Table of contents for May 19, 2016 in Rolling Stone

Misfit Royalty this was an incredibly well-researched and written cover story [“The Curse of the Ramones,” RS 1259]. Mikal Gilmore captured the essence of the band’s dysfunctional relationships and its prolific body of work. The way some revere the Beatles is the way I feel about the Ramones. Ryan Gilfedder, Forest Hills, NY great piece on the band that helped cement my music taste. Thanks for helping to educate the new crop of punks about the roots of this music. (No, son, Blink-182 did not invent the genre.) Andy Lippitt, Stoughton, MA as a die-hard ramones fan, I loved the cover story. I was surprised Gilmore didn’t mention the subgenre of pop punk that includes bands like Screeching Weasel, the Riverdales and the Huntingtons, ones that used the Ramones’ sonic…

The Black Crowes frontman is on a solo tour, and hosting the psychedelic radio show Gurus Galore on Sirius XM. Gong “I Never Glid Before” Don’t mention “psychedelic music” if you aren’t familiar with Gong. This is the perfect union of great jazz and rock, under a psychedelic dome. Broadcast and the Focus Group “The Be Colony” There’s a darkness in the vocals, but it’s wrapped in a beautiful pop moment of great imagination. Canned Heat “Poor Moon” This is a song about the environment, where they basically say, “If we could, we’d fuck up the moon.” Judee Sill “Enchanted Sky Machines” Judee was the first artist signed to Geffen Records, but there’s little info out there about her bizarre life. This song has a heavy message, but it’s still…

Best New Artist Grammy winner Meghan Trainor returns May 13th with Thank You, which expands her sound into dance-, rap- and Caribbean-influenced tunes. Epic Records’ L.A. Reid had rejected the LP as too similar to Trainor’s debut, so she scheduled an emergency session with producer Ricky Reed. The pair cooked up the thumping “No,” which became Thank You’s first single. “As soon as he played it, L.A. jumped up and said, ‘That’s what I’m talkin’ about!’ ” Trainor says. “He played it 29 times that evening.”…

There are black helicopters buzzing over Hollywood Boulevard. The LAPD has shut dow n traffic in both directions. Thousands of civilians are amassed on the sidewalk. If this were a comic-book movie, now would be the time when the sky opens up and the alien mothership comes swooping in, space guns blazing. But bec ause it’s just the premiere of a comic-book movie – Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War, opening this month – all the hubbub merely presages the ar rival of the man of the hour, the leader of the Avengers, Cap himself: 34-year-old Chris Evans, flashing an act ionfig ure smile as he steps out of a blue Audi sports car and onto the red carpet. The sports car was not Evans’ idea. Audi is a big sponsor…

From the age of 11, Prince was in my ears and in my head. I patterned everything in my life after him: his fashion, his affect, his taste in women and, of course, his taste in music. I wouldn’t have started listening to Joni Mitchell without him. And that led me to Jaco Pastorius, who led me to Wayne Shorter, who led me to Miles Davis. I had a simple rule: If Prince listened to it, I listened to it. In the wake of his death, as we all try to come unstunned, everyone is talking about his genius. That’s understandable. But most of the discussion is general. I like to think about the specifics. I like to think of the way he innovated even early on, the way he…

SINCE TAYLOR SWIFT’S TRANSfiguration from country star to pop phenom, Keith Urban has been Nashville’s top crossover gogetter. His last album, 2013’s Fuse, featured contributions by Top 40 mainstays Benny Blanco and Stargate. On Ripcord, the Aussie singer-guitarist’s most eclectic album yet, Pitbull and Nile Rodgers appear together on the booty-hound party fluff of “Sun Don’t Let Me Down.” Better is “The Fighter,” a ’10s update of an Eighties retooling of a Motown-style romantic duet with Carrie Underwood, coproduced by country-crossover golden boy Busbee (see Maren Morris’ “My Church”). There’s Bieber-esque soul and an old-school waltz; “Boy Gets a Truck,” with its U2 lift, poignant flash-forward narrative and infuriatingly indelible stuttered rhyme scheme, is ad-ready genius. But the highlight is the 2015 hit “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16,” which…

Maggie’s Plan Writer-director Rebecca Miller knows how to make relationship comedies that pull you up short. And here, with Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke and Julianne Moore playing characters in lust and love, she touches a nerve. May 20 Little Men Ira Sachs tells a small tale that uncovers large truths as two boys, beautifully played by Theo Taplitz and Michael Barbieri, find their lives inextricably altered by a Brooklyn apartment that changes hands in the family. July 15 Southside With You You won’t find a more charming romance this summer than Richard Tanne’s take on a first date between two people, finely acted by Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter, who happen to be Barack and Michelle Obama. August 26…

To accompany Mikal Gilmore’s Ramones cover story, our editors compiled a comprehensive list of punk rock’s most iconic records [“The 40 Greatest Punk Albums of All Time,” RS 1259]. Readers from around the country weighed in on the rankings and on records we failed to include. NO DISRESPECT TO BILLIE Joe Armstrong, but the Dead Kennedys’Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables merits a higher ranking than No. 40 and was arguably a far bigger influence on punk than Green Day’s Dookie. Mark Flythe, Hamilton, NJ WHERE’S THE FRIGGIN’ MC5? There would be no Ramones if it weren’t for Fred Sonic Smith! Kick Out the Jams is the bible not only for every heavy-metal band but for every punk band as well! John Hefty, Crestone, CO DEAD BOYS’ “YOUNG, LOUD and Snotty”…

On a sunny afternoon in San Diego, Tom DeLonge sits in front of a Mac in a darkened room, searching “black triangle UFOs” on YouTube. He plays a clip of a mysterious glowing craft, which hovers over Paris before disappearing in a flash of light. Conspiracy theorists refer to it as a TR-3B; some believe it’s a machine the government secretly built from gathering UFO intelligence. “It’s pure, unadulterated anti-gravity,” he says, marveling at the craft’s movement. “It would scare people if they knew this existed.” For as long as he can remember – even before he sang “Aliens Exist” on Blink-182’s multiplatinum pop-punk classic, Enema of the State, in 1999 – DeLonge has been obsessed with what he calls “the phenomenon.” He can tell you about reports of triangular…

ONE OF THE MANY EXCELLENT things about being Skrillex is that you can rehearse for your Coachella performance in a hotel room. Just a few days before the festival, he and Diplo – who will perform together as Jack Ü – are still figuring out most of their set, which will end up being a highlight of the weekend, complete with a Kanye West guest spot. “If you work until the last moment,” says Skrillex, 28, “you have the best show ever.” For Skrillex, the last couple of years have been adventurous ones, as he put aside the skronky dubstep that made him famous in favor of Jack Ü’s populist bombast and an unlikely turn as a hitmaking producer for Justin Bieber. “You just gotta go on with that feeling…

MORE THAN $1 TRILLION DOWN THE DRAIN – FOR nothing! Tens of millions arrested, many millions incarcerated and countless families and communities savaged by stupid prohibitionist policies. And that’s just in the United States. ¶ Hundreds of thousands dead in drug wars from Asia to the Americas. Terrorists funded by drug money. Prisons packed. Gangs empowered. Governments intimidated and corrupted. It’s like alcohol prohibition and Al Capone, times 50. ¶ And all for what? The Drug War doesn’t make us safer, or healthier. Its only real beneficiaries are those who figure out how to make money selling drugs and the drugprohibition industrialcomplex. ¶ Ending a war requires guts and leadership. President Obama has shown promise of late but no real commitment. Many Republicans say that fewer Americans should be locked…

On thursday, April 14th, at about six in the evening, a black SUV pulled up to the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. It was an hour before showtime, but Prince didn’t need much preparation – this was the eighth stop on his Piano and a Microphone Tour, a series of unusual shows, mostly two a night, that saw one of the world’s greatest showmen scaling down his performance for an intimate keyboard recital. “He only soundchecked for a few minutes,” Lucy Freas, the promoter who’d set up this concert, tells Rolling Stone. As had been his habit for more than a decade – whether playing a 4,600-seat theater by himself or a 20,000-capacity arena with a full band – the shows were pop-ups, arranged on short notice. Freas had gotten an…

Beyoncé Lemonade Parkwood What does it mean for Beyoncé to drop a new surprise album on the world within days of Prince leaving us? It’s a welcome reminder that giants still walk among us. Lemonade is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world’s most famous celebrity; it’s also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game. All over these songs, she rolls through heartbreak and betrayal and infidelity. Yet despite all the rage and pain in the music, she makes it all seem affirming, just another chapter in the gospel according to Beyoncé: the lifechanging magic of making a great big loud bloody mess. This is the queen in middlefingers-up mode. When the first four songs…

What’s the most British thing about you? I’m attracted to things that aren’t simply pretty – there has to be an element of darkness to it, like the beauty of the smog. That comes from growing up in London. I also find it very hard to say something intimate without following it with a joke. “Quickly, make it sarcastic! Pull it back!” I don’t know if that’s a British thing or just a Welch family thing. What was your favorite book as a child? Little House on the Prairie. For Christmas, my aunt gave me and my sister little custom smock prairie dresses, and we would make a prairie in our house, with a lake made out of towels. I may have sensed something unsettled in my parents’ marriage; they…

For True Sadness (due June 24th), the Avett Brothers and producer Rick Rubin shook up the band’s rootsy sound by getting seriously experimental: Using three different studios, they alternated between electronic beats and live instruments, recorded with different lineups, and constantly recut and “deconstructed” songs, according to Scott Avett. The result is a highly catchy LP that runs from lush, big-beat pop to sparse Americana. “We trust Rick,” Avett says. “Not only as a producer but as a friend.”…

It is, in theory, a mundane sight, nothing 2 get excited about: just a 55-yearold man in his suburban Minneapolis workplace, scrolling through a Windows Media Player library on a clunky Dell computer. An equally ordinary multiline phone sits beside it, near a lit candle, bottled water and some expensive-looking lotion. A huge old Xerox machine looms over the desk; a window at the far end of the room looks out onto barren trees and an empty, snow-lined highway. It’s early evening on Saturday, January 25th, 2014, in Chanhassen, Minnesota. The office is on the second floor of the 65,000-square-foot Paisley Park compound. The little guy sitting at the keyboard owns it all, had it all built back in the Eighties. And Prince being Prince, it’s fascinating to watch him…

Eric ClaptonI Still Do Bushbranch/Surfdog Eric Clapton’s 21st-century output has been erratic, but he’s been best when tending to his roots – like his latter-day B.B. King collaboration, Riding With the King, and his mid-’00s Cream reunion and Robert Johnson tribute. His latest follows suit: a revival meeting with classic-rock swami Glyn Johns, who produced 1977’s Slowhand. It’s a set of swampy blues and well-chosen covers that finds fresh angles on the guitarist’s perennial obsessions. I Still Do also marks a welcome change from the supper-club blues and beachcomber reggae of 2013’s apparent retirement postcard, Old Sock. His guitar snarls and struts on Leroy Carr’s 1930 blues classic “Alabama Woman Blues,” and it slithers like an Everglades highway python on Skip James’ “Cypress Grove.” Johnson’s “Stones in My…