Photo: Erika Goldring/Retna

With the presidential election fewer than two weeks away, Barack Obama was in the air at the tenth anniversary of the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans. On Friday, the first day of the three-day festival in City Park, Erykah Badu saluted him as a “human being for change,” and DJ King Britt worked part of his DNC speech into his set. A local group even rewrote a Mardi Gras Indian chant as “Handa Wanda Obama.”

(Check out photos of Nine Inch Nails, R.E.M. and more from Voodoo right here.)

Voodoo merges the national and local on six stages, with music ranging from traditional brass bands to the New Orleans Bingo! Show, which includes a trapeze performer and yes, a game of bingo. Friday night, TV on the Radio relied more heavily on Return to Cookie Mountain than their new Dear Science. Singer Tunde Adebimpe’s left arm had a mind of its own as he paced the stage, waving wildly when it wasn’t pressed behind firmly behind his back, but his voice was low in the mix, so those who didn’t know the songs didn’t know what animated him.

Scott Weiland took the stage for Stone Temple Pilots’ set in a leather bolero hat and oddly cut red paid jacket, doing a slow-motion “wax-on, wax-off” dance for much of the set. Ray Luzier subbed for drummer Eric Kretz, whose father died recently, leaving the group’s tempos a half-step sluggish. (more…)

Last weekend’s Austin City Limits festival was an ample opportunity for people in Texas to see some great bands, but it also allowed Tegan and Sara to catch up with their old pal Tom Gabel from Against Me! Click above for the three-way interview, including news on Gabel’s solo album and the benefits of being the only girls at a rock festival.

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Check Out Full Coverage of Austin City Limits and the Rest of the Summer’s Biggest Festivals on the Backstage Blog

[Video: Pete Maiden]

One of the centerpieces of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival was the “Don’t Look Back” series, which featured several bands playing one of their classic albums in its entirety. The guests included Thurston Moore (playing his solo album Psychic Hearts), Meat Puppets (who took on Meat Puppets II) and Built to Spill, who ran through their beloved 1997 album Perfect From Now On. Click above for a performance of “I Would Hurt a Fly.”

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On the surface, the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival would seem like a pleasant getaway in rural New York. But as Patton Oswalt exlains, there’s a dark underbelly. “This is where the people who were haunting the Overlook in The Shining were sent when they were way too evil,” Oswalt says of Kutcher’s resort, the site of the festival. “I’ve seen an abandoned bar, an abandoned game room and I have abandoned hope.” Click above for more from Patton, including what he thinks music festivals will look like after the apocalypse and how he did on “the world’s saddest putt-putt course.”

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Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore was at this past weekend’s All Tomorrow’s Parties festival to play his classic solo album Psychic Hearts in it’s entirety. “It’s kind of annoying,” Moore admits to Rolling Stone’s Kevin O’Donnell. “But exciting at the same time.” Click above for more from Moore, including the mishap the band had at an earlier All Tomorrow’s Parties and what song they are recording for Gossip Girl.

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[Video: Eric Helton]

• More All Tomorrow’s Parties Coverage at the Backstage Blog

While over at All Tomorrow’s Parties over the weekend, Rolling Stone’s Christian Hoard caught up with Syd Butler and Tim Harrington from Les Savy Fav in the middle of a lake. Click above to hear Harrigton’s favorite joke and to get a demo of the band’s ramming skills.

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[Video: Eric Helton]

Photo courtesy of Joshua C. Bis

Local overachievers Death Cab for Cutie proved an appropriate choice to close out the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle this weekend. The platinum-selling band that, as many Bumbershooters recalled, was playing to 200 people in their Bellingham, Washington hometown just a few years back, ably translated old and new songs to the stadium setting under a cloudy sky and the looming spire of the Space Needle. Singer Ben Gibbard, looking distinctly svelte, played solo acoustic on “I Will Follow You Into the Dark,” a song he dedicated to previous mainstage act Superchunk. The band finished a four-song encore with “Transatlanticism” as a shower of sparks cascaded behind them.

On Sunday, T.I. made a bid for royal stature as Bumbershoot’s only major hip-hop performer. He was backed by DJ Drama, a pair of hypemen, and various members of his entourage, all playing to a well-toasted afternoon crowd. He channeled one of last year’s Bumbershoot highlights when he snatched the chorus of “Superstar” by Lupe Fiasco — who played the same Memorial Stadium stage in 2007 — and rapped his own verse from the remix.

Later that night, after the Stone Temple Pilots tour bus backed up to the Memorial Stadium stage 30 minutes late, singer Scott Weiland preened and scraped his voice dramatically to hits like “Creep,” which meandered from full crowd sing-along to extended ambient jam, with Weiland mumbling a few lines from Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” (more…)

Photo: Chona Kasinger

While big names like Stone Temple Pilots, T.I., Beck and Paramore rocked Seattle’s Bumbershoot festival this weekend (read the mainstage report here), as usual the 36-year-old event’s secondary stages were packed with talent. Here’s a breakdown of the best:

• Darondo, the 61-year-old SF Bay Area soul legend, made a rare appearance on Saturday, backed by a band half his age. Anyone squeamish about sexy seniors would’ve blanched as the zoot-suited singer pushup-humped the stage and riffed on “whip cream and titties,” but Darondo redeemed himself with a Al Green-flavored liberation manifesto called “Let My People Go” to end his set.

• Sunday’s heroes were the Saturday Knights, longtime hometown favorites forever on the brink of going huge. Backed by a trio of horns, drummer, and guitarist, the roguish hip-hop trio rhymed over Seattleites-of-the-moment Fleet Foxes, turning their “White Winter Hymnal” into a mock cocaine anthem. Their sunset set under an illuminated Space Needle was like a lawn party thrown by old friends. (more…)

Photograph by Brad Fedie for RollingStone.Com

For bikers, this past weekend’s Harley-Davidson Festival was a big deal: Organizers expected more than 100,000 Harley riders and guests to descend on Milwaukee to celebrate the 105th birthday of the H-D motorcycle. Many rode to Milwaukee from all around North America; some came from as far away as New Zealand. For four days, the city was packed with comedians, merch booths, bike stunts, beer and loads of rock & roll. (Click here for photos!)

“Good evening Harley-Davidson enthusiasts,” Bruce Springsteen said just before nine Saturday night. More than 180 minutes later, he was still onstage, closing out six months of steady touring and, for all intents and purposes, the fest. (There are only a handful of gigs Sunday.) Despite all the time on the road, Springsteen showed zero signs of fatigue. He bounced around the stage, sweated like Kevin Garnett, rolled around on his back and took numerous trips into the crowd to shake hands and let fans sing into his mike.

Most of the best-known, crowd-pleasing songs came near the end of the show, including “Glory Days,” “Born to Run” and “Rosalita.” (more…)

Rolling Stone’s Jenny Eliscu hung out with Cold War Kids frontman Nathan Willett at the Outside Lands festival over the weekend, and he talked about how much he loved the San Francisco weather and his band’s new album Loyalty to Loyalty. But mostly, he talked about hunger. “I want some good food,” he told Eliscu when asked what he was looking for at a festival. “I’m not that excited about seeing bands. I just want to eat lunch.” Click above for the complete interview.

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At last weekend’s Outside Lands festival, RollingStone.com’s Pete Maiden caught up with Kaki King to talk about San Francisco and cops on horses. She admits she needs to take a lesson on rock and roll moves, but thinks that former tour mate Dave Grohl takes it a little too far. “He’s got a box full of cheesy rock moves,” the singer-songwriter jokes. “He sticks his tongue out as far as possible any moment he can!” Click above for the full interview with King, including why she aligns herself with cauliflower.

Photo: Getty

The 2008 edition of the Warped Tour wrapped up last weekend, and for Katy Perry, the conclusion of the tour means she’ll finally be able to nurse some wounds. “I have bruises all over my legs. That’s from wearing leggings. I’m like jumping off of the monitors and doing scissor kicks, or trying to keep up with these boys. It’s funny,” Perry told Rolling Stone’s Christian Hoard. “I’m onstage on the right, and then there’s another stage going on right before I go on, and usually it’s like a hardcore screamo band with a mosh pit spanning the size of an arena, and I’ve got all pink gear and a soft-pink bubblegum guitar. I definitely am keeping up with them, but I am causing injury at the same time.”

As for Perry’s favorite Warped moment, that came courtesy of the man who laid stake to the claim I Get Wet. (more…)

Photo: Chris Tuite

Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson headlined the historic Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival this weekend, ending San Francisco’s decades-long search for a world-class rock gathering to call its own. Sixty-four bands on six stages drew more than an estimated 120,000 international attendees to three wooded meadows inside the enormous Golden Gate Park.

• Photo Gallery: Radiohead, Tom Petty, Beck Invade Golden Gate Park for Outside Lands Festival

Radiohead’s 22-song set Friday night overwhelmed security, sound systems and synapses as an estimated 5,000 gate-crashers joined the capacity crowd. The UK rock quintet’s advanced sound gear caused two PA outages during heavy moments in “Airbag” and “All I Need,” yet Yorke and company played through the gaps like pros and drove the crowd wild with favorites “Just,” “Paranoid Android,” “Bodysnatchers” and “Fake Plastic Trees.” Yorke cracked up laughing during “You & Whose Army?” making the imperfect set all the more endearing. (more…)

Even before he took the stage to close out the inaugural New American Music Union festival, Bob Dylan cast an exceptionally large shadow over the proceedings. The fest, organized by American Eagle and presented around the corner from their corporate headquarters in Pittsburgh, featured an eclectic lineup whose musical DNA could all be traced back to the most American of genres: the blues. It was in the Roots‘ hard-times funk and the Black Keys’ garage noise on Friday night and in the barroom soul of Spoon, the space-hop of Gnarls Barkley and the muscular arena thump of the Raconteurs on Saturday. Dylan provided the first-person account of the early blues — a generation-bridging link to the past. (more…)

Besides for the headliners, no one was better represented at Ozzfest’s one-show stint at Pizza Hut Park than the late “Dimebag” Darrell Abbott, who was killed onstage at a Damageplan show on December 8, 2004 in Ohio. For most of the day, that was in the form of T-shirts, tattoos and the virtual army of men in baggy cargo shorts and pink-dyed goatees. But following the set by Hellyeah, featuring his brother Vinnie Paul on drums, Dimebag’s music was there, too.

“Mouth for War” — with Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta on vocals and Mudvayne’s Gregg Tribbett on guitar — kicked off the tribute set, and brought with it the first big moment of the festival that didn’t involve a girl pulling aside her bikini top. “A New Level” followed, with Max Cavalera and King Diamond sharing vocals and Anthrax’s Scott Ian on guitar. An acoustic cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” headed by Jerry Cantrell served as a palate cleanser, before Slayer’s Kerry King appeared with Hellyeah/Mudvayne singer Chad Gray for “Fucking Hostile.” (more…)