Discs titled Greatest Hits or The Best Of are not typical fodder for critics, but such collections serve their purpose, sometimes splendidly, other times laughably. At times, they can be the best introduction to an artist or band. We’re in the time of the 99 cent download, so albums are nearly extinct, but record companies still release Greatest Hits. Maybe they’re chasing the Eagles, whose Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975) – with sales of 42 million worldwide – is the best selling album of all time. This came to mind when two discs hit my mailbox recently: Quiet Please ... The New Best of Nick Lowe (Yep Roc) and Filter’s The Very Best Things (1995-2008) (Rhino). Quiet Please aims to replace the now out of print Basher: The Best of Nick Lowe (Sony), a single disc collection released in 1989. Basher is a desert island disc for me, 25 tracks of the best power pop ever, full of wit and effervescent guitar jangle. If you only know “Cruel to Be Kind,” it’ll open your ears to some of the best Brit-pop of the 1970s and 80s. Twenty years later, Quiet Please brings Lowe’s career into fuller focus, from his pub rock days with Brinsley Schwarz to his latest incarnation as an aging crooner, and does so by doubling the amount of songs. It even comes in a deluxe version with a DVD of early videos and a concert from 2007. It’s a nice update, and the songs still ring true, but I’ll still take my copy of Basher with me wherever I go.

Chick Corea, Al Di Meola, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White still burn in the fusion reactor memory of last May’s two-night Return to Forever reunion stand at the Paramount Theatre. In January, the Mediterranean stingray himself, Di Meola, returned, this time to the One World Theatre, where he broke off the axe portion of RTF and speared an intimate audience with Flamenco-stampeded slights of hand. Now comes El Capitan’s turn. Corea, no stranger to the One World, instead loads into UT's Bass Concert Hall, this time with another six-stringer in tow, guitar mystic John McLaughlin. Two such jazz/rock pioneers could draw a symposium of sonic scientists all by themselves, only they’ve seen fit to gird the power of two with a trio of genuine all-stars. Kenny Garrett on sax will dislodge lung sponge, but in bassist Christian McBride and one of the best drummers alive, Brian Blade, the Five Peace Band come armed to the teeth. The Miles Davis alum leading FPB have written new material, the 2-CD Five Peace Band Live previewing its summer release for Concord Records on sale in the Bass lobby, while also acting as another evolutionary leap forward in Corea and McLaughlin's decades-long history of collaboration. In Brian Blade alone, they’ve advanced their musical agenda 1,000 years. This Leonard Cohen disciple can only wring his hands that he won’t be at the PAC’s main lodge on Thursday, April 2, 8pm, to witness an alternate, but doubtlessly no less mind-blowing return to forever. Tickets here.

Accolades abound Friday night at the H&H Ballroom, the premiere Latin music dancehall of Austin, when Sonidos del Barrio honors local Tejano musicians. With support from the City of Austin’s Cultural Arts Division, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Austin Latino Music Association’s (ALMA) annual event focuses on Austin musicians with distinguished careers. Up for awards this year are singer Joe Bravo and seven of the Capitol City’s horn players, including saxophonists Dave Gutierrez, Abel Gutierrez, Joe Salas, Tim Torres, and Jesse Botello plus trumpeters Jesse Hernandez and Lawrence Ramirez. Bravo performs along with A.J. Castillo and a rare appearance by the legendary Tortilla Factory, the seminal Chicano rock-and-soul band. Tortilla Factory’s All That Jazz was nominated at last year’s Grammys. Sonidos del Barrios is only one of ALMA’s numerous events throughout the year. March saw the Trail of Tejano Legends honoring traditional performers, including Manuel “Cowboy” Donley, Roy Montelongo, and the Perez and Ramos families. In May, ALMA’s Latin Music Month program will highlight more Tejano and Latino musicians with events showcasing the wide variety of Latino musical styles. Tickets for Friday, April 3 are $8 before 8pm; $10 afterward. Doors open at 7pm. Call 512-563-3697 for more information.

Mere hours before Metallica made South by Southwest history by crushing Stubb’s on Friday, OTR got to spend a few minutes with bassist Robert Trujillo at the Four Seasons, sharing an elevator with Perez Hilton and Perry Farrell. Here are a few of the more interesting excerpts from exchange. Fear not if you missed the show. Metallica has added another leg to its world tour that includes a stop at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, September 28. On the creation of Guitar Hero: Metallica: “It was almost like a sci-fi experience. You’re in this hot wet suit and you’ve got these little tassels that trigger your motion and your movements. Playing in that suit for a couple of hours, you really start feeling it. The next day our necks and bodies were actually sore. It was an intense workout. You sweat off the excess and get in gig shape. It was very interesting and physical. It’s great to see something like this become what it is and flourish from the ground up.” On his character in the game: “It’s a lot of fun building your character and fine tuning it. The body type that they had given us, especially the first round, was like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was like, ‘You guys got to tone it down a bit.’ Lars will be like, ‘Can you give me a bit more pecs. Everyone looks buff but me.’ Stylistically, we wanted to convey our personalities. In terms of my movements, it’s all pretty random and spontaneous, but in watching myself it’s almost like I’ve got this slouchy Neanderthalic personality that I never really quite noticed. I really wanted them to capture more of that. I told them to make me look even more primate then I already am.” On getting in shape for tour: "In a band like Metallica, the work ethic is strong so physically you have to be in pretty good shape to go up there and do what we do, not just in terms of your core and your legs, but even just your chops and being out there and to run around the stage and execute your parts and act like you’re not in a lot of pain. We have a chiropractor that actually travels with us. It’s not like we’re 25 anymore. Everybody’s got their thing. Lars likes to go running for about a half-hour a day. Kirk does a lot of yoga. James and I have a cardio kick class in San Francisco. His wife and him go and I sometimes go with my wife. That gives us an opportunity to interact in a cardio kick manner, which is really good. It’s an hour of intense, almost martial arts oriented regime along with an aerobic style of a workout." On the leftovers from Death Magnetic: "We had to decide out of 14 tracks to narrow it down to 10. One of the tracks we didn’t get a chance to finish was quite possibly the heaviest track on the album. You don’t have all of the time in the world. There’s a scheduling process. We’re writing a lot actually. We have a jam room before every show. Someone like Hetfield is a riff machine. He plugs in a guitar cable or turns a knob and five seconds into it he comes up with this massive riff. We have no shortage of ideas. In the world of rock bands that have been around for awhile, it can be difficult sometimes to become inspired. You’ve found situations where bands have hired outside writers to keep the machine going. If anything we have too many ideas and we try to force them all into one song. I think that’s a great thing for Metallica."

On Saturday, my roommate told everybody about his second interaction with the Love Language’s Stuart McLamb. As the story goes, Keith saw the lanky singer/guitarist wearing the same once-white V-neck t-shirt for the second day in a row, walked up to him, and asked, “Did you only bring one shirt on tour?” In the same spirit as the lazy strum the North Carolina youngster brings to his acoustic, McLamb turned and replied, “Hey, man. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” An hour after their afternoon set at Peckerheads, I watched McLamb and his band shaking tambourines and banging snare drums in the crowd while King Khan & the Shrines set fire to the stage. Unlike Austin City Limits, which turns the city into one unified front celebrating a specific culture of recreation and entertainment, South by Southwest is a week largely undefined. Ask any hip-hopper who they saw in Zilker Park last September and they’ll list a similar lineup: Del the Funky Homosapien, NERD, Erykah Badu, Bavu Blakes, Gnarls Barkley. Probably tried to get into the Cool Kids show at Mohawk late Friday night. That’s a cakewalk after this weekend. Thursday alone, Talib Kweli and Hi-Tek slung Rawkus magic at the Scoot Inn with his Blacksmith Entertainment squad; Big Boi and K’Naan lit up Austin Music Hall; some of the best new alternative Left Coast material was on display at Back Alley Social and Karma Lounge in Pacific Division and U-N-I; and the always on-point Rhymesayers crew was chilling at Habana Bar Backyard. Getting a good look at all the deserving acts wasn’t just wishful thinking; it was downright impossible.

Another South by Southwest has flown by and now Geezerville is experiencing its annual post-event depression. I keep thinking, "I need to get out of the house!" Here are some highlights. First, it has nothing to do with SXSW, but big news came out in the middle of it. If you haven’t read Joe Gracey’s latest post over at Graceyland, check it out and be prepared to shed tears of joy. The band I saw the most was Minneapolis’ Romantica. I know, a horrible name that makes them sound like some sort of techno act. In reality, they’re a fourpiece led by Irishman Ben Kyle with a brand of lush Americana that modulates between Lloyd Cole and Ryan Adams. Carrie Rodriguez joined them for a song during the Twangfest party on Saturday and they’ll be touring with her this spring. The scene in the parking lot of the San Jose Hotel on Friday night was astounding. Alejandro Escovedo, who had a full orchestra with horns and backing singers, managed to get the crowd that spilled onto South Congress to stop talking for a few minutes. His older songs still ring truest, especially with the orchestral arrangements, but for me it was the top event of the weekend.

Longtime local guitarist Mel Brown, 69, a regular in the Antone’s house band of the 1980s, died on Friday of complications from emphysema in Kitchener, Ontario. Born in Jackson, Mississippi on October 7, 1939, Brown was best known for his decadelong stint with Bobby Blue Bland, but also performed alongside Stevie Ray Vaughan and Willie Nelson, among others, and issued a series of solo albums for Impulse before his tenure in Austin. The bluesman produced and performed as part of the Silent Partners, whose lone album, If It’s All Night, It’s All Right, was released by Antone’s Records in 1989. A memorial service will be held at the Ratz-Dechtel Funeral Home in Kitchener, Ontario on April 4, with visitation on April 2 and 3.

In the Music issue of the Oxford American, former No Depression editor Grant Alden contributed an article on the fall of the critic, or more accurately, the fall of his job as critic. No Depression was a landmark music magazine, responsible for defining alt.country in the 1990s and fostering the reemergence of Americana to its current thriving state. I lamented its folding as a bi-monthly publication last year (it has currently been revived as a quarterly “bookazine” published by UT Press), both for the loss of its thorough, extended features and coverage of regional artists that remain largely obscure. The magazine briefly tried to continue its mission online, but it was clear the editors’ hearts were not into online publishing.