There were differing opinions about this song when it came out last year. And it's always a technical challenge to get rap to sound good live. But I think these two old pros came off pretty sharp last night at New York's Highline Ballroom. (Judging from this video, I mean. I wasn't there.) They were guests of the headliners, the underground supergroup Slaughterhouse, who recently signed with Eminem's Shady Records.

Bruce Springsteen appeared on the Jimmy Fallon show last night, and played "Because the Night" with who-woulda-thunk-it backing from a supergroup combo of the E-Street Band the Roots. It was a little tepid in the beginning, but at the end, it got very rocking! READ MORE

So, you know Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum reappeared last year, after going underground for a decade after making what some people believe (what this person believes) is one of the ten-or-twenty-or-so greatest albums of all time, ever, by anyone. The reappearance was brief. And there's been no new music. But Merge Records recently rereleased In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as well as the band's other, slightly less perfect album, On Avery Island. And also, in celebration, a pair of video clips of Mangum playing solo at the Knitting Factory in 1998. The footage is, umm, intense. He is like a cross between John Fogerty in 1969 and Jack Nicholson, all frozen solid at the end of The Shining. When he open his mouth to holler, you can almost see his eyes rolling back in his head like a shark. Like he is feeding on his bonkers. And he is so, so, so good.