“I'd like to make a suggestion to President Obama, ” Tom Morello bellowed to the capacity crowd gathered for the National Nurses United rally at Chicago's Daley Plaza on Friday afternoon. “If he doesn't have the courage to close Guantanamo Bay, how about he takes some of those Wall Street criminals? Throw them in there, lock the door, throw away the key and blast Rage Against the Machine 24 hours a day!”

As he has previously done at several Occupy Wall Street rallies, Morello played a short set of protest anthems under the guise of his alter ego, the Nightwatchman. The crowd consisted largely of Occupy Chicago supporters and nurses wearing red scrubs and green “Robin Hood” hats, in a nod to the Robin Hood tax that would essentially tax financial institutions a minimal percentage for transactions. The rally was originally supposed to coincide with the G8 summit in Chicago this week, but it was rescheduled around this weekend's NATO conference after the summit was moved to Camp David.

Morello opened with “One Man Revolution,” the title track off the Nightwatchman's 2007 debut LP. Clutching his guitar emblazoned with the words “Whatever It Takes,” he told the crowd how proud he was of the nurses' resilience when Chicago's mayor, Rahm Emanuel, had temporarily plugged the plug on the rally. “They looked the mayor dead in the eye and they said, in the words of the old 1990 spiritual, 'Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me!'” Morello exclaimed.

Following a rendition of his appropriately-titled “Union Song” – during which he praised “the union men and women standing strong” and slipped in the line, “like the nurses in Chicago” – Morello invited fellow Chicagoan and Rise Against lead singer Tim McIlrath onstage for a searing rendition of Bruce Springsteen's “The Ghost of Tom Joad.”

The rally was just the start to Morello's busy weekend in Chicago; in addition to the Nurses rally, he'll play the Woody Guthrie centennial celebration on Saturday and the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War rally the following day. Backstage before Friday's performance, Morello deemed his first event a success, if only for that fact that it happened at all.

“Our victory is that we're standing here today,” Morello told Rolling Stone, although he expressed disappointment over the relocation of the G8 summit. “They ran away like little lambs because they were afraid of the reception that Chicago was going to give them. Who else is not welcome in Chicago? NATO. They had to call in the National Guard and bus in police from three adjoining states to protect their conference from the people of Chicago.”

Gregg Alexander, frontman of the New Radicals, was also on hand to show his support for the non-profit group Health Gap. He told Rolling Stone that he sees the Robin Hood tax as a solution to the country's current economic crisis. “The Robin Hood Tax can be the crucial and only pivotal change that will not only be a Band-Aid, but something that causes systemic change,” Alexander said. “My message to the artistic community would be, 'Don't pay attention to Band-Aids. Let's not do things that look like Gap commercials for trendy PSAs. Let's make Wall Street and the corrupt monsters live up to their word.'”

After a crowd-participatory version of “This Land Is Your Land,” Morello invited the masses to join him onstage for “World Wide Rebel Songs.” But when security temporarily prevented the audience from joining him, Morello had one final biting set of instructions: “Everything has been going so smoothly up until now,” he said. “So let those fucking people up here, or there's gonna be a problem!”

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Donna Summer, the singer known to her fans as the Queen of Disco, died on Thursday at the age of 63. Summer, along with the producer Giorgio Moroder, was at the forefront of the disco movement in the Seventies, expanding and transforming dance music by mutating strains of R&B, funk and electronic music.

Though Summer and Moroder gave the world groundbreaking hits like “I Feel Love” and “Love to Love You Baby,” they weren't alone in creating timeless disco music. Our question for you this week is: What is the best disco song of all time?

You can vote here in the comments, on facebook.com/rollingstone or on Twitter using the #weekendrock hashtag.

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New York state senators have drafted, reported and adopted a resolution honoring the late Beastie Boys member Adam “MCA” Yauch. The resolution granted legislative time for lawmakers to pay respects to the recently deceased emcee. It called Yauch a “man of colossal talent and charisma” and contained an apparent lyrical reference to the Beasties' 1994 hit “Sure Shot.”

For the full text of the resolution, visit New York State's open database. Yauch died on May 4th in New York City. He was 47.

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Chuck Brown, a pioneer of Washington, D.C.'s Go-Go music scene, died today at the age of 75, reports WJLA. Brown had been sick for some time, and was hospitalized with pneumonia last week.

Brown, a guitarist and singer, was known to fans as the Godfather of Go-Go. He played in bands since the Sixties, but broke through in the late Seventies as Go-Go, a subgenre of funk, blew up in the D.C. music scene.

He was best known for his hits “I Need Some Money,” “Ashley's Roachclip” and “Bustin' Loose,” which was sampled prominently on Nelly's 2002 hit “Hot in Herre.” Brown's song “L.O.V.E.” was nominated for a Grammy in the best R&B performance by a duo or group category in 2011.

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WINNER OF THE WEEK: Mother's Day. We're not comfortable generalizing about mothers' musical tastes – this writer's wife, who is a mother, favors George Jones, Parliament and the Sex Pistols – but stereotypical mom-oriented albums got a boost on the Billboard charts this week. Carrie Underwood's Blown Away sticks to Number One for a second straight week, selling 120,000 copies; Adele's 21 jumps from Number Four to Number Two, with 101,000 copies sold; and Lionel Richie's easy-like-Sunday-morning Tuskegee jumps from Number Six to Number Three, selling 71,000 copies. The surge is largely old-school and CD-focused. On iTunes, Underwood is Number One, but Adele is at Number Three and Richie isn't even in the Top 10. Similarly, while Norah Jones' Little Broken Hearts is at Number Five on Billboard (a three-slot drop), she's at Number 10 on iTunes.

LOSER OF THE WEEK: Albums. Last year, record executives expressed optimism that album sales were finally starting to inch back upwards, after plummeting for more than a decade in the post-Napster era. “Maybe we've reached bottom!” some suggested, in so many words, in interviews throughout the year. Or maybe Adele's 21 was an anomaly, and now that it's run its course, sales are dropping again. So far in 2012, record labels have sold 112.32 million albums compared to 113.79 million in 2011, a 1 percent drop. It's still early in the year, but we think it's safe to say that the post-Napster plummeting continues.

SEVEN DAYS OF RIHANNA VIRALITY: Rihanna isn't at the top of the charts at the moment, at least in the traditional Billboard sort of way, but her publicity blitz of the past week is paying off in serious viral action. In addition to doing prominent interviews for her upcoming movie Battleship, her racy video for “Where Have You Been” came out on April 30th and has logged more than 29.5 million views – enough for an 88-spot surge on the Ultimate Chart, which measures Internet criteria. The new single lands at Number Eight, and “We Found Love” climbs 15 slots to Number 32.

LAST WEEK: The Beastie Boys Return to the Charts

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John Mayer stopped by The Ellen DeGeneres Show today to talk about shrinking away from the press after his handful of controversial interviews two years ago, Us Weekly reports.

“It was a very strange time and it sort of rocketed me into adulthood,” Mayer said during the show. “It was a violent crash into being an adult.”

The singer-songwriter was berated widely in 2010 after giving revealing interviews to Playboy and Rolling Stone. In them, he talked very candidly about his relationships with Jessica Simpson and Jennifer Aniston and, at one point, used the n-word.

“For a couple of years, it was just figuring it all out, and I'm glad I actually stayed out of the spotlight,” Mayer told DeGeneres. “Because I think back then I would've said, 'Give me two weeks or let me get out and do Ellen and let me explain myself.' It was like, 'No, idiot. Go away and be 33 and 34 instead of 28 for the fourth year.”

Mayer said that he “had to go home for a minute” to help him get things back on track. “The plan that originally gets you out of high school and your hometown, in front of people… that plan was over. I had done it. I just sort of lost my head for a little while.”

Mayer also discussed the recent cancellation of a 21-city tour to promote his new record after learning that a granuloma on his vocal cords had returned, even after doctors thought it had healed. He noted that it wasn't too much of a health concern and that it has only silenced his singing temporarily.

Describing the procedure, Mayer said, “They cut this thing out of your throat and then they inject your vocal cords with Botox, which freezes your vocal cords so that this thing can heal without smacking up against the other side.” He added, “I just need more Botox next time.”

Mayer's fifth solo album, Born and Raised, is set for release on May 22nd. In a January interview with Rolling Stone, Mayer said of the record, “I think it's gonna be more oganic, more natural lyrics and chords and artful simplicity.” The album will also feature backing harmonies from David Crosby and Graham Nash.

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Lady Gaga will have to cancel a June 3rd show in Jakarta, Indonesia after she was denied a permit due to protests from religious and political leaders, the Associated Press reports.

Islamic hard-liners and leaders along with conservative politicians spoke vehemently against the suggestiveness of Gaga's performance – from her clothes to her dance moves – fearing that it might sully the moral fabric of the country and corrupt the nation's youth.

The criticisms were also coupled with threats of physical force to keep Gaga from even stepping off the plane, leaving police worried that they would be unable to guarantee security, according to national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar. The police then recommended that the permit for Gaga's Born This Way Ball show be denied.

In Jakarta it is common for concert permits to be issued well after tickets have gone on sale, as was the case for Gaga's show. The sold-out concert at the 52,000-seat Gelora Bung Karno stadium was to be the biggest on Gaga's Asian tour. With local promoter Michael Rusli unavailable for comment, it is uncertain whether fans will be refunded.

“I'm very disappointed,” one ticket-holder, Mariska Renata, told the AP. Succumbing to the wishes of “troublemakers” only gave them more power, she said: “We are mature enough to be able to separate our own moral values from arts and culture.”

Gaga kicked off the Born This Way Ball in Seoul, South Korea at the end of April amidst similar protests from Christian groups, which forced authorities to make the concert adults-only.

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Just days ago, General Electric's bulldozers entered a third year of around-the-clock dredging along New York's Hudson River, where the energy giant is still working to undo the contamination it created during the Seventies. During that time, GE dumped toxins from two of its manufacturing plants into the water, poisoning the striped bass and killing commercial fishing in the Upper Hudson. GE has since paid the EPA millions for the damage, and the company now estimates that its cleanup effort will finish by 2018.

The dumping was dirty work, but it was also legal. Hydraulic fracturing – or “fracking,” a drilling method that ruptures the bedrock a mile below and forces natural gas to the surface with a cocktail of water, sand and chemicals linked to cancer – remains profitable and free from many restrictions in more than 30 states including Texas, its birthplace. With lawmakers now reviewing a bill that would allow fracking in New York state, local musicians including Natalie Merchant, Citizen Cope, Joan Osborne and Tracy Bonham will join the New Yorkers Against Fracking rally and concert in Albany on Tuesday, to encourage Governor Andrew Cuomo to maintain the state's ban.

“I think a lot of people are lulled into this false sense of security that because there's a moratorium, good sense is going to prevail,” Merchant, a lifelong rural New Yorker, told Rolling Stone.

The event will kick off with a late-afternoon rally on the West Capitol Lawn, to be followed by a concert at 7:00 p.m. at the Egg Empire State Plaza. Additional supporters include actors Mark Ruffalo and Melissa Leo, jazz trio Medeski Martin and Wood, singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello and the Felice Brothers.

Parts of New York State sit above the Marcellus Shale, a natural-gas goldmine that also encompasses neighboring Pennsylvania and is considered prime real estate for legal fracking. “In 10 years, the Marcellus is likely to become the most productive natural gas field in the world,” Chesapeake Energy's Aubrey McClendon told Rolling Stone earlier this year.

In May, President Obama proposed that gas companies should reveal which chemicals they use when fracking on federal land. This type of drilling happens more often on private property, however, where big drillers like Chesapeake aren't required to disclose this information. Scientists have concluded that in some cases, chemicals including benzene cause childhood leukemia, while methane gas from fracking has been blamed for contaminating groundwater.

Though gas companies and their opponents disagree on fracking's effects, no one denies its ability to make money. Tycoons like T. Boone Pickens have long pushed for a natural-gas energy policy over one based on foreign oil dependence. Last week in a CNBC interview, Pickens condemned Washington, D.C. as “a piece of shit” for failing to embrace widespread fracking. A recent Fortune cover story assigned the Viagra metaphor to fracking, suggesting it was the boost the economy needs to fast-track job creation. Mitt Romney has endorsed it, and even the EPA has called the Marcellus Shale “commercially viable.” Its website reads, “Natural gas plays a key role in our nation's clean energy future.”

The Washington, D.C.-based Food and Water Watch found that fracking, if permitted in New York, will create only 0.026 percent more jobs, and out-of-state workers would likely claim most of those. Fortune, however, predicts an increase of 200,000 jobs in the areas of steelmaking for wells and exporting natural gas to other countries, which would guarantee record profits for companies like Exxon.

Osborne, who owns a house on a farm in the Catskills above the Marcellus, says that rural families will pay the price if and when big drillers erect rigs in their neighborhoods. Fracking opponents argue that trucks carrying chemicals will overwhelm traffic, hauling loads of wastewater to storage facilities that dwarf every house on the block. Tankers could overturn and spill. Wells could leak. Tap water could be rendered undrinkable.

“That really gets to me emotionally, thinking about my daughter and trying to raise her in a situation like this,” Osbourne tells Rolling Stone. “They get these tiny, little fines which are like a little bitty slap on the wrist, and it doesn't mean anything to their bottom line, so there's really very little incentive for them to care about whether people's water is being poisoned or not.”

Years ago, when Sandra Steingraber was diagnosed with bladder cancer at age 20, the now-chair of New Yorkers Against Fracking couldn't tell doctors which chemicals she'd been exposed to as a child in what she called her “highly industrialized” hometown. A previous lack of disclosure laws had prevented access to to such details. Now a cancer survivor, ecologist and activist, Steingraber demands alternatives to the drilling activity allowed throughout most of America.

“As an adult, I'm not interested in kicking the addiction on fossil fuels down the road so that my children have to deal with the transition to renewables,” she said. “Gas is actually an obstacle, not a bridge, to renewable energy.”

“No amount of regulation is going to make this safe,” adds Merchant, who wrote a song about fracking that she'll perform at Tuesday's event. Its working title: “Texas.”

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Jay-Z will headline the Budweiser Made in America festival in Philadelphia this Labor Day weekend. The festival, curated by Jay-Z himself, will feature a roster of nearly 30 acts from many different genres on three stages at Fairmount Park on September 1st and 2nd.

The event, produced by Live Nation, will benefit United Ways in greater Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and New York City. The organization works to invest money in local communities and education.

As of yet, Jay-Z is the only confirmed act on the bill. Tickets for the festival will go on sale May 23rd, with a pre-sale on May 22nd.

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After giving Austin fans an early live look at close to half of his new album, Big Station, on Saturday, Alejandro Escovedo took a few minutes to deliver a sort of mini-memoir, recounting his boyhood travels from Texas to California (“I was the only Chicano surfer, and they didn’t like that”) and New York City, and how he fell in love with rock & roll along those many miles. It was a poignant and relevant story to share, since Escovedo’s new album is about the journeys different people take in life, and how they intersect and affect each other.

Playing with a mostly new lineup of his band the Sensitive Boys in front of an adoring crowd at the Pachanga Latino Music Festival, Escovedo was in confident and comfortable form, debuting some of the Big Station songs live for the first time before heading out on tour for most of the rest of 2012. In marked contrast to his recent glossy, rollicking albums, Street Songs of Love and Real Animal, the new Tony Visconti-produced release is moody in many spots and restrained enough to give harrowing, somber songs room to breathe.

Show opener “Sally Was A Cop” is a perfect example of that departure, with a picked guitar opening and shuffling rhythm leading into the story of a proud Mexican border town native forced to become a fighter in the face of escalating drug trade violence. And the loose, sing-along chorus of “Bottom Of The World” gives pleasant cover to a workingman narrator looking out on a world that likely hasn’t changed for the better while he’s spent years punching a clock.

Joined by Austin singer-guitarist David Garza for a handful of new material – the all-Spanish “Sabor A Mi,” “Common Mistake” and the yearning love song “Never Stood A Chance” – Escovedo reworked some of the songs from their album versions, rendering them even more introspective and making departures to explore new musical ideas on songs that he and his bandmates are still getting comfortable with in a live setting.

“It’s still daunting because a lot of them we’ve never played in front of people before,” Escovedo said after the performance. “Some we’ve been playing for people for a while, like 'Sally Was A Cop,' and 'San Antonio Rain,' so we’re comfortable with those. But we’re not at the place that we were with 'Street Songs of Love.'”

Describing Big Station as an “outward looking album,” Escovedo said he and songwriting partner Chuck Prophet were aiming for a varied sonic template similar to The Clash’s Sandinista!

“In a way it’s like Sandinista, where they were looking at lots of styles and rhythms, whether it was reggae or dub or Algerian or country and western,” he said. “That’s always been our template because punk rock for us has been about having a vast record collection and championing the great stuff.

“I see [Big Station] as a journey, a place where we all go or come from, kind of a junction in some sort of voyage. Or, it also could have an idea of a big radio station blasting out all these great things that are celebratory and what we love about rock and roll.”

Set list:

“Sally Was A Cop”

“This Bed Is Getting Crowded”

“Anchor”

“Tender Heart”

“Bottom Of The World”

“San Antonio Rain”

“Sabor A Mi”

“Common Mistake”

“Never Stood A Chance”

“Chelsea Hotel ‘78″

“Castanets”

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