DOWNLOAD: Amadeus the Stampede, featuring Reks, “Deadly Toxins”

When the highly mobile Lawrence MC Reks returned to Mass before his Grey Hairs release party this past August, he blessed a mess of Boston affiliates with doses of his recently revamped dynamic slickery. Among his fortunate collaborators were Illin’ P, DL, Black Madeen, and Greater Good mic menace Amadeus the Stampede, whose full-length non-mixtape debut, House of Broken Mirrors, is set to drop early next year.

As I walked down the Paradise corridor toward the Murs show last night I worried that the joint might not be stuffed to the balconies. It’s not like I expected a riotous sell out, but considering that Lil Wayne and Jay-Z packed the biggest room in Boston one night earlier, it would have been extra disheartening if hip-hop’s most important major label artist couldn’t draw a serious crowd.

Poor JAM’N 94.5. Just a few years ago their Monster Jams were suffering; hip-hop and R&B fans were lucky if they caught more than one artist with more than two hit songs. But in 2008 the station staged a commendable comeback with a roaring Summer Jam line-up and a subsequent pre-Halloween blowout featuring Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, only for the latter not to show up.

I’m not packing clothes for this year’s CMJ Marathon in New York City. In fact, I’m not even bringing down a laptop. Instead of spending five straight days inhaling various poisons, feverishly blogging on the same nonsense that everyone else is covering, and ransacking my weathered eardrums with out-of-tune guitar shreds and swollen bass lines, I’m limiting my trip to one day and two nights, and seeing how much I can cram in.

Image of how the independent music industry should feel about the Bush administration courtesy of Immortal Technique's Revolutionary Vol. 2 album cover.

No doubt all you independent musicians out there are investing titanic chunks of time to getting Obama elected. You’re endorsing him at shows, putting bumper stickers on the tour bus, and, maybe, just maybe, donating a fraction of your discretionary booze and blow money to the effort.

The good news is that you haven't been inseminated by former Porn Theater Ushers front man Nabo Rawk or his new accomplice, DJ Paul Foley (or maybe you have - who knows?). The bad news is that these two famed dance-and-party happy Boston rap degenerates are dropping a dual effort under the group name Wasted Talent

DOWNLOAD: Age Rings, Rock and Roll Is Dead [mp3]

Used to be, when we wanted to hear an AGE RINGS number, we’d just wheel ourselves over to Will Spitz’s desk and poke him with an uncapped Sharpie until he acquiesced with an a cappella version of the song of our choosing. Last time, it took only three dots.

"I never looked at it as an investment," Lars Ulrich says in Some Kind of Monster, as he walks through Christie's on the night that one of his Basquiats -- "Profit I", from 1982 -- fetches $5.5. million dollars. "But . . . the other guys would take a big pile of money and park it in a bank, while I would take a big pile of money and park it on my wall."

We find this clip amazing not just because "No One Does It Like You," from Grizzly Bear offshoot Department of Eagles' excellent album In Ear Park, is a contender for Song of the Year, but also because if what the Gum said is accurate, then this was their first live performance ever. They're backed by the drummer from Grizzly Bear, the bassist (I think; she looks different now so I'm not sure) from Dirty Projectors on backing vocals, and bass wunderkid Nat Baldwin, who Camille profiled not long ago

On the off chance that you haven't been reading Lil' Wayne's fantacular new blog for ESPN.com -- which once again proved that Weezy is the king of the internets -- allow us to learn you. In his latest jawn, he speaks on Brett Favre ("He must know God's phone number. Come on. He's like 3900 years old and he threw for six touchdowns?"), Aaron Rodgers's shoulder ("I'm skeptical about it because when you say something like he has a sprained shoulder, come on, who sprains their shoulder? I've never sprained my shoulder"), and how to watch football like a thug ("I have a wonderful chef and he cooks whatever I like.