If you think this poster is cool and you wish you could have been there to see the show it promotes, stay tuned.

Gorillaz/Gorillaz

Enlarge Lindsay Sanchez/NPR

Stephen Thompson's collection of long-neglected Prince CDs -- and, yes, The Scandalous Sex Suite is in there.

Lindsay Sanchez/NPR

Stephen Thompson's collection of long-neglected Prince CDs -- and, yes, The Scandalous Sex Suite is in there.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around with a few guys who fit squarely in my demographic: late 30s or early 40s, obsessed with music, and just resistant enough to MP3s that they still curate ludicrously sizable CD collections. Amid the usual talk of our fading hopes for a rapidly shrinking future, the topic came up: What recording artist has put out the most CDs you own but never listen to? Ideally, you'd have a large collection of titles without having listened to any of them in at least, say, two years. Bonus points if you've acquired late-period albums out of habit and then never bothered to listen, though I'll grant that this phenomenon is more common among folks who get virtually all of their music for free.

Rather than get too caught up in my own answers to the question we posed — though I'll drop a hint and say that the most prominent culprit's name rhymes with "Frince" — I'd like to gather a cross-section of responses and see how many names come up again and again. I'll solicit examples here and on Twitter, then pull together a final tally this time next week. Perhaps if there's a runaway winner of our little Owned & Abandoned Sweepstakes, we can sculpt some sort of trophy for the artist, crafted out of long-ignored copies of R.E.M.'s Around the Sun.

Please leave your nominations in the comments section below.

A slow jam session with fidder Kevin Burke and guitarist Robin Bullock.

Each year for the past four years, I've spent a week of my summer at a Celtic music camp, most recently at the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, N.C.  It's just about my favorite week of the year, and I've had some pretty good weeks this year.

One of the reasons it's so great is that I get to play guitar from 9 a.m. until roughly 2 a.m., with breaks for food and concerts by some of the best Irish and Scottish musicians in the world.

Most of the year, as host of All Songs Considered, I'm a listener, an audience member and a passive participant.  But at Swannanoa, I play guitar with fiddlers, pipers, accordionists, banjo players, bouzouki (large lute) players, bodhran (Irish drum) players and other guitarists jamming on jigs, reels, hornpipes and an occasional waltz until my fingers can't take it anymore.

I love being in an audience and being transported by a great band, but there's nothing like playing music to carry me away.  I can't explain the difference between the two, and that's where I'd love this conversation to go.

What does music do for you as a listener? If you're a player, what does music do for you, and how is it different from merely listening?

It's just about time for one of our favorite music events of the year: the Newport Folk Festival. What we love about Newport is that it's very musician-friendly, so you get a surprising mix of artists playing on stage with each other.  Also, the lineup features both old favorites and young unknowns, who stretch the definition of folk music to include everything from heavy-metal bluegrass to Nigerian-inspired hip-hop and reggae.

Here's the lineup, subject to change:

Saturday, July 31

• John Prine
• Andrew Bird
• Jim James of My Morning Jacket
• Calexico
• Brandi Carlile
• Doc Watson & David Holt
• Sam Bush
• Blitzen Trapper
• The Low Anthem
• Dawes
• A.A. Bondy
• Nneka
• Horse Feathers
• O'Death
• Liz Longley
• What Cheer? Brigade

Sunday, August 1

• The Levon Helm Band's Ramble on the Road w/ Special Guests
• The Swell Season
• The Avett Brothers
• Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
• The Preservation Hall Jazz Band w/ Special Guests
• Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
• The Felice Brothers
• The Punch Brothers featuring Chris Thile
• Tao Seeger Band
• Justin Townes Earle
• Pokey LaFarge & The South City Three
• Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore
• Cory Chisel & The Wandering Sons
• April Smith & The Great Picture Show
• What Cheer? Brigade

You can hear our complete coverage at NPR Music, live streaming on the NPR Music iPhone app, and on WFUV in New York.

Our coverage starts at noon ET Saturday, July 31, and goes until sundown, and then starts all over again Sunday, August 1, at noon EDT.

I'll be there along with WFUV's Rita Houston, with lots of help from Folk Alley.

Sets will be archived online. Select sets will be available for download in the Live Concerts podcast.

You can also hear our Newport Folk Festival 2010 Mix, which features songs by artists performing at this year's festival.

We've still got performances from past Newport Folk Festivals available for streaming and download in our archives, including great sets from Fleet Foxes, Mavis Staples, Pete Seeger, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Decemberists and Gillian Welch.

We'll open up a chat room and post photographs, along with live commentary, interviews and, of course, a lot of great music.

Who are you looking forward to hearing? Let us know in the comments section below.

Shane Williams

Listening to Fading Collection through headphones while I sit at an office desk is cruel. The band's charged electro-dance-rock makes me wish I was at a crowded dark club with pulsing strobe lights. The overdriven synths and rattling drums are perfect for anyone prone to tearing up dance floors late into the night.

Though the '90s rave scene passed, Fading Collection's latest EP Attakk recalls the jolting sounds of electronica bands like The Prodigy and The Crystal Method. With Sarah McGuinn’s breathy melodies, Fading Collection packages the group's explosive energy in shorter indie-pop tracks rather than techno marathons. The group's members may rely on electronics to create a spacy industrial aesthetic, but, as they noted on the cover, “this recording is auto-tune free.”

Take a listen to "March Rabbits."  (You might need to check your blood pressure after).

Download more music from great unknown artists in our Second Stage podcast.

Submit your music for possible inclusion on Second Stage or All Songs Considered.

Enlarge Courtesy of Artist

The Californian indie-pop band hit the ground running after SXSW and a Hype Machine hit with "Pumped Up Kicks."

Courtesy of Artist

The Californian indie-pop band hit the ground running after SXSW and a Hype Machine hit with "Pumped Up Kicks."

I hope your summer playlist isn't finalized yet, because here's one more essential track for the mix: "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People.  It's a laid-back, breezy song made for a top-down covertable cruise to the beach.

A killer melody floats lightly over a surf guitar lick as mellow as low-tide. Ambient synths echo a distant cicada buzz creating a hazy summer feel. It's an indie-pop jam that exudes sunny californian vibes.

Foster The People caught a big wave with love from Hype Machine listeners and a few key South by Southwest performances.  Attention from blogs created a rippling effect of praise with one comment noting "Pumped Up Kids" should be played in a similar situation to this scene in Hi-Fidelity.

But don't go looking for Foster The People on Myspace, check out Facebook instead. The unsigned band is committed to staying connected to its growing audience by crowd-sourcing its Facebook friends for tour locations, tweeting with updates, and offering free downloads via its official website.

Download more music from great unknown artists in our Second Stage podcast.

Submit your music for possible inclusion on Second Stage or All Songs Considered.

So far, it's been another strong year when it comes to cover songs.  But unlike the last few years, when those songs might have appeared on compilations or charity albums, the majority have been offered as part of various online music series or served directly from the musicians to their audience.  Here are five of my favorites so far.

1) Beck's Record Club Covers INXS — "Never Tear Us Apart" (featuring St. Vincent, Liars, Os Mutantes)

It's been two years since Beck has put out an official release, but dude's still been busy: He produced and co-wrote Charlotte Gainsbourg's album IRM, produced tracks for Jamie Lidell, had guest appearances with Tobacco and Bat For Lashes, and even dropped a new song on the True Blood soundtrack. For most, that might be enough, especially for an off cycle.

Still, Beck soldiers on with his amazing website feature Record Club, in which he invites his friends and fellow musicians to cover an entire album in one day and release it song-by-song once a week. In its recently completed fourth iteration, Beck covered INXS' Kick, with St. Vincent's Annie Clark, Liars and Os Mutantes. The project ebbs and flows between inspired takes and sloppy yet fun one-offs. This deconstruction of the power ballad "Never Tear Us Apart" might end up being the album's highlight thanks to the sexy and soulful singing of Clark. They also (thankfully) replace the original version's cheesy sax solo with a soaring violin.

The Avett Brothers have released a new video for "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise," from the band's latest album I And Love And You.  It's a spare but stunning work of art, featuring the animated paintings of Jason Ryan Mitcham.  The video shows the rise, fall and inevitable decay of rampant urban development.

"Head Full Of Doubt/Road Full Of Promise" was written about the temporary nature of our buildings and our mentality," says Scott Avett.  "Accepting the temporary state we may be in. (Artist) Jason (Ryan Mitcham) with his landscape paintings, and some that I'd seen that he'd animated, dealt with the temporary nature of the world around us."

Rather than make a bunch of different paintings for the animation, Mitcham gradually altered a single painting 26-hundred times.  Ten alterations to the painting equaled one second of film.

The Avett Brothers are currently on tour in support of I And Love And You.  The band also plans to release a new CD and DVD set of live performances on Oct. 5 called Live, Volume 3.

Cover art for 'Renmin Park'

The latest edition of All Songs Considered features a super cool new song from Cowboy Junkies with the mysterious title "Sir Francis Bacon At The Net."  We asked frontman Michael Timmins if he could help us understand what the track is about.  The story he told was more ivolved (and interesting) than anything we could sum up in a sentence or two, so we decided to share the whole thing with you.

"Sir Francis Bacon At The Net" appears on the new Cowboy Junkies album Renmin Park, an inspired collection of songs built on ambient recordings and found sounds Timmins made while living with his family in China.

"The roots of this song are quite varied and complicated," says Timmins. "It started as a musical structure based around the field recording that you hear, which is of two men playing badminton in Renmin Park. Every Tuesday and Thursday I would go to the park at 7am to play badminton with a group of people, a couple of them were People’s Liberation Army old guards. I was befriended by one of them and through him I was introduced to a few other men of his generation and over the weeks of getting together, and then going to breakfast after our game, they would slowly unveil their stories. All of them had been members of the PLA (airforce, intelligence, foot soldiers); all of them had harrowing stories of their lives during the Cultural Revolution (after they had given their youth to their country, fighting for an ideal put forth by Mao). All of them had been imprisoned; one of them (the man who befriended me) was in a labour camp for 16 years. And yet when I tried to broach the subject of Mao and his legacy, I never heard one discouraging word and more often than not there was praise. Part of this was an old world wariness about speaking out on a subject as politically volatile as Mao, but I also began to realize that Mao’s legacy is rooted in so much contradiction and personal history.

"So the lyrics started off as an attempt at touching on that contradiction (So calculating it parses a man / between the hand that held the dream / and the sword being held by the hand. / Their golden frames hang gleaming. / Tangled bones of their crimes bleaching. / Their golden frames hang gleaming. / Bleaching bones of their crimes tangling.) From there the song grew…it touches on the inevitability of the next “Mao” rising up (There he stands a mere mist of a thing / Waiting his turn to challenge the King)…and the proclivity to violence in that country’s history:  man-made to nature’s violence (Merciless nature, both human and mother, walk this land each through the arm of the other) and then it ends with a comment on how the outcome of these cataclysmic violent upheavals (the man-made ones) are completely and totally unpredictable. The first line is based on an ancient Chinese saying about the uncertainty of predicting the future and the second half is the same theme but based on a Sir Francis Bacon quote (As the map is unrolled the dagger comes out / and that which was certain will now end in doubt.)

"The title of the song brings in to play the field recording of the badminton game and the underlying theme of the song which is based around the Bacon quote about all things beginning in certainty inevitably end in doubt. By looking at China’s past and talking to those who have lived through the turbulence of the past 80 years, it seemed to me like this quote was a fitting way to predict its future."

The Walkmen's latest album, Lisbon, isn't due out until Sept. 14, but we've got a sneak preview of one of its standout tracks.  "Stranded" is an incredibly soulful piece with beautiful horn parts that sound like something pulled from a 1950s Sun session.  We first heard the cut when The Walkmen performed it live at our South by Southwest showcase in March.

courtesy of the artist

"Early on, we had a whole batch of songs that were based on this New Orleans-style horn playing that (guitarist) Paul (Maroon) was working on," singer Hamilton Leithauser says.  "But 'Stranded' is the only one that actually ended up making the album. I think it was maybe the second song we wrote for Lisbon, so it sort of exemplifies our sound from maybe two years ago.  I guess it sounds more like our last record, You & Me, than a lot of the other songs on Lisbon.  The horn section included my wife, Anna, our lead trumpeter Paul Brandenberg, and a ratty assortment of the other guys we usually tour with — mostly trumpets and maybe two trombones.  We had them all into Gigantic Studios, and I sang the whole thing live right there with them and the band.  It's always fun doing a big production like that. Paul also added a bunch of his own trumpets down in Philly to give it that wobbly style, and maybe just to make sure it was completely out of tune.  (Keyboardist) Walt (Martin) and I did the words together.

"We took two trips to Lisbon over the course of writing this record," Leithauser adds. "None of us had ever been there, and we were really blown away by the place. The topography and architecture are stunningly handsome. Even when we were there for the rainy season — it literally never stopped raining — it was a trip that outshone a lot of others.  We've never had much luck at all in Europe, and the Portuguese were surprisingly accommodating.  I think those two trips really helped keep us motivated while making this record.  We named the record Lisbon as sort of a 'thank you' and a small tribute."

courtesty of artist

The Los Angeles-based garage rock revivalist group The Like.

The latest episode of All Songs Considered features music by the bands Best Coast and Jenny and Johnny, both of which sparked a conversation about why the late '50s and early '60s sound is so prominent in today's music. I can't be certain of what's inspired an endless list of bands like She & Him, Mynabirds, and Surfer Blood to take this retro route.  But I know this music appeals to me because it’s simple and comforting.

Every time I hear girl group harmonies and Phil Spector’s wall of sound, I’m transported back to my childhood, and by that I mean all the way back to 1995. I’m seven years old again riding in my aunt’s car to the beach, playing with the radio until I hit the golden oldies station. The short simple pop songs were sweet and satisfying to my innocent ears.

Now that I’m older and I’ve transitioned through many musical tastes, those bubblegum pop songs still elicit a warm fuzzy feeling. And I love when bands reinterpret that nostalgia in their own style.

Our upcoming All Songs Considered will feature new music by The Walkmen, a group that drew inspiration from Elvis Presley's early work. We'll also premiere a collaboration by Bjork and The Dirty Projectors, who say they were influenced by '50s doo-wop.

Take a listen to a few clips from bands with a throwback sound. Why do you think today's musicians are referencing an era before their own time? Could it be sentimental? Comment with your thoughts.

Courtesy of the Artist

The Retribution Gospel Choir isn't a choir...  and doesn't play gospel.

I was recently at a show in Philadelphia. I went to hear the Retribution Gospel Choir featuring Alan Sparhawk from Low. They were neither gospel, not really a choir, and there was little to no retribution.

The Tallest Man on Earth is a smallish guy (Kristian Mattson) with a big voice. I love his sound and the name, but you don't get what you might expect.

The same is true of I'm From Barcelona, The Killers (we sure hope not). The band members of Girls, Women, and Barenaked Ladies are all dudes. Brazilan Girls are all guys but one and none of them are from Brazil. Sometimes false advertising is a good thing and and thankfully that's true for the band Butt Trumpet. (As All Songs producer Robin Hilton pointed out:  No butt, no trumpet).

Ok, so come up with some other names that tell you one thing, but deliver something completely different.