Though much of the buzz (for better or worse) for the last few days has been for the emotionally charged audition of Chris Medina back in Milwaukee, after spending two days in Nashville -- only the second time the show has made it to Music City -- judge Steven Tyler proclaimed he thinks they may have found “the one.”

Quite a promising statement for such an early phase of the competition (there is still a few more rounds of auditions before Hollywood Week), despite it coming from one of rock’s elder statesmen, who’s undoubtedly seen his fair share of talented vocalists on the road.

The judges made one thing clear when they arrived to the famed Ryman Auditorium, former home of the Grand Ole Opry: They were hoping to find someone to fill Carrie Underwood’s multiplatinum heels. 

Johnny Rotten has lived in Los Angeles for the last two decades, and for a time considered his post-Sex Pistols project Public Image Ltd to be an L.A. band, he told The Times recently when he loaded into the passenger side of an old Volvo to get ferried to a video interview downtown. If any of that information is news to you, the video above will perhaps serve you well. In it, Lydon, whose work with the aforementioned two bands transformed rock music in myriad ways over the course of the 1970s and '80s, is his typically acerbic self.

The punk archetype, who turns 55 on Monday, pulled no punches over the course of two hours in the car and at The Times building, expecially when the subject of the current breed of punk bands came up. Specifically, Green Day, whose music Rotten apparently dislikes.

Said Lydon when asked about his inheritors: "Many of the punk bands are cop-outs and imitators and have made it easy for the likes of Green Peace -- Green Day, who I hate. I really ... I can’t stand them. To me, they’re like coat hangers, and haven’t earned the right, they haven’t earned the wings, to be wearing the mantle of punk. They haven’t had to go through the violence, and the hate, and the animosity that us chaps way back when had to put up with. We had to fight for every single footstep."

“Cause when you're 15 and somebody tells you they love you / You're gonna believe them / And when you're 15, don't forget to look before you fall / I've found time can heal most anything / And you just might find who you're supposed to be / I didn't know who I was supposed to be at 15” – Taylor Swift, “Fifteen”

There is something about youth that has the American Idol judges desperate to dole out golden tickets.

Call it the Justin Bieber effect, call it cuteness, you might even call it pity, but the judges' affinity for teens –- specifically 15-year-olds (the show's new lowered minimum age) -- reached a fever pitch when the show ventured to Milwaukee for a round of tryouts.

As host Ryan Seacrest pointed out, every single 15-year-old that auditioned in Milwaukee received that coveted golden pass to Hollywood.

With viewers being treated to a operatic tribute to Bieber’s hit, “Baby,” Seacrest acknowledged that the pint-sized star's lightning-quick rise was a main motivator for the show to lower the age limit from 16 to 15. This would undoubtedly usher in an influx of Beiber-like prodigies, and Seacrest said, “They've certainly delivered so far on the road."

But what exactly constitutes delivered?

Though Bieber has enjoyed unparalleled success in a strugglingmusic industry, he built up a hefty fan base with an abundance of popular YouTube videos, which gave him a foundation of fans to pull from when it came time for his debut. "Idol," however, provides little backstory for each contestant during the audition rounds, choosing to focus on tear-jerkers. 

Last year, I spent a bit of time on a fairly treacherous-looking video set with the local noise-punks No Age. On Thursday, they released that video, for the single "Fever Dreaming" off their recent album "Everything In between." The clip, directed by Patrick Daughters, is one long tracking shot that uses the edge of the camera frame to torment Dean Spunt and Randy Randall with the encroaching threat of --  well, you'll see. But a fever dream is pretty far down the list of maladies they're suffering from by the end.

-- August Brown     

Pop & Hiss published Part One of a conversation among L.A. singer Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast, Nathan Williams of Wavves (who's Cosentino's boyfriend), and writer Matt Diehl last week, but the interaction was a little too long to digest all at once -- and we even edited some of it out. Still, it was an entertaining, pull-no-punches roundtable totally worthy of publication, so what follows is the conclusion. The pair are in the midst of their first-ever duel-headlining tour, which arrives in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday before venturing up the Eastern Seaboard:  

1/27, Tallahassee, Fla. (Club Downunder)
1/28, Athens, Ga. (40 Watt Club)
1/29, Carrboro, N.C. (Cat's Cradle)
1/31, Washington (9:30 Club)
2/1, Philadelphia (Starlight Ballroom)
2/2, New York (Webster Hall)
2/3, Brooklyn (Music Hall of Williamsburg)

For a full list of the tour, check here. The pair arrives at the Music Box on Feb. 24. (Note: the freewheeling conversation contained a certain amount of cussing, some words of which we've excised from our relatively family-friendly blog.)

Matt Diehl/Los Angeles Times: Last year, you both controversially dissed Katy Perry (“Oh I hate Katy Perry so much, you do not represent California Girls, ...,” Bethany posted on Best Coast’s Twitter). Why the hate?

Bethany Cosentino: We’re not into Katy Perry. I admit that she has good songs; I just don’t like her — I don’t like that whole kitsch thing. But she takes her cat on tour, which is cool.

Nathan Williams: I like “California Girls” — that song is great. I just don’t like that she’s like “I’m a weird girl” when she looks like a model. I love Lady Gaga, however.

LAT: Bethany, are you fan of Bruce Springsteen? I noticed the drum fill that opens [the Best Coast song] “Boyfriend” is the same as the one from Springsteen’s “Badlands”…

NW: I love Bruce Springsteen. When I was first listening to the rough mixes from the album, I was like, “Wait — this is ‘Badlands’!” But Bob [Bruno, Cosentino’s musical partner in Best Coast] had never heard that song before. I pointed it out to him, and he was like, “Oh my God, that’s really weird.”

LAT: A couple of years ago, Wavves was all over the Internet due to a beef and physical fight with members of the band Black Lips. What was that about?

BC: Well, when you’re in a band that’s existed for a long time and you get some amount of success, and then someone else comes around who’s only been around for a year gets bigger than you… It ... people off.

NW: Situations like that do nothing but help you.

Monotonix plays the Echoplex on Thursday, and prospective attendees should hide their beers, protect their cellphones and be prepared to rethink how they view a rock show.

The Israeli trio hates playing on the actual stage, instead opting to rock out in the audience, on the audience, atop the bar, in the bathroom -- and don't be too surprised if the 40-something singer Ami Shalev ventures outside the club to climb a tree and sing from a branch.

They take the antics of Gogol Bordello, the raw power of the Stooges, and meld it with a type of performance art that's equal parts house party, Marx Brothers and chaos.

In support of their new album "Not Yet", produced by legendary engineer Steve Albini, Shalev spoke to Pop & Hiss by telephone, noticeably happy with their sophomore offering, released through Drag City on Tuesday.

The note Lucinda Williams sent when I asked Wednesday for her reflections about Louvin Brothers singer Charlie Louvin, on getting word of his death at age 83 from pancreatic cancer, was exceptionally touching, and warm and funny.

I quoted just part of it in the obituary I wrote for Thursday's paper, but the whole thing is worth sharing:

"I got word of Charlie Louvin's passing today, which is also my birthday. Losing Charlie means that we have lost one of the last of the founding fathers of honest-to-god country music. Charlie was a legend as one half of the Louvin Brothers and left a deep impression on me. I had the honor of working with him in the studio and touring with him.

"Every show would end with the two of us trading out verses on his song, 'When I Stop Dreaming' followed by my song 'Get Right With God,'" Williams wrote in her e-mail, "Charlie loved that song and he loved to dance and as the band rocked out, he would grab my arms and spin me around.

"One time we were performing in Kansas City outdoors and it was very windy that evening. Charlie's set list kept blowing away. At one point, he'd finally had enough and he grabbed his pocket knife and planted that thing right through the set list into the stage floor to keep it from blowing away. Later, that same night, after the show, we sat on the bus and, with sadness in his eyes, he told us that, on the way to Kansas City, we had driven right by the milepost where his brother, Ira, had been killed in a car wreck.

"Charlie was eternally youthful, full of spitfire, vim and vigor and, like Hank Williams, was a true punk, in the best sense of the word. We will miss Charlie but like he said, shortly before he left us, 'I'm ready to go home.'"

It's a simple tweet that Coachella posted a half-hour ago, one that perhaps crushes the dreams of procrastinating and/or stoned music fans everywhere:

“No, we don’t have any passes left to release, kthxbye”

That's right: The festival in the desert is sold out. Where now? Craigslist? Perhaps, but before you make any hasty decisions, be aware that counterfeiters have been known to prey on desperate (and/or stoned) concertgoers looking for passes at the site.

Just be careful out there.

-- Randall Roberts

So you've got glitter on your eyes, your stockings ripped all up the side and looking (if you do say so yourself) sick and sexy-fied in preparation for local pop tart Ke$ha's spring tour stop in L.A. on May 6 at the Hollywood Palladium. But you decided to wait and buy tickets after spending all your pocket change on dental-hygiene-related Jack Daniels expenses. Tough luck, because she just sold out the entirety of her first headlining venture this spring in support of her mini-album, "Cannibal."  

Fortunately for your wounded, sparkle-spattered pride, her new single "Blow" makes radio rounds next week. But on a side note, am I the only one who thinks she would just be an awesome late addition to this year's Coachella? She could finally back up all that hipster boy-heart baiting in person.

-- August Brown 

A list of upcoming concerts across the Southland, with on-sale dates in parentheses.

Empire Polo Club

The Big 4 with Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth, April 23 (Fri.)

Gibson Amphitheatre

Janet Jackson, April 16 (Fri.)

Club Nokia

Chris Young and Gretchen Wilson, Feb. 15; Dierks Bentley, April 1; Echo & the Bunnymen, May 21; the Script, May 27 (Fri.)

Music Box

Psychedelic Furs, April 30 (Fri.)

Chicago's rock 'n' roll shape-shifters Wilco have formed their own label,  dBpm Records, whose releases will be distributed and marketed by eclectic Silver Lake independent Anti- Records. A full announcement is expected soon.

"This is an idea we've discussed for years,” Wilco's Jeff Tweedy said via his publicist. “We really like doing things ourselves, so having our own label feels pretty natural to me. And, to be working with Anti- -- a label that was started by a punk rock guy to sell his own records -- seems like a perfect fit for us.” 

Wilco became free agents after its 2009 Nonesuch release, "Wilco (The Album)," and the move marks not only a shift to the independent world for the band, but also quite possibly Anti-'s biggest coup since inking Tom Waits, whose 1999 album,  "Mule Variations," was the label's first release. Anti- is an offshoot of Epitaph Records, the punk label founded by Bad Religion's Brett Gurewitz. 

A timetable has not yet been given for a new album. An Anti- spokeswoman could not be reached for comment early Wednesday afternoon. Wilco spokeswoman Deb Bernardini said the band is currently recording its follow-up to "Wilco (The Album)" in Chicago.

The Wilco camp already has a connection with Anti-. Wilco architect Tweedy produced the most recent album from Chicago soul legend Mavis Staples, "You Are Not Alone," which was released last year on the label. At the time, Pop & Hiss spoke with Tweedy and asked the singer about the possibility of signing with Anti-, an adventurous imprint that's home to rock legends (Roky Erickson), rock weirdos (Waits), rock elegance (Neko Case) and rock mercenaries (Grinderman). 

"I think they’re pretty smart," Tweedy said at the time. "I think they’re music lovers. I really respond to it. It’s very similar to the way I am. It’s a lot more like the way the world exists now than when I was growing up. There are less lines drawn in the sand between genres. Punk rock was a line in the sand for a lot of kids when I was growing up." 

Tweedy had hinted that the band would soon be going the indie route. In the summer of 2010, Tweedy told Billboard that it "seems unlikely that we will be under the umbrella of a major label." Indeed, Wilco is already one of the more self-sufficient working rock bands. The band staged its first-ever festival, Solid Sound, in North Adams, Mass., last year, and will be bringing Solid Sound back to the area for Round 2 in June.

"As we reached the end of our last deal, it felt like it was time for a change, and the one thing we were certain we did NOT want to do was to sign another traditional recording agreement," said manager Tony Margherita via a written statement. "Our discussions with Anti-, coming on the back of a great experience working with them on the Mavis Staples record, led us to thinking we might be able to come up with something quite different from the norm that could potentially be better for us and, frankly, a lot more interesting."

Margherita will oversee the label, based in Easthampton, Mass. The label will release "all future Wilco recordings and more," according to the statement. As for what the "more" entails, details have not yet been unveiled. 

 
Here’s something we didn’t know about Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam: The laudably bearded former film professor and father of five is actually one of the suavest sex jam singers of recent note. True, the moments of baby-making R&B at the first of his two sold-out nights at the Wiltern on Tuesday came tempered with death and cosmic impermanence and a bit of a ’70s yupster-funk sheen. But Beam wasn’t kidding when he titled his latest album “Kiss Each Other Clean” — his current live set puts heavy emphasis on backseat smooching.

Iron and Wine has undergone one of the more remarkable transformations in indie-folk since 2002’s “The Creek Drank the Cradle,” which is nigh impossible to describe without the words “sepia” and “toned.” Beam’s sound was rooted in adept acoustic fingerpicking, close-harmony whispers and lyrics that evoked rural pleasures and spiritual perils without coming off mawkish.

But after an unexpected hit with a cover of the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights,” he hung a hard left into humid Afro-pop guitars, noisy jazz breakdowns and percussive exotica that complemented his ever-stronger singing. It turned out his intimate pleas sound kind of saucy with a bedsheet-tight backbeat.

“Kiss,” his major-label debut for Warner Bros., is his most sonically adventurous yet, but it posed a particular challenge for this round of touring. How does a low-key folk guy wrangle a dozen-strong backing band into something that can hold the Wiltern for two nights?