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For years, it bugged Motion City Soundtrack frontman Justin Pierre that he couldn’t fully replicate the sound of the band’s records live. “Some people can go on day after day; they can just yell, scream, do whatever, not do anything, and then they sing, they sound perfect and brilliant. And those people have upset me because I want to be that guy,” Pierre tells Rolling Stone. “And unfortunately for me, I’m not that guy.” But as MCS get ready to kick off a tour in support of their major-label debut, the Mark Hoppus-produced My Dinosaur Life, Pierre is finally growing more comfortable with the unexpected elements of a live show.

One unexpected event has already struck: Pierre lost his voice while on tour overseas last month, and though vocal rest and a few days off at home in Minnesota to recharge have helped, Pierre says it’s still not where he’d like it to be as the band prepares to play the first show on their “Dino Initiative” tour tonight. Named after Lost’s Dharma Initiative — a move fitting for the band’s pop sound and frequently tongue-in-cheek lyrics — the month-long trek will find MCS mixing longtime live staples with tunes from the new record, culminating with a set at the annual Bamboozle festival.

Two nights before Motion City Soundtrack play their own material, they’ll tackle a set of Nine Inch Nails songs as a part of the fest’s Hoodwink pre-show (Say Anything will cover the Misfits and Saves the Day will perform Weezer’s Pinkerton at the fest, too). While the band as a whole are fans of Trent Reznor and Co., Pierre reveals bassist Matt Taylor is in charge of MCS’ tribute set, which will likely include “Closer,” “Head Like a Hole” and Pierre’s personal favorite, “Perfect Drug.”

“I don’t know if people would put Nine Inch Nails and Motion City Soundtrack in the same room together,” Pierre acknowledges. “But it actually feels like it makes a whole lot of sense that we’re doing this just based on the material of what the songs are about. It’s crazy how much I relate to them even now.”

While the NIN songs likely won’t appear in MCS’ set, Pierre says fan requests via Twitter and band meet-and-greets may help determine the songs played each night. Even still, some songs from Dinosaur may not make the cut — or will they? “We want to play them, but we want to do it right,” Pierre says. “Or maybe we’ll just wing it and see what happens.”

Photo: Eichner/WireImage

Jeff Buckley’s music may be joining the Who and Green Day on Broadway thanks to a new show that fuses his songs with William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The Last Goodbye was first conceived three years ago by Michael Kimmel, a New York director and theater professor who started up the project when he noticed how uncannily well Buckley’s lyrics accented the Bard’s language. With approval from Buckley’s estate, Kimmel created a musical using “New Year’s Prayer,” “So Real” and “Eternal Life” and other songs from the singer-songwriter’s catalog to further the classic play’s tale of ill-fated love.

Look back at more rockers lost before their time.

“Jeff’s music takes this idea of young emotion and passion to an entirely different level that we haven’t seen with the play before,” Kimmel explains. “What I love about the show is that it’s this great merging of a really strong writer and an amazing musician.” After well-received concert readings in New York last spring, Kimmel and his creative team are finalizing plans for a regional staging later this year. Interest from commercial producers has sparked hope for a Broadway transfer during the 2010-2011 season, but Kimmel isn’t planning too far ahead: “All the attention the piece has gotten has been really exciting, but for us, it’s about getting it right.”

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Photo: Coppola/Getty

John Mayer the musician has been carefully cultivating John Mayer the brand over the last 10 years. He’s merged his acoustic singer-songwriter persona with his blues-virtuoso alter-ego, developed the logos on his tour T-shirts and spat out streams of 140-character tweets that broadcast his most off-the-cuff musings. But though he clearly knows how to get results on his own terms, sometimes the terms aren’t his to define — and as his recent Playboy misadventure demonstrated, even Mayer can hit a painfully wrong note. But at a pair of packed shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden late last week, Mayer proved sometimes he’s able to just let his music do the talking.

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“You’re looking at the clean me,” Mayer announced midway through Thursday night’s set. Then he launched into a solo acoustic medley of “My Stupid Mouth,” “Daughters” and “3X5″ that was immediately followed by a groovy cover of Bill Withers’ “Ain’t No Sunshine” on electric guitar. It was an impressive display of his sharp guitar playing, appealing sing-alongs and personable wit, and the audience responded generously. Mayer was clearly grateful for the crowd’s warmth. “It means the world to me you’re here,” he said on Friday. “I mean it from the bottom of my dumb heart.”

Mayer was less concerned with sending messages via his song selection than picking tracks that showed off his evolution as an artist: the acoustic (”Why Georgia”), the bluesy (”Crossroads”), the groovy (”Vultures”), the heartbroken (”Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”) and the hopeful (”Perfectly Lonely”). Mayer also acknowledged his inspirations with covers of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’ ” and Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” which he cleverly slipped into the Mac-flavored “Half of My Heart.”

Though his winter arena tour comes with hi-tech production — a massive lighting rig, mesh curtain and a giant projection screen — Mayer switched the set up each night, keeping the focus on the music. On Thursday, he honored a fan chant with an impromptu version of his love letter to the city, Room for Squares‘ “City Love,” and pulled in lyrics from Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” during “Gravity.” On Friday he exuded a more relaxed energy, breaking out a sultry take on “I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)” and a buoyant “Good Love Is on the Way.”

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On both nights, Mayer seemed to savor the audience’s reaction to the line “It’s a long night in New York City” from “Who Says.” And perhaps feeling safe in his adopted hometown, Mayer got vulnerable during Friday’s show-closing “Gravity,” and debuted new lyrics that seem inspired by his Playboy fallout. He explained his new theory, that “lovelessness leads to loneliness, which leads to sadness, which leads to anger, which leads to hate” and spoke of imperfect batting averages. Then he sang:

“When you got hurt/it made you beautiful/the cracks around your heart/they let the light shine through./When you got hurt/in pieces on the floor/put them back together/even better than before”

The moment over, he finished the show in expected Mayer fashion: with an explosive solo that had him jamming on his knees with his guitar on the floor, moving forward, in the best way he knows how.

Set Lists:

Thursday, February 25th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Crossroads”
“Vultures”
“No Such Thing”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”
“Assassin”
“My Stupid Mouth” -> “Daughters” -> “3×5″ (medley)
“Ain’t No Sunshine”
“Waiting on the World to Change”
“Bigger Than My Body”
“Why Georgia”
“City Love” (tease)
“Gravity”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Friends, Lovers or Nothing”

Friday, February 26th:
“Heartbreak Warfare”
“Good Love is On the Way”
“Vultures”
“Perfectly Lonely”
“I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)”
“Comfortable”
“Free Fallin’”
“Waiting On The World To Change (w/ Michael Franti)”
“Assassin”
“Crossroads”
“Belief”
“Half of My Heart”
“Why Georgia”
“No Such Thing”
Encore:
“Who Says”
“Gravity”

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Photo: Becker/FOX
Simon Cowell has one requirement for his replacement on American Idol: “My role on the show is somebody who has run a successful record label,” he told reporters during a conference call last night. “This person, specifically, has got to have a lot of experience in the music industry.”

Cowell says managers, artists and A&R representatives are solid candidates — with a caveat. When Rolling Stone mentioned producer Steve Lillywhite’s campaign for the job (his credentials? “I have spent 30 years telling Bono what to do”) Cowell asked us to assess the producer’s looks. “You’ve got to be good looking,” he explained with a laugh. As for the other big names who’ve publicly thrown their hats in for the gig, Cowell says he’s “fairly certain” no one on Idol’s end has approached Howard Stern and that the shock jock’s resume is dubious. “He plays records,” Cowell says. “But he doesn’t seem to have any of these qualifications.” On the other hand, he tells RS Perez Hilton “would be funny. He’s got good taste in music and he’s a personality. It could work.”

Cowell dispelled rumors of a feud between himself and new judge Ellen DeGeneres, saying he doesn’t know the comic that well yet but can vouch for why she’s a good judge: “She’s very responsible for people she has performing on her own show, she loves music and she’s been an artist.” And he addressed the elimination of Top 24 contestant Chris Golightly, saying he was unaware of the reason for the singer’s early disqualification.

Cowell says he has a wish list for the next few months. He’d like to see Lady Gaga, who he calls “the most relevant pop star in the world at the moment,” as a guest judge, admits he’d love to find his own Taylor Swift to win the competition (a veiled nod to self-proclaimed country starlet Haeley Vaughn?) and, of course, keep his spot as the final voice when the judges offer their criticism. “I want to go out on a high; It’s my last season, I want it to be successful and I’m going to do everything I can to make it happen.”

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Photo: Jiro Schneider

Hanson have been striving to integrate the smooth music they grew up on — Billy Joel, Steve Winwood and classic Stax and Motown records — into their pop-rock sound, and on their upcoming fifth album Shout It Out (due June 1st) the trio of brothers push their love of soul and R&B to the next level. Michael Jackson’s horn arranger Jerry Hey and funk brother Bob Babbitt guest on the record, which they laid down in El Paso, Texas, last April and finished up in studios in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Hollywood.

“The album title stood out early on in the record process as a phrase that helped put all those elements into one simple statement,” Taylor Hanson tells Rolling Stone. “The record is built like a lot of records from ’60s and ’70s. From the beginning of the writing process, it felt like the kind of record we could have old school horn parts on.” Working with Hey was a reunion of sorts since he’d also arranged horns on their 2004 release Underneath. But when it came time to team with Babbitt, Hanson says the band benefited from a few “lucky calls” made by industry vet/drummer Steve Jordan and former Michael Jackson music director Michael Beardon to hook them up.

Hanson says Babbitt helped the band add movement to the record, which reflected their larger goals for Shout. “I want to be able to talk about changing the world through your actions and being a generation that is aware and a force to be reckoned with — and at the same time be dancing,” Hanson says, adding that the band’s last LP — 2007’s The Walk — was tied to the band’s experiences in South Africa and its fight to raise money for AIDS awareness. “This record is more buoyant.”

To kick off Shout It Out, Hanson are performing each of their albums in chronological order over a five-night stand in New York City at the end of April. The sold-out shows will be streamed online, and Hanson says the band has locked in guest appearances from musicians who have played on previous Hanson records — a pool that includes blues guitarist Jonny Lang, Sly & the Family Stone member Rose Stone and singer-songwriter Matthew Sweet.

“By going back for a second, it creates a platform that allows you to hear the new record in perspective. In the end, you’ll hear how the songwriting and who we are has never changed,” Hanson explains. “With the new record, we’ve set forth the path we’re on and we’re really comfortable with it. We’re not trying to add anything new. For better or for worse, this is a written, performed, composed by Hanson album.”

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