TODAY'S TOP ROCK HEADLINES

Rolling Stone Tuesday, July 17, 2007

TODAY'S TOP ROCK HEADLINES

STARBUCKS EXPANDS ITS MUSIC-BIZ REACH Just over a month after its record label's first-ever release, Starbucks has announced a partnership with iTunes and NBC Universal that will expand the coffee giant's attempts to entertain us with more than just pricey lattes. Click here to check out what's in store, and visit RollingStone.com/rockdaily for more music news.

NEW MUSIC TUESDAYS: ROONEY, THE CRIBS This week, Rolling Stone executive editor Joe Levy sits down with RollingStone.com staff writer Elizabeth Goodman to talk about the new discs from the Cribs and Rooney. Click here to watch the video and visit RollingStone.com/newmusictuesdays for more New Music Tuesdays.

DISPATCH AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN: WHAT DO A THREE-PIECE JAM BAND DO BEHIND THE SCENES? Over the weekend, scores of suburban teens donned their finest Abercrombie and Hollister duds and headed to Madison Square Garden to catch the newly reunited pseudo-jam-band Dispatch, who now hold the record as the first independent band in history to sell out the 20,000-capacity venue. (To put this in perspective: tickets are still available for the White Stripes' gig next week at the same place.) On Saturday, we caught up with the band after they finished up their soundcheck to ask them about their pre-show rituals - and how their friends reacted to the news that Dispatch had sold out the Garden. Click here to watch the video, and visit RollingStone.com/dispatch for more Dispatch.

THE WHITE STRIPES DISCOVER SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL IN NOVA SCOTIA For their tenth anniversary show on Sunday in remote harbor town Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, the White Stripes managed to find one room that was nearly perfect: The Savoy, an intimate theater built in the early 1920s to replicate old Victorian music halls - and which happens to be schemed almost entirely in red, black and white, and (if you believe the locals) haunted by as many ghosts as the band's music. Both sides of the "White family"were in attendance for the occasion, and eager fans dressed in color-coordinated outfits were rewarded with small cups of champagne by the Stripes road crew pre-show. Click here to read more about the Stripes' two-hour trip through their catalog, and visit RollingStone.com/whitestripes for more on the band.

SMASHING PUMPKINS FOCUS ON "TODAY" AT OPENING NIGHT GIG At the first of 11 sold-out shows at San Francisco's Fillmore, the Smashing Pumpkins lived up to leader Billy Corgan's reputation for excess. The '90s alt-rock icons hadn't played the historic venue since April 1994, when it was a big deal to have such an ascendant act (then exploding in popularity in the wake of 1993's breakthrough Siamese Dream) host the nightclub's reopening following 1989's Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1991 death of legendary promoter Bill Graham. And so the band returned with appropriate largess to play a three-hour show that ended shortly after 1 AM. Click here to read more, and visit RollingStone.com/thesmashingpumpkins to check out more on the Smashing Pumpkins.

For more of the latest music news - including stories on Carrie Underwood, Paris Hilton and Be Your Own Pet - visit RollingStone.com.

TODAY'S PICKS

DAILY TRACK: The White Stripes - "Prickly Thorn, Sweetly Worn" At their tenth anniversary show on Sunday in Nova Scotia, the White Stripes paid homage to a rich local musical heritage founded in the fiddle music imported by Scottish immigrants in the 1800s. The duo took the stage heralded and flanked by a tartan-clad bagpipe troupe, and their Gaelic stomp "Prickly Thorn, Sweetly Worn" (Jack on mandolin, Meg on bass drum and a local teenager on bagpipe) brought the house down, with drunken men in kilts dancing perilously on the precipice of the old room's balcony. Click here to check out this hilarious, over-the-top video for the lead single.

DAILY VIDEO: Dispatch at Madison Square Garden - What Does a Three-Piece Jam Band Do Behind the Scenes?

DAILY REVIEW: Rocklahoma Report - Four Days of Hair-Metal Mania The Rocklahoma festival was a whirlwind tour of '80s hair-metal Olympus. What a weekend - the sisters were twisted, the foxes were Britny and the pussycats were faster. This festival united a swarm of Sunset Strip pay-to-play sleaze metal titans: Ratt, Poison, Twisted Sister, L.A. Guns, Warrant, Slaughter, Skid Row, Quiet Riot. For three days, they rose out of the cellar and into a giant field on the outskirts of Pryor, Oklahoma, where some 30,000 hardcore fans came on, felt the noize and asked each other, "Who were Firehouse again?" Whitesnake didn't make it, but White Lion did, and so did Great White. This was definitely the place where the down boys go, even if they're down men now. The fans ranged from local kids to leathery ladies still trying to fit into that vintage Winger "In the Heart of the Young" tour bustier. Click here to read more of Rob Sheffield's Rocklahoma report.

ARTIST OF THE DAY: DISPATCH The complete ROLLINGSTONE.COM archive includes videos, photos, interviews, reviews, and more.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS TERRY BUTLER of BLACK SABBATH, 58 SPENCER DAVIS, 68 TODAY'S ROCK ON TV (ALL TIMES EST) NBC 11:35pm - The Tonight Show with David Letterman: RYAN ADAMS 12:35am - Late Night with Conan O'Brien: THE CRIBS 1:35am - Last Call with Carson Daly: KAY KAY AND HIS WEATHERED UNDERGROUND CBS 11:35pm - The Late Show with David Letterman: MUTE MATH 12:05am - Jimmy Kimmel Live: AS TALL AS LIONS