THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE:

...with CREEDENCE CLEARWATER REVIVIAL! Live at the Royal Albert Hall, circa 1970.  Your setlist includes; "Born on the Bayou," "Green River," "Tombstone shadow," "Travelin' Band," "Fortunate Son," "Commotion," "Midnight Special," "Bad Moon Rising," "Proud Mary," "Night Time is the Right Time," "Good Golly Miss Molly," and "Keep On Chooglin'."

BENJI HUGHES advance streams Songs In The Key Of Animals.

AUBRIE SELLERS advance streams New City Blues.

WALTER MARTIN advance streams Arts & Leisure.

CIAN NUGENT advance streams Night Fiction.

WHITE RABBITS cover "Instant Karma." Gonna knock you right on the head

DAVID BOWIE impersonates Bruce Springsteen, Marc Bolan, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Anthony Newley, and Neil Young.

THURSTON MOORE tells Collider he doesn't get why he gets blamed for the demise of Sonic Youth.

SAVAGES are profiled at Paste.

ARCTIC MONKEYS: Ten of Their Best.

NOW SHOWING: This weekend's wide releases include Dirty Grandpa, which was not screened for critics; The 5th Wave, currently scoring 18 percent percent in the ol' Tomatometer; and The Boy, which was also unscreened.

AMY SCHUMER will take a polygraph in response to claims she stole jokes.

MILEY CYRUS & LIAM HEMSWORTH are engaged again.

WILL SMITH joined his wife's Oscars boycott.

MARK RUFFALO is considering boycotting the Oscars, and he's a nominee.

KRISTIN CAVALLARI was taken to a hospital outside Chicago after a car wreck.

EGYPT: Five years ago, massive street protests swept out Egypt’s strongman president and changed the course of the nation. Now, its authoritarian government, in an effort to avoid any resurgence of unrest, is clamping down on its critics and signaling that public displays of dissent won’t be tolerated.

THE RUSSIAN MILITARY is expanding its footprint in Syria, setting up operations at an airfield in a northeastern, mostly Kurdish province across the country from its main coastal base.

IRAN: US Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged Thursday that some of the money Iran received in sanctions relief would go to groups considered terrorists.

AN ORPHAN RHINO's First Walk.

MAYBE THE DOG ate your ganja and harshed your mellow.

SNAKE in a mousetrap. I know. I know - it's really serious.

PET HOARDING: Sixty-seven-year-old Lynea Lattanzio now lives in a trailer on her six acre property and allows more than a thousand cats to run freely through the five bedroom house.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN honored the late Glenn Frey in Chicago with a stripped-down take on The Eagles' "Take It Easy."

ALL SONGS CONSIDERED: Glen Hansard covers Bowie, plus new music from Lucius, Ray LaMontagne and more.

THE I DON'T CARES: Paul Westerberg and Juliana Hatfield drop "Born for Me" ahead of Wild Stab.

ROBYN HITCHOCK drops a demo for "Raymond And The Wires" ahead of his as-yet untitled next LP.

M WARD drops a "Confession" ahead of More Rain.

ERIC BACHMANN (Archers of Loaf, Crooked Fingers) drops  “Mercy” ahead of a self-titled solo LP. And he's working a Phil Spector/Brian Wilson vibe on it.

THE DEL LORDS extend "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live?" Circa 1990.

THE 100 GREATEST DAVID BOWIE MOMENTS, according to SPIN.

TORTOISE talks to Aquarium Drunkard about The Catastrophist.

SPOONER OLDHAM: The Muscle Shoals vet talks to American Songwriter about the reissue of 1972's Pot Luck.

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER is profiled by Paste and talks about the spaciousness of her third release, New View.

WONDER WOMAN has a teaser trailer online.

SUICIDE SQUAD has trailer online, set to "Bohemian Rhapsody."

STAR WARS: EPISODE VIII is moving its premiere to Dec. 15, 2017 -- opposite the planned date for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, and 10 days before the planned date for James Cameron's Avatar sequel.

R. KELLY is suspicious of the accusations against Bill Cosby. Shocka.

JAMIE-LYNN SIEGLER, recently married to baseball player Cutter Dykstra, disclosed she has been battling multiple sclerosis for the past 15 years.

ALEXIS ARQUETTE is lashing out at Will and Jada Pinkett Smith in a Facebook post the day after the latter announced she was boycotting the Oscars.

NORWAY is giving migrants courses to prevent violence against women, especially rape, and to teach them how to interpret customs in a country that may seem surprisingly liberal to them.

IRAN: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday those opposed to the values of Iran's Shi'ite theocracy should not be allowed to run for parliament, signaling a rift between him and its moderate president over the February elections. Shocka. Also, Iran almost derailed their own prisoner swap.

IRAQ: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group's relentless destruction of ancient cultural sites.  The terror group also holds an estimated 3500 people, mostly women and children, as slaves in Iraq.

NANAKULI, the one-eyed surfing cat.

THE WORLD'S OLDEST LIVING ANIMAL is eating like a King at 183 years old.

SPOCK the HOUSECAT weighs a whopping 27-pounds, is nearly 4-feet-long and eats up to a pound of food in a single day.

DOES THIS CAT look like Adam Driver (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)?  This is the hard-hitting question addressed by TIME magazine.

THEN AGAIN, given all the bad news that has already flooded into 2016, maybe that's not such a bad thing. I should be back tomorrow.  In the meantime, regardless of whether you're mourning the loss of The Eagles' Glenn Frey, read this 2011 piece from Bill Simmons on The History of the Eagles, Part One.  It could not help but brighten your day, regardless of whether you like The Eagles or have seen the documentary.

GLENN FREY, 67, a founding member and guitarist of the Eagles, died in New York City of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia. Here's the Rolling Stone obit, and bandmate Don Henley's tribute.  And here's journalist-turned-filmmaker Cameron Crowe recalling the making of his Rolling Stone cover story on the band (which begins with a cameo from WCFL Superjock Larry Lujack). Most of the Eagles' hits were collaborations, but Frey was the lead vocalist on "Take It Easy", "Peaceful Easy Feeling", "Tequila Sunrise", "Already Gone", "Lyin' Eyes", "New Kid in Town", and "Heartache Tonight," a selection basically consistent twith the notion from interviews that Henley was the darker of the band's two main songwriters.  After the Eagles split, Frey continued to chart with hits including "The Heat Is On", "Smuggler's Blues",and "You Belong to the City."  It may sound at first like I'm speaking ill of the dead if I say I was never a huge Eagles fan. But my parents were fans, along with millions upon millions of people. And if you grew up in the 70s and early 80s, they were an inescapable part of the musical landscape and the culture in general. I have a relationship with Eagles songs that comes from marinating in them to the degree that I cannot say whether it is because I like them (though I do like some of them, I think).  So it is impossible not to feel a sense of loss at Frey's passing, even if it is not the sort of loss I feel over the passing of, say, David Bowie.

LANGHORNE SLIM stopped by Morning Becomes Eclectic for a session.

FOALS stopped by World Cafe for a chat and mini-set.

SON LITTLE, Live In Concert.

JEFF TWEEDY, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, Scott McCaughey, Gary Louris, Kurt Bloch, Corin Tucker and more cover "All the Young Dudes", while BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN covers "Rebel Rebel" for a Bowiesque Twofer Tuesday.

THE KINKS: How We Made "Waterloo Sunset."

DON McLEAN was arrested early Monday on a charge of domestic violence assault.

DALE GRIFFIN, drummer and co-founder of Mott The Hoople, has died at age 67.

MIC GILLETTE, renowned trumpet and trombone player and founding member of the legendary Oakland funky soul band Tower of Power, died suddenly of a heart attack over the weekend. He was 64.

MILEY CYRUS and some friends drove a U-Haul truck over to  Liam Hemsworth's pad in Malibu and unloaded over the weekend.

SPIKE LEE & JADA PINKETT SMITH are boycotting the Oscars.

SEAN PENN, who gave Mexican drg lord El Chapo editorial control over their interview, is sad about the state of journalism.

STEPHANIE SEYMOUR was arrested for DUI.

FRIENDS are sorta reuniting, but there's no reboot.

IRAN: The U.S pardoned or dropped the charges against seven Iranians in a prisoner swap for the release of four Americans held by Iran.Afterward, the U.S. imposed new sanctions on Iran as a result of its repeated test-firing of ballistic missiles.

IRAQ: Three Americans reported missing from a Baghdad neighborhood were kidnapped by Shiite militiamen from an apartment in the capital, a senior police official and resident of the building said Monday.

DOG's BEST FRIEND is...another dog.

MATING NEWTS close a California road.

A SHARK found in the swimming pool of a Hypoluxo condominium community was barely alive when it was rescued, said the woman who reported the incident and tried to save it.

GIANT WORMS the size of a baby snake, weighing as much as a small mouse, have been discovered on the Isle of Rum.

U2: "Pride" and "MLK." Crushingly obvious. Have a dream.

LISSIE stopped by The Current for a chat and mini-set.

TORTOISE is streaming The Catastrophist, which includes their cover of David Essex's "Rock On."

TINDERSTICKS give All Songs Considered a track-by-track tour of The Waiting Room.

SUN KIL MOON & JESU stream their collaborative album.

WEEZER drops "King of the World" from what will become known as either the "White Album" or the "Beach Album." Stereogum also has a brief Q & A with Rivers Cuomo.

DION: A vintage performance of "Abraham, Martin & John."

DAVID BOWIE: Invisible New Yorker.

SAVAGES talk to the L.A. Times about love, and the power of consciousness. Next question.

JOHN CALE talks to The Guardian about rearranging his past, working with Lou Reed and running riot with Bowie.

THE MOST ANTICIPATED ALBUMS of 2016, according to Pitchfork.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Ride Along 2 tops the holiday weekend chart with 39.5MM, lagging the original (despite opening on 500 more screens), but hust about recouping its production budget. The Revenant placed with 35MM on a waveof awards buzz that should project the 135MMfilm  into profitability by the time it leavesthe big screen. Star Wars: The Force Awakens slides from the top slot, showing with 31MM on a still leggy 27 percent drop.13 Hours came in fourth wih 19MM, which ain't bad given the competition for male filmgoers, esp. against a low-for-Michael-Bay budget of 50MM. Daddy's Home rounded out the Top Five with 11.4MM and is well into the black for Paramount.

13 HOURS largely manages to do the things director Michael Bay does well and avoids the things outside his skill set.  The film, which recounts the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on US facilities in Benghazi, Libya, largely avoids the political issues that arose in their wake, although it dramatizes many of the tragic findings of the bipartisan report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The generally-agreed-upon facts of the case are aggravating enough. 13 Hours thus plays as essentially a war film, which is something Michael Bay knows how to make. Some of the action is over-the-top; for example, Bay repeats the "follow this bomb as it drops to its target" shot from Pearl Harbor.  But for the most part, he reigns in his worst instincts and provides enough exposition in the first act for the audience to understand the chaos that erupts in the third act.  The characterizations are a bit thin, save for the pseudononymous Jack Silva, played by the pumped-up John Kacinsk iwell enough that you're not always imagining him in The Office. But the screenplay never becomes as mawkish as Pearl Harbor, either.  It's no American Sniper or Zero Dark Thirty, but it's good enough to rank as one of Bay's best films at Rotten Tomatoes and to earn an "A" Cinemascore from generally forgiving audiences.

CELINE DION lost her husband and her brother in the same week.

THE CRITICS' CHOISE AWARDS went to these folks.

BILL COSBY: A former district attorney in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, claims he agreed more than a decade ago that his office wouldn't use a civil deposition given by Bill Cosby in any criminal matters, an email obtained by CNN shows -- a revelation that could call into question the viability of the criminal case against the comedian.

JAMIE-LYNN SIEGLER married her fiancé of almost three years, pro baseball player Cutter Dykstra.

PRETTY IN PINK returns to theaters for its 30th anniversary, and is expected to include alternate endings and behind-the-scenes footage.

ALAN RICKMAN's Ten Key Performances.

RICHARD LIBERTINI, the crazy General in The In-laws, died on January 7.

DAN HAGGERY, a/k/a Grizzly Adams, died from cancer early Friday morning. He was 74.

SWITZERLAND: Refugees arriving in Switzerland have to turn over to the state any assets worth more than 1,000 Swiss francs (£690) to help pay for their upkeep, the broadcaster SRF has reported.

AL QAEDA GUNMEN stormed a luxury hotel frequented by foreigners in Burkina Faso's capital on Friday night, seizing hostages and killing others while fighting with dozens of security forces who began a counterattack hours later. It was Al Qaeda's first major attack in the landlocked sub-Saharan country, a former French colony.

IRAN: The 10 U.S. Navy sailors held by Iran were told by their captors to "act happy" while they were being videotaped during their detention, according to a U.S. defense official with access to the latest information about the debriefing of the sailors.

A CAT nurses baby ducks with her kittens...

THE SQUIRREL THREAT: A suicide rodent cut off power to the Vermont statehouse.

IS THIS KANGAROO grieving...or a murderer?

AN IMPOSING CAT who had previously achieved Twitter fame for his rebellious streak has returned to the spot where he first went viral.