John Lennon isn’t the only rock star with a 70th birthday in 2010. Frank Zappa would have hit 7-0 today, Dec. 21, and to mark the occasion his estate has assembled a birthday bundle of a dozen recordings that is now up on iTunes.

“The Frank Zappa Aaafnraaaa Collection” includes half a dozen tracks from the man himself (“Treacherous Cretins,” “My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama” and “City of Tiny Lites”), a few featuring offspring Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa plus a couple of salutes to the influential composer, guitarist and singer by Macy Gray (“Your Mouth”) and a compendium of admirers including DMC, Talib Kweli and MMM.

The live rendition of “City of Tiny Lites” was recorded in 1978 at London’s Hammersmith Odeon and is drawn from the three-CD "Frank Zappa: Hammersmith Odeon" set released earlier this month, also in conjunction with the 70th anniversary of his birth. Zappa's widow, Gail, said none of the tracks had been previously released. Another live track on the new "Aaanfraaaa Collection," this one from 1988 -- five years before the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee died of prostate cancer -- captures Zappa’s version of “Stairway to Heaven.”

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions are all about musical history, but the producers of March's fete at the Waldorf Astoria might want to consider playing a current hit to greet the latest batch of inductees. “Raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways — all my underdogs,” Pink sings in the titular chorus of her No.1 song.

The rabble-rousing diva had no way of knowing that her trash anthem would apply so perfectly to those being honored by the Cleveland-based canonizing institution. But the strongest quality shared by 2011's chosen ones is that they're five dark horses, forming a winners' circle that looks different than any the Rock Hall has ever had.

That's not to say that Neil Diamond isn't a towering figure in genre-spanning postwar pop or that Darlene Love doesn't possess one of the signature voices of the girl-group era or that Tom Waits hasn't produced one of the most enduring recorded legacies of the rock era. I would never underestimate Alice Cooper's influence on several generations of theatrical rockers or marginalize New Orleans piano man Dr. John, who has turned on millions to the magic of the Crescent City under that name and as “Mac” Rebennack.

Add to this group one more significant performer, Leon Russell, whose reception of the Musical Excellence Award completes the comeback he's made with the graceful assistance of Elton John, and you have a selection that will mostly please pop aficionados but may also puzzle many. (Two worthy inductees in the nonperformer category were also announced: Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman and Specialty Records head honcho Art Rupe.)

 
Bon Jovi fans, take heart.

New Jersey rocker Jon Bon Jovi may have missed the boat for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction this time around, but he’s in da club as far as President Obama is concerned.

Bon Jovi is one of 25 people newly tapped by the president for the White House Council for Community Solutions, his initiative that seeks to bring together individuals, nonprofit organizations, businesses and government to identify and address community needs.

Obama selected the rocker to be part of the group because of his work through his Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, which has helped create affordable housing for low-income families and individuals. In 2008, the singer and songwriter hosted a fundraiser for Obama at his Garden State home during the presidential campaign.

"These impressive men and women have dedicated their lives and careers to civic engagement and social innovation,” Obama said in a statement the White House issued Tuesday. “I commend them for their outstanding contributions to their communities, and I am confident that they will serve the American people well in their new roles on the White House Council for Community Solutions.  I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead."

The other council members include educators, entrepreneurs, corporate executives and religious leaders.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Jon Bon Jovi performing in Nashville in 2007. Credit: Peter Kramer / Getty Images.

 
 
Tom Waits, Neil Diamond, the Alice Cooper Band, Dr. John and Darlene Love will be welcomed into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next spring, the organization will announce Wednesday.

All five had been long eligible for induction under the hall’s criteria that acts wait at least 25 years after releasing their first recordings. In addition, Jac Holzman and Art Rupe, the founders of Elektra and Specialty Records labels, respectively, are entering the hall as co-recipients of the annual Ahmet Ertegun Award bestowed on influential record executives.

Demonstrating that when Elton John speaks, Rock Hall voters listen, Leon Russell has been selected as the honoree for the new Award for Musical Excellence, previously known as the Sideman category. John had been exceptionally vocal this year when promoting their duet album “The Union” in saying that his Oklahoma-based fellow pianist, singer and songwriter deserved to be in the Hall of Fame.

Of the nominees who were on the final ballot for induction, Bon Jovi, Donna Summer, Chic, Laura Nyro, the Beastie Boys, Donovan, the J. Geils Band, LL Cool J, Joe Tex and Chuck Willis were left to wait for another year to be voted in.

As much as Waits’ induction will be cheered by critics and fans who have long admired his idiosyncratic songs, which often deal with the denizens of seedy bars and low-rent hotels, this year’s choices won’t help mollify those who have criticized the hall for the scant attention it has given rap music since its earliest proponents first became eligible in the last few years.

Dr. John’s selection can be seen both as a vote of confidence in his richly regional gumbo of New Orleans R&B, jazz and rock as well as for his prominence in recent years as an outspoken champion of the Crescent City’s status as a wellspring of musical and cultural riches following the devastation to the region in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Mainstream rock fans are also likely to grouse about the snub of Bon Jovi, even though many music critics have been lukewarm to New Jersey’s catchy but cliché-ridden brand of Springsteen-lite pop-rock.

When cartoonish rock band KISS made the nominee list last year, many fans objected, saying that Cooper, a.k.a. Vincent Furnier, had established the template for outrageously theatrical hard rock and deserved to be voted in first.

The induction ceremony will be held in March in New York.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Tom Waits in concert at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles in 1999. Credit: Los Angeles Times

Some things are eternal. Jerry Lee Lewis, the man, isn’t one of them -- miraculous as it may seem with the Ferriday Fireball delivering seminal rock ‘n’ roll with the power he put across Saturday night at the Fox Theater in Pomona, just four days ahead of his 75th birthday.

Looking across the beaming faces of fans in their teens, 20s and 30s as they lapped up music from a man who had two careers come and go before they were born, it was easy to envision future generations getting the same visceral thrill from this music long after Lewis himself was no longer around.

“I have my favorite bands, but this is the best show I’ve ever seen,” said 26-year-old Bill Burke, seeing the Killer for the first time with his wife, also 26 and both recently discharged from the Army following stints in the Middle East.  He cited O.C. post-hardcore band Thrice at the top of his list, while Karen said she’d gotten hooked on Lewis’ music and life story after seeing an impersonator’s act in Las Vegas, which spurred her to seek out the real deal. “He’s amazing,” she said after the show.

Lewis himself seemed taken Saturday with the fervent response to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” more than half a century after he burst onto the scene with it. Onlookers proved unable to contain themselves as he leaned back in the middle of the song and let his right hand pound the piano’s high notes. If it’s no longer with the fire of youth that once drove him, he still projects a focused intensity.

Want a gig working with a Grammy-winning Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member? Try posting a smart video on YouTube.

That’s how it worked for Daniel Lanois, who recently wrapped up work producing a new album for one of his longtime rock heroes, Neil Young.

Sure, it didn’t hurt that Lanois has seven Grammys of his own and had previously worked with such stellar lights of contemporary pop music as U2, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris and Brian Eno.

Still, it was the YouTube stuff Lanois made with his own band, Black Dub, that inspired Young to reach out to his fellow Canadian about collaborating.

“He called me and he said ‘I could use your help,’ ” Lanois told me over the weekend at his house in Silver Lake. “He said, ‘I saw your Black Dub films on YouTube…. I loved those films. Would you film me and record me doing 10 acoustic songs?' I always wanted to make a Neil Young album. I said I would, of course.”

Their get-together, however, didn’t turn out exactly as Young first proposed it. Instead of 10 acoustic songs, the resulting album, “Le Noise,” which comes out Sept. 28, has just eight songs, only two of them acoustic numbers.

Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 album, “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” is the focal point of an expansive reissue package coming Nov. 16, spanning three CDs and three DVDs containing several hours of audio and video  recorded during and shortly after the making of the album.

“The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story” includes two hours of audio and six hours of film footage shot in the recording studio, a live performance in Houston during the Darkness tour and his 2009 performance of the album in its entirety in New Jersey. There’s also  a new 90-minute documentary by director Thom Zimny on the creation of the album Springsteen made in the wake of his breakthrough success with 1975's "Born to Run."

" 'Darkness' was my 'samurai' record, stripped to the frame and ready to rumble," the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer writes in materials that will accompany the set. "But the music that got left behind was substantial."

That includes 21 songs that will be released in official form for the first time. One of those, “Save My Love,” is streaming starting today on Springsteen's website.

The deluxe package also will include an 80-page notebook with facsimiles of Springsteen’s personal notes. A smaller edition will include just the audio component and will be released on two CDs or four LPs, and the deluxe version alternately will be available with three CDs and three Blu-ray discs.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Bruce Springsteen in 1978. Credit: Columbia Records

Chrissie Hynde will put out her first full-fledged album apart from the Pretenders next month, but don’t call it a solo project.

Hynde has partnered with Welsh singer and songwriter JP Jones on “Fidelity!,” which will be released Aug. 24. It’s credited to JP, Chrissie & the Fairground Boys, and the album is full of bracing rock that Pretenders fans will recognize, as well as some country touches that may surprise those who’ve heard Hynde’s professed aversion to country music over the years.

The album in a sense documents the budding relationship between Hynde, the 58-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, and Jones, who is in his 20s. The 30-something year age gap between them figures into the lead-off track, “Perfect Lover,” in which Hynde sings, “I’ve found my perfect lover but he’s only half my age/He was learning how to stand when I was wearing my first wedding band.”

Word is they met randomly at a party in London and not long after took a trip together to Cuba, where they wrote most of the songs.

“It wasn’t an easy album to make emotionally,” Hynde wrote on their MySpace page, “but writing and singing together was like falling off a log -- the music was pouring out of us. We wrote to each other, about each other, with each other and for each other.”

Hynde and Jones, who played their first gig together in April at Bardot in Hollywood, will make an appearance at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles on Aug. 23 as part of the museum’s “The Drop” series highlighting noteworthy new releases.

The museum's executive director, Robert Santelli, will interview them, and they are then expected to play a few songs from the album. Tickets will go on sale next week, but an on-sale date hasn’t been finalized.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Chrissie Hynde and JP Jones. Credit: C. Taylor Crothers

While spending an afternoon with Tom Petty at his Malibu beach house for Friday's feature on him, I couldn’t resist asking whether he considered himself and the Heartbreakers more part of the history of L.A. rock or that of Florida, where most members of that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band grew up. Yesterday I floated the question to our readership, and now I offer Petty's response.

“We loved L.A.,” Petty said about the band's move across the country in the mid-‘70s. “We wanted to come here because so many of the artists we admired came from here, especially the Byrds and the [Buffalo] Springfield and the Doors, and the Beach Boys — we’re huge Beach Boys fans. …Plus Bernie Leadon had come and Tom Leadon had come, and they’d both found success. They were both making records, and I just followed their trail really.

“I often see us included in Southern [rock]. But honestly, when the Southern rock thing happened, we were long gone for the most part,” he said. “I think we’re really Californians. I’ve been in California longer than I was in Florida. Certainly where you grow up is always going to be deeply embedded in your soul. I don’t know, but sometimes it kind of hurts my feelings that were not included in discussions of Southern California music. The Heartbreakers formed here. We really are an L.A. band.”

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Tom Petty in the garden of his Malibu beach house. Credit: Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times

Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, Jack White, Jerry Seinfeld, the Jonas Brothers and others will pay tribute to Paul McCartney at the White House on June 2 when the ex-Beatle is feted as the latest recipient of the Library of Congress George Gershwin Prize for Popular Song.

The performance will be hosted by President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, and also will include performances by Faith Hill, Herbie Hancock, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dave Grohl and McCartney himself during a presentation that will be recorded for airing July 28 on PBS stations.

McCartney is the third recipient of the Gershwin prize since its inception in 2007 to recognize “the profound and positive effect of popular music on the world’s culture.” The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member follows Paul Simon and Wonder as the first two honorees.

Just one question: Jerry Seinfeld -- what's up with that?

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Paul McCartney at the Hollywood Bowl in March. Credit: Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

After accepting the imposingly named BMI Icon Award on  Tuesday night, rocker John Fogerty strapped on a guitar and blazed like a bullet train through a brief sampling of the even more imposing songbook that earned him the career honor at the performing rights organization's annual dinner at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

“I got a little scared with that ‘icon’ stuff,” the 64-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member said good-naturedly just before peeling off nearly a dozen rock classics such as “Green River,” “Travelin' Band,” “Up Around the Bend,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary,” along with a couple of newer tunes for several hundred fellow songwriters and other members of Broadcast Music Inc., the organization that collects and distributes publishing royalties to songwriters.

As this year’s Icon honoree, Fogerty joins a class of celebrated songwriters that includes Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, the Jacksons and Dolly Parton.

Shortly before the ceremony, Fogerty told me that his interest in songwriting was spurred when he was 3, and his mother gave him a children’s recording of “Camptown Races” and “Oh! Susanna,” taking time to point out the name of the writer of those two American folk standards: Stephen Foster.

“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” he said. “I don’t know why she did that,  but after that I was always attracted to great songwriters, people like Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, who was one of my favorites, Cole Porter and George Gershwin. When I saw the [1946] movie ‘Night and Day’ about Cole Porter, as a kid I thought, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good -- they made a movie about this guy. He must be important.’ ” 

Pop quiz:  How many No. 1 hits did Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Otis Redding score before his death in 1967 in a plane crash?

Answer:  None. 

The R&B; and soul great’s only chart-topping hit was “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which was recorded less than three weeks before his death and released shortly after. And it’s the one song that casual Redding fans might wonder why it doesn’t appear on the new “Otis Redding: Live on the Sunset Strip” album being released Tuesday.

That's because the two-CD set was recorded at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood in April 1966, well before he laid down the track for “Dock of the Bay.” At the time of these fiery performances, Redding’s star was streaking across the pop stratosphere thanks to a rapidly expanding catalog of soon to be classic songs he’d written and recorded  including “These Arms of Mine,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now),” “Mr. Pitiful,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and perhaps the only one on which he just might have been upstaged by another artist’s rendition, “Respect.”

Aretha Franklin’s version, however, was a little over a year away when Redding and his explosive 10-piece band powered through these shows, and you can practically feel the sweat in the room that night.

“Picture a calliope, spouting blasts of sound, and imagine a steam generator in the innards of the calliope, frantically driving the whole mechanism, and you have a fair vision of the 10-piece band led by Otis Redding, which opened at the Whisky A Go Go Thursday night with their massive Southern-style rhythm and blues sound,” Los Angeles Times staffer Pete Johnson wrote at the time in an article that’s reproduced in the 15-page CD booklet.