John Yarling is one of the busiest and most versatile drummers working in South Florida. He's recorded and played live with more people than most of us have met, and on Monday, he drew yet another assignment: Review Eric Clapton in concert at Hard Rock Live. Here's what he saw and heard:

From the second song on it was mostly blues, with a few of the hits along the way. Clapton gave second guitarist Doyle Bramhall II room to play both regular and slide guitar, and keyboardist Chris Stainton had a few solo spots as well. Clapton sounded good, but seemed to be going through the motions at times. Bramhall didn't really get it going, either, during his solos. But Stainton was energetic, and I got the impression he was trying to move things along.

Clapton's voice was in fine form throughout, and the vocals of Bramhall and the two background singers were spot-on. A solo acoustic interlude where Clapton played Driftin' and Driftin' was one of the high points of the night.

The full band returned and stayed mostly acoustic for Wonderful Tonight. Of course, Bramhall and Clapton traded back and forth on Layla, switching parts at times, with Bramhall playing slide. Everyone in the crowd was up on their feet at the first notes of Cocaine, and they stayed up for the encore: pedal-steel guitarist Robert Randolph sitting in for a version of Got My Mojo Working.

The band was never introduced. (Doyle Bramhall II, guitar, vocals; Chris Stainton, keyboards; Pino Palladino, bass; Ian Thomas, drums; Sharon White, backing vocals; Michelle John, backing vocals). They were tight for the most part and, like Stainton, drummer Thomas was doing his part to raise the energy level. Clapton looked tired, though, and with a two- or three-day beard he looked older than I expected.

But I enjoyed the concert. Even when not hitting on all gears, Clapton still sounds great. The production was classy and not overdone; simple lighting and backdrops were pretty much it. I am glad I got to see him one more time before he possibly retires.

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They weren’t much to look at, the four guys in Spoon, but the plainness of their live presentation was not a blindness to style. The Austin, Texas rock band, which played on April 16 in Fort Lauderdale with a big drab sheet as a backdrop, understands very well the uses and the limits of being stylish

There was an acute formalism to the songs Spoon played at Revolution (packed to the ductwork that Wednesday night with an undetermined ratio of paid to comped), and you could call that musical tailoring a fashion sense. One element of style is reference — letting the tune tell the listener who the songwriters admire and whose labels they would gladly wear. Spoon did its referencing in careful, calibrated doses — enough to own up to certain influences without being accused of excess tribute or outright theft.

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Review here of Avril Lavigne's Sunday night concert in western Palm Beach County. I spent some of it talking about the ever-present-tense in Lavigne's songs. (From He Wasn't: "There's not much going on today/I'm really bored. It's gettin' late/What happened to my Saturday?/Monday's comin', the day I hate/Sit on the bed alone, starin' at the phone") But there's also some nostalgia at work - or at least that's what I think I'm hearing.

All told, Lavigne sounds wistful for the typical teen-aged high-school experience she never had complete. She went after a music career starting in her early teens, so she had, as they say, other priorities. She became a label pro at 16. But string together songs like Innocence, Girlfriend The Best Damn Thing, Sk8er Boi and others, and Lavigne has constructed her very own high school musical.

She's not the first entertainer to make grades 9-12 her muse. Leslie Gore, the Beach Boys and the Ramones - to name a few - drew great inspiration from that stage of life. There's even a band, The Go! Team, whose whole concept is an arch celebration/examination of school spirit and teendom. But there's an unusual, un-ironic persistence to Lavigne's identification with it that's lasted three albums, numerous videos and assorted tours. It's as if she's using her career to imagine a life without the job she's got.

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Soul singer Mary J. Blige has no trouble engaging an arena-sized crowd and sustaining the fever pitch of her always emotional, energetic live sets. She’s done as much on several visits to South Florida, including a performance on Saturday night at Miami’s AmericanAirlines Arena

The question was whether Jay-Z, Blige’s co-headliner of the just-launched “Heart of the City” tour, could be impressive in his own right, especially on opening night. The rapper doesn’t play out nearly as much as Blige, a fellow New Yorker, and on Saturday he had to follow her triumphant first act.

But a confident, in-command Jay-Z allowed no letdowns for himself or the capacity crowd. It didn’t hurt that he sprung surprise guests: rappers Memphis Bleek and Kanye West, and producer Tim “Timbaland” Mosley. But as Timbaland said, “You’re killin’ … You don’t need me.”

It was true. Even without celebrity cameos, Jay-Z matched Blige hit for hit, and maintained the audience’s upbeat, participatory mood in what may be the most ambitiously produced and arranged hip-hop road show ever. The hustler from Brooklyn proved to be a smart traveling companion for Blige, the Bronx-born healer of hearts.

“Heart of the City” sometimes looked and sounded like both headliners’ tryouts for some future Las Vegas residency. The band on stage with Blige numbered 22 people, including a 12-piece ensemble — seated together at stage right — consisting of eight string players and four-man horn line. This crew could have backed Shirley Bassey (who made an appearance of sorts when Jay-Z’s DJ spun a bit of Bassey’s James Bond theme, Diamonds are Forever).

The string section took Jay-Z’s set off, while the horns stayed, joined by a DJ who meshed nicely with the other instrumentalists. Whatever the configuration, the populous band was sharp and often imaginative in its handling of both artists’ set lists. It was a thrill to hear live violins slicing through the groove of Blige’s Family Affair. For Jay-Z’s Izzo (H.O.V.A.), the rap track was the Jackson 5’s effusive I Want You Back, with the horn section leading the way.

The show began and ended with duets. Blige and Jay-Z opened the concert and the tour with Can’t Knock the Hustle. Three hours later, she rejoined him for Heart of the City (Ain’t No Love). Performing together and separately, they made great pop sense as partners in what should be a well-received tour.

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R.E.M. was a band with a predicament going into Saturday night’s show at Big Cypress Seminole Reservation.

Conscious of the pull of a glorious past, but eager to play new songs, these literate Southerners who midwifed the culture of alternative rock had sometimes contradictory tasks before them at the Langerado festival: Give the people what they want and know; and persuade them that new songs almost nobody has heard yet belong on the set list.

R.E.M. aced the balancing test. If anything, playing the short, punchy numbers from Accelerate — due April 1 — helped the band put a spark in the stand-bys (Drive, The One I Love) as well as some less-appreciated songs from recent albums (Electrolite, Imitation of Life).

Flush with the energy of Accelerate-d songs, and framed by current events, 1989’s Orange Crush (“Follow me/Don’t follow me … We are agents of the free”) sounded like a fresh grenade lobbed at wartime mentality. Singer Michael Stipe - almost cocky at times - also did some less coded politicking, wearing a t-shirt that said “OBAMA.”

The five-piece touring version of R.E.M. opened with the familiar and then dove right into the unkown: The quintet followed What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?, the power-chord mash from 1994's Monster album, with an uptempo garage-rocker from Accelerate — title not announced. Separated by 14 years, the two sounded like jukebox siblings — think Robert Palmer’s inseparable one-two-three of Sailing Shoes, Hey Julia and Sneakin' Sally Through the Alley.

R.E.M. rolled out its own classics in a 22-song set: Losing My Religion was a interlude of quiet — but anxious quiet, in keeping with Stipe’s keening vocal and Peter Buck’s edgy mandolin lines. Man on the Moon was a warm, crowd-embracing close to the performance.

The band reached even farther back to its distant, pastoral ‘80s songbook with Southern Central Rain and Fall on Me.

But Accelerate kept poking its nose into everything, pushing the tempo and promoting attitude. Stipe sang the title track like a panicked CEO: “Where is my cartoon escape hatch?” The apocalyptic I’m Gonna DJ (“the end of the world”) could have been R.E.M.’s answer to the “woo-hoo,” over-the-cliff holler of Blur’s Song 2.

After awhile, albums can become pretexts for touring, and bands on a long hitless streak often become more proficient than ever at playing those great old songs. But that surrender to the road is a kind of death - witness the Eagles - and R.E.M. doesn’t sound like it’s going gently into that good night.

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It amused the Beastie Boys to no end to find themselves playing in a Florida swamp. They couldn't stop talking, or rapping, about "the 'Glades" on Friday night at Big Cypress. There was even a call for "every alligator, every horse ... to put a finger in the air and scream."

The Beasties, in their Langerado debut, drew a big crowd to the main stage and earned a mostly enthusastic response. Concertgoers at the back of the scrum were more curious than invested; the screams came from closer in to the platform and its gigantic companion video screen.

The New York trio, joined by DJ Mixmaster Mike and keyboardist Money Mark, got off to a balky start, with the P.A. clipping at first, before they locked down and played to the occasion. The 90-minute set was a mash-up of hits, b-sides and - because Langerado made its name as a jam-band festival - some longform, funky suites. Money Mark doodled like Lalo Schifrin circa '75 on electric piano, and later there was a spacey instrumental anchored by what sounded like the low vibration of a didgeridoo.

Along with some of their signatures - rhyme-passing, three-way raps including Body Movin', Super Disco Breakin' and Intergalactic, the Beastie Boys played what might have been one of their early, pre-rap punk songs. They finished with a Beastie favorite: Sabotage, its choir of howls and fuzzed-out bass groove coming a little more naturally, and easily, to them than the mellow instrumentals.

Still, there amongst the 'gators and the neo-hippie-rave-kid glow sticks, the Beastie Boys made sense. Langerado's outlook is expansive enough to welcome just about any band short of GWAR.

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The sound of the Langerado music festival on Thursday was, for me, a drumbeat - rain hitting my windshield on the slow crawl up Snake Road in the Everglades. I had hoped to arrive a little before the first bands started playing at 6 p.m., but a heavy storm and heavy traffic on the home stretch into the festival grounds conspired to sink that plan.

For reasons too stupid to detail just yet (you can read about it below the fold), I wound up hearing just a little bit of music at Langerado's muddy Big Cypress debut. There was Les Claypool, of Primus fame, singing like a squawk-box Walter Winchell, and playing his guttural-sounding bass guitar in a band whose brass section had a Sun Ra feel for skronk. I caught a bit of Dead Confederate, who seemed to be a summit of Drive-By Truckers' Southernism and Radiohead's art of noise. It was squall meets y'all, and I'm not sure Dead Confederate quite pulled it off. Or it might have been my foul mood to blame at that point.

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The Black Crowes say Maxim magazine's 2 & 1/2-star putdown (out of five) of their forthcoming album was made up — written by someone who hadn't even heard it. And Maxim, according to the Associated Press, is not denying the charge.

A representative for the magazine would not confirm or deny to The Associated Press whether the writer actually listened to the album. Instead, Maxim released this statement in response: “Maxim will continue to provide our readers with information that is important to them, whether it is about fashion, lifestyle, technology, music, movies and more.”

The Crowes' manager said in a statement that the fabricated review leaves Maxim with a credibility problem: “ ... it’s a disgrace to the arts, journalism, critics, the publication itself and the public. What’s next — Maxim’s concert reviews of shows they never attended, book reviews of books never read and film reviews of films never seen?”

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Tom Petty sounded oddly fragile opening his Superbowl performance with American Girl, a flutter in his voice and his five-piece band, The Heartbreakers, so far back in the mix that every tremble in Petty's singing was magnified. The Superbowl is a show of American entertainment might and media muscle, but Petty & the Heartbreakers opted for gentility. The four-song sequence of American Girl, I Won't Back Down, Free Falling and Runnin' Down a Dream was almost a ghost in the Superbowl machine.

The set played like counter-programming, not so much to the football game itself as to all the comic, exaggerated violence in the ads. Among the highlights: a giant mouse beating a man to a pulp for his bag of Doritos; pop singer Justin Timberlake jerked around by an invisible force, as if sucked through a straw, into a crotch-first collision with a mailbox; a cast member of Fox's Prison Break getting flattened by a football player. If advertising is a barometer of American sentiment, the country must be in a punchy mood.

Yet here was Petty singing with empathy for a lost American everygirl ("raised on promises ... and then she had to die"). I Won't Back Down exuded quiet resolve, whereas the slow-motion anthem Free Falling sounded fatalistic ("I'm gonna free fall out into nothin'/gonna leave this world for a while").

Petty & the Heartbreakers picked up the tempo and swung a little harder with Runnin' Down a Dream, the mini-set's rocking finale and an uncomplicated ode to the open road and the sense of possibility. But Petty's halftime show was a different animal than last year's marching-band rollout by Prince. It sounded as if Petty was trying to inject a note of sobriety into Superbowl mania.

Reigning American Idol Jordin Sparks sang a lively, almost jazzy arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner, with interesting time shifts and small edits that gave Our National Anthem a little pop while preserving its grandeur. I don't recall Sparks singing anything on American Idol with as much poise as she handled this.

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I didn’t get to see Led Zeppelin in December, but I did catch The Eat last night. It was the trailblazing Miami punk band’s first reunion show since a pair of live dates, in 1996 and 1997, at Churchill’s in Little Haiti. Churchill’s was the scene again on Saturday as The Eat roared back to life in front an affectionate crowd.

It’s easy to root for a old, admired band that tries to regain its form for one night. But The Eat’s genially breakneck set wasn’t a case of well-wishing or audience delusion. Objectively, The Eat killed. They lived up to their cult, playing original songs that first escaped Miami beginning in 1980 and got into the bloodstream of American punk.

Singer-guitarists Eddie and Michael O’Brien thrived on their sibling mix of telepathy and rivalry. They volleyed, shared, handed off and converged, and the rhythm section underlined the brotherly tandem with a compact rumble of its own. The music was the embodiment of punk-rock: acerbic but approachable, equal parts lysergic and melodic.

During and after the band’s life cycle, 1979-1985, Eat music became prized and hard to find. The shortage, illustrated by high prices for original Eat vinyl, persisted well into the download era. Then came the July 2007 release of It’s Not The Eat, It’s The Humidity, on punk icon Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label. The two discs, with 59 tracks, included just about every known Eat studio effort, plus several live recordings, and finally spread the wealth hoarded until now by collectors and punk fans with long memories.

If anyone was taping last night, then there’s another worthy document of the Eat’s punk proficiency out there. Before the show, Eddie O’Brien had promised “the best 55 and over punk rock show you will see this February.” There are 27 days left for somebody to disprove the claim, and maybe another decade before The Eat do this again.

Three bands set the table, and the evening’s earsplitting volume level. Pitch Black Radio kicked off with a show of brute-force, old-school punk. Up next, Jeanie & the [rhymes with “Hits”] struck a contrary note when Jeanie asked to have her vocal monitor shut off: "I would like to not hear my insecurities singing back at me.” Fraulein, sounding baggage-free by comparison, sprinted through a short set of buzzing three-piece tunes and then turned the stage over to The Eat.

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Today's guest poster, John Owens, is a singer and guitarist in the South Florida post-punk group Band No. 12. Owens previously played in the Vacant Andys alongside Chris "Dashboard Confessional" Carrabba, and in Seville with Dashboard alumni Dan Bonebrake and Mike Marsh.

Owens hit the road last weekend to see a reunion date in Orlando by Hot Water Music, the great Gainesville punk/post-hardcore band and Warped Tour headliner before gritty-voiced singer Chuck Ragan left in 2005. Owens saw Ragan rejoin mates Jason Black, Chris Wollard and George Rebelo, and filed this account of the evening. You can reach him at vacantjohn@gmail.com.

Photo by Kate Mazza

On Saturday night the House of Blues Orlando looked like a mall Santas training seminar: The facial hair on display in the crowd and on stage was abundant and full. The occasion that seemed to shun the shaven, Hot Water Music’s reunion show, was sold out.

I had arrived late; there were tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings all over the area, and driving in the Magic Kingdom this time of year is difficult at best under perfect conditions. My first priority was a drink. But I did catch a piece of opening act Cutman, a downtempo, bluesy band reminiscent of Maryland hard rockers Clutch.

I wasn't sure who was up next; I had hopes of an old Gainesville favorite, like Radon. What I got was better yet: Samiam. I felt like I had stepped into a time machine to 1996. Samiam played for about 45 minutes, did its hits and drew me into a mosh pit for the first time in about five years. I’m happy to say I survived -- in part because the average age in the pit had to be a less-than-frenzied 28.

Finally came Gainesville’s favorite bristled band: Hot Water Music, who hit the stage like they were shot out of a howitzer. And the crowd responded. The set started with the title song from 2001's a flight and a crash, and the band played with the high, hard-charging energy of its peak years. Chuck Ragan was as, if not more, intense as I remembered him. At one point it looked as if his head might fly off his neck and land ten rows out.

I had kept to the side of the stage, next to the bar, for about the set's first half just to take this all in. But I could no longer be a passive observer of this brotherly mayhem. I went to the pit and stood in the back, while Hot Water Music kept springing surprises with its song selection. They didn't just play crowd favorites; you got a feeling that this set was for them as well.

Then came Better Sense, for which the place erupted and I found myself, by the end of the song, two rows from the stage. This is where I saw the real effect of this band on an entire generation of “kids." Everyone had smiles - no attitudes, no tough guy crap. At one point waves of people stopped moving so a guy could find his wedding band. This show was a great reminder of what music in Florida was like: Fun, rowdy and moving.

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Photo by Edwin Cardona

But skill wasn’t the point. Participation was, and nobody encouraged it more than Jones, a vocal powerhouse and onetime session singer who is suddenly hot at age 51.

Jones’ eight-piece band, the Dap Kings, backed Brit-soul sensation Amy Winehouse in the studio. The relentless attention on Winehouse’s music and personal life fanned interest in the band and its other, full-time singer.

Thankfully, no one on Thursday requested any Amy Winehouse. Jones and the Dap Kings played songs from their three albums in what the big-voiced frontwoman called “our first gig of the new year,” a dry-land show before an engagement at sea with several other acts aboard the Jam Cruise (organized by Mark Brown, co-promoter of South Florida’s Langerado festival).

The Culture Room crowd included Jam Cruise patrons previewing their shipboard entertainment. What they got was an old-fashioned soul revue. The Dap Kings — eight men in jackets and ties — played a rambling overture, with a guitarist and emcee named Binky Griptite introducing the “super-bad soul sister … with the magnetic je ne sais quoi.”

Jones emerged in a sleeveless, thigh-high white dress and opened with the James Brown-styling I’m Not Gonna Cry. While Griptite played clipped chords, the roving Dap horns floated up and around Jones’ survivor refrain. The breakup chronicles continued — with help, so to speak, from the first of several would-be dancers — on How Do I Let a Good Man Down. For Nobody’s Baby, Jones had the whole room chip in the song’s “woo-hoo” response.

Let Them Knock was a case of lover’s bliss, laced with urgency — Jones in the role of someone clinging to a good thing knowing it might not last.

The Jones catalogue of love’s peaks and valleys can’t be regarded as a revelation; torchy singers such as Etta James and Koko Taylor long ago established the model of the strong-hearted soul and blues belter. South Florida’s own Betty Padgett is another great exponent of the style. But Jones’ earthy testimonies, delivered with exclamation points and underlined by the superb Dap Kings, are a welcome reintroduction to the form. Jones, who's been singing for decades, can hardly be called a nostalgia act.

100 Days, 100 Nights, the show's high point, compressed a whole funk-soul era into a single track, pivoting at the halfway mark from midtempo to waltz — an instance where the thrill came not from speeding up but slowing down.

When she encored with the funky Pick It Up, Lay It in The Cut, a handful of spectators came on stage to add their own period reference: breakdancing, which they did with goofy abandon to the great amusement of Jones.

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Streaming a concert on a computer, or watching one simulcast in a movie theater, is an excellent use of technology and a commendable waste of time. But nothing beats being in the room. Someday, somebody may figure out how to simulate the experience of live music — the peak moments, the vibrating air molecules, the bonding with friends and strangers. Until then, and even then, concerts remain irreplaceable for their mix of place, pleasure and accidental learning.

This was my brain on music in 2007. Your results may differ.

10. Dashboard Confessional, John Ralston (City Limits, Delray Beach, Sept. 22)

This homecoming show had an air of expectation and watchfulness, and two accomplished South Floridians, Chris “Dashboard Confessional” Carrabba and John Ralston, handled the friendly tension well. Warming up for a U.S. tour, the indie-rock labelmates engaged a club crowd consisting of — but not limited to — friends, family, ex-classmates and minders of the local music scene.

The Ralston band tackled the challenging, detailed songs from his new album, Sorry Vampire, and as a bonus played Neil Young’s Vampire Blues, connecting Ralston’s current work to his alt-Americana days in Legends of Rodeo. Carrabba, the golden child, scaled back to the solo troubadour form that made him famous. Dash-mate John Lefler contributed some guitar and keyboards, but this was classic Confessional, with Carrabba on vocals and acoustic guitar facilitating full-house singalongs of Screaming Infidelities and other tales of infatuation.

9. R. Kelly, Keyshia Cole (AmericanAirlines Arena, Miami, Dec. 31)

R. Kelly’s days as a free man may or may not be numbered. His appetite for showbiz is unsinkable. Kelly’s New Year’s Eve concert, on a tour being conducted under court supervision, was entertaining and a little mad. He quoted more than he sang, hopping manically from track to track, with his band remarkably ready for every swerve. He didn’t care if the more lurid songs reminded people of his ongoing troubles — and the prospect of a criminal trial arising from his videotaped encounter with an underage girl. He didn’t shrink from the raunchy persona, and as a pop-savvy r&b singer he was still powerful, joyous and often graceful.

Keyshia Cole hasn’t just outgrown her beginnings as an industry-groomed r&b ingenue; she’s left that part of her career in smoking ruins. Opening for Kelly, Cole was a force of nature, singing like someone who has called up her innner Mary J. Blige — and indeed, she covered a bit of Blige’s I’m Going Down. Cole delivered drama in concentrated doses, and sparred expertly with a band that fused funk, soul, jazz and rock as if Frank Zappa and Quincy Jones were co-conducting.

8. The Killers (Hard Rock Live, Hollywood, April 19)

Concern isn’t necessarily a desirable trait in a rock band. But the Killers, from Las Vegas, spike their empathy with cynicism and disgust at the messes that people make of their lives. In concert, they were earnest but not cuddly. Mr. Brightside and When You Were Young had the grandeur of U2 stadium songs, but the effect was chillier, and in Brandon Flowers’ voice there was a touch of curdled, disappointed spite to go with the well-meaning despair.

7. Tool (BankAtlantic Center, Sunrise, June 1)

It’s one thing to be the metal band most likely to play Art Basel. It’s another to take all those conceits — the concept albums, the mantra-ish songs, the death-is-nigh time signatures, the bizarre visuals — and merge them into an awe-inspiring live show. Tool perfected total metal immersion for more than 10,000 people that night. It didn’t matter that no one except press-shy frontman Maynard James Keenan knows, as a general rule, what the heck Tool is talking about.

6. Prince (Dolphin Stadium, Miami Gardens, Feb. 4)

He only played for 12 minutes, but it couldn’t be helped. Prince’s Superbowl Halftime show, co-starring the amazing Florida A&M University marching band, was the kind of American-made spectacle that leaves people dizzy, proud and dumbstruck-happy if it doesn’t kill the power grid first (which it didn’t). Prince was so in command, rain fell during Purple Rain and CBS cameras didn’t turn away from his naughty bit of man-with-guitar shadow dancing.

5. The Gourds (Bamboo Room, Lake Worth, Nov. 8)

From Conway Twitty to Snoop Dogg, the Gourds had it covered. The Austin, Texas combo — tagline, “unwashed/well-read” — paid honest homage to American music of all types and temperaments with a sprawling cover-tune palette. The Gourds’ own songs were like custom kitwork — rock, country, bluegrass, folk and r&b assembled by a crafty Southwestern garage band.

4. The Police (Dolphin Stadium, July 10)

Ego kept Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland apart for more than 20 years, and ego made their comeback worth the wait. It wouldn’t do to just relive past glories; the Police insisted on sounding sharp and relevant today. (Copeland’s comical self-review of an earlier show was a reminder of the rude perfectionism that pushed the reggae-pop trio to become Top 40 monsters of rock.) In front of 40,000 people, the songs held their own and the band made the case for disbanding and reuniting, provided there’s a decades-long break in between.

3. Chris Brown (BankAtlantic Center, Dec. 26)

At 18, Chris Brown has already crossed over, but he still radiates promise. That sense of great things to come might just be a permanent feature of his appeal, no matter how wildly successful he becomes and how long he hangs around. In concert, he sang his hook-happy r&b hits with youthful spark and grown-up poise. He performed with dancers, a drummer, a DJ and taped backing tracks. The absence of a band, far from diminishing him, made him seem that much larger than life.

2. Flaming Lips (Pompano Beach Amphitheatre, April 13)

If the Flaming Lips could put on their own version of a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, they would. Lacking the means to hoist floats, the post-punk band from Oklahoma deployed big props and costumed extras as a kind of living, nonsensical illustration of their music. Songs about good people, dark forces and the fate of humankind were weird, affecting and sometimes light as air, and they all worked as attractions in the Lips’ offbeat carnival of togetherness.

1. Lily Allen, The Bird and The Bee (Culture Room, Fort Lauderdale, March 20)

You could have found Lily Allen knocking back drinks at the Wayward Sailor or run into her outside as she discretely checked out the crowd coming to see her. She wasn’t quite that informal once she got on stage, but she never stopped being the cool girl you could hang with. Allen’s reggae-tinged, Brit-pop vignettes about ex-flames and petty friends played like conversations turned into songs. The more vicious the lyric, the more charming she became. Allen gave the most congenial, intimate and winning concert of the year. She had a great tour companion in The Bird and the Bee, an unorthodox pop-jazz group led by singer Inara George, daughter of the late Little Feat guitarist Lowell George.

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Allow me to explain. On Tuesday night at Churchill's Pub I saw Miami's own skiffle supergroup, The Donegans, as in pre-Beatles UK phenom and guitar-strummin' skiffle diety Lonnie Donegan. Then it was on to nearby, new-ish Amendment XXI for a chance encounter with Mister-not-Reverend Jesse Jackson, a Magic City conjurer of folk, rock, roots and blues.

First, the Donegans. Churchill's owner Dave Daniels said he had been badgering Miami musician Henk Milne to start a "skiffle night" at the pub. Milne leads the self-styled "American Celtic" group The Three Jacks. So it was a short hop to skiffle, early American jug band music later revived as working-class British country blues.

The skiffle posse assembled by Milne to play every second Tuesday of the month at Churchill's isn't fixed, and the program isn't strictly skiffle. Piano Bob opened, and last night's party of six included Milne on vocals and guitar, Matthew Sabatella on banjo and vocals, Chris DeAngelis on stand-up bass and vocals and Jack Stamates on fiddle.

A lot of ye Donegans have backgrounds in rock, and while their instruments were acoustic (and mic'd), there was a free-swinging, rock 'n' roll verve to their mashup of folk, country, gospel and blues, tempered by affection for the music. When the Donegans played a pair of spirituals, I Saw The Light and Down By the River Side, even the faithless could have floated away happy and fulfilled.

Without knowing it or meaning to, singer-guitarist Jackson continued my baptismal tour at Amendment XXI by playing Down to the River to Pray, which contains one of gospel's loveliest lyrical images, "Who shall wear the starry crown?" Jackson, on vocals and guitar, was joined by a harmonica player ("Stringbean, from New Jersey," said Jackson) and a drummer. There was no bassist; Jackson has that Charlie Hunter-esque knack for combining low end, middle chords and high lines all by his lonesome.

Jackson's technique is more stark and impressionistic than Hunter's, and on River he used it to create a feeling of eerie beauty. This was music that gave weight to its silences, and made me think of a Daniel Lanois phrase, "soul mining."

A version of the Stones' Dead Flowers had its own haunted air, a sensation amplified by the club's parlor vibe and a low-hanging naked chandelier. But Jackson also knew to bring out the song's biting wit and its Jagger-esque notion of detente: "Send me dead flowers to my wedding/ and I won't forget to put roses on your grave."

It was a one-beer visit, so I had less time to take in Jackson's own songs. You can listen to some here and read about Jackson here. And remember: Keep folk alive!

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A rarity down here, The Gourds came to Lake Worth's Bamboo Room on Thursday night bearing a sound you might call Tex Americana. Cagey and crammed with allusions, the music of this Austin five-piece radiated heart and soul, too, plus some sort of stimulant pressed into the grooves. The Gourds turned the Bamboo Room into a dance hall, and tables close to the stage were at risk of being toppled by exuberant two-steppers. (Only one got knocked over.)

Their set ranged from revved-up barroom bluegrass to spaced-out honky tonk, and everything in it, including their superb cover of a rap track (more on that later), seemed to carry a Lone Star gene. The Gourds' take on music from the flatlands held traces of Doug Sahm's garage rock, Joe Ely's picturesque Tex-Mex, Freddie Fender's heart-broke ballads and Robert Earl Keen's porch poetry.

Of course, the most glaring point of reference on Thursday was Compton, California, home of rapper Snoop Dogg. The Gourds' cover of Snoop's Gin & Juice has become a small phenomenon, a variation that floats up at bars, house parties and Web sites to catch people by surprise and make them like the song all over again - or at least reappraise it. It might not body-snatch the source material, like Johnny Cash did to Trent Reznor's Hurt, but it will be hard to shake. The Gourds' version drafts on Snoop's slick original like a pickup truck shadowing a limo.

And they can't not play it live; people would revolt. So singer and instrumentalist Kevin Russell led the West Coast tribute, flaying his mandolin and handling Snoop's self-satisfied lyric ("So much drama in the L.B.C./It's kinda hard bein' Snoop-D-O-double-G") with a big, melodious drawl. Bandmates Jimmy Smith, Claude Bernard, Keith Langford and Max Johnston kept the uptempo, hillbilly-gangsta jam rolling.

Fun as Gin was, a better measure of the Gourds' easy virtuosity was My Name is Jorge, a mandolin-y amble through the 20th Century as witnessed by one of the little people: an itinerant fruit vendor selling his goods off of a wagon. This odd, pleasing song, sung by Smith, undercuts the idea of historical "sweep" by never letting go of its modesty: Jorge recounts his no-big-deal encounters with the likes of Henry Ford and Lee Harvey Oswald. They were all just customers to him.

The Gourds' interest in history is more musical. They're the kind of band that reminds you how deep the songbook goes, which they do without sounding like pedagogues. The asides on Thursday -- bits of Molly Hatchet, Lou Reed, Santana, Bob Marley -- fell into the mix naturally, though noticeably, like hiccups.

Russell was less offhanded breaking into a verse of a Looney Tunes classic, Michigan J. Frog's Hello My Baby. But when he performed The Image of Me, made famous by Conway Twitty, he wasn't quoting anything. He was just enjoying a pearl of a song.

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Britney Spears made her promised appearance on Sunday night at Mansion in Miami Beach. The good news, from her perspective, is that lines still form for B.S. Several hundred people who had paid $45.20 for the privilege waited in a light rain on Washington Avenue to be admitted to the club.

The bad news? Spears, 25, may be getting an early start on a future as a faded club attraction.

Door time was 8 p.m. Spears went on at about 10:30, after some DJ warmup, and was gone in 20 minutes. She and four female dancers, performing as "The M+Ms," pantomimed parts or all of five songs: . . . Baby One More Time, I'm a Slave 4 U, Breathe On Me, Do Somethin' and Toxic.

Spears, looking fit, wore a blonde wig to cover the well-chronicled scissors attack, and a headset microphone with a signal transmitter pack clipped to her waist. The latter was largely for show and talk. If Spears was actually singing, she was doing so over taped tracks.

There were three wardrobe changes, and one wardrobe malfunction -- possibly staged. With her back to the audience, Spears was peeling away the fringed outer layer of a glittery bikini top during Slave when the whole apparatus appeared to come undone. She bolted offstage for a change of outfits. The house music was turned back up to fill each of the wardrobe interludes.

Part 2, if you will, had Spears friction-dancing an empty chair during Breathe until the obligatory lucky fella from the crowd was summoned to the stage to be ravished, PG-13-style, by the quintet. There was another break, another wardrobe change, a sprint through Do Somethin', another wardrobe change, and Toxic as the finale.

"Thank you so much," she said, and left. A cloud of confetti fell from the ceiling.

Spears, it has to be said, went over well with a generally patient and enthusiastic crowd. "Make sure you write that she was awesome," said Veronica Garcia, 23, from Miami. A concertgoer who said he was a correspondent for In Touch, the celebrity gossip magazine, wasn't so sure. He called the evening "disastrous."

Attendance was respectable but fell short of Mansion's advertised capacity of 1,500, not to mention the arenas Spears used to fill before she quit touring to take one of the more public career breaks.

Although with Spears, it might be argued that there are no breaks. Everything she does is "career" -- the marriage, the baby-seat episode, the divorce, the flip-out, the rehab and the M+Ms mini-tour that started in San Diego, played Orlando on Saturday and Mansion on Sunday.

So don't call it a comeback. She never really went away.

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Pink Floyd songs generally come in two moods: anger and melancholy. Roger Waters used to sing most of the angry songs, hissing at “certain teachers” on Happiest Days of Our Lives, while David Gilmour was the melancholic one, “swimming in a fishbowl” on Wish You Were Here.

Yet there was Waters on Friday night at Sound Advice Amphitheatre, west of West Palm Beach, singing Gilmour's Wish You Were Here as wistfully as his hard-edged voice would allow.

Waters, 62, didn’t assume too many of Gilmour’s vocal duties on the first U.S. date of "Dark Side of the Moon Live.” Touring singer and guitarist David Kilminster was the de-facto replacement -- and a capable one -- for Waters’ former bandmate. But the absence of Gilmour, or any ex-colleague of Waters, was not so glaring in this welcome revival of classic Pink Floyd.

Friday's showpiece was Dark Side of the Moon. That 1973 album, a masterpiece of total immersion, represented a peak in the Waters-Gilmour partnership. It’s also become one of the best-selling records of all time, handed down like an heirloom and, unfairly or not, celebrated more for its technical brilliance than its themes of alienation.

The Waters-led band played Dark Side in its entirety, in order, on Friday night, and bookended it with other material. The arranging, playing and singing were impeccable throughout a 26-song set. Dark Side was by no means the only source of highlights during a sold-out performance for nearly 20,000 people.

The change in tone of Mother, from 1979’s The Wall, still came as jolt, as Waters’ voice rose from an insistent plea (“Mother, do you think she’s dangerous to me?”) to a demanding scream (“Mother, will she tear your little boy apart?”). Shine On You Crazy Diamond, an endearing tribute to Pink Floyd’s founding guitarist, the late Syd Barrett, swayed between gentle verses and a booming chorus.

Some concertgoers in Europe have said that Waters is occasionally using pre-recorded vocals to buttress his singing. But if that was the case on Friday, the pairing of Waters’ voice with any taped tracks was too seamless to be detected from the seats

But then, Pink Floyd was the epitome of rock as a form of perfectionism. Dark Side of the Moon is still one of the most exquisite-sounding albums ever made, and while it’s not bereft of emotion or meaning, its overall effect is trance-inducing. Dark Side is ultimately an escape vehicle, an immaculate sonic cocoon — however much it addresses greed (Money), modern-day paranoia (Brain Damage) and existential dread (Time).

But those three songs were timely on Friday, since the chaotic world they describe hasn’t gotten any calmer since 1973. Waters made his topical references more explicit during the dreamy-sounding Us and Them, flashing images of war planes and oil machinery on the video screen.

The Great Gig in the Sky had no claim on current events. It was simply a stand-alone, showstopping performance, with its spacey gospel aria sung majestically by backing vocalist Carole Kenyon.

Along with first-rate sound, the concert boasted tremendous visual pop. The old, push-button tabletop radio that served as a motif was nothing but pixels, but the screen showing it was so stunningly high-def, the radio looked real enough to touch. There were deep-space vistas — a nod to those “Laser Floyd” planetarium shows? — and acid trails and grainy reels of people and places.

As it happened, the most eye-catching prop of the night was also the lowest-tech: a giant, graffiti-covered pig floated over the crowd during a song called Sheep. If Waters’ anti-war, anti-Bush sentiments weren’t obvious to anyone one before that moment, seeing the the name of the sitting president printed across the big pig’s posterior removed all doubt.

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The history of Nas, as narrated by Nas, is an epic in which the hero beats back every sabotage that nature and humanity can throw at him. A standoff-ish attitude is second nature to rap, but in 13 years of laying down tracks, this particular New Yorker has taken me-against-the-world to the brink of delusion.

It might be a stretch to say that Nas in person has a sense of proportion that’s missing from his CDs. But on Sunday night at Revolution in Fort Lauderdale, he did cut a more down-to-earth figure. Nas, 33, sounded less like the Conan of hip-hop (“Blood of a slave, heart of a king”) and more like the young scrapper who rhymed his way up.

For one, this was an outdoor club show with no production frills: Nas had a DJ, backing MCs and a microphone that he handled like a champagne bottle. He also dialed down the hyperbole by his choice of tracks. Most were grandiose, but some were scaled to allow Nas a sharper look at everyday details. It’s easy to forget that he has any poetry-of-the-mundane in his repertoire, but there it was in Oochie Wally, a portrait of a slacker, and in Made You Look, a breezy car ride with a top-down double entendre.

Nas showed up with a new album to promote, Hip Hop Is Dead, but apart from deploying that phrase as a tongue-in-cheek theme for the evening, he devoted most of his 80 minutes on stage to earlier work. He threw curves at a crowd of 2,000 on Revolution’s outdoor patio, and most were met with cheers. Eye for an Eye, his 1995 collaboration with fellow New Yorkers Mobb Deep, was an unexpected blast. Nas also offered up six of the ten tracks on his acclaimed 1994 debut, Illmatic.

The persecuted-yet-exalted persona did surface in places: Hate Me Now, for example, ought to sound ridiculous coming from one of rap’s biggest celebrities. But that glass-shattering sample of O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana, was still an effective backdrop for the song’s never-surrender chant.

There’s no denying that Nas, he of the Tut mask on 1999's I Am ... can make good use of his superiority complex. One Mic, starring Nas as rap’s indomitable torchbearer and movement leader (“All I need is one mic, one beat, one stage ... one page and one pen, one prayer …”) was Sunday’s most electrifying moment. Nas delivered it like a sermon, carrying the text from a loud, urgent rasp down to a whisper and back.

About the only obstacle Nas couldn’t overcome was time: He ran head-on into the curfew for Sunday’s 18-and-over show, and bade a hasty goodnight.

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From my colleague, Sun-Sentinel Books Editor Chauncey Mabe, comes this review of the first solo CD by fiddler and singer Elana James. James' self-titled debut was released Feb. 27 on Snarf Records, and Mabe has tagged this as the arrival of a major talent.

Fiddler Elana James, a former member of Bob Dylan’s touring band, emerges on her debut solo disc a fully formed musical entity, combining -- with unlikely authenticity -- what seems like the entire history of jazz, string-band and country music. Anyone disenchanted with the sleepy charms of Norah Jones, who has been subject to a recent and not-altogether-justified backlash, might find this album a joyful pick-me-up.

James, who cut her teeth with the neo-Western swing trio Hot Club of Cowtown, treats all her influences as living art forms, not museum pieces, and she’s confident enough as a songwriter to open with her own Bob Wills-ish fiddle swing, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, only to follow with a convincing cover of Dylan’s One More Night, which she presents with the dignified simplicity of a Carter Family tune.

Oh, Baby, another sprightly James original that sounds like it must have been written in the 1930s, gives way to a barn-dance rendition of the traditional Goodbye Liza Jane, followed by the mournful hillbilly lament All the World and I, another James-penned tune. Indeed, while the covers range from Dylan to country pioneer Carson Robison to Duke Ellington and Eubie Blake, James writes more than half the songs, with no fall-off in quality.

Her song Down the Line melds country-fiddling brio to jazz sensibility with breathtaking ease. James deftly interprets the Ellington classics I’ve Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good) and I Don’t Mind, singing with a supple sophistication that makes these well-worn chestnuts sound fresh as mountain laurel in bloom.
Yet she immediately swings into the ancient dance hall joys of Silver Bells, and turns Robison’s The Little Green Valley into an improbable yet wholly convincing jazz two-step.

As the co-producer on the album, James shows herself not only a fine musician and songwriter, but also a bandleader par excellence, and master of her own musical fate, too. She uses her modest vocal talents expertly, sultry or coquettish or mournful as the occasion requires, singing with playful warmth and tastefulness and setting exactly the right mood for each song.

That Elana James can create such artfully artless fun in the nexus where country and jazz collide is a near miracle. Louder, more bombastic and self-conscious jazz or country records will doubtless be produced this year, but don’t expect any of them to be as persistently listenable as this small gem.

-- Chauncey Mabe

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A DVD of the Cirque du Soleil Super Bowl performance might dazzle more than the real thing. As seen from the Dolphins Stadium seats on Sunday (specifically a press box in the 200 section, above the Chicago Bears’ end zone), the pregame spectacle looked a bit lost.

Cirque acrobats weaved around giant objects created by pop-art impresario Romero Britto, and they were adorable objects, to be sure: striped palm trees, smiling alligators, colored banners a city block in length, and a cluster of egg-shaped balloons. Even the dancers wearing mattress-sized butterfly wings looked improbably lighter than air. Working off of a stadium-sized, jumbo samba rhythm, the Cirque-sters did their level best to light up Britto’s wonderland. It was Brazilian Carnaval meets Yellow Submarine on a big green LeRoy Neiman canvas.

It might as well have been the pregame tarp pull for all the awe it inspired in the crowd. Maybe it was the rain. Or maybe the fans in the stands already had their minds on the upcoming game. More likely, it was the fact that nobody really emceed the festivities beyond a cursory introduction. There wasn’t a house voice — a Cirque ringmaster with a microphone, for example — to narrate or at least direct everyboy’s attention to the action.

So Cirque’s presentation had movement, music and an eye-popping palette, but no real direction or discernible theme beyond Miami Is A Very Brightly Colored and Happy Place. Which it is if you're Romero Britto.

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Somewhat overdue, and in reverse order, from good to greatest:

12. Buju Banton (Memorial Fest, May 28, Bicentennial Park, Miami). The gruff-talking Jamaican dancehaller put a charge into the crowd with his revved-up patter and twitchy delivery. It was helpful to not catch every word of Banton's fast-moving toasts, since insulting gay people is one way he alleges prowess with the ladies. Damian "Jr. Gong" Marley was more compassionate and socially conscious but less riveting.

11. Pink (July 24, Revolution, Fort Lauderdale). If Pink believes that she ought to be headlining arenas by now, she didn't betray any disappointment at smaller surroundings. The singer threw a rock 'n' roll dance party for 1,000 people and enjoyed herself to no end belting out rocked-up versions of danceable hits.

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