Today marks an interesting cosmic date in the universe of the Beatles, as it is the birthday of the late John Lennon. Born in Liverpool in 1940 (in the middle of a German air raid at the height of World War II), Lennon lead a hardscrabble childhood but loved music (especially early American rock and roll) and ended up fronting the most inventive and important bands in the history of pop music. As the recent release of "The Beatles: Rock Band" has proven, the band's influence still runs quite deep, from Pearl Jam to Silversun Pickups to Jack White to TV on the Radio. Lennon was tragically cut down in 1980 by a disturbed guy named Mark David Chapman. Lennon was survived by his wife Yoko Ono (who just released a new album) and his two sons, Sean and Julian.

Strangely, today is also Sean Lennon's birthday (he turns 34 today). He has managed to carve out a nice musical niche for himself, first as a touring member of Cibo Matto back in the '90s and then as a solo artist. He was signed to his first record contract by Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys and put out his solo debut Into the Sun in 1998. He bounced around a few different projects in the following years, then made his return in 2006 with the woefully overlooked album Friendly Fire. That album featured the single "Dead Meat," a spacey little psychedelic pop tune with a tremendous video directed by Michele Civetta.

The end of summer is officially here, which means it's time to tack an extra day onto this weekend. But fret not, as the MTV Newsroom blog will be back on Tuesday to start counting down to the Video Music Awards as well as the release of "The Beatles: Rock Band." Until then, hit up a barbecue, crack open a cold beverage and let the summer wind blow through your hair one final time in 2009. In between rounds of volleyball in the pool, gorge yourself on the highlights from this week's dispatches.

» Michael Jackson was finally laid to rest, but not before a birthday party in Brooklyn that celebrated what would have been his 51st birthday.

» Whitney Houston paid a visit to "Good Morning America" and turned in a performance that can only be described as ... complicated.

» DJ AM was memorialized in Los Angeles this week. Many of his friends came forward to mourn, including the Black Eyed Peas.

» Paramore's Hayley Williams suggested that if you're headed back to school, you should really pick up some vests designed by Miley Cyrus.

» Speaking of Cyrus, she really does have an amazing Twitter.

» In VMA news, it was announced this week that the cast of "New Moon" will be there to present an extended version of the trailer to their upcoming movie. In order to prepare, you should watch a Backstreet Boy turn into a werewolf.

» This week's big lesson: The only reason to have 19 children is if you're developing a Polyphonic Spree tribute act.

» Jay-Z certainly made the rounds, hitting up a Grizzly Bear concert with wife Beyoncé, stopping to give details on his September 11 concert to MTV News correspondent Tim Kash and taking a spin through all of his old album covers.

» Madonna released the new video for "Celebration" this week, which inspired us to dig into the archives and unearth this crazy piece of tape featuring Jim Cantiello as a safari guide.

» TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe told us the band is taking a break for a year to work on other stuff.

» Beyoncé celebrated her 20th birthday. Did you remember to sign the card?

» We laughed when Missy Elliott got hit in the head with an umbrella in at 2006's version of the show, but what are your favorite "WTF?" VMA moments?

» Finally, the NFL season kicks off next Thursday, which gives the Miami Dolphins plenty of time to sign Willy Zoom (also known as Will.I.Am).

We're only a week away from the release of "The Beatles: Rock Band," the latest installment of the game-changing video game franchise that puts you in the position of Liverpool's favorite sons and gives you the opportunity to play over 40 Beatles songs. For many rock bands, the Beatles are a cornerstone group who tend to inspire early songwriting and enthusiasm for experimentation, but that "Beatles moment" happens differently for everybody.

For Tunde Adebimpe, frontman for Brooklyn space-funkers TV on the Radio, it came a little bit later than what is usual. Though his dad played him Beatles tunes as a kid, he didn't really understand what the band was all about until he had an experience in college with a long documentary about the band. "'The Beatles Anthology' documentary was on, and I watched so much of it," he told MTV News backstage at last weekend's Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco. "I feel like a lot of the arrogance of youth is realizing very deeply that you don't have anything going on, and that's the beauty of art. When you think about it, in an insanely short period of time basically revolutionized a lot of thinking about rock music. Art is either plagiarism or revolution, and I think the Beatles took a lot of stuff knowing that." Adebimpe admits that these revelations were assisted by certain chemical elements, but that shouldn't take away from the fact that they were a great band. Check out his whole story below, and enjoy the background performance by the Mars Volta (we were hanging out just behind the stage where they were shredding on Saturday night).

Lollapalooza is always full of surprises, but the last thing I imagined would happen on Saturday was that I would be walking backstage with Dhani Harrison – yes, son of late Beatle George Harrison – and listening to him lovingly, and I must say, quite capably, busting some Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Method Man rhymes on the way to an exclusive acoustic set. Harrison is here with his band, Thenewno2, who played earlier in the day to an enthusiastic noon crowd that lapped up their raga-fueled trippy rock tunes.

Harrison, clearly a hip-hop fanatic – and a collaborator of Wu-Tang’s The RZA – worried that his special acoustic set for MTV News wouldn’t be heard over the rib-rattling kick drum sound from rapper Atmosphere’s set behind him, but he gave it a shot anyway. Picking up an acoustic guitar alongside his bandmates, Jon Sadoff and Jeremy Faccone, he played the song “Shelter,” from the band’s debut album.

It’s hard not to look at Harrison and think of his late dad. Between the shoulder-length hair tucked behind the ears, that unmistakable voice, an easy, quick smile and peaceful, pleading lyrics (“when the clouds go we’ll see better … I feel alone like a moon at night/all smilin’ bright lookin’ out my window … falling trees and the rising sea, billion people on their knees,” it’s hard not to stare. But Harrison has a way of putting you immediately at ease, whether with self-deprecating jokes – he claimed to have taken the stage earlier in the day dressed as a pirate – or just an eagerness to perform at the drop of a hat despite an onerous heat that had the Henley-on-Thames-native “schvitzing.”

“I wasn’t allowed to go when I was a kid, my dad banned me,” said Harrison when asked about whether he’d ever attended Lollapalooza. “He said I could go when I played, so I broke my ban today.” He said the set went “surprisingly well,” perhaps likely better than their first-ever festival performance, at this year’s Coachella Festival in the spring. “We’re getting better and being outdoors is a real laugh. You can turn your amps up, you don’t have all this slap of … let’s just say it’s a far cry from the Mercury Lounge in New York.”

Faccone was very psyched to see Tool’s set later in the day, while Harrison was set on checking out Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Santigold, while Sadoff was leaning towards TV On The Radio (or “TV on the Internet … TV on the Dishwasher” in Harrison’s world). “Beastie Boys got replaced by Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” he lamented, referring to the veteran hip-hop band’s departure from the line-up due to MC Adam Yauch’s battle with salivary gland cancer. “I was mad into seeing the Beastie Boys … TV on the Radio are going to be wicked.”

Next up for the band is a major fall tour with an artist Harrison said he could not yet reveal, but which he promised would be “major.”

Last weekend, Sony Music and GenerationFly sent the winner of their summer internship contest to Lisbon, Portugal for Optimus Alive. Here are her dispatches.

By Kristina Truong

I found myself in Lisbon, Portugal, ready to dive head-first into Optimus Alive 2009. Kids on the bus to the festival grounds were just going nuts: Jumping, banging on the exit doors, passing around bottles of who knows what and screaming "Metallica!" at the top of their lungs.

Getting through the entrance, I definitely missed the black outfit memo, as the dominant fashion trend was all black, heavy metal rock T-shirts and cyber goth gear. It made sense, as this was Optimus Alive's metal day, with Mastodon, Machine Head, Lamb of God, Slipknot and Metallica all on the main stage. The lineup was fleshed out by less-hardcore groups like the Klaxons, Crystal Castles, Silversun Pickups and TV on the Radio.

Silversun Pickups caught my attention right away. The band's live performance was very impressive and the sound quality was nearly identical to how they sound on their records. Crystal Castles, a band that I was excited to see again, got the crowd on their feet and on the edge with their intense energy and light show. However, their show was a bit derailed by technical difficulties with singer Alice Glass’ mic. Metallica, on the other hand, performed another phenomenal show. It seems impossible for these guys not to put on a heart-pounding, feet-stomping, hair-whippin’, body moshing, heavy metal show.

The second day of Optimus Alive was similarly exhilarating and blood-pumping. Read more...

When Conan O'Brien moved from the 12:30 slot to the more high-profile "Tonight Show," there was concern in the media (and in the MTV newsroom) that O'Brien wouldn't be able to be as aggressively weird as he was allowed to be on his old show. But on Friday, a familiar face returned to the fray: Former Eminem rival Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, who took his microphone to Bonnaroo to poke fun at dirty hippies and take down a handful of bands, including TV on the Radio and the Beastie Boys. Triumph's Beasties interview was probably the finest bit, which saw Robert Smigel's puppet note, "It used to be 'Check Your Head' and now it's 'Check Your Prostate.'" Check out the entire clip below.

Perry Farrell does it to us every year. Yes, his brainchild Lollapalooza is one of the best rock deals for the money every summer, with more than 100 bands playing right on the Chicago lakefront in beautiful Grant Park. But whoever maps out the schedule grid must be a masochist, because this year's lineup has more than its share of conflicts that are going to force some serious musical Sophie's choices. I have already begun stewing over the ones that are trying to break my heart.

Friday is not so bad. Yes, I'd like to see White Lies, but I'll probably choose Jersey punk outfit the Gaslight Anthem. And as much as I've always wanted to check out nutso electronic duo Crystal Castles, by evening I'll probably need to be soothed by the dulcet tones of Fleet Foxes. The headliner spot is an easy one for me, since I just caught Kings of Leon but haven't seen Depeche Mode in six years, and I know their show will have a bit more flash than the Followill brothers' more straight-ahead set.
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I envy you ... the unwashed masses, the blissfully unemployed, the bearded and bedraggled. You get to go to Bonnaroo, to revel in four days of unadulterated muck and music and mind-altering substances. I don't, because I am stuck in meetings all week.

And this is most certainly a bummer. See, I love Bonnaroo. I think it's the best fest in America, an experience every music fan must have at least once in their lives (and I'm not just saying this because, back in 2007, I got to fly a helicopter there).

But this year, because of the time constraints due to back-to-back-to-back business meetings (read: impending adulthood), I'm not going to make it down to Manchester, Tennessee. I will probably regret this for the rest of my life, because Bonnaroo 2009 looks like it's going to be a blast.

And, yeah, I know that the weather forecast for Manchester could charitably be described as "cataclysmic" — the phrase "strong storms" is bandied about, which should make camping in an open field with 80,000 other revelers a rather messy affair — but that doesn't change the fact that there are tons of can't-miss moments spread out over the fest's four days. Which means that if you're brave enough to, uh, brave the weather, you're gonna be in for a treat.

So even though I won't be down in Tennessee with you, I figured I could still lend a hand. I've thrown together a Bonnaroo Cheat Sheet, highlighting some of the fest's best acts. These are the bands you probably can't afford to miss, even if you have to trudge through six feet of water to check them out.

» Thursday: A bit of a light schedule, as most of the 80k will still be setting up their tents, but you'd be doing yourself a favor if you checked out Passion Pit, a much-buzzed electro-pop outfit from Massachusetts who just released their debut disc, a dazzler called Manners. If you can get past frontman Michael Angelakos' pinched squeal, there's plenty of goodness.
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By Rya Backer

Did you have the sing-songy chorus of Estelle and Kanye West's Grammy-winning "American Boy" stuck in your head for a good amount of 2008? Well, so did Estelle. That's why she's happy to reveal that she's working on new material as we speak.

"I'm sick of singing 'American Boy,' so we need something else," the West London native confessed at a recent party for the fashion line Chloé.

Recently, Dave Sitek of TV on the Radio — who has produced work for Scarlett Johansson and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — helped her record a track. "He's amazing," Estelle gushed, "I'm really excited. We just finished a song together. I listened to it all the way here. I'm having a moment. He's really, really cool.'' Read more...

By Steven Roberts

I'm quick to pat myself on the back. Each of the new MCs I said that you guys should watch out for in 2009 have been carving their own lane in hip-hop. Sure, two of them almost retired, Asher Roth put his foot in his mouth and Charles Hamilton is kinda eccentric, but they're all on their way to becoming household names.

Wale is working with just about everybody considered good in music, from Lady Gaga to TV on the Radio, Asher released a solid debut album, and Kid Cudi is releasing phenomenal music. While I hate to say it — and stop patting myself on the back — I definitely missed the brightest star of the bunch.

Drake's buzz had been building on the Internet for a while, but I honestly wasn't that big a fan of his singing and rapping. But the more I hear his mixtape, So Far Gone — and the fact that DJs play a selection of Drake songs every hour here in New York — the more I find myself singing along.

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