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Since a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, people around the world have mobilized, searching for ways to help this tiny nation in its time of need.

The good news is, you can help. Right now, the biggest need is money -- money to get supplies to people, fly in doctors, set up clinics, clear the rubble, re-establish some basic services. In time, as Haiti rebuilds, there will be a need for goods and services. But right now, money will grease the wheels to keep this massive relief effort going.

The following organizations will evenly split the proceeds from Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, which will air Friday, January 22 at 8 p.m. on major television networks and websites, including this one. You can donate during the event, or reach out this minute and give directly to the organizations, using the links below.

Hope for Haiti Now Charities
The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
Oxfam America
Partners In Health
American Red Cross
UNICEF
United Nations World Food Programme
Yele Haiti Foundation

For a long time, the Classic Rock Crate Digger totally loathed David Bowie, particularly his golden period, 1970 to ’77. On so many of his so-called classic albums (Ziggy, Diamond Dogs, Heroes, et al.), he sounds like a glam-rock/New Wave charlatan constantly nicking tricks from far superior artists, including a few personal heroes: Scott Walker, Brian Eno and the perennially overlooked Peter Hammill. If that wasn’t enough, too many of his fans seem to possess a blind devotion that is more than a little annoying. I swear, at least 75% of the fanatics that I’ve met regard the guy as some kind of post-modern genius, the be-all and end-all of everything that's avant garde. Meanwhile, so few of these same people have ever even heard, say, Hammill’s Chameleon in the Shadow of Night or Walker’s Scott 4.

Then something happened. I watched the incredible documentary Scott Walker: 30 Century Man, and it changed my mind. Sort of.

Bowie, in addition to serving as executive producer, is one of the primary interviewees, and the guy really shines. First off, he doesn’t take himself seriously at all (no post-modern baloney dripping from his trap). What we've learned from Velvet Goldmine notwithstanding, he’s a rock 'n' roll fan boy, just like you and me and the little snot down the street snorting crushed Ritalin and cranking the White Stripes. That’s cool. More importantly, Bowie acknowledges the debt he owes the artists who have inspired him through the years. He wants his fans to track down all the cool underground stuff he digs.

Now, I still find his music dull as river rock, and I’ll explain why: in order to sell his art-rock vision to the mainstream, he had to cleanse his influences of their most volatile, and interesting, idiosyncrasies -- not pop enough for the masses, apparently. Yet those are the things I’m most into -- the weird stuff. Oh well. The important thing is that I no longer hate David Bowie. In fact, having a cocktail with him and talking jams sounds like it would be a total blast. Maybe Geraldo can come, too.

A lot of the artists Bowie has championed over the years (Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, T. Rex) are very nearly as famous as he is, nowadays. Nevertheless, I thought it would be cool to give a brief rundown of some of the musicians and records that inspired the, uh, Thin White Duke (always hated that phrase).

Rhapsody is proud to join major television networks and websites in broadcasting Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief. The telethon will feature performances by a superstar lineup that includes Bruce Springsteen, Mary J. Blige, Taylor Swift, Shakira, Sting, Justin Timberlake, Stevie Wonder and many more. It will be hosted by Wyclef Jean, George Clooney and CNN's Anderson Cooper, and all proceeds from the event will benefit Haitian earthquake relief efforts. See the telethon live here on Friday, January 22, at 8 p.m. EST, or check back all weekend for video streaming of excerpts from the concert. All musical performances will be available for purchase for $.99 per song shortly thereafter, with proceeds benefiting Haiti relief funds managed by Hope for Haiti Now charities. Enjoy the spectacle, but more importantly, open your wallet and give generously -- lives are at stake.



The Haitian story is more than just about this tragic event. From rara to kompa, the country has a rich musical heritage that has been been influential in the development of Caribbean music and has been largely overlooked by American audiences. We've scoured our extensive musical catalog to provide you an overview of the country's rich artistic legacy. We invite you to look below and dig deeper to explore its people's vibrant music and culture,

	Love Song: A Brief History of Haitian Music		Donate: Find out how you can help Haiti
	Discover: Classic Haitian Music		Listen: Haiti Newest Music and Biggest Hits
	World Picks: The Biggest Hits from Haiti and Beyond		Explore: The Music of the Caribbean

Very sad news: Bobby Charles died on Thursday, January 14, in the morning, apparently. Though an exact cause of death has yet to be determined, the New Orleans composer and singer had been battling health problems for several years.

I love Charles’ music, yet I know very little about the guy. Then again, very few music writers do, outside of my pal Brian J. Barr, who wrote a fantastic profile on him for Oxford American’s 10th Annual Music Issue. Charles, according to the Seattle-based scribe, “kept a death-grip on his privacy and spent his last years in a two-bedroom trailer ‘with a wide deck on it outside Abbeville [Louisiana]. He told me there was a seafood restaurant he frequented near his home where the waitress would already be mixing his Grey Goose martini before he’d even finished parking his car. He ate alone and he lived alone.”

Bobby Charles, an ethnic Cajun, was more or less a major-league talent who didn’t like the spotlight, who didn’t crave fame and fortune -- just a martini and some killer seafood. This means a lot of music fans out there don’t understand his impact, which is considerable. First off, he’s a legend in New Orleans music. If you’re a legend in the city that gave birth to the very idea of an “American sound,” then you’re a pretty big deal just about everywhere else, from New York to Des Moines to ... Seattle. Much like fellow Big Easy great Allen Toussaint, Charles devoted a good chunk of his career to writing songs for others and in the process had a hand in creating several genres including swamp pop, Southern R&B and hell, even rock 'n' roll its bad self. In the 1950s and ’60s, he penned a string of pop standards, namely “But I Do,” which Clarence "Frogman" Henry had a major hit with; "Walking to New Orleans,” the Fats Domino classic, and the Bill Haley No. 1 “See You Later, Alligator,” a song whose title threaded itself into the very fabric of the American lexicon.

Other chestnuts include “The Jealous Kind,” “Why Are People Like That” and the ballad “Tennessee Blues” (a sublime version of which J.D. Crowe & the New South, with a young Keith Whitley on lead vocals, recorded for their 1978 album My Home Ain't In the Hall of Fame).

The news out of Haiti is bad, to put it mildly. International aid efforts are still only a trickle, hardly enough yet to help hundreds of thousands of people who have no shelter, no water, little food and a lot of death around them. The world is watching obsessively, visions of Katrina and the tsunami not exactly dancing in our heads. Get it right this time, we all seem to be silently imploring the powers that be.

Not that we have that much power. So Rhapsody has decided to pay tribute to this tiny nation the only way we know how -- by celebrating its music. Take a journey with us via our Haitian music sampler, learn about Haiti's musical history after the jump, and while you're at it, please take the time to donate to one of the relief agencies participating in "Hope For Haiti Now: A Global Benefit For Earthquake Relief," which will air Friday, January 22nd on major television networks and websites, including this one. Learn more about the event, watch it and find links to the participating charities here.

And don't forget to sign up for your free trial if you haven't already ... because Rhapsody subscribers have access to all this great music, all the time.

Joining the ranks of such illustrious names as Berry Gordy, Phil Spector and Moammar Kadafi (he managed the Chi-Lites), music mogul Simon Cowell has built an empire for himself based almost entirely on the fact that he is a jerk -- a smug, smarmy, pompous, insolent British jerk (actually, one of the 100 worst, according to one poll) whose only talent is for actually being all of those things. And the best part is -- we love him for it! We love watching him dole out his snide, cutting remarks to hopeful contestants whose big dream is to entertain the masses with the music of their hearts -- screw them! More than anything else, it's Simon that makes American Idol worth watching. He's the mountain standing in the way of performers and their dreams, the one that's close to impossible to surmount and that makes reaching the top that much sweeter. So what are we gonna do now that the dude's announced his exit from the show in 2010? Confronted with this harrowing reality, we compiled a list of possible replacements, names that bring to the table a special mix of Simon's rare gifts, as well as a few of their own.

Ke$ha and all the other girl next doors -- past, present and future -- are yours to listen to and share whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we're all about.

You may have heard of a little smash hit that's been crowding the airwaves lately called "Tik-Tok." On one hand, the song is an ode to the kind of debaucherous, decadent partying many of us have never experienced: a kind of aural Girls Gone Wild or The Simple Life. On the other, however, unlike her equally wild contemporaries such as Lady Gaga, who revel in and exacerbate their freaky-deaky alien-ness, there's something accessible, suburban, maybe even all-American about Ke$ha. Her predilections for brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack aside, Ke$ha somehow still manages to come off like the kind of girl many of us might know, maybe even the kind of girl many of us could actually be -- you know, if we had Paris Hilton's number in our cell or the nerve to break into Prince's house. She is, in short, a type of girl next door, albeit a kind of G.N.D. 2.0 -- an all-American sweetheart for the post-"... Baby One More Time," post-"I Kissed a Girl" era in which the girls you grew up with aren't always sugar and spice and everything nice (not that they ever were) and are, quite frankly, maybe a little sick of being so good. Ke$ha's ability to balance extreme brazenness with accessibility got us thinking about how the image of the girl next door has changed over the decades of pop music history. We present to you the stages of evolution of the G.N.D., from Annette Funicello to The Girls Next Door. (And for a playlist of all the artists here, check out our The Girl Next Door through the Ages playlist!)

Owl City, Postal Service, Brokencyde and every other band listed in this article are yours to rock out to whenever and however you want with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we’re all about.

Owl City’s Adam Young may be only 23 years old, but he’s already beginning to look old-fashioned. The Billboard-topping artist, who was still living in his parents’ basement when he began recording music, established the foundations of his fan base via MySpace. (Remember MySpace?) Modeled on the sparkly electro-pop of the Postal Service, Owl City might even be considered a kind of retro undertaking. OK, it’s a stretch, but just think: the Postal Service’s lone album came out in 2003. That’s eons ago, in Internet years. In any case, Owl City’s blend of electronic production, emo songwriting and Web 2.0 community-building signaled a major aesthetic shift for the American underage set, reuniting punks with synths and bringing together the whole Hot Topic Nation under a cheerfully post-everything umbrella.

Now, nipping at Young’s heels comes a slew of musicians raised on the diversified diet that substitutes for monoculture these days: dance pop, emo, crunk, trance. Some of them, like Owl City, stick mainly to a twinkly sort of shtick you might call “tweemo”; others take pages from Lil Jon and Insane Clown Posse. But no matter whether they come across as shrinking violets or smirking violent offenders, they love their synths and their Auto-Tune. Whether you call it emotronica, crunk-punk or crabcore, it’s a crazy new world of American synth-pop, one that even Suicide surely never imagined. Check out a playlist, and read on for a who’s who in the bleeps ‘n’ bangs scene.

Teddy Pendergrass, one of the finest soul singers of his generation, has passed away.

Pendergrass was a Philly drummer with Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes when the star-making Gamble & Huff songwriting/production team noticed his backing vocals. They quickly made him leader singer of the group, much to the chagrin of a certain Mr. Melvin.

Pendergrass' ultra masculine, smokey vocals turned such Philly soul wonders as "If You Don't Know Me By Now," "The Love I Lost" and "Bad Luck" into classics that are still widely heard today. An old Blue Notes hit, "Wake Up Everybody" was even reborn as a protest song during the 2000s. Like Pendergrass' best work, the song hadn't aged a day.

Teddy's star shone even brighter when he went solo. His single finest outing may just be "Love TKO," a blistering torch song with a relentless groove and a peerless Pendergrass vocal. The song is so sublime that millions were rumored to have ended relationships just so they could have the tune work its healing magic on them.

Pendergrass was enjoying a long string of platinum albums, hit singles and sold-out "ladies only" concerts when a 1982 car accident left him paralyzed. Pendergrass soon made a successful recording comeback and his typically sensual "You're My Choice Tonight" should have won the Oscar for best song for the Alan Rudolph cult movie Choose Me.

Teddy Pendergrass also worked tirelessly on behalf of others with spinal chord injuries and charitable work became his primary focus when he retired from music in 2006. He passed away from complications due to colon cancer surgery on January 13th, 2010.

Go here to listen to a stellar collection of Teddy Pendergrass hits on Rhapsody. Also, check out this swank TV appearance and see Pendergrass work his magic in front of a disco dancing audience. 
 

Jay Reatard was the archetypal punk rocker: ridiculously talented, prolific, smart, totally weird, nihilistic, paranoid, tortured -- qualities worthy of worship balanced with traits most of us shamefully try to hide instead of embrace. Sadly, the multi-talented musician, born Jimmy Lee Lindsey, Jr., passed away on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, at the young age of 29.

An ace guitarist and singer-songwriter, Lindsey helped boost the garage rock scene in his hometown of Memphis, where he began recording at the tender age of 15. His first project was the Reatards (initially just him playing guitar, singing and adding his own DIY percussion). He went on to record and play with numerous local artists and bands -- Lost Sounds, Final Solutions, Nervous Patterns, among others. He eventually released his first solo record, Blood Visions, in 2006, before signing to indie label juggernaut Matador Records. He most recently released Watch Me Fall in early 2009.

Lindsey may not have been a household name, but he was a powerful force in the indie and rock worlds. Blood-soaked album covers, fist-fight-inducing performances, song titles like "Greed, Money, Useless Children" -- these were all sly diversions to keep the faint-of-heart away. But those who dared to listen, watch and revel in his talents got every bit of who he was: the good, the bad, the fun, the defiant, the gifted. Now that's punk rock.

Dig into Jay Reatard's catalog on Rhapsody, including exclusive live cuts of his performance at Rhapsody Rocks NYC in 2008.

Ignore the naysayers, 2009 was a great year in indie rock. Since it's a new year and a new decade, we're going to keep that optimistic spirit afloat as we take a look into the future and gather excitement for our most anticipated albums. There are plenty of rumored releases for the year (Radiohead?! Arcade Fire?!), so we've decided to focus on the first quarter. Kicking off 2010 is the much ballyhooed release of Vampire Weekend's sophomore album, Contra. Here are 10 more to get giddy about. (And if you're really getting antsy, listen to our playlist featuring singles from many of these upcoming albums.)

And, of course, you can listen to these as soon as they come out with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we're all about. 

In the frenzy of year-end features, where albums naturally get put under the microscope, one thing became perfectly clear: although there were plenty of great singles on country radio in 2009, many of those songs were from albums released in 2008.

With music, things tend to go in cycles. If last year was a "zig" for the country format, this year is already shaping up to be a "zag," with many A-list artists -- and some interesting newcomers -- due to release new albums. Here are a few of the ones we're looking forward to the most.

And, of course, you can listen to these as soon as they come out with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we're all about.

OK, yes, 2009 was a big year for pop powerhouses. But 2010 says, "Oh yeah? I'll see your Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson and Black Eyed Peas, and raise you first-name-basis divas like Christina, Amy, Janet, Missy and Usher." Throw in a little Katy Perry, Scissor Sisters and Kelis, and this year is looking fabulous and fierce. You know, if they actually manage to make these rumors realities. Cross your fingers with us as we count down the most anticipated pop albums of 2010 -- including the wildest rumors and up-and-comers to watch.

And, of course, you can listen to these as soon as they come out with your Rhapsody subscription. Take a free trial and see what we're all about.

Do you live, sleep and breathe hip-hop and aren’t afraid to voice your opinion on the subject? Rhapsody is looking for a handful of hip-hop experts to lead our new blog community. Your opinions (and knowledge) will be projected to Rhapsody’s hundreds of thousands of subscribers -- it’s a great chance to get exposure on one of the biggest stages available. And of course, we’ll provide all the technical assistance you need. If you’re interested, send two writing samples and a list of your top 10 albums from the previous year to schennault@rhapsody.com.