Coachella 2012: John Fogerty joins Black Keys in Levon Helm tribute

Yes, weekend two of Coachella can still present surprises. And so it was when rock legend John Fogerty joined Friday night's headliners the Black Keys to pay tribute to Levon Helm, who died Thursday from cancer.

Black Keys singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach called Helm, who was the drummer and a singer of the Band, "amazing and inspiring," and performed a soulful cover of "The Weight" with Fogerty. Earlier in the day another Helm tribute was made as the punk band Refused taped "RIP Levon Helm" to their bass drum.

 COACHELLA 2012 | Full coverage

The gesture by the Black Keys was touching and fitting in a set packed with explosive and gritty roots rock, including hits "I Got Mine" and "Lonely Boy."

Coachella 2012: Black Keys bring hard garage rock to the main stage

As guitar slinger Gary Clark Jr. proved earlier in the day, there's no arguing with a master blues rock player, someone who can channel chords and licks that have been seemingly done to death -- after all, how many combinations of progressions could there possibly be? -- with the venom and volume to awe a bunch of jaded kids.

The Black Keys are two average midwestern dudes, at least from the outside, the kind of guys that you might mistake for mechanics or restaurant managers.

Singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach is certainly no Jarvis Cocker, the astounding, magnetic lead singer of Pulp who had played just before on the main stage. Cocker is a natural, and is perfectly happy to be the ringmaster; Auerbach's just there to play the rock songs to entertain the people, no witty banter required.

COACHELLA 2012 | Full coverage

Drummer Patrick Carney murders his drum kit every night. Touring in support of its recent "El Camino," the band beefed up its lineup for the occasion, which added a necessary depth to what can be a pretty sparse live sound when performing as a duo.

Critic's Notebook: At Coachella, a rebellious spirit

The booking of Pulp, with its ‘Common People' anti-1% screed, typifies Coachella '12. 

One of the great, universal rock anthems of the last two decades — Pulp's “Common People” — bypassed the U.S. when it exploded out of England in 1995. But if and when a reunited Pulp plays the song at this year's Coachella Music and Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., its artful and catchy screed against the 1% couldn't be more timely.

At a moment when jobless kids are cracking open piggy banks and digging deep for a Coachella ticket to see 120-odd bands over one weekend at the Indio festival, Pulp seems the most relevant among veteran acts that also include Refused, Mazzy Star, At the Drive-In, Company Flow, Madness and Squeeze. But Pulp's arrival isn't the biggest name coming out of the desert's festival, which runs two consecutive weekends. This year's roster, which was announced Monday afternoon by promoter Goldenvoice, will feature Dr. Dre and Snoop, Radiohead and the Black Keys as headliners, while dozens of other acts will occupy the festival's five stages, including Grammy-nominated names such as Bon Iver, Florence and the Machine and David Guetta. An undercard includes dance, hip-hop and rock upstarts SBTRKT, M83, Azealia Banks and Feist.

Pulp's arrival at Coachella this year, however, typifies the festival, its ever-evolving and maturing aesthetic, and its place in the culture right now.

“Common People” is a lyrical conversation with a rich girl longing to slum it with the commoners. With bitterness in his voice, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker tells of her desire to “sing along with the common people,” then replies that she could never truly do that because inherited wealth blinds her to the realities of the paycheck-to-paycheck life. “You'll never get it right,” he sings, conjuring the spirit of both Ray Davies and Bob Dylan, “'cos when you're laid in bed at night/watching roaches climb the wall/if you call your dad, he could stop it all.”

Coachella 2012: Dr. Dre, Radiohead, the Black Keys to headline

Rapper Dr. Dre will close the 2012 edition of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, to be held for the first time over two consecutive weeks in mid-April. Headliners for the multi-weekend, six-day affair include rock acts the Black Keys, Radiohead and the Shins, as well as hip-hop and dance acts Snoop Dogg, the Swedish House Mafia and Kaskade, among many others.

Coachella, run by AEG-owned concert promoter Goldenvoice,  will be held over two consecutive weekends -- April 13-15 and April 20-22. The lineup was unveiled on the Goldenvoice and Coachella Facebook pages Monday.

PHOTOS: Coachella 2011

Modeled after major long-running European festivals such as Denmark's Roskilde and England's Glastonbury, Coachella is coming off its second-consecutive sell-out year, hosting approximately 90,000 people per day. Tickets for the 2011 edition went in a record six days, and the event, held at the Empire Polo Grounds, is considered the unofficial kick-off to the summer festival season. More to come ...

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-- Todd Martens

Almost Acoustic Christmas is a gauge of rock's past, future

Jane's Addiction is a parody of itself, while Black Keys and Mumford & Sons wipe out pretenses; Florence + the Machine and Foster the People are embraced.

Guys with guitars roamed freely Sunday night at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where bands including Jane's Addiction, the Black Keys and Death Cab for Cutie took part in KROQ-FM's annual Almost Acoustic Christmas concert. But throughout this sold-out six-hour marathon — the second of two presented by the influential modern-rock station, after Saturday's bill with Blink-182, Social Distortion and others — those durable guitar heroes were shadowed by another musical figure. Witness the rise of the resourceful tech-head, hunched over a keyboard or sampler, tapping out newfangled sounds with near-scientific precision.

Some groups at the show had room for guitar wizards and computer geeks in their lineups; others staged a production around one or the other. Taken as a whole, though, Almost Acoustic Christmas felt like an investigation of where rock is today, what it's made of and what it should do.

One firm conclusion among the many more half-answers: Jane's Addiction has finally turned into the parody act it's been threatening to become for years. Headlining Sunday's show (albeit to a significantly thinned-out crowd), this on-again/off-again L.A. outfit interspersed hits from its original late-'80s incarnation with material from this fall's “The Great Escape Artist,” Jane's Addiction's first studio album since 2003. Yet it all sounded equally terrible, Perry Farrell's adenoidal vocals meandering aimlessly atop Dave Navarro's bludgeoning power chords. Worse still were Farrell's clownish between-song ramblings about Christmas in the era of Occupy Wall Street, which made the presumably unintentional argument that the once-ubiquitous character of the preening rock god has lost all but his comedic value.

PHOTOS: KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas

The Black Keys black out Spotify, MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody

The Black Keys' latest album, "El Camino," is out everywhere -- except Spotify, Rdio and Rhapsody.

The band's decision, first reported by Digital Music News, comes after Coldplay and Mac Miller made similar calls earlier this year to withhold their newest releases from streaming music services that give subscribers online access to millions of albums on demand -- either for free during a trial period or for a monthly fee.

The move highlights a fear among bands and music labels that having a new album available for streaming would result in lower sales.

Spotify has refuted this notion, saying music sales in aggregate tend to increase in markets where it introduces its service. Other music services have argued that streaming music actually helps listeners discover new songs that lead to purchases that would not have occurred otherwise.

Album review: The Black Keys' ‘El Camino’

On their latest album, the Black Keys strip it back to the fundamentals, and they do it without sounding like anyone else. Call it the best rock album of 2011 or 2012. Or both.

Look, rock and roll isn't that hard if you've got a sex drive, two arms and at least a couple fingers for strumming and fretting — or if you prefer, thumping, snaring and keeping time. It is a formula, one with a few basic ingredients: rhythm, attitude, melody, volume and an undying belief in freedom through a few well-chosen chords. Why make it any more complicated than that?

The Black Keys are serious about this, and on their seventh record, “El Camino,” prove it with 11 songs about love, lust, greed, desire, helplessness, heartbreak, or some combination thereof. The Akron, Ohio-bred pair — Patrick Carney on drums and Dan Auerbach on guitars and vocals — have for the last decade tapped into the rich, deep well of American roots music and have proved over and over again that they understand the Truth of rock and roll, blues, country and western, and rhythm and blues.

“El Camino” sees the team, which has recently relocated to Nashville, asserting itself as a pure rock band by stripping away any artifice or irony — not that the Black Keys had much of it in the first place — to concentrate on the fundamentals, the kind that recall bands as varied as the Rolling Stones, Booker T. and the MG’s, the Ramones and White Stripes. With the help of producer Danger Mouse, who works with admirable restraint to keep the band clean of unnecessary effects, the Black Keys do it without sounding like anyone else.

Highlights? “Sister” contains a devastating opening — “Wake up, gonna wake up to nothing/Breakup, the breakup is coming” — that the band couples with a midtempo dance number with hand claps, a humming organ, a classic riff and hooks worthy of 1965-era Beatles. “Gold on the Ceiling” sounds as if it's existed forever — why hasn't somebody combined these chords before? Same with “Run Right Back,” which contains a guitar line that's so obviously primal that it's a wonder it's lain in plain view for so long.

Death Cab, Foster the People to close KROQ's Acoustic Christmas

Death Cab for Cutie, the Black Keys and Cage the Elephant will headline the second and final night of the yearly Almost Acoustic Christmas presented the weekend of Dec. 10 by KROQ-FM (106.7). Other acts on the bill for Sunday night include local breakout stars Foster the People, the rock theatrics of Florence + the Machine and veterans Jane's Addiction, among others. 

Also on the bill for Sunday is local pop act Grouplove, folk rockers Mumford & Sons, Noel Gallaher's High Flying Birds project and glossy New Zealanders the Naked and Famous. Saturday night's bill, as previously announced, will feature Blink-182, Bush, Chevelle, Incubus, New Found Glory, Social Distortion, 311 and Young the Giant. As has been typical for the station's annual holiday event, the second night represents more up-and-coming artists while the first night showcases acts that have, generally speaking, long been KROQ fixtures. 

Black Keys drop new single and video for 'Lonely Boy'

If you're just getting going this morning and you feel like dancing, well, you've come to the right place. The pride of Akron, Ohio, the Black Keys, have just released their new single, "Lonely Boy," and it's as sturdy and catchy as any rock song you'll hear this year. Like the rest of the duo's forthcoming album for Nonesuch, "El Camino," which comes out on Dec. 6, "Lonely Boy" was produced by Dangermouse.

Click through to check out the new video, which should prompt a little early morning shuffling.

Black Keys release video teaser for forthcoming 'Blakroc 2' album

Almost two years after stripped-down rock duo the Black Keys made their official foray into the rap game, a second helping of their hip-hop hybrid side project Blakroc is on the horizon. Forged through their partnership with hip-hop mogul Damon Dash, the new album -- simply titled 'Blakroc 2' -- has guitar-wielding vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Pat Carney jamming in-studio with a parade of marquee rhymers. As of now, the list of collaborators includes Talib Kweli, Wiz Khalifa, Curren$y, Jim Jones, U-God, the Cool Kids, Jay Electronica, OC and Sean Price.

News about the project piles onto the ever-mounting buzz over the Black Keys' forthcoming Danger Mouse-produced follow-up to 2010's Grammy Award-winning album "Brothers," which is reportedly already in the can. Despite the swiftness with which it was recorded, that album also has no release date yet. And though we're not quite sure when 'BlakRoc 2' will be unveiled, the new trailer below is an intoxicating reminder that more soul and blunt-inspired rap rock is most definitely on its way.

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 -- Nate Jackson

Photo: The Black Keys on stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at the Empire Polo Grounds in Indio, on April 15, 2011.

Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times