him over his radio. The voice said: 'Talking Heads have a new album. It's called Fear of Music.'"

So begins Jonathan Lethem's Fear of Music, a new, in-depth exploration of Talking Heads' third studio album and its transformative effect on the boy who grew up to be a MacArthur Award-winning novelist and essayist.

Fear of Music

by Jonathan Lethem

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Lethem's Fear of Music is part of the 33 1/3 series, a set of books each inspired by and dedicated to a single classic album. In his book, Lethem mixes track-by-track close readings with autobiography in an attempt to interpret one of his great teenage obsessions.

In 1979, Lethem, who describes himself as an "awkward white fifteen-year-old," was struggling to navigate the complex social terrain of his primarily black and Hispanic Brooklyn neighborhood. Bookish and arty, the child of a painter father and a political activist mother (who died when Lethem was 13), he took refuge in passions that later played a formative role in his writing career: science fiction, comics and music.

"In a lot of ways I can see in retrospect," Lethem says, Fear of Music "was a message in a bottle to me, to tell me that who I was, and how I felt, was gonna be okay, and might even be a little better than okay."

Fear of Music, produced by Brian Eno, marked a new stage of Talking Heads' growth from New York art-school punks into a nationally prominent, critically acclaimed pop band. The album rose to No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and gave rise to the hit single "Life During Wartime." Lethem, however, is more intrigued by "Memories Can't Wait," the track immediately following it at the close of the album's A-side.

"Memories Can't Wait" is a dark departure from the Talking Heads' typical sound, musically and lyrically. I spoke with Lethem about how the song surprised him, how he grew to understand it and how it shaped his youth and taste in music. (You can read Lethem's chapter on "Memories Can't Wait," from his entry in the 33 1/3 series on Fear of Music, here.) According to Lethem, it's a song that lifts the band's typical veil of ironic distance to expose the raw emotions underneath — anger, alienation and fear.

Rachel Smith: In the book, your description of "Memories Can't Wait" is really over the top visceral. You write, "This dreadnaught of a song wears an exoskeleton of reverb and sonic crud as it grinds grimly uphill, armored like a Doctor Doom or Robocop who has been smeared with tar and then rolled like a cheese log in gravel. It is as if 'Memories Can't Wait' rides on spiked treads, a vehicle bogged in mud at the depths of the record's second side, and determined to climb into view over the crushed bodies of the other tracks." It sounds almost monstrous.

Jonathan Lethem: Well, it's the most aggressive song on the record, in terms of real deep aggression, and it's also the most depressed song on the album, I think, the most really, really abject one. Both of those things are threatening to me, and in a way you might say that the tone of "Memories Can't Wait" was a problem for me, because it wasn't exactly what I was going to Talking Heads, or Fear of Music, to get. And in fact, I make a couple of jokes that I think are indicative in that chapter. I talk about The Exorcist, or Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper." I had a really embarrassed resistance to things that came on as scary or doomy at that point in my life. Like the first time I heard The Doors, and the way Jim Morrison was storming around, that sort of doomy voice, I thought it was a joke. I didn't think anyone could sing like that and want to be taken seriously.

Enlarge Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Tom Gabel of Against Me!

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Tom Gabel of Against Me!

Late Tuesday night, Rolling Stone posted a news item that Tom Gabel of the punk band Against Me! plans to begin living as a woman. Gabel will soon undergo the transition, with hormones and electrolysis treatments. According to Rolling Stone, Gabel has "dealt privately with gender dysphoria for years." The full story, written by Josh Eells, hits newsstands on Friday.

As Matthew Perpetua, a Rolling Stone contributor, notes in a thoughtful piece about autobiography in pop music, Gabel has addressed gender identity issues in Against Me!'s music before, most explicitly in "The Ocean," the closing song on the 2007 album New Wave.

If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura
I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her
One day I'd find an honest man to make my husband

And earlier this year, Gabel performed a new song, "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," with just an acoustic guitar, perhaps as a nod to Against Me!'s explosively vulnerable beginnings as a folk-punk band 15 years ago.

Gabel, who will take the name Laura Jane Grace, admits that the transition won't be easy.

"I'm going to have embarrassing moments, and that won't be fun," says Gabel. "But that's part of what talking to you is about — is hoping people will understand, and hoping they'll be fairly kind."