• New Moon’s Taylor Lautner: The New Issue
• Lambert Loses GMA Gig Due to Racy AMAs
• Vote for the Best Music of 2009
• Bob Dylan on Christmas, Hip-Hop
• 1,500 Complain Over Lambert’s AMAs Set
• Lady Gaga Brings “Bad Romance” to Leno
• Paramore Dig a Grave in “Brick” Clip
• Pixies’ Minotaur Set Unveiled
• Fricke’s Picks: O’Rourke’s Long Song
• Rihanna Brings Her “Umbrella” to GMA
• News Ticker: Usher, Bryan Ferry
• Lambert Breaks Down AMAs “Controversy”
• Springsteen Wraps Epic Tour in Buffalo
• U2 to Headline Glastonbury 2010
• A Short History of Crotch Rock
• Can Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine Rescue Sound?
• Grammys: Gaga Won’t Compete for New Artist
• New Reviews: Lambert, Gaga, Rihanna
• Rob Sheffield on Lambert’s “Glambgasm”
• Dave Matthews Skewers Ozzy on SNL
• Jackson Glove, More Rare Objects Sell
• Readers Rock List: Phone Songs
• Whigs Channel Cash, Stones on March LP
• Adam Lambert Shocks AMAs With Racy Song
• Green Day Record “21 Guns” With Idiot Cast

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

Pixies fever has swept into New York as the reunited rockers played the first of four Doolittle shows last night at the Hammerstein Ballroom. With Black Friday looming, the perfect gift for the Pixies fan in all of us is the band’s mammoth Minotaur box set. In the video above, check out the limited-edition version of Minotaur, which boasts artwork from the Pixies’ longtime graphic designer Vaughan Oliver. This 26-pound mega box features all five of the band’s studio albums — Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova and Trompe le Monde — on 24K gold-plated discs and 180-gram vinyl. (more…)

We’ve already started soliciting your opinion for the best album, song and artist of the 2000s in our massive Greatest Music of the Decade Readers Poll — but the voting doesn’t end there. On December 15th we’ll reveal our picks for the best music of 2009, and we want to hear your selections, too. Click here for the 2009 Readers Poll ballot and get your voice heard (you have from now until December 8th to vote!). Follow the jump to see who’s up for Artist of the Year: (more…)

When Rihanna took the stage early today for an appearance on Good Morning America, she faced a crowd that had been waiting in the misty morning for several hours to catch a glimpse of the star the day after Rated R hit stores. When she emerged from behind a black backdrop, they erupted. She half-smiled, then asked, “What’s happening, New York?”

Get a look at Rihanna’s fiercest fashions, onstage and off.

Rihanna kept a black coat on during sound check and seemed reserved, standing wooden during run-throughs of “Wait Your Turn,” “Russian Roulette” and her mega-hit “Umbrella.” But then she disappeared behind the backdrop for hair and makeup. At 8:30 a.m., she emerged looking radically different, in a white tuxedo mini-dress that became the subject of one of her between-take interviews. “I’m a little too fat right now — the zip busted in the back!” she told host Robin Roberts of her original outfit. “They wanted to stitch it up, but I couldn’t.” (more…)

During a recent visit to Rolling Stone, Paramore’s Hayley Williams was reluctant to talk about the new video for the band’s Brand New Eyes single “Brick By Boring Brick” — to be fair, Williams was reluctant to talk in general, as she was still suffering from laryngitis — hoping instead to keep the band’s long-in-the-works clip under wraps. But now the secret is out and the video is streaming on Paramore’s official Website.

The CGI-heavy, autumn-washed video finds a young girl wearing butterfly wings and carrying a doll — apparently a representation of Hayley’s own psyche — running carelessly around a dream world while the now-blonde Hayley sings alongside a newly dug grave. (more…)

Photo: Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
To the surprise of fans and critics alike, Bob Dylan released his holiday-inspired album Christmas in the Heart last month, an unexpected first in the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s discography. Now Dylan is talking about the inspiration behind the album and responding to skeptics in a new interview posted on Street Newspaper (via Twenty Four Bit).

Check out RS’ collection of Bob Dylan photos.

The first question many asked when Dylan announced Christmas in the Heart was “Isn’t he Jewish?” Dylan tells SNS’ Bill Flannigan that he didn’t feel left out of the holiday’s celebrations despite his Jewish roots growing up, and that his childhood is full of memories of “plenty of snow, jingle bells, Christmas carolers going from house to house, sleighs in the streets, town bells ringing, nativity plays.” Dylan also said that he was approached in the past to do a Christmas album, but due to a glut of albums on the market he held off until now. Dylan must really be in the Christmas spirit, considering his“Must Be Santa” video marks the first time he’s appeared in his own non-soundtrack music video in over a decade. (more…)

Photograph by Mark Seliger

Taylor Lautner’s body is a temple. The 17-year-old New Moon star with the eight-pack abs and tan, chiseled face tells Rolling Stone’s Neil Strauss he’s never smoked pot, never tried cigarettes and never snorted a line of cocaine in our new issue dated December 10, 2009, on stands tomorrow.

Check out exclusive shots from Taylor Lautner’s hot RS cover shoot on the beach.

What Lautner has done is turn his love of martial arts into superstardom as werewolf Jacob in the Twilight series. “This could have happened to anyone who played Jacob,” Lautner tells RS. “It’s Twilight. It’s not me personally.” But his hard work is inescapable: he started learning karate at age six and moved on to Xtreme Martial Arts, relocating with his family to Los Angeles to pursue acting and stomaching the bullying that came along with it. He put on 30 pounds of muscle between the first two Twilight films. He found time to shoot the upcoming Valentine’s Day with Taylor Swift, with whom he “instantly clicked,” he admits. (more…)

Photo: Tomatis/BuzzFoto/FilmMagic

Adam Lambert’s racy performance on the American Music Awards has led ABC to scrap his scheduled concert tomorrow on Good Morning America. “Given his controversial live performance on the AMAs we were concerned about airing a similar concert so early in the morning,” an ABC spokesperson told Rolling Stone while confirming news of the Lambert cancellation.

Adam Lambert shocks, Taylor Swift soars: the 2009 AMAs in photos.

It’s not all bad news for the Wild Idol, however: Lambert will instead perform on tomorrow’s episode of CBS’ The Early Show. It’ll be a double dose of Lambert on CBS tomorrow, as he also recorded a performance yesterday at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theatre that will be broadcast tomorrow night on The Late Show With David Letterman. In an interview with Ryan Seacrest, Lambert indicated he wasn’t taking ABC’s decision to nix his morning appearance personally, adding, “Obviously I respect their decision, they gotta do what they gotta do. It’s too bad, I think there were a lot of fans who were excited to come see me. They probably had a lot of pressure coming at them from certain people who weren’t happy about it. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but they need to do what they need to do.”

Infamous crotch-rock moments, from Lambert’s AMAs to “Dick in a Box.” (more…)

Guitarist-composer and avant-rock provocateur Jim O’Rourke is notorious for his collaborations with Faust, drone pioneer Tony Conrad and the late guitarist John Fahey, and infamous in the mainstream for his noise-and-pathos mix of Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But O’Rourke’s new truly solo album — he played, produced and engineered every note — is one long confession of his true rapture for melody and instrumental detail. The Visitor (Drag City) is a continuous 38-minute piece that winds through buoyant tangles of acoustic guitar, piano and percussion; gorgeous spells of rippling suspended chords; and, halfway in, a cocky, eccentric Americana of banjo, reeds, swooping pedal steel guitar and marching drums, as if Charles Ives had rolled into an instrumental session for the Beach Boys‘ Pet Sounds. There are no track breaks here, just sparkling sustained delight.

Network television had a case of “Bad Romance” on two consecutive nights as Lady Gaga followed up her American Music Awards performance by bringing The Fame Monster single to the The Jay Leno Show yesterday. Donning the biggest shoulder pads this side of David Byrne, Lady Gaga and her gang of masked dancers gave fans a preview of what they can expect when The Monster Ball tour finally embarks this Friday in Montreal. To Leno’s relief, no glass was smashed during this performance of “Bad Romance.”

From Gaga to Green Day: the AMAs, in photos.

Following the performance, Gaga sat down with Leno to talk about playing for the Queen of England, what her music sounded like when she was in Catholic School (”My music was different in high school. I was singing about love. Things I don’t care about anymore”) and that rule that disqualifies Gaga from being nominated for the Grammy she was the favorite for. “Well, I’ve been locked out of the Best New Artist category… I was a new artist this year. But it’s fine, I wouldn’t be screwing anyone over there to have them take the award,” Gaga joked. “I’ve been nominated in the past, so technically due to songwriting and things, I’m not a new artist. But it’s OK, because the biggest reward for me has been my fans.”

Check out Lady Gaga’s wildest wardrobe moments. (more…)

Of the over 14 million viewers who watched the American Music Awards Sunday night, only 1,500 people called in complaints to ABC following Adam Lambert’s controversial, show-closing performance. According to Reuters, the Federal Communications Commission would not confirm nor deny whether viewers registered complaints with the agency following Lambert’s “For Your Entertainment,” which featured simulated oral sex with a male backup dancer, a brief make-out session with a male keyboardist and a middle finger to the stunned audience. (Read Rob Sheffield’s account of the Full-Frontal Glambgasm.) MTV reports the event pulled in 14.2 million viewers this year, for the awards’ best showing since 2002.

Adam Lambert shocks, Taylor Swift soars: the 2009 AMAs in photos.

ABC also confirmed the network did edit a portion of Lambert’s performance for the West Coast feed, removing the performance’s most controversial moment — “Lambert rubbing the face of a male dancer in his crotch,” Reuters colorfully writes — but Lambert’s kiss with his keyboardist remained in the final cut. Dick Clark Productions, who produced the AMAs, said in a statement that they “did not expect the impromptu moments” based on Lambert’s pre-show rehearsals.

Infamous crotch-rock moments, from Lambert’s AMAs to “Dick in a Box.” (more…)

Photo: Tama/Getty

• Usher’s Raymond v. Raymond has been delayed. The singer’s post-divorce album is moving from December 21st to an undetermined date, Billboard reports.

• Bryan Ferry sent a note to fans announcing that he’s begun work on a new solo album that’s due in summer 2010 and features Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Flea and Nile Rodgers. Ferry posted some video from the studio on his official Website.
• The Black Keys will spend every morning this week from 10-11:00 a.m. on Sirius XMU host Jake Fogelnest’s radio show chatting about and debuting music from their new Blakroc project. Dan Auerbach will also perform songs from his solo LP Keep It Hid.
• Tommy Lee has assembled a project called Bezerk that features Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith, Velvet Revolver’s Matt Sorum, Incubus’ Jose Pasillas, Godsmack’s Sully Erna and more artists and will debut at Guitar Center’s Drum-Off ‘09 Grand Finals at Los Angeles’ Wiltern on January 8th. The show will also have Jason Bonham paying tribute to dad John, and Tool’s Danny Carey teaming with Mastodon’s Brann Dailor.

Photo: Miller/FilmMagic

The Avett Brothers plot a whole spring full of dates in support of their latest album I and Love and You, Breaking artist Harper Simon takes a tour of the West Coast and Breaking band Alberta Cross plot an early 2010 jaunt. Full dates for all three treks, after the jump. (more…)

Four of the most anticipated albums of 2009 came out today (rather than on the traditional Tuesday release day) as the labels got an early jump on Black Friday. Leading the charge is Rihanna’s Rated R, the “Umbrella” singer’s first LP since she was assaulted by Chris Brown in February. Rihanna didn’t open up to the public before she began promoting her album, and found an outlet for her emotions on Rated R, an album that scored a four-star review from Rolling Stone’s Jody Rosen.

“The songs are etched in somber shades and minor chords, with Rihanna belting over synths and booming beats. The results are a musical match for the black-on-black CD cover — goth R&B,” Rosen writes. With Rated R, Rihanna proves she has the personality to match her voice and model looks, as she “has transformed her sound and made one of the best pop records of the year.” There’s nothing on here as immediate as “Umbrella” or “Disturbia,” but there’s an intimacy on Rated R tracks like “Stupid Love” and “Russian Roulette” that those previous hits lacked. (more…)

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty
Last week, inspired by both Lady Gaga and Beyoncé collaborations “Video Phone (Remix)” and “Telephone,” we started collecting your top telephone-oriented songs. After tallying the votes, Tommy Tutone’s phone number anthem and perennial prank call victim “867-5309/Jenny” was dialed in as our winner, beating out tracks by Beck, the Replacements and Lou Reed. Click below to see the entire Readers’ List of Phone Songs.

1. Tommy Tutone – “867-5309/Jenny”
2. Blondie – “Call Me”
3. Electric Light Orchestra – “Telephone Line”
4. Beck – “Cell Phone’s Dead”
5. Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone” (more…)