When the Retribution Gospel Choir set up before the altar of the Central Presbyterian Church at this year’s South by Southwest, the Duluth, MN., trio unleashed a surge of melodic distortion that rattled the sacred rafters. It was a sound far more cohesive and powerful than their first tour through Austin in the summer of 2005, which essentially featured slow-core pioneers Alan Sparhawk of Low and Mark Kozelek of Red House Painters trading amped-up versions of their familiarly mellow tunes. “It was pretty ramshackle,” laughs Sparhawk of the 2005 tour. “In hindsight, now that the band’s grown a little bit and we’ve done a record, I wish we would have buckled down and made that tour even better. But it was fun.” Though Kozelek’s tenure in the band was brief, he produced their eponymous debut and released it through his own Caldo Verde label. Sparhawk, meanwhile, has transformed the Choir from a re-imagined side project to a legitimately bruising force, embracing an explosive sound that lay dormant beneath the sublime subtleties of Low.

1982: I'm driving back home from Omaha, Nebraska, after a day of hanging out with friends at the mall and going to the record store. You still called it that back then. We're listening to the new Judas Priest cassette, Screaming For Vengeance. Two of us chipped in and split the cost as neither had the money to buy it solo. Of the five of us in the car, I alone had seen the Mighty Priest in concert: once at the Austin Opry House in ’77 or so, and once in San Antonio at the Hemisfair Arena. Then I moved to the musical wasteland that was Nebraska. In two years, I went to maybe eight total concerts, and these were 160 mile round trips to Omaha or Lincoln. Months later, Priest toured and I had tickets go unused due to a blinding snowstorm that closed the roads for several days.

In 1992, Freedy Johnston released one of my all-time favorite albums. Can You Fly (Bar/None) remains a watermark of his career with its blend of guitar jangle, exhilarating melodies, and vivid, if slightly obscure, lyrics. He never quite repeated that brilliance, although his major label debut, 1994’s This Perfect World (Elektra), comes close. Except for a live recording, Johnston’s been absent since 2001. But the Nashville resident's just released My Favorite Waste Of Time (Singing Magnet), a collection of cover songs that allows him to have some fun while displaying admirable interpretive skills and that marvelous, reedy voice. Of the disc's ten tunes, the power pop stances work best, with the Marshall Crenshaw-penned title track and sugary take on Matthew Sweet’s “I’ve Been Waiting." A smoke-filled bossa nova version of Cole Porter’s “Night And Day” shows the other side of Johnston.

Chuck D once called hip-hop the black CNN because the music gave a voice to the voiceless. Now that hip-hop is a global phenomenon, it's the CNN, BBC, and Al Jazeera of marginalized people everywhere. The Eastside is the place to be this weekend starting with an early show Thursday at the Scoot Inn. Palestinian trio DAM uses beats and rhymes to protest what they describe as terroristic acts by the Israeli military and government, a massive wall separating the West Bank from Israel, and the repression of a stateless people. The video for “Who’s the Terrorist?” opens with former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark calling Palestinians the most terrorized people on Earth before the group raps in Arabic, “Your countless raping of the Arabs’ soul finally impregnated it, gave birth to your child, his name: Suicide Bomber. And then you call him a terrorist?”

Let’s hear it for American Beat Records, whose have-a-nice-day attitude about the classics reminds us great music didn’t always hit No. 1 and context is crucial in assessing a band’s output. Here are the Impressions, for example, a Chicago-based doo-wop outfit that morphed into the most Motown of the 1960s non-Motown acts, lost their stellar lead vocalists, went on to create notable blaxploitation soundtracks, and became a bellwether for 1970s funk. American Beat collected 10 of the Impressions’ vinyl recordings from 1968-1976 and turned them into five two-fer CDs that track the band from the last recording with Curtis Mayfield through its socially conscious growth. It’s a remarkable arc, and posits the Impressions as one of the most important if less acknowledged black acts. The velvet-voiced Jerry Butler (“For Your Precious Love”) left the group almost as soon as they formed in the late 1950s and Curtis Mayfield stepped up to the lead. Fred Cash and Sam Gooden soon joined as Mayfield developed into their chief composer with hits like 1961’s “Gypsy Woman.” The Impressions’ personality grew around Mayfield’s acute social vision: “People Get Ready” remains a not-so-subtle call to arms for 1965.

A friend of mine recently made me a mixtape for my birthday that included a song by Arthur Russell. I wasn’t familiar with Russell, but “That’s Us/Wild Combination” immediately caught my ear and hasn’t since let go. Russell’s voice moans in melodic reverb, sounding almost disjointed from the bed of electronic beats like a remix of a minimalist composition. It’s beautifully unsettling. I have since dove into as much of Russell’s work as I can find and, thanks to recent reissues of his albums, there is a wealth of amazing material available. Russell passed away from AIDS in 1992, but gets a second look via Matt Wolf's recent documentary, Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, and the new tribute vinyl EP, Four Songs by Arthur Russell, which features Jens Lekman, Taken by Trees (Victoria Bergsman of the Concretes), Vera November, and Joel Gibb of the Hidden Cameras.

DJ Million turned up the volume 30 minutes after Holy Fuck's instrumental beats drifted off the stage and the opening scripted Asian threat to action subsided, and the crowd went epileptic. It had been a year and a half since Maya Arulpragasam last graced the La Zona Rosa stage – before her soaked Austin City Limits set last year – and in that time, M.I.A. turned the world on its ear with her lyrics steeped in politics, world beats, and revolution. I dare you to find a show steeped in gunshots and air horns as fashionable as M.I.A.'s.

Without question, her sophomore LP, Kala (Interscope), released last year, peeled back the ceiling, tossing out everything from dancehall to Bollywood in one gust. Last night was no different. From the opening burn-up of "Bamboo Banga" to last shoot-out "Paper Planes," M.I.A. owned that crowd. I've never seen so many American Apparel-clad twentysomethings aiming guns into the air with smiles as wide as the Indian Ocean.

The ladies came on stage for "Boyz," the gentlemen followed – or more precisely, mixed – for "Birdflu," and everyone sang along to the Pixies-inflected "20 Dollar." True debut Arular (XL) made a quick showing of "Pull Up the People," but the night was all about M.I.A.'s newest crowing glory. That chick had the crowd wrapped around her little finger, and she was loving every minute of it.

By the time the last encore closed, with M.I.A.'s projections up against the wall, La Zona was a sauna, and everyone was giddy, drenched, and laughing. Proof that shows are still fun, music still effective, and no one has to understand what you're saying on stage to get the message. It was awesome. Click through the gallery to see more from the night.

It was announced last week that the Backyard, another venue that's made Austin a great music city, is closing at the end of this year's concert season. The Backyard we once knew hasn't been the same since it was invaded by a strip mall, and just getting in and out of the place has become a nightmare. Last summer, it took more than an hour to travel from the stop light at Bee Cave Road to the parking lot. Thankfully, the night's performer, Norah Jones, held up the show until most people could get in, then commented how bad things had gotten during her performance. When someone with the integrity of John Hiatt, who appeared at the Glenn in 2006, questions from the stage whose idea the parking lot surrounding the venue was, you know there's a problem. In its heyday, the Backyard was as close to perfect as a music venue could be. On a night when the weather was right, the glowing oaks and a Texas sky full of stars were as much a part of the music as whatever was happening on stage. Last week on the Statesman's blog, Michael Corcoran asked for favorite Backyard experiences. Here's five of mine. Funny how they all fall within a couple of years of each other. Let's hope that the promised "new" Backyard they've got planned comes to fruition. Keep in mind that when Liberty Lunch (R.I.P.) closed they announced plans for another venue and we're still waiting for its return.

"You the man, Joe!" Joe Jackson winced as someone shouted that from the balcony of the Paramount Theatre Monday night. I winced too, wondering how often he gets that. But for 90 minutes, he was the man. As Jackson sat alone at the piano during the first song, dressed in a dapper jacket and slacks, he almost looked like a character from Cabaret, his falsetto high and clear. Latest effort Rain, recorded in his adopted home of Berlin, certainly owes much to the city's historical mood swings, but it's also reflective in its sense of isolation. Longtime bassist Graham Maby and drummer Dave Houghton, who have been playing with Jackson since the late 1970s and appear on Rain, then joined him for a crystalline "Steppin' Out" and proceeded to reel in the years: “On Your Radio” and “Different for Girls” from 1979's I’m the Man; “Cancer” and "Chinatown" from 1982’s Night and Day; "Take It Like a Man" from 2003's Volume 4; “King Pleasure Time,” "Solo," and “Invisible Man” from Rain; and an amazing cover of David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)." Jackson replicated the missing guitar of Gary Sanford with his piano to impressive effect, veering between jazz, pop, and new wave effortlessly. Encore closer "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" riled up the already besotted, mostly khaki KGSR crowd, inciting a singalong chorus. Joe just smiled, like you do when you've hit the mark.