Nearly 40 years of Led Zeppelin bootlegs prove beyond a scintilla of doubt that the second greatest English quartet were a mixed bag live. Jimmy Page could crack open terra firma one night, then the band would sputter like a Studebaker the next. My lovingly illicited new $28 DVD, 126 reunion minutes in London’s O2 Arena last December 10, hasn’t changed the tune.

Practically shot from atop the flagpole crowning the 20,000-plus seater, Zeppelin’s return to this mortal plane – in this case – initially testifies to (ahem) documentarian resolve, the zoom capabilities of this particularly eye in the sky, and judicious use of the next fellow’s shaggy head as a shield from view. When the band’s Recorder of History issues the concert out of his Les Paul laboratory, the second Led Zeppelin DVD of the millennial age will no doubt rival 2005’s Pink Floyd reunion on the Live 8 DVD box. Until then, this bird’s eye view affords dispassionate observation of a once-in-a-lifetime rock & roll convergence. There may well be a Zeppelin reunion tour as Page has said he wants, but there will only ever be this one show played by these four individuals for a man who changed music history as seismically as the group he put his faith in.

There’s a style of facial hair known as a hipster, defined as the separate growths of a mustache, soul patch, and chin beard. While the local search for a hipster sporting a hipster was fruitless, I did start to notice a lot of dudes are rocking facial hair.

Then I met local musician Bryan Nelson, who appeared on our Oct. 19, 2007, cover. In addition to producing, engineering, and playing in Gorch Fock and the Little Bicycles, the guy has a 29-inch beard. A bright-orange one.

Intrigued, I asked to photograph him. It snowballed from there. Nelson told me he was "sponsoring" beards for Misprint's 2nd Annual Beard and Moustache Contest, which went down last Saturday at Club de Ville. I learned a few things:

1) It truly is an art.
2) Ladies love the facial locks.
3) Some ladies don't mind wearing the facial locks.

Click through the image gallery, collected from the Misprint contest and Rio Rita's recent gear swap, for all the handlebar you can handle.

Journalist, blogger, promoter, radio host, and all-around hustler Matt Sonzala was reppin' the Houston hip-hop scene way before anyone outside the 281 area code knew the names Paul Wall and Mike Jones. Sonzala has been booking hip-hop artists for South by Southwest for several years but was recently hired on full-time. More than 150 hip-hop acts take the stage in Austin from March 12 to 16, and whether they are living legends or local unknowns, Sonzala is the man responsible for getting them on schedule. Bump & Hustle caught up with him last week to talk about the fest's hip-hop lineup.

Bump & Hustle: What are you most excited about this year?
Matt Sonzala: David Banner and Killer Mike doing a panel together at the Carver Center on Saturday [March 15]. Before they go on, I’m showing a film called Slingshot Hip Hop, a documentary about hip-hop in Palestine, and another movie called I Love Hip Hop in Morocco. After that there’s going to be a performance by World Trade, which is Bavu Blakes and Element 7D. Also, having Bun B and the whole UGK family is very exciting.

Radiohead has confirmed a few dates and venues for the first leg of its U.S. tour behind latest In Rainbows. Thom Yorke and company visit Houston's Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion May 17 and Dallas' recently renamed Superpages.com Center the following evening. No opening artists or Austin dates have been announced. Presale tickets are scheduled to go on sale Thursday through W.A.S.T.E., with general tickets becoming available Feb. 16.

It’s Saturday night before Valentine’s Day and I’m spending it with the man I’ve spent more Saturday nights with than all my husbands and boyfriends combined. He’s been married all these years so it’s been a little dicey, but we’ve managed just fine. We even got his wife to let me “borrow” him for a very public annual event for about twenty-five years, and since I was often married or attached, it looked perfectly innocent.

And in that corny kind of Same Time, Next Year way, there was always that moment when he and I would stand together in front of hundreds of people once a year. No one knew about those Saturday nights, those precious hours after dinner and before midnight. During the two years I lived in Hawaii, my friend E.A. acted as go-between and would record him sending “messages” to me, because his voice is so divine. Sometimes we even spent Tuesday and Wednesday evenings together. And to think it all started on a small, left-of-the-dial radio station in Austin, Texas.

The mirror behind the Mohawk’s inside stage produces an oddly unsettling effect. The frosted glass reflects another world, one paralleling its own wood and brick reality. The audience stares dumbed upon themselves, and the performer is left naked and open in the hindsight. Seated before the full room with only her acoustic guitar Wednesday night, it seemed an appropriate environment for Nina Nastasia.

The New Yorker’s songs have always exposed an unnerving intimacy, her powerful voice confidently pitching high and whispering soft in a confessional paradoxically strengthened in her own insecurities. Yet there was also an easy reciprocation from the crowd, who seemed largely her friends, in the discarding of hard stances, the following of her intimations through the looking glass.

Richard Kern won’t be winning an Academy Award anytime soon. Or an Independent Spirit Award, for that matter. You won’t hear his name in a list alongside Jim Jarmusch, Paul Thomas Anderson, and John Waters. But he is, nonetheless, a cultural icon and a purveyor of the cinema of transgression (read Marc Savlov’s 2004 interview with Kern, “Transcending Transgression”). Beginning in the Eighties as an erotic filmmaker shooting people like Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins, Kern is probably best known in record stores as the man who created the cover to Sonic Youth highlight EVOL.

Throughout the last three decades, Kern has branched out into music videos (SY’s “Death Valley 69,” King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”), art shows, and zines, but he always kept at least one, um, member in erotic photography. Or in the case of the 280 glossy pages of his new photo book, Action (Taschen Books, $39.99), straight-up pornography.

And no, there’s nothing immoral or unethical about it. Kern’s photographs are beautifully shot and executed and oftentimes quite interesting: A (very) young woman squats down innocently and partially clothed grasping a trio of perfectly white eggs; another chews on a packet of birth-control pills while laying statically on a rumpled bed. The contrast is humorous and ironic. There’s no doubt that Kern has the talent.

Before January recedes too far in the rear view mirror, I wanted to point out two releases from last month worth checking out.

Ray Bonneville’s Goin’ by Feel (Red House) has an Austin connection, co-produced by Gurf Morlix and partially recorded here. Born in Canada and raised in the States, Bonneville's a songwriter and guitarist with a solid buzz among folkies of all stripes, and with this disc it’s easy to see why. A bluesman in the same vein as J.J. Cale and a storyteller like John Hiatt, his sixth disc is funky and dark, filled with interesting characters and spare yet solid grooves. In another Austin connection, “I Am the Big Easy,” a potent tribute to post-Katrina New Orleans, features Eliza Gilkyson on backing vocals. If you’ve never heard of Bonneville, this is an excellent introduction to his brand of gritty Americana.

MVD Visual has been releasing an excellent slew of music DVDs lately, and the brand spanking new Flipper Live is a true bone(r) for any fan. The quartet’s logo had them forever pegged as a hardcore band, but Flipper was seriously not, at least within the West Coast definition. They loosely existed with the realms of new wave, noise, and punk, all rolled into a sloppy, hot mess. The sound of grunge to come. Plus, they had a sense of humor.

Bassist/vocalist Will Shatter died in 1987, and replacement bassist John Dougherty died in 1995. Singer Bruce Loose once said Flipper was like Spinal Tap, except the bassists kept dying. Krist Novoselic just joined the band, which reunited in '05, so maybe this one will stick and Flipper’s recent sporadic live shows will become less so.

Yes, but the DVD. A 1980 Berkeley concert reveals the early incarnation of Flipper; Bruce Loose still has acne on his face. “Low Rider” (gotta love that sax solo),“Love Canal,” and a drunken performance of “The Wheel,” notable if only to see the crowd, which is even drunker than the band, are all indelible marks of a band on to ... something.