plus: Joey Ramone's playlist. The worst album that Greil Marcus has ever heard. "NOW That's What I Call Executive Privilege!"

Tim McGraw [ tickets ] is scheduled to perform two free shows next Tuesday in support of his forthcoming album, "Set This Circus Down," according to a press release. At 12:30 p.m., he will perform at South Street Seaport in New York, then later that day in Nashville, he will perform at 6:00 p.m. in a tent near the intersection of 11th Ave. S. and 12th Ave.

The Nashville Tennessean reported on a lawsuit that Trisha Yearwood [ tickets ] filed last March against singer Michael J. Young, who added his voice to an old Yearwood demo, then began selling it as a duet. Yearwood claims that he didn't have the right to do that, Young claims that he did.

Salon.com reported that the website Uplister, "which produces a software application that lets music fans trade song playlists, posted Joey Ramone's last playlist a few months before his death. ...

"Among the 10 tunes are 'Kick Out the Jams' by the MC5, 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' by the Stooges, 'Eighteen' by Alice Cooper and 'Who Will Save Rock and Roll?' by the Dictators."

Also on Salon.com is Greil Marcus' assessment of Ben Harper [ tickets ] and the Innocent Criminals' latest album, "Live on Mars":

This is the worst album I've ever heard. Not because it's more than 137 minutes long--it was the worst album I'd ever heard after 10 minutes. It begins with thick waves of insensate cheering (track by track, you can hear the engineer pushing the volume up at the end of every number)--and then, out of the maelstrom, comes this pathetic, strangled, self-pitying, self-righteous, melisma-crazy bleat ..."

From the Department of Cool Mix Tapes, we read in the Los Angeles Times that:

More than 1,000 additional hours of Richard Nixon's historic White House tape-recordings will be offered for sale to the public, his heirs and the National Archives announced Tuesday. ...

The tapes, to be offered on cassettes, will contain lengthy Cabinet Room meetings and presidential office and telephone conversations dealing with the Vietnam War, civil rights, economic problems and a host of other domestic and foreign issues. ...

Early last year, the Archives began selling 12 1/2 hours of tapes that had been heard by federal court jurors during the Watergate criminal trials in 1974. Later, an additional 251 hours, which covered a category labeled "abuses of government," were offered for sale.

Like, literally "labeled"? That is too cool.

Imagine, like, going cruising with Nixon's White House chief of staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman in his car some Saturday afternoon in '71, and looking through the mix tapes on his dashboard:

"ROAD TRIP SONGS"

"MUSIC TO GET HIGH TO"

"ABUSES OF GOVERNMENT"

"SABOTAGING THE PARIS PEACE TALKS"

"SONGS FOR HEATHER"