The annual South by Southwest music conference -- the Sundance for pop music -- has been announcing waves of bookings for its next tuneful spring break, March 12-17 in the Texas capital.

As usual, several Chicago folks have made the early cut. This year's locals with official showcases for the industry and media include ...

Beyonce has some big weeks ahead.

Before her halftime performance Feb. 3 at Super Bowl XLVII, she'll be singing the national anthem at President Obama's inauguration ceremony Jan. 21 on the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C.

Also performing at the inauguration, per an announcement this morning: Kelly Clarkson will sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" and James Taylor will sing "America the Beautiful".

The Recording Academy announced the first round of performers for this year's Grammys: Taylor Swift, Mumford & Sons, fun., Rihanna and the Black Keys.

Performers are usually drawn from the pool of artists with the greatest number of nominees, which this year includes six acts with six nods each -- including the Black Keys, Mumford & Sons and fun.

David Schelzel says the upcoming new album by the Ocean Blue -- their first full-length in nearly 14 years -- sounds a lot like the pop band's first two records. Why? Because he's been listening to a lot of current indie pop -- a good chunk of which sounds a lot like "The Ocean Blue" (1989) and "Cerulean" (1991).

"Stylistically, my headspace right now is more in the music I loved from that time period, and the new music I listen to now sounds more like the music I loved growing up," Schelzel says. "I love the xx, Beach House. I was with a friend one time in a restaurant and she heard Beach House come on. She said, 'Man, that sounds exactly like the Ocean Blue.' I don't necessarily agree with her, but it's funny she said that."

Happy birthday, Bowie -- you got us a gift?

David Bowie, 66 today, posted a new single on his web site this morning and teased the pending arrival of a new album -- his 30th, and his first in a decade -- titled "The Next Day."

In pop music, when hard-pressed to do something new, do something really old. This maxim plays out in the latest batch of songs from Beck, an album the "Loser" star did not record, but one you now can hear -- if you play it yourself.

Beck Hansen's Song Reader is a fancy folio containing 20 pieces of sheet music, plus nearly a hundred pages of art (from Marcel Dzama, Leanne Shapton, Jessica Hische and more), published in mid-December by McSweeney's.

In some introductory liner notes, writer Jody Rosen describes the project as "an experiment in ventriloquism." Beck wrote the words and music; now you have to give them voice and sound.

Many musicians, professionals and amateurs, are doing just that. The web site for the project already overflows with videos of wildly varying performances of the songs. Dig Amy Regan's sultry reading of "Do We? We Do," John Alexander's Jackson Browne-y take on "Ye Midnight Stars" or the lighter-than-air "Old Shanghai" by Contramano.

Typical of Beck, this "album" -- songs he's been tinkering with since 2004 -- is an eclectic bunch. Last Thursday night in midtown Chicago, a similarly eclectic bunch gathered to play the set in its entirety.

This city's continuing lack of a permanent blues museum remains a criminal blunder. (St. Louis? Really?) But in the meantime, we more than make do with the living historic exhibit that is guitarist Buddy Guy. An active embodiment of rock and roll's connection with its blues roots, Guy not only remains justly celebrated (last month's Kennedy Center Honors) but active and creative -- releasing a new live album, at the beginning of which he promises, in a firm whisper, "I'm not through yet."

William Shatner's on the phone, and here's one of the first things he says: "I just put down the phone with Ben Folds."

I'm a "Star Trek" fan but it's not, you know, a lifestyle. I like the franchise just fine, and my favorites are the third series and the sixth film. It's a pleasure to be speaking with Capt. James T. Kirk, sure, but I'm less interested in "Trek" than other things. He's one of the few Enterprise captains, after all, who's done many, many, many other things -- which is why his life story has thus far supported three memoirs and, on tour now, a one-man autobiographical stage show titled, with typical humility, "Shatner's World: We Just Live In It."

So when he mentions Folds, with whom the often musically maligned Shatner recorded one supremely excellent album -- 2004's "Has Been," an evocative and emotional set of 11 tracks based on Shatner's unique. way. of delivering. the spoken. word, featuring Aimee Mann, Joe Jackson, Henry Rollins, Brad Paisley and others -- my music side beams up more than a little.

2012 could go on the books with not one but numerous major musical headlines.

It was the year electronic dance music supposedly broke through (again). It was the year YouTube took the wheel, driving some of the chart's biggest hits ("Call Me Maybe," "Somebody That I Used to Know," the record-setting "Gangnam Style"). It was the year we lost Whitney Houston, the Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch, Jenni Rivera. It was the year hip-hop seemed to chill out about homosexuality. It was the year of a generational stalemate between a hardy crop of teen stars (Bieber, One Direction, Carly Rae Jepsen) and aging boomers who refused to go gently (the Rolling Stones, the Who, nearly everyone who played the 12-12-12 benefit concert). It was the year pop music finally became transparent -- in the form of a "holographic" Tupac Shakur.

Not a slow musical news year, for sure.

Here's a look back at some of 2012's biggest musical moments from our particular perspective here on the third coast ...

One final ranked list looking back on 2012: 10 great pop songs (you can listen to) ...