Categories: Battle Acts! or Versus

• Dylan & Springsteen LIVE at a Kroger’s near you!

  How ‘the spokesman for a generation’ and ‘the voice of the American working class’ really feel about the things you actually care about!

• STING vs. ELVIS COSTELLO

  The race to betray their “punk rock” roots first and play elitist music began almost immediately

• Cheap Trick vs. All Four Original Members of Asia!

  ‘Don’t Cry’ if Mommy & Daddy just seem a little weird over who to ‘Surrender’ the fun money to this weekend!

• Kelly Clarkson vs. Bob Dylan

  From now on the New Dylan will be a vulnerable girl who doesn’t blow harp, can sing rings around Old Dylan and has a reality show tie-in

• Ashlee Simpson vs. Ashford & Simpson!

  It’s the street fight of the century! Who will win — pop’s latest brat teen titan or sixtysomething soulsters who can’t keep their hands off each other?

• David Bowie vs. Bowie Bonds: Leveraging the Thin White Duke

  With Bowie Bonds performing at an all-time low, everyone’s favorite plastic messiah is under pressure in 2004.

• Pink Floyd vs Johnny Mathis vs Chilling Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House

  Which album gave more chills and thrills?

• Chad & Jeremy vs. Peter & Gordon—What’s the difference, eh?

  Two British duos, two sets of spectacles, please lock me away until I figure this out.

• The ten scariest concept albums of all time

  Back before long-form videos and CD-ROMs existed, musicians used the concept album to overextend their half-baked ideas. Not content with letting one song do its job, groups charged an entire collection with the mission of delivering a single dunderheaded message. What follows are the worst of a very bad lot.

• John Tesh: Entertainment, good night?

  No kidding, I’ve had a long-standing fear of the Tesh and it’s not for the same reason that New York woman used to go into epileptic fits every time she heard Mary Hart’s perky voice. During a 1995 phone interview with the former TV talking head, he got mad at me for comparing his working relationship with his wife, co-executive producer Connie Sellecca, to a John and Yoko — and I meant it in the nicest possible way. “I take [...]