Bob Dylan's Tempest comes out Sept. 11, and the first public airing of one of its tracks isn't on NPR or a similarly demographic-appropriate outlet—instead, the stompy bit of blooze "Early Roman Kings" got its debut in a commercial for the Cinemax original series Strike Back, which according to the party line is "a high-octane, globe-spanning thriller with storylines ripped from today's headlines." Hey, any port in a marketing storm! The trailer is below.

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​The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—continues, and you get to vote on who makes it to Round Two. We'll have some first-round results later today, but right now we kick-start the Downtown division with a matchup between its top seed, Bob Dylan, and the hard-driving hardcore act Sick Of It All. Will Bob take this in a walk, or will we see a shocking upset? You can help determine the outcome by casting a vote at Facebook.

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Today Amnesty International releases Chimes Of Freedom, a really, really huge compilation of bob Dylan covers by artists both canonized and obscure. Trying to analyze such a huge undertaking can only be done in one way: Mathematically.

Amount of music in this collection: 73 songs on four CDs, totaling 313 minutes and 24 seconds. (You get three additional songs if you buy it digitally, for an additional eight minutes' worth of music.)

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A king of hip-hop, retaking the penthouse of the album chart with his latest blockbuster.

A middle-of-the-road rock band, reviving a turn-of-the-'90s "alternative" sound that's now squarely mainstream.

A sexagenarian legend who debuted in the '60s and who still captures Boomers' hearts and CD-buying dollars.

And a younger, big-lunged diva, looking to continue her pop dominance after a notable MTV appearance and a blitz of multimedia omnipresence.

I could be describing some of the current inhabitants of the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart. If I were, they would be, respectively: rap king Lil Wayne, who debuted at No. 1 this week with nearly a million in sales; aging alt-funksters the Red Hot Chili Peppers, debuting right behind Wayne at No. 2; '60s ingénue turned veteran diva Barbra Streisand, at No. 9 in her third week in the winners' circle; and vocal powerhouse Adele, hanging in at No. 3 after a commanding MTV Video Music Awards performance that, just this week, sends her ballad "Someone Like You" to No. 1 on the Hot 100.

But I could also be describing four acts who, on this day a decade ago, dropped new, Top 10-destined albums: hip-hop king Jay-Z; lite-grunge revivalists Nickelback; reluctant '60s-generation spokesman Bob Dylan; and pop/MTV queen turned ill-fated actress Mariah Carey.

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Last night's South Park was in large part about the fad/scourge of Tween Wave, a new genre that horrified parents and mobilized kids all across the country. Dubbed as such because it would be the Next Big Thing from 2009 through 2012, it made the phrase "this sounds like shit" quite literal; it basically sounded like someone (or, shudder, multiple people) with really bad indigestion letting the world know about their digestive tract's problems over sorta-dubsteppish beats. But what musical subculture was the episode really making fun of? A clip, and some theories, below.

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(Part One is here.)

So here we are on the once-unthinkable occasion of Dylan turning 70.

When Dylan was starting out, old white men--I mean older than Pete and Woody--were mostly on the wrong side of the Civil Rights movement. Older black men, if they were survivors like Howlin' Wolf or Son House, were people to aspire to. Dylan's version of being young--at least in the beginning--was to emulate the older guys on the folk blues records. Odetta, an older black woman, inspired him to go acoustic. But don't take it from me. Here he was in early '62: "I don't carry myself yet the way that Big Joe Williams, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Lightnin' Hopkins have carried themselves. I hope to be able to someday, but they're older people." This is Dylan at 21, talking to the great Nat Hentoff for the liner notes of his breakthrough Freewheelin' album, the one that started with "Blowin' in the Wind" and included other chestnuts he still performs: "Hard Rain"; "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright"; "Girl From the North Country."

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About a year ago, I was putting a book about Bob Dylan to bed. Since I was looking at year's lead time, my plan was for Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown (Yale) to be released on Dylan's 70th birthday, for obvious reasons. I learned early on at my grandfather's funeral the biblical significance of threescore years and ten. Add two thousand years and the development of modern medicine, and you could say that yesterday's threescore years and ten could be today's fourscore years and ten, give or take--in other words, in twenty years, Bob Dylan might very well be Betty White. Still, 70 is a mighty powerful benchmark, and it officially puts the baby boomers, Dylan's original and most fervent demo, on notice that they are either officially old or, with the aid of the Facebook equivalent of 2031, could help snag Dylan a Saturday Night Live hosting stint.

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"Fortunately, I didn't have too much time to think about it."

Scarlet Rivera may well be the most famous post-Band musician to play behind Bob Dylan. Two reasons: a violin that stands out more than, say, even the most stylistic bass or drum set, and one hell of a story. In February 1976, People magazine previewed Dylan's latest record, Desire, with the following hyperbolic headline: "Bob Dylan Spotted Scarlet Rivera on the Street, The Rest Is Rock History." Certainly, few backing musicians have ever made so strong or immediate an impression. I talked to Rivera about her unlikely discovery, and her time with the man himself.

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In the '70s and '80s, knowing Bob Dylan was one of the most crucial skills of being a good rock critic, right alongside "a smug sense of entitlement" and "snorting this whole table of blow." But how does he fare among a new generation of critics? For young rock writers, Bob is basically an influence on Iron & Wine and something for will.i.am to sample in Pepsi commercials. This week, our panel consisted solely of critics under the age of 40 -- the kids whose first exposure to Dylan was probably "Oh word, Jakob's dad?" They were given this brain-buster:

Bob Dylan made nine studio albums in the 1960s. How many can you name?

Shouldn't be too difficult, right? Pretty much the most epochal records ever made if you're the type of person to listen to NPR for any reason beyond "by accident." We cobbled 13 professional and semi-professional rock critics and gave them the usual rules:

1. I will not identify you AT ALL, so it is OK to be wrong. [We will say that our esteemed panel edits magazines, websites, and alt-weeklies. They have written for pretty much every outlet you've ever heard of, from Rolling Stone, Spin, and Billboard on down to random Tweets.]

2. You can't use Google.

So did these rainy day men and women end up bringing it all back home? Find out below:

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Pic by Trucks.

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Bob Dylan's arrival in New York City: To celebrate, each day this week we'll be taking you to a different landmark integral to the half-century-old Bob-in-NYC story, hosted by the most deadpan voice-over guy in history (that'd be me) and filmed by Voice video guru Jeremy Krinsley. In today's episode, we visit the still-intact Cafe Wha? (where it all started back on January 24, 1961) and 94 MacDougal, where Dylan lived -- unhappily, it would appear, thanks to that guy rooting through his trash -- for a few years after returning to the city in 1969.

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