THE HOLD STEADY, oft compared to the E Street Band, got to join The Boss onstage at the end of a Springsteen tribute concert.  There's some bootleg video of Craig Finn helping out on "Rosalita."  There's more video links from the concert at Stereogum.

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS are splitting with Jason Isbell, but Jason's wife (Shonna Tucker) is still in the band... so far.

LILY ALLEN, who popped up here a couple of times last week, popped up in DC last night, so you can stream her gig from NPR now.

BRIGHT EYES has a live segment with special guest M Ward up at AOL Sessions.  Plus, Conor Oberst talks politics, colonics and music with the Omaha Weekly Reader.

JOE BOYD is the guest DJ for NPR's All Songs Considered, where he talks about and spins early Clapton and Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band and more.

PHIL SPECTOR:  With a jury selected for the hit producer's murder trial, Spinner has a piece about how he nastily screwed an early business partner.  Karma may not be instant, but it's getting to Phil now.

THE STRAWBERRY ALARM CLOCK plays "Tomorrow" live for a venerable TV show.  This song was on the satellite radio on the way to my family's Easter buffet.

THE LONG WINTERS frontman John Roderick talks to the Riverfront Times and the Salt Lake Tribune about the band's songs and albums being "growers."  There are plenty to stream over the ol' HM at the moment.

INDIE SELLS OUT:  New Pornographer A.C. Newman explains how "Bleeding Heart Show" became the theme of the University Of Phoenix (he thought it was a local thing).  Embedded video at the link.

PATTI SMITH explains on video at Spinner how she came to put "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on her upcoming covers album.  And she talks to The Scotsman about being an icon and an iconographer.

PETE DOHERTY-KATE MOSS UPDATE:  The troubled singer plans to surprise his supermodel lover by getting his penis pierced.  With the largest size piercing, if Britain's Daily Star newspaper is to be believed.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE:   Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons repeated as the one-two punch of the weekend, taking in $23 million and $17 million, respectively.  The Ice Cube-led family comedy Are We Done Yet? showed at $15 million.  Grindhouse opened in fourth place with $11.6 million, but it will be the talk of Tinseltown today.  Box Office Prophets offers a number of theories for the diasppointing debut, but I think the answers are pretty simple.  First, as BOP notes (but not as to Grindhouse specifically), Easter has never been a great long weekend to open a movie.  Second, it was probably ill-advised to open this project on Easter weekend -- more family-oriented fare prevailed.  Third, Grindhouse runs over three hours long;  BOP argues this argument doesn't hold after Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, ignoring that it was the final film of an enormously popular franchise.  Peter Jackson had a tougher sell with King Kong, which was still better known to the public than the grindhouse genre, was released in December and was not a hard "R"-rated film.  Grindhouse may play much better to the regular weekend teen market next weekend.  The Reaping, which also would have played to that market, opened in fifth with $10.1 million.  Finishing sixth is 300, which did surprisingly well in its fifth weekend, especially given the mismatch with Easter (it might also be argued that its huge box office these past weeks satisfied some of the demand that would have gone to Grindhouse.).  Wild Hogs also hung in for another $6.8 million.  Shooter drops to eighth and looks to be a loss for the studio.  TMNT drops from fourth to ninth, but has already made $46 million on a $34 million budget.  Firehouse Dog debuted in the tenth slot with $4 million.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH IS STILL DEAD, but two diaries she kept in the early 1990s paint a portrait of a woman apparently deeply in love with her then-octagenarian-billionaire husband, but often worried about her weight and disdainful of sex.  Yet Playboy magazine has put her on its cover again.  And Las Vegas magician Steve Wyrick is quoted extensively in this week's Star magazine, claiming that Smith liked rough sex.

BRITNEY SPEARS reportedly "hates" her once-and current manager Larry Rudolph, but it may be that no one is calling the shots for the beleaguered pop tart.  London's sun claims Spears nipped to see a liposuction specialist in Las Vegas.  And her reported new boyfriend, musician Howie Day, was arrested in Wisconsin in 2004 for locking a woman in the bathroom of a tour bus after she refused his sexual advances.

KATE BECKINSALE wishes she had "gigantic real breasts, like Queen Latifah," adding that "If I had them, I'd run up and down a flight of stairs!"  Yet she deplores the phony beautification that goes on in her business, telling Glamour magazine that "Everybody is retouched, stretched, lengthened, slimmed and trimmed. I could look at a picture of myself from the past and think, ‘Why don't I look like that now?' It's because I never have!"

SCARLETT JOHANSSON talks to Seventeen magazine about her current single status: "When I'm single, I don't focus. I focus on a guy if he's a boyfriend, but I don't focus on finding a boyfriend." With a laugh, she adds, "They're never around when you want them." 

TOM-KAT UPDATE:  Cruise is coming to NYC to promote his controversial Scientology-inspired treatments for 9/11 workers, and will host a mega-fund-raising gala for it.  The program -- which had received hundreds of thousands of dollars in city funds -- hasn't been endorsed by the Fire or Police departments and has been described by some experts as nothing more than medical mumbo-jumbo.

LUCY LIU and CARLA GUGINO apparently have a lesbian vampire sex scene in the upcoming movie, Rise: The Blood Hunter.  Egotastic has video.  NSFW?  Close enough to issue a "better safe than sorry."

JOSH HARTNETT and PENELOPE CRUZ were caught canoodling in the Caribbean, as were Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, who were staying at the same posh resort.

OCEAN'S THIRTEEN is premiering at my local cineplex, followed by a star-studded after-party at the soon-to-open Room 21 restaurant and nightclub.  The event will raise money for the International Rescue Committee, so perhaps Angelina Jolie will turn up with Brad Pitt.

NAOMI WATTS and LIEV SCHREIBER reportedly want to tie the knot before she gives birth in late summer.   It's almost old-fashioned.

JESSICA ALBA is in her underwear in the trailer for the upcoming Good Luck Chuck.  Following on the heels of Jessica Biel in the trailer for I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry (which got a huge respose at the Grindhouse premiere, btw), this Spring has been a good one for Jessicas in their underwear in trailers.

CULT of the iPod:  Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats in Michigan Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy a MP3 player or iPod for every school child.  It sight be easier to sell the gadget as protection for US troops in Iraq, though one won't really slow down a bullet all that much.

AUSTRALIA'S TOP MUSLIM CLERIC, who complained about long sentences for gang rape and to compare immodestly dressed women to uncovered meat, suggesting they invited sexual assault, and who was creating "The Australian Peace Party," has been sacked by the peak Islamic body and the role of mufti has been abolished as the Australian Federal Police widens its probe into allegations that the sheik gave charity funds to supporters of the al-Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorist groups.  UPDATE:  The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has denied reports it has sacked the mufti; it just isn't paying him, and plans to have minders "translate" his outrageous comments into English.

IRAQ:  Fresh troops arrived in Baghdad over the weekend.  The Iraqi government imposed a ban on all vehicles in the Iraqi capital from 5:00 am Monday until Tuesday dawn on the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall to US forces.  Moqtada al-Sadr urged Iraqi forces to stop cooperating with the US and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate their attacks on US troops rather than Iraqis.  That may be intended to stop the previously-noted splintering of the Mahdi Army, but is likely to be a disaster for that militia, if history is any guide.  US troops swept into Diwaniyah before dawn on Friday, targeting the Mahdi Army; three fighters were killed and 27 were captured on the first day of the assault.  On Saturday, 39 more were detained, and a US air strike took out Mahdi fighters carrying RPGs, based on intell from the locals.  Coalition forces also kicked off an operation in Anbar province.  The Anbar Awakening Council captured what appears to be an intell treasure, according to ITM's Omar Fadhil.  And there are further signs of a rift between Al Qaeda in Iraq and their former Sunni allies.

KNUT UPDATE:  It's good to be a celebrity -- zoos from around the world have reportedly expressed interest in having little polar bear girls get to know Berlin's little polar bear boy.

THE SQUIRREL THREAT:  Now they are infiltrating Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

THE BOVINE THREAT:  Gate-crashing cows have created a bovine terror for some homeowners in New Tampa, FL.

COYOTES, BUNNIES and PANDAS:  The Public Eye blog at CBS News defends the proliferation of animal stories on the Evening News, complete with a link to the legendary water skiing squirrel from the '80s and '90s.