Electro Lounge

Earlier this week we posted a poll asking whether you think concerts have gotten too loud, and whether you've started wearing earplugs at shows. After a week of voting, the results are in, and respondents have what seems to be a pretty clear message to clubs and concert venues: Turn it down!

We get a lot of mail at NPR Music, and amid the packages our kids discard in disgust for not including the new Pokemon 3DS games is a slew of smart questions about how music fits into our lives — and, this week, tips on inter-generational bonding over music.

Jake Ibey writes via Facebook: "How do you introduce new music to a parent (mid-50s) who is stuck in late-'70s rock mode?"

Since playing on John Coltrane's first release in 1957, drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath has participated in a number of landmark jazz records. Now 78, the musician is featured in a new trio session with players nearly half his age — pianist Ethan Iverson of The Bad Plus and bassist Ben Street.

Like a piece of gym equipment that always yields a great workout, most musicians have favorite tunes. For saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, "Who Wants Ice Cream" by trumpeter Ralph Alessi has proven especially fertile, drawing him back again and again since he recorded it as part of the album Spirit Fiction.

Ohio-born trumpeter Sean Jones played lead for approximately five years with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Artistic Director Wynton Marsalis was a member of Sean's section. When was asked what he learned from Marsalis, Jones answered in two words: "work ethic."

Now 35-year-old Sean Jones is touring with the Marcus Miller group, an Associate Professor at Duquesne University and Oberlin Conservatory, Interim Artistic Director for the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, and leading his group in Detroit with music from his album No Need for Words.

August is shaping up to be American music month in Shanghai. Metallica, the legendary heavy metal band, has just wrapped up its long-awaited China debut with two packed shows at the city's Mercedes-Benz Arena. This weekend, Limp Bizkit headlines a two-day festival. Next week, Aerosmith plays a Shanghai soccer stadium followed by a concert by Pitbull, the Cuban-American rapper from Miami.

Swing was sweeping the country in the 1930s, long before schools, buses, baseball or even the military felt any pressure to integrate. Back then, every expert had his own definition of swing, but none saw what seems so obvious today: When orchestras started to swing, millions of young, white, middle-class fans suddenly began listening to the same music black audiences had been hearing for years.

By the time John Denver died in a plane crash in 1997, he had written and sung a remarkable assortment of cherished music: "Rocky Mountain High," "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "Sunshine on My Shoulders," "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and many more. He was often mocked by edgier musicians for being a kind of musically soft, spongy Wonderbread of a singer-songwriter. But his songs have endured — and influenced more than one generation.

In its quest to become the world's most brutal, ugly and offensive death-metal act, a young band should ask itself three questions: "How fast can the drummer blast-beat?" "How many unspeakable acts can we cram into three minutes, lyrically speaking?" "Are the riffs-per-second an accurate measure of how brutal we truly are?" I'm only sort of kidding. These exercises in ridiculousness are par for the course, though their excess is not unrewarded. Enter Wormed.