It doesn't get much more legendary than an ex-Beatle. Paul McCartney put on a hell of a show for what looked like a sold-out crowd at the Pepsi Center.

The Dead Weather wowed a packed house at the Ogden Theatre Saturday night with a stellar performance and infectious stage presence. The band hasn’t been together for even a year, yet they are already one of the hottest indie buzz bands, mainly since they count wunderkind Jack White, of the White Strips and Raconteurs, as a member.

It’s rare to witness true music nerds performing. It’s even more rare to find music nerds who prefer hysterical swing and kazoos to intense sampling and laptops. That’s why people who are lucky enough to see the Two Man Gentlemen Band should know that the stars have aligned in their favor.

What the hell is Matt Costa doing on Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records? Everything about his music should be the anti-Jack Johnson, the personification of California’s oxymoronic laid-back image. Costa’s work on his latest album, Mobile Chateau, is laced with ’60s psych and folk, practically sprawling with sporadic interpretations of tripped out kaleidoscopic sounds in the key of the 13th Floor Elevators. But the potential berserk awesomeness of this is whitewashed by Johnson’s mundane influences, along with a handful of issues that stem from Costa’s own faults.

It was a boring weekday night when I stumbled across what I thought was a relic from my youth: a Sam and Max video game, fully restored and buyable from the Playstation Network store. But I was wrong. Delightfully wrong. The game I had found was Sam Max: The Devils Playhouse,.

Rusty Anderson has been an unsung hero of popular alternative music in the last 20 years. He’s been Paul McCartney’s right hand man and lead guitarist since 2001. He’s worked with Willie Nelson, Elton John and Regina Spektor. He even contributed the now-famous guitar riff to Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca.”

Erykah Badu is just about a month into her Out My Mind, Just in Time Tour with rotating opening acts that so far has included N.E.R.D., Bilal, Lupe Fiasco, B.O.B. and Maxwell. But for most of the tour, including the Denver show at the Fillmore Auditorium on June 16, the opening act has been 24-year old Kansas City native and Atlanta transplant Janelle Monae.

When I initially received a disc of Live in New York! by The Two Man Gentlemen Band, I had severe reservations. Novelty music is the slipperiest slope a group can climb. When it’s good it’s as funny as the greatest standup comics, but when it’s bad it’s more annoying than Dane Cook giving you mosquito bites.

What Paul Simon is to Vampire Weekend, The Beatles are to The Young Veins. On their debut Take A Vacation! the band serves as a throwback machine that incessantly pumps out song after song of fun and catchy retro-pop in the same — well — vein of the music that made the Fab Four famous in the 60s.

It’s pitch black on the stage. The lights are off and the sound is growing. Matt Paradis’ silhouette stands boldly as the sound grows. This was the face of Statewide Emergency Saturday night at the Fox Theatre.