AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian, File

TIn this May 21, 2008 file photo, Donna Summer performs during the finale of "American Idol" at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. Donna Summer's hit "I Feel Love" is joining The Grateful Dead's famous 1977 Barton Hall concert as sounds of cultural significance, among 25 additions that are being announced Wednesday, May 23, 2012 by the Library of Congress as part of its National Recording Registry.

"I Feel Love," one of the disco-era hits of the late Boston-bred diva Donna Summer, is one of 25 sounds saved by the Library of Congress. "Purple Rain" by Prince, "Green Onions" by Booker T and the M.G.'s, " and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio are also among the 2011 National Recording Registry inductees.

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As if losing the third member of their crew wasn't enough, the Beastie Boys have been slapped with a lawsuit.

AP Photo/Capitol Records

In this 1989 file photo originally provided by Capitol Records, members of the Beastie Boys, from left, Adam Horovitz, known as Adrock, Michael Diamond, known as Mike D, and Adam Yauch, known as MCA, are shown. Yauch, the gravelly voiced Beastie Boys rapper who co-founded the seminal hip-hop group, died, Friday, May 4, 2012, at age 47 after a nearly three-year battle with cancer. Yauch was diagnosed with a cancerous salivary gland in 2009.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, who lost Adam Yauch a.k.a. MCA to cancer last week, were sued by record label TufAmerica the day before Yauch's death on May 4.

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(Aram Boghosian for the Boston Globe)

We've seen Ed Helms show off his banjo chops as Andy Bernard on "The Office," including in this backstage clip. Now the man who was once the boss at Dunder Mifflin is planning the debut album of his bluegrass group The Lonesome Trio, which features two of his former classmates from Oberlin College. Of course, Helms isn't the only fast-picking funnyman. Steve Martin has won two Grammy Awards for his banjo recordings. Martin will join Helms on Saturday, May 5, at a festival Helms organizes, The L.A. Bluegrass Situation.

Josh Haner/The New York Times

Twin Shadow at Fader Fort by Fiat. Wednesday March 16th at The South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, TX.

George Lewis Jr., who dispenses lo-fi pop goodness as Twin Shadow, has announced he will release his second album, "Confess," which will be released by indie label 4ad in the states on July 10. The album will drop in the United Kingdom on July 9.

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Marilyn Manson and Johnny Depp (yes, the actor Johnny Depp), teamed up to cover Carly Simon's 1972 smash "You're So Vain" (yes, this really happened).

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(Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Caesars Entertainment)

Attention lambs: Mariah Carey is logging some serious studio time, and through the magic of social media, we're getting a glimpse of who has stopped by to collaborate with the diva on her latest effort.

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Hey, Passion Pit fans, there's a new single up on the band's MySpace page. "The Reeling" is more downtempo than the group's other songs, and not as immediately catchy, but I have high hopes for the album. The Boston electro-pop quintet is releasing its debut full-length, "Manners," on May 26, and one imagines there will be more tunes appearing online.

Passion Pit plays the Paradise June 18. Tickets go on sale March 30 -- get them quick!

Hey Lily Allen lovers, you can listen to the cheeky British pop star's new album, "It's Not Me, It's You," out next Tuesday, on her MySpace page. I'm listening to it right now, and while so far it seems less lively than her first release, I'm just happy to be back in Lily's orbit. Check for a review of the album in Monday's paper.

(Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

In an extraordinary egotistical, self-important turn, I've decided that I'm going to use the next few lines to tell you about 5 things that I'm really enjoying right now. And then I'm going to tell you about one thing that I'm not really enjoying right now.

This is the sort of thing that would be cool if the comments in this blog were turned on: you guys could spend hours telling me how extraordinarily egotistical and self-important I am. And I would be able to relate. Anyway, if you have a serious gripe, please drop a line to mshaer@boston.com, and I'll make an informal comments section in a subsequent post. Keep it clean.

Listening constantly to: "Trompe-l'oeil," the great full-length debut from French-Canadian rock quartet Malajube. If you can stomach music in a foreign language (cough, cough), "Trompe" is a tour de force mash-up of sunny pop, grinding punk-tinged anthems, and hook-laden... well, OK. You get the point. Hoping these guys'll make it to Boston soon. There weren't many albums released this year as smart as "Trompe-l'oeil".

Conspiracy theory that I recently pulled out of thin air: Chan Marshall (above) was denied a Grammy nomination 'cause she's a little crazy. Maybe not so conspiratorial: apparently, the same thing has been happening to Robert Downey Jr. and the Oscars for years. Blogs are great for unsubstantiated rumors!

The new Shins album is really good. Get excited.

Also listening constantly to: the "Stranger Than Fiction" soundtrack. Britt Daniel (above), from Spoon, orchestrated the whole thing; if you close your eyes really hard, you can pretend it's the follow-up to "Gimme Fiction".

Watching over and over again: The new Bob Dylan video, which was first aired on Slate.

I don't think that the Annuals -- the new internet buzz-band of, like, the minute -- are any good. Oh man! Oh yeah! I went there.

An interesting music post from Joshua Glenn, by way of the Brainiac blog:

Way back in 2002, shortly after the Ideas section was launched, I interviewed Brookline native Jody Rosen -- now firmly entrenched in Brooklyn, he's a music critic for The Nation and for Slate -- about his then-new book, White Christmas, a fascinating account of how a Jewish songwriter composed what quickly became America's most popular Christmas song. And last year, in another Ideas item, I quoted Rosen's blistering response to an offhand remark that NYT columnist David Brooks made about French rap. I also followed his blog, The Anachronist, which was dedicated to early-early pop music, until he stopped updating it.

Now Rosen is back on my radar with the release of Jewface, a compilation of vaudeville-era Jewish novelty songs (songs largely written by Jewish composers, including Irving Berlin, published by Jewish-owned Tin Pan Alley music firms, and performed by Jewish vaudevillians before cheering Jewish audiences) -- from 1905-1922 that he has collected over the years on wax cylinders and 78s. (The label is Reboot Stereophonic.) This is minstrelsy, Jewish-style: or "coarse ethnic lampoon as ethnic in-group entertainment," as Rosen has put it.

In the preceding paragraph, I purposely left out the adjective between "a" and "compilation" because any adjective used here would have to be a thoroughly dialectical one. Like "Borat," this collection is creepy-yet-hilarious, fascinating-yet-depressing, great-yet-terrible. "Perhaps the Most Offensive Album Ever Made," trumpets the CD cover -- and a couple of the song titles alone -- "When Mose With His Nose Leads The Band," "Cohen Owes Me 97 Dollars" -- make one tend to agree. But like many cultural phenomena that attract and repel simultaneously, I find "Jewface" enchanting; I'm obsessed with it.

Decide for yourself: Take a listen to Ada Jones's 1908 tune "Under the Matzos Tree," here.