Table of contents for October 6, 2016 in Rolling Stone

The Gov’t Mule frontman spent the summer playing Dead favorites with symphony orchestras all over the country. “Terrapin Station” It’s such a unique song, since it has a lot of elements from different genres mixed together, like classical and prog. I like songs with lots of moving parts, and this is one of them. “Blues for Allah” This is completely different than anything else in their catalog, since it utilizes Eastern music. It’s very complex musically, but beautiful to the ear. “Slipknot” They really went out on a limb with this. It’s one of the most jazzy pieces that they did, very intricate and hard to perform. The show got really exciting whenever they did it. “Estimated Prophet” This is my favorite Bob [Weir] song. The lyrics are cool, and…

The beach boys saga has always haunted the American imagination because of the family bond at the heart of it: the three Wilson brothers – tortured genius Brian, shy Carl, madman drummer Dennis – and their abusive dad, thrown together in a surf band with their flashy cousin. Part of the poignancy is Brian Wilson versus Mike Love – two California boys who never should have been in the same room, much less trapped together for life. Wilson and Love both have excellent new memoirs, telling the story from opposite perspectives. Since Beach Boys fans are fiercely tribal – hardcore Brianistas dismiss Love as a mercenary clod riding his cousins’ coattails – both books are musts, not to mention guaranteed argument-starters. I Am Brian Wilson is soulful and earnest –…

When he calls from London one recent Tuesday evening, the 1975’s Matt Healy has been enjoying his version of a day off – he walked his dog, went to a singing lesson, chilled with his little brother and rehearsed with his band for the next leg of its world tour. The 1975 have been on the road nearly nonstop since their 2013 self-titled album – full of confessional tunes about drugs, sex, more drugs and even more sex – became a surprise hit. The follow-up, this year’s I Like It When You Sleep, for You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware of It, reached Number One in America. The 1975 began playing together 14 years ago, but it was a full decade before they released any music – fortunately, after they’d…

There’s never been a creative boom for TV like the one we are living through right now. Ever since The Sopranos changed the game at the turn of the century, we’ve been in a gold rush that gives no signs of slowing down. What better moment to look back and celebrate the greatest shows in the history of the art form? So we undertook a major poll – actors, writers, producers, critics, showrunners. Legends like Carl Reiner and Garry Marshall, who sent us his ballot shortly before his death this summer. All shows from all eras were eligible; anybody could vote for whatever they felt passionate about, from the black-and-white rabbit-ears years to the binge-watching peak-TV era. The ratings didn’t matter – only quality. The voters have spoken – and,…

Bruce Springsteen Chapter and Verse Columbia HHHH ½ Bruce Springsteen’s passion for storytelling has taken countless forms over the years – he called his early songs “twisted autobiographies.”Chapter and Verse is the companion album to his memoir, Born to Run, following the tale from his garage-band youth to his current glory days, with five tunes he’s never released before. He’s chosen a revelatory mix of classics and obscurities – he leans hard on the hard-luck tales in his songbook, as the Jersey romance of “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” gives way to the dashed dreams of “The River” or “Brilliant Disguise.” For the previously unheard gems, he reaches all the way back to 1966, to his teen garage band the Castiles (“Baby I”) and his pre-E Street group…

Goat Nick Jonas, Ben Schnetzer Directed by Andrew Neel HHH nick jonas, the youngest JoBro (he’s 24), makes good on promising TV acting (Kingdom, Scream Queens) with a stellar turn in Goat, a fact-based frat movie – think Animal House minus the laughs. Jonas plays Brett Land, a member of Phi Sigma Mu, a fraternity being pledged by younger brother Brad (Ben Schnetzer), who wrote the 2004 anti-hazing memoir on which the film is based. Alpha dude Brett thinks his loner brother will man up by joining the frat. But first Brad has to endure Hell Week. Getting peed on and being tricked into thinking they’re eating shit – that’s for starters. It’s brutal, especially when pledge master Dixon (a scarily effective Jake Picking) goes into action. But director and…

On october 6th, nearly six months after Prince’s death from an accidental overdose of the opioid fentanyl, his fabled Paisley Park compound in Chanhassen, Minnesota, will open its doors for public tours. In preparation, workers digging through its rooms have found an array of treasures: from vintage outfits (including the one he wore at the Super Bowl halftime show in 2007) to a book with 40 to 50 pages of handwritten lyrics and a secret room that hid unreleased video footage. “Everywhere I turn,” says a source close to the project, “it’s, ‘Holy crap.’ ” Even more surprising are the detailed guidelines Prince left behind for turning Paisley Park into a museum after his death –including a wall-mounted timeline of his life through the mid-1990s and messages and texts sent…

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Duck Dynasty 2012-Present Congratulations, Robertson family – you are officially the worst anything ever! A dipshit sitcom passed off as a reality show, with a bunch of bearded phonies stumbling over their scripted banter – like The Beverly Hillbillies with less-believable facial hair. The Robertsons talk about Jesus a lot, but Jesus probably prefers Real Housewives like the rest of us. Northern Exposure 1990-95 A critically acclaimed cult favorite, set in an unbearably heartwarming Alaska village. Gosh, do these folks learn some lessons! An even preachier M*A*S*H rip, full of heavy moose symbolism. For the final seasons, the guy in charge was none other than David Chase, who went on to create The Sopranos. Fact: Television is weird. Ghost Whisperer 2005-10 Light a candle, please, for whatever beautiful mind came…

They were everywhere this summer, the wanna-be statesmen, the failed comedians, the conspiracy theorists and entrepreneurs with political convictions, or absolutely no convictions, selling the national id. In Cleveland, they trawled the streets outside the Republican National Convention, shouting, “Hillary’s lies matter!” or “Hillary for prison!” – the slogans stamped on buttons, Tshirts, bumper stickers, decals, trucker hats, hoodies, onesies. At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, diehards in bernie 2016 shirts held signs reading “#NeverHillary” or “Shillary,” or handed out posters renaming the Democratic nominee “War Hawk” or “Goldman Girl” or “Monsanto Mama.” Everywhere the venom was carefully packaged and rigorously on-message. One button, plumbing the depths of the antipolitically correct, read life’s a bitch -don’t vote for one. Another promoted a kfc hillary special: 2 fat thighs,…

Regina Spektor Remember Us to Life  Warner Bros. HHH ½ Since Regina Spektor’s 2012 LP, What We Saw From the Cheap Seats, she has released the rocking theme song to Orange Is the New Black (“You’ve Got Time”) and an impeccably phrased cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” – two moves that might suggest an eccentric artist pushing toward the mainstream. Her fifth album, full of brilliant songcraft per usual, performs a similar balancing act between the familiar and the far-out. Spektor’s skill at storytelling compression remains stunning. “Grand Hotel” hilariously reimagines Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest as a W-franchised portal to hell, and “Bleeding Heart” seems like an amiably boilerplate wallflower shout-out until it becomes multiple stories about outsider mindsets. On the Beatlesque “Older and Taller,” Spektor addresses…

1. Zack de la Rocha “Digging for Windows” The Rage Against the Machine frontman just released his first song in nearly a decade, a punk-rap screed against “a future so toxic,” cooked up with El-P of Run the Jewels. It’s just the kind of lefty noise this psycho election year demands. 2. Lady Gaga “Perfect Illusion” Gaga says goodbye to her Tony Bennett phase on this return-to-form crusher. All she needs are some Eighties guitar cheese, a Godzilla beat and a little Pat Benatar vocal fire to remind us she’s the demon queen of trash-disco thunder. 3. Crying “Revive” Imagine if a bunch of cardigan-sweater emo types tried dorking out on REO Speedwagon and Rush. Now imagine if that was really great – laser-show prog-rock with a tender heart. 4.…

Shawn mendes is sitting in a dressing room in New York on a recent Saturday afternoon, feeling a little disoriented. This is partly because he just saw a guy’s leg get crushed in a traffic accident. But it’s also because the 18-year-old is about to headline Madison Square Garden for the first time. The show sold out in five minutes, and young girls with wide smiles are already lined up outside. “It’s nuts for it to be packed here for me,” says the singer-guitarist. “I don’t know what, how or why it’s happening, but I’m gonna do the best I can.” In three years, Mendes has gone from a hockey-loving kid in Pickering, Ontario, to a Vine star, to a chart-topper. Last year’s Handwritten hit Number One, and it’s a fair…

Actors/Showrunners/Show Creators/Journalists Sam Adams, TV journalist, Slate, Indiewire Eric André actor, The Eric André Show Judd Apatow, showrunner, Freaks and Geeks Tara Ariano, co-creator, Previously .tv, Television Without Pity Steven Bochco, co-creator, Hill Street Blues, NYPD Blue Sarah D. Bunting, co-creator, Previously .tv, Television Without Pity Lizzy Caplan, actor, Masters of Sex, Party Down Chris Carter, creator, The X-Files David Chase, creator and showrunner, The Sopranos Robert Cochran, co-creator, 24 Sean T. Collins, TV journalist, The New York Times, Observer, Vulture Diane English, creator, Murphy Brown Sam Esmail, creator and showrunner, Mr. Robot David Fear, critic, ROLLING STONE Dan Fienberg,The Hollywood Reporter Nathan Fillion, actor, Castle, Firefly Matt Groening, creator, The Simpsons Tony Hale, actor, Veep, Arrested Development Gillian Jacobs, actor, Love, Community Nina Jacobson, showrunner, The People v. O.J.…

Bon Iver 22, A Million Jagjaguwar HHHH Who’d have thought that a bearded guy from the wilds of Wisconsin could help shape music from Chicago to London and beyond? But Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has done just that. Since debuting with the forlorn indie folk of 2007’s he’s carried on a rich conversation with modern pop, collaborating with Kanye West and James Blake while creating a new version of sensitive-guy Auto-Tune soul on 2011’s With his long-awaited third album Vernon completely breaks from his guitar-hugging persona, leaving it in the woods like a Coen brothers corpse as he flexes a mastery of processed vocals, samples, loops, beats, synths and noise, along with more familiar trappings. The results place him alongside pop’s top futurists. Amazingly, it still sounds like Bon…

What music moves you the most? God, there’s so much. It moves me to hear Alison Krauss sing because she has the most wonderful voice in the world. It moves me to hear Joni Mitchell, who’s probably the best singer-songwriter who’s ever lived. It still moves me to hear Miles Davis playing Sketches of Spain. I sent an old friend of mine my last album. He said, “Well, I don’t listen to other people’s stuff.” What the fuck? I listen to other people’s stuff all day long! The day isn’t complete if I don’t get Steely Dan in it. What advice do you wish you’d received early in life? It’s simple: Don’t do any hard drugs, ever. Don’t do any cocaine, don’t do speed, don’t do junk. Do you mourn…