Playlist

... That is, if you consider Thursday part of the weekend. CrueFest (I don't feel like looking up the html code to put the umlaut-dot-things above the u, sorry) hits Thursday evening and the Mayhem Festival with Slipknot and Disturbed starts Friday afternoon, both at Superpages.com Center. Are you going to either one? Let us know.

(Photo by Jason Janik / Special to DMN: Slipknot guitarist Mick Thomson)

Nas' untitled album just took over the top spot on Billboard's Top 200. It seems as if the controversy over the album's original n-word title didn't hurt. (Or could it be that everyone already has Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III? Just wondering ...) God's Son sits atop the charts after selling 187,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, for his fifth No. 1.

Don't count Weezy out, though. He's still selling over 100,000 per week ... if you remember, Tha Carter III sold a million in the first week of release. And he's held the top spot for three non-consecutive weeks. Guess hip-hop isn't so dead after all ...

Nas, supported by Talib Kweli, Jay Electronica and DJ Green Lantern, will appear at Dallas' House of Blues on The Jones Experiece Tour on Aug. 26.

Ah, what I'd give for a cold day. How I would love to be on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, feeling the 50-degree breeze hit me in the face. But since I'm not there, I will turn up the air conditioning in my house in Plano and put on a movie. So, my choice is Sliding Doors, starring Gwyneth Paltrow, circa 1998. Near the end, I hear someone singing the old Warren Zevon-Jackson Browne song "Tenderness On the Block." Perfect choice for the finale of that movie, but whose voice is that? It sounds so familiar ... it turns out to be Patty Larkin, whom I reviewed just a few weeks ago at Uncle Calvin's Coffeehouse. Wow. Patty Larkin doing a song that was co-written by Warren Zevon and Jackson Browne (and which appears on Mr. Zevon's best album, Excitable Boy). It turns out the song appears only in the movie, not even on the soundtrack album. And not on any Patty Larkin album. And you can bet it will be a cold day in Plano in July before it's released again on any album. Enjoy it while you can. Makes me wonder how many terrific single cuts end up with a similar fate.

Photo: Patty Larkin in concert