For years, the annual Warped Tour has been more or less a knucklehead boys club on wheels — with music in between — but in recent years more female-dominated bands have been cracking the lineup. Count among them Meg & Dia, the two easy-on-the-eyes, Utah-bred sisters Frampton (no relation to Peter) — Meg, 23, and Dia, 21 — and their three male bandmates.

The group has been on three Warped jaunts, including this year’s.

Meg & Dia is supporting its first major label release, Here, Here and Here (released April 21 on Sire), an accomplished collection of confessional and sometimes confrontational (and irrepressibly catchy) modern rock that takes more stylistic liberties than most bands in the pop-punk/emo realm.

Dia (foreground in photo), who sings lead and splits songwriting duties with Meg and the other band members, called from the tour bus and proved to be a lively, open interviewee. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.

What are the good parts and the bad parts about Warped?

(Coughs) Well one of the bad parts is getting sick and not being able to get better. We don’t have a hotel, a place to take a hot bath. I’ve been cleaning out my nose with a netti pot. I’d give anything for a hotel right now, a quiet room. Yesterday I had a crazy fever.

Video after the jump.

Meg & Dia play the Warped Tour on Sun. July 26 at Vinoy Park, St. Petersburg.

You’re at least in a tour bus, right?

We have a bus, thank goodness. I can’t see how people do it in vans.

So the good stuff about Warped …

We get to see a lot of good bands. We were on the tour in ’06 and ’07, and it’s like a family reunion. The crew, the stagehands, everyone is really nice here. We’re hanging out with them more than anyone. Warped is real earth-friendly, too. Kids are easily influenced, so they can walk by charities and maybe stop in.

But I see 12-year-olds on their way to the Trojan condom tent. I mean, it’s good to be safe, but when you’re 11? “But it’s safe.” I wanna say, “No it’s not!” I guess I’m somewhat conservative, but that’s too young. There’ll be a punk rock band telling the crowd to put their middle finger in the air, and I’m like, “Cool — punk rock.” And then I look around and there’s little kids watching. It’s like, “Oh no.”

I always think of Warped as a boys club. How are you relating to all the guys?

Well, I met this guy in a band the other day, and he was like, “You should come by; I make these awesome whiskey and ginger ale drinks. So I was like, “Sounds good.” And then he looks at me real serious and says, “I have a girlfriend. I just wanna be friends. Just so you know that.”

That’s a strange kind of role reversal. You tend to think of the guys as predators. Here’s a guy who wants to make sure you’re not a predator.

There are all these guys bro’in’ down, gambling, smoking. When I sit down I feel weird. It’s a little hard for me to make friends in that scene when if I talk to anybody they think I’m hitting on them. I have made some cool friends, though. This one guy and I started exchanging books. I gave him a Buddhist book — I’m not a Buddhist, but I’m interested — and he gave me a Kurt Vonnegut book. We’ve started a little book club. We’re the nerds on the tour.

You’re singing on Here, Here and Here has a real edge. There’s an element of confrontation and anger there. Where does that come from?

I think the spirit of my vocals comes out most heavily because I wrote a lot of the lyrics on the record. And the lyrics really meant something to me. On the previous albums, the lyrics came from a lot of literature and books. This one was more about my personal life, and what I was going through at the time. I was still really bitter, and you can hear that some times [in the singing]. I didn’t feel I had to make the vocals nice, like pretty girls have to sound pretty.

What were you bitter about?

I was going through a very bad breakup. It was the first time I’d been alone since I was 15. Ever since I was 15, I always had a boyfriend. I’d break up with a boyfriend and find another one instantly, just because I would go hunting for it. Sometimes I wouldn’t even like them very much. But we could at least lean on each other.

It was the first time I had been alone for a long time — not having anyone to call, eating by yourself, people staring at you. Before, the band would say, “Why don’t you just be single for a while, relax.” In just about the last month, I’m become happy being alone.

You know what’s going to happen, right? You’ll find a new boyfriend, probably tonight.

Thanks for the jinx.

How does the creative dynamic work with Meg? She is, after all, the older sister.

I think whatever animosity there was has been ridden out. She’s been real supportive. She plays guitar and piano. She’ll add stuff to my songs to bring them to life. She’s real positive, but also critical. “What if you tried this?” Or sometimes, “You should really just get rid of that.”

Has being professional partners affected the sister bond.

We’re still very close.

So it sounds like your parents don’t have to worry themselves to death with their daughters out on the road. You seem like a level-headed pair.

They’ve always been real supportive. Meg and I are just really big nerds. It’s kind of ridiculous when people come and talk to us. We talk about books or some nerdy movie.

Have you come under pressure from the marketing people to use your sex appeal in a way that might make you uncomfortable?

We don’t wanna be like Britney Spears. We’re interested in being more — I don’t wanna say classy, because I don’t think showing skin is always a bad thing. But we’re just nerdy and kind of keep to ourselves.

Meg & Dia, “Monster”

It was not all that long ago that a self-imposed eight-year hiatus by an R&B singer was tantamount to quitting the game. Labels wouldn’t have it; fans would forget.

Singer Maxwell’s retreat for most of the decade into “pedestrian life” has done nothing to hurt his career. BLACKSummer’snight, his first release since 2001’s Now just entered the Billboard 200 chart at No. 1 with sales of 316,000.

Maxwell’s re-arrival happens at a precipitous time, amid a listless modern soul scene where hardly anyone can resist the Auto-Tune button. We’ll call BLACKSummer’snight a solid return, especially welcome considering contemporary R&B’s current state of affairs.

The 36-year-old Brooklyn-bred artist is a genuine singer in the classic mold of a Marvin Gaye. His stock-in-trade is smoldering restraint, but he can grasp for the rasp and turn up the passion when called for.

Halfway into the acoustic-guitar-based “Playing Possum” Maxwell slides into falsetto and sings “I’m beggin’ you, sugar, have some leniency/ Call the President and ask him, baby, to pardon me.” Although the lyrics may be precious, it’s clear we’re experiencing a singer of real substance. (Often it’s not the words, but how you sing them.) Then he soars even higher into a series of woo-hoos, setting the song’s emotion thermostat on rapture. And like the great soul singers of yore, Maxwell’s melismatic fills, punctuations and asides are as vital to the performances as the lines of lyrics themselves.

The relative weakness of BLACKsummer’snight is the songwriting. The album’s eight romantic laments of varying tempo  (and, inexplicably, one closing instrumental) pretty much bleed together. But the arrangements are a wash of invigorating air, played as they are by a 10-piece band that gives the tracks a live-in-the-studio quality. Creamy horn arrangements caress, organs swirl, guitars slink, the remarkably organic drums lay down supple grooves. Maxwell sings through a microphone and his voice emerges without a trip through a computer program. The music is real. (Columbia)

Maxwell performs at Ruth Eckerd Hall on Thurs., July 30 @ 8 p.m. Chrisette Michele opens. Tickets range from $41 to $131. More details.

Check out a video of Maxwell’s new single “Pretty Wings” and other titles.

They saved the not-a-dry-eye-in-the-house part for the very end. As the Michael Jackson memorial stretched just past two hours this afternoon, after a series of speeches and several emotional music performances, Jackson’s daughter approached the microphone, aunt Janet steadying her. Choking back sobs, 11-year-old Paris said, “Ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. I just want to say I love him so much.”

If that didn’t get to your tear ducts at least a little, you’ve got a pretty chilly heart.

The second-most famous Jackson, Janet, clad in a black dress and beret, was sad- or stone-faced every time on camera. She neither spoke nor performed. Michael’s brothers Jermaine and Marlon offered tributes, and Jermaine sang a teary rendition of what speaker Brooke Shields said was Michael’s favorite song: the Charlie Chaplin chestnut “Smile.”

Maybe I’ve reached Michael Jackson overload, but I stayed dry-eyed until Paris’ comments at the end.

The memorial got started at 1:33 p.m. Eastern, about a half hour late. The anticipated mobs outside the Staples Center in L.A. did not materialize as feared; police estimated about 50,000 were in or around the venue.

A gospel choir sang as the pallbearers carried in Jackson’s shiny, flower-strewn coffin. The lyrics sounded like “We are going to see the King,” and one wondered if the double meaning — God, the King; the King of Pop — was intended.

The podium speakers — from Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, Al Sharpton, Queen Latifah (who read a Maya Angelou poem), two of Martin Luther King’s children and others — took a variety of approaches, from Sharpton’s fiery oratory to the more lighthearted remembrances of Gordy, Robinson and Magic Johnson.

Sharpton seemed intent on pushing the late Jackson for sainthood, saying that the people who were comfortable with Michael Jackson in their youth turned out, as 40-year-olds, to be comfortable with voting for an African-American for President. Sharpton pushed past the bounds of reality with the comment, “I would like to say to his three children there wasn’t nothing strange about your Daddy; it was strange what he had to deal with.”

The comment earned a long, standing ovation, probably appropriate in the context of a memorial, but essentially untrue. Michael Jackson was indeed a strange individual.

In fact, a few of the speakers chose to paint Jackson as a victim. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee exclaimed, “We know that people are innocent until proven otherwise.”

Usher, Mariah Carey, Lionel Richie, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer (in a rather odd turn playing “Human Nature” on guitar) and others sang heartfelt tunes. The most stunning of all came courtesy of Stevie Wonder, seated at a piano. He sang “I Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer,” a ballad that Michael covered, and the rather obscure slow tune “They Won’t Go When I Go,” calibrating his performance with just the right measures of heartbreak and passion — and hitting notes in the upper register that a 59-year-old should not be able to reach.

in the end, the Michael Jackson memorial was about what I expected — not some kind of cathartic experience — and as fitting as I had hoped. There had been predictions that more than a billion people around the world would watch on TV. I’ll be anxious to see if such a staggering number came to pass.

It was fated that one day they’d collaborate. Audioslave (and former Rage Against the Machine) guitarist Tom Morello and Boots Riley, rapper for the Coup, are two of the most stridently radical musicians to ever plug in. Get ’em together and you get Street Sweeper Social Club, 11 songs and nearly 40 minutes of unremitting agitprop set to thunder beats and monster guitar riffs.

Every song rails against something: bosses, politicians, capitalism, materialism, the System. Virtually every song advocates the violent overthrow of oppressive forces, the gathering of guns, the whole ain’t-taking-shit-NO-more thing.

Unless you’re planning to cause trouble at the next G8 summit, this kind of rhetorical and musical onslaught can wear your ass out. But give Morello and Riley big ups for commitment — and big up Stanton Moore for providing the crushing funk-rock grooves.

Rap-metal is a worn-out subgenre, and to some extent the Morello/Riley team (along with drummer Stanton Moore) sags under the weight of stylistic orthodoxies. There are only so many new ways to approach a heavy guitar riff, only so many variations on funk-rock beats.

It’s Riley’s singlemindedness of purpose and the strident and often clever barrage of his rhymes that redeems the effort. “World poverty has just gone platinum/ Unemployment checks need to come with a gat in ’em,” Boots bellow on “The Squeeze,” just one example of the many punchy turns of phrase that run throughout the album.

The most engaging track is “Promenade” — built around a springy slam-beat, it’d be the perfect tune for a line dance at an anarchists rally. “FBI comin’ round the outside/ Which one of us is finna die tonight?/ Is we finna fight over crumbs to bite?/ Or make a whole muthafuckin’ world ignite?”

If you get a mind to spark some violent revolution, load Sweet Sweeper up on the iPod before you grab your gun and go. (SSSC)

No TV at the job? No worries. We’re streaming the Michael Jackson memorial here via Hulu. The stream starts at 12:55 p.m., so leave the window open or check back with us. Comment, comment, comment. I’ll be watching and weighing in.

Ten days after his death, Michael Jackson is the biggest story in the entertainment world. Some of you may be crying overkill, but I’m still keeping tabs. Here’s a series of the latest links I’ve come across.

Video of Jackson at his last rehearsals.

Jackson’s public memorial confirmed for L.A.’s Staples Center on Tuesday, July 7.

TV networks planning coverage of Jackson memorial.

Billboard: How Michael Jackson’s Thriller changed the music biz.

Billboard: Jackson will likely set more chart records.

Billboard: “Michael Jackson and MTV — The M once stood for Michael.”

Madonna honors Jackson during a show at same arena in London that he was to perform 50 shows.

Former L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn, who probably had more access to MJ than any other scribe, writes a remembrance.

Jackson news coverage touches on the tawdry side.

Most pop singers from the ’60s and ’70s who are fortunate enough to still be touring resort to what I call vocal cheats. That’s when they get to a point in an old hit that has a particularly high note they can’t hit — a note that especially resonates with the baby-boomer audience — so they either drop it an octave or turn it over to the background singers.

There’s nothing really shameful about these vocal cheats — it would be worse, for instance, if Daryl Hall tried to hit that big release note in “She’s Gone” and failed miserably. Or if Roger Daltrey attempted to render the big scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and sounded like a frog.

I tell you all this because I saw Boz Scaggs last night at Ruth Eckerd Hall and he didn’t resort to any vocal cheats. He’s 65 years old. Very impressive. When, on “Lido Shuffle,” it came time for the “Lido, whoa, whoa” part, he was right on it — with the backup singers helping, yes, but not drowning him out and thus protecting him. Scaggs came up a little short or a little thin on some of the high notes, but he went for them all.

It wasn’t just the lack of vocal cheats that made Scaggs’ 75-minute set in front of a near-sold-out crowd a success. His voice still has that full, creamy texture of the old days, and his delivery and phrasing brimmed with nuance. (more photos below; all are by Tracy May)

Scaggs’ most recent albums have been made up of standards from the Great American Songbook. He set that material aside at REH, opting instead for a compendium of hits from the latter half of the 1970s and early ’80s (”Jojo,” “Lowdown,” “Georgia,” “Look What You’ve Done to Me” and others) as well as blues and R&B tunes from his early, early career. His encore was an extended version of the slow blues “Loan me a Dime” from his 1969 self-titled album.

Scaggs, who played guitar as well, was backed by five instrumentalists and a dynamic background singer who, I think, went by Miss Monet. She was as torrid as Scaggs was ultra-cool, and provided the ideal vocal foil. Miss Monet took center stage for a roof-raising version of the Aretha Franklin vehicle “Until You Come Back To Me.” Her performance drew a big smile from the perpetually laid-back Scaggs.

The band’s dynamics were impeccable, dialed back at times in order to make room for Scaggs’ supple pipes to take the spotlight, allowing him to contour the lyrics in fresh ways.

Besides the fact that he omitted “Breakdown Dead Ahead” and declined to sing any standards, I was thoroughly pleased with Scaggs’ set. A longtime fan, it was my first occasion to see him in concert.

Just for the record, Michael McDonald played the second set of the double bill. I’m not a fan, so only caught a few tunes and left. As a result, I’ll pass on offering commentary here — except to say that he sat facing the crowd behind an electronic keyboard as his feet pumped on pedals … and he was wearing flip-flops. Yeesh.

Here’s a photo, however.

Jeff Tweedy doesn’t sound any happier. I’ve always found the Wilco leader’s apparent discomfort in his own skin to be one of the reasons the band was capable of compelling music (although by no means always).

On “Solitaire,” one of the many somber, introspective tunes on Wilco’s self-titled seventh studio album, Tweedy sings in his trademark laconic style, “Once I thought without a doubt/ I had it all figured out/ The universe with hands unseen/ I was cold as gasoline/ Took too long, to see, I was wrong, to believe, in me/ Only.”

Does that suggest that Tweedy is now playing well with others? Or has he finally found the others that are willing to follow his vision. I’m guessing it’s the latter.

In any case, Wilco’s approach on the new album hews more closely to standard song structures than some of the avant-garde-leaning work of the past. Only a handful of songs really stick to your ribs, though, and only one will have you singing it in your head later. That would be “You Never Know,” the disc’s most energetic, uptempo tune, with swelling background vocals, a choppy piano part and a swooping guitar lick that calls to mind George Harrison’s breezier solo songs.

While the material comes up short on the catchiness scale, the guitar interplay between Tweedy and Nels Cline is full of imagination and beguiling texture: the theremin-like whistle on “Deeper Down,” the push into Neil Young-esque noise on “Bull Black Nova,” the razory slide on “Sonny Feeling” (the albums’ other sort-of-uptempo rocker), the pedal steel-style slurs that pop up throughout.

Tweedy surrounds the guitars with a mostly pastel backdrop that at turns includes tubular bells, organ, and the slightest splashes of strings and horns (to give the closer, “Everlasting Everything,” an epic crescendo).

In the end, Wilco is a worthy entry into their canon, but certainly not a classic. (Nonesuch)

“You and I” featuring Feist

Hip-hop seems adrift, with no particular faction dominating the pop psyche (or the charts). Bling-rap isn’t resonating as much lately, these being trying times and all. The current landscape is perfect for a multi-facted, thinking artist such as Mos Def, whose fourth studio album, The Ecstatic, continues his impressive body of musical work.

The 35-year-old Brooklyn native — who has, perhaps more than any other rapper, made a mark in film, TV and theater — has never had much use for rules. And even though Mos Def is a middling music star, he still approaches his recordings with a decided indie hip-hop aesthetic.

That shows in his choice of producers —Madlib, Preservation, Mr. Flash, J Dilla — who collectively let the rhythm tracks breath, allowing room for Mos Def’s relaxed, conversational flow. Complementing the urban scrapyard of sounds, snippets of found dialogue and arcane samples are various jazz elements like vibes and horns and a handful of Middle Eastern-type chants.

Mos Def, a Muslim, avoids clichéd ’hood themes in favor of utopian ideas (“Revelation”) and commentary about everyday life (“Workers Comp”).

The album has moments of clever irony — like, on the intro the “The Embassy,” where a captain addresses his passengers and describes in detail the guns they have in the cabin.

While most of the songs find funky mid-paced groove, the occasional uptempo beat brings a welcome burst of energy. “Quiet Dog” pummels along on a fast quasi-swing beat (decorated with handclaps) and throbbing bass, evoking a hip-hop version of Ellington-esque jungle jazz. The percolating “Casa Bey” matches spitfire rhymes with a lush, symphonic soul backdrop.

Not all of the disc’s 16 tracks are gems, but by and large The Ecstatic represents some of the best hip-hop has to offer at the moment. (Downtown)

Check out “Quiet Dog” (with a still photo)

The hip-hop bible Vibe magazine, founded by uber-producer Quincy Jones in 1993, has folded. Jones, who sold the publication in 2006 and was unaware of its dire situation, has vowed to bring it back.

Jones said: “[Owner Wicks Media Group] just messed my magazine all up, but I’m gonna get it back. You better believe it, I’m'a take it online because print and all that stuff is over.”

Read more.