June 26, 2003 – Who: Composer Warren Fischer and his Art Institute of Chicago schoolmate/vocalist Casey Spooner. Dancers, backup singers, chocolate-syrup wranglers, and wig fluffers flesh out the duo's live performances. Sound Like: They've been lumped in with Brooklyn's '80s-plundering electroclash scene, but Spooner doesn't believe in the much-idealized decade: "The '80s are a fiction. Everybody is re-creating a culture that never existed." The duo's debut album, #1, draws from late-'70s influences like Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder. Why You May Have Heard of Them: Their single "Emerge" is already a club smash. Or maybe you've been studying abroad? If you rolled up their European press clippings, you could housebreak a dog. "The mythmaking is out of control," Spooner says.

June 26, 2003 – For one night at New York City's Madison Square Garden, the reconstituted Guns N' Roses didn't suck--they rocked. The rocked extremely hard. And then they were no more There was a sense that the entire existence of Guns N' Roses--a tenuous entity if ever there was one--hung in the balance on December 5, 2002. It was the day of New York City's first major snowstorm of the season, and the evening of GN'R's sold-out performance at Madison Square Garden. And 10 p.m. was make-or-break time for the winter of Axl Rose's discontent. For most of last year, the elaborately braided Midwestern madman had an appetite for miscalculation: His MTV performance last Augustwas suspect; the subsequent Guns tour sketchy (there was a riot after a no-show in Vancouver, and there were half-empty arenas across the Midwest).

June 25, 2003 – James Mercer, Rosie Thomas, Sam Jayne and Sam Beam (Iron and Wine)Knitting FactoryNew York CityFeb. 1, 2003 "There's some amazing shit coming up and I don't use that term lightly," gushed a giddy Sam Jayne after a bare-bones cover of the Kinks' "Last of the Steam-Powered Trains." Jayne, who also fronts Olympia freak-out rockers Love as Laughter, was the first of a traveling caravan of Sub Pop artists to perform at New York City's Knitting Factory earlier this month. The evening's sole female performer, Rosie Thomas, opened the show, cracking jokes in-between short and engaging melodies about falling asleep in the back seat of a car and wanting to fly away on paper airplanes. Thomas' heartland vocals had surprising depth, belying her pixie-like speaking voice and helium-tinged giggles.

June 25, 2003 – Damaged art school grads or the nü face of electronic music? It's no surprise that the success of Fischerspooner, New York's best-known, most-loved nü-electro guerillas, may have moreto do with the group's mythology than the actual music they produce. By their own admission, Fischerspooner is both an "art project" and a "popband," though one can never be sure where one ends and the other begins. Educated at a Chicago art school and partially funded by Deitch Projects (a prestigious downtown New York City gallery), Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner sink their pedigreed fangs into performance-art deconstruction and explorations of pop culture much like Whitney's finest Biennialists. "I am a prop," says Spooner nonchalantly. "To me, it doesn't matter whether I sing or I don't sing.

June 25, 2003 – Who are the most important artists right now? The Donnas (right)are ripping up NYC (#24), desert-nomad future-gazers Queens of theStone Age make hard rock fun again (#15), while the White Stripesare quickly becoming America's favorite rock 'n' roll fantasy (#3). Who are the most important artists right now? The Donnas (right) are ripping up NYC (#24), desert-nomad future-gazers Queens of the Stone Age make hard rock fun again (#15), while the White Stripes are quickly becoming America's favorite rock 'n' roll fantasy (#3). 40. Sleater-KinneyThe den mothers of the grrrl-rock nation and one hell of a guitar band. Upcoming: An April mini-tour with Pearl Jam. 39. Jimmy Eat WorldThe best arena-rock band in emo America. 38. 50 CentEx-crack dealer and mad-flowing mix-tape king teams up with Dr. Dre and Slim Shady. 37.

June 25, 2003 – The Blood Brothers Who: Brilliantly spazzy Seattle punk-metal quintet featuring pinched-nad shouter-singers Johnny Whitney (far right) and Jordan Blilie (second from right). What: On their new album, Burn Piano Island, Burn, the band rock NASCAR tempos, turn-on-an-atom arrangements, and glockenspiel, subverting mosh-pit convention with Yes-like song titles ("Cecilia and the Silhouette Saloon") and surreal lyrics. Courting ControversyThe band insist that previous album references to "golden crotches" and illicit horse-human relations were strictlytongue-in-cheek. "It's not like, 'Oh, we should write a song about bestiality--that'll be awesome!'" notes Whitney. Adds Blilie: "It wasn't followed by a round of high fives or anything." Not Mach Enough? "I get the feeling that kids are kind of into us," says guitarist Cody Votolato (center). "But they don't want their friend to know.

June 25, 2003 – By: Chuck KlostermanWhy is Axl Rose eating Eminem's soul? Here's the thing about modern teenagers: They like rap. It speaks to them. Rap music (sometimes referred to as "hip-hop" by sociologists) offers today's youth a sense of urgency and desperation not seen since the "heyday" of late-'70s punk-rock artists like the Clash and Boston. This phenomenon is best illustrated through the work of a popular Caucasian known as Eminem, a man who spent much of 2002 as the unsmiling cover boy for youth-oriented magazines such as Spin, The Face, and The New York Times Magazine. It would seemthat Eminem is a new kind of cultural Minotaur: the irrepressible cad who flouts society's conventions by candidly critiquing pop culture and sporadically threatening to murder people. It all seems quite innovative. Yet this is not as you may suspect, true believers. This has been done before.

June 25, 2003 – Perpetual class clown Will Ferrell dons his dunce cap once again in Old School Saturday Night Live lost its big, burly heart when Will Ferrell departed from the show after his seventh season. But the frenetic actor had dreams of making it big in Hollywood, where SNL vets like Eddie Murphy, Mike Myers, and Tim Kazurinsky all found fame and fortune. This month, Ferrell finally gets his close-up alongside Luke Wilson and Vince Vaughn in Old School, in which the three actors play middle-aged pals taking one last grope at their glorious college years. In the spirit of the film, we gave Ferrell a little exam of our own. Given the opportunity, would you want to go back to college? I have a recurring dream that I'm one class short of graduating.

June 25, 2003 – Foo FightersThe Supper ClubNew York CityOctober 31, 2002 In honor of Halloween, America's reigning garage-grunge combo took the stage dressed as Europe's reigning garage-grunge combo. "I don'tknow how the fuck the Hives wear these monkey suits," Dave Grohl said, tugging at his white tie. "These shirts are fucking hot!" Then the Foo Fighters launched into a dead-on version of the Swedish quintet's "Hate to Say I Told You So," and with little more than a quick "Happy Halloween!" and a portentous burp into the microphone from Grohl, they slid into the slow burn of their own "All My Life." Trick-or-treating as younger upstarts was an interesting choice for the Foos, because after struggling for eight years to shake their image as Grohl's post-Nirvana project, they've finally established their own identity as one of the best rock bands in the world.

June 25, 2003 – Joey Scott of Saliva gets passionate Spin: What's the first record you put on in the morning?Josey Scott: Alison Krauss' Forget About It. It's an amazing record. It's not crossbred pop country. Like Merle Haggard says--from when "Coke was still cola and a joint was a bad place to be." Do you have a favorite driving record? AC/DC's Back in Blackis a good driving record. And I listen to a lot of Dirty South hip-hop--Three 6 Mafia's Hypnotize Camp Posse and When the Smoke Clears, Project Pat's Mista Don't Play--that's the shit. I jumped on a verse on the new Three 6 Mafia record, actually. I'm on a song called "Mosh Pit." How did that happen? We're just good friends--Memphis boys. We hang out together a lot. I'm good friends with Three 6, Frayser Boy, Project Pat, all those guys. I've known them since I was in high school.