I missed the first 45 minutes of the two-hour-plus blowout (filing a news story on Taste of MN), but they reportedly played some new tracks early on. After that, it was just one long marathon of funk. My god, they just kept playing and playing, as if proving there’s no such thing as a commercial break in the road life of the Roots. Songs didn’t really start or end, they just sort of popped up sporadically, including ”Step Into the Realm,” “You Got Me” and “The Next Movement.” Granted, they’ve always been a jam band, but this took it to a whole other level. They also threw in more cover-song snippets than usual, from a much wider range, including “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song,” George Thorogood’s “Who Do You Love?” (just kidding… RIP Bo Diddley) and “Never Can Say Goodbye” (and RIP MJ). I’d say the jukebox format definitely showed the influence of their Fallon gig. One other sign of their new TV stardom: More frat-boys at the sold-out show. Ah well, welcome aboard, and hold on tight! 

Let’s not jump to conclusions yet, though. When I last spoke to Tom Sullivan a couple weeks ago (who has run the place with his brother Bill for the past decade), he hinted that there would be a “new partnership” deal at the club he would be announcing soon. There was no air of finality or regret about it. I know that the bar was late paying some of its taxes to the state last year, and it incurred a hefty construction bill when its exterior wall had to be remade following a modest crumble. But that’s the bar biz. There are a few touring shows listed there for the coming months on Pollstar, including Scott H. Biram on July 23, Slobberbone (doing a brief reunion tour) Aug. 15 and Joe Pernice on Sept. 12. Here’s hoping we’ll indeed see them there. Stay tuned.

And some good news for now: City on the Make, one of many great bands (and probably the best) that the 400 has fostered of late, was able to move its show tonight a few blocks away to the Bedlam Theatre (9 p.m., $7). Massey said of the quick switcheroo, “I’m amazed sometimes that there are good people like the Bedlam who go out of their way to make special things happen.”

Wearing heavy-duty headphones (like the ones worn by people who guide airplanes on tarmacs), Eli Pirner, 5, stood onstage in front of bassist Tommy Stinson’s amp during the opening “Somebody to Shove.” By the end of the night, Eli was at the mic, lowered to his level, to sing “Stand Up and Be Strong,” face to face with his kneeling dad. Bet your kid didn’t get to do something that cool when you took him or her to work.

Afterward, Danny Murphy told the sellout crowd: “Eli rocks! That was good man. Just like the singer, it took Eli a little while to get wound up and then he was into it.”

That would be a fairly accurate review of Dad’s 95-minute performance at the Zoo. With Eli sitting in the wings, Pirner perked up during the seventh song, “Without a Trace,” which he dedicated to the band’s late bassist Karl Mueller. “String of Pearls” earned big cheers from the crowd, which may have been the tamest crowd at the zoo this year. “Let’s All Kill Each Other” was perfectly punk tongue in cheek.

The big winner came later: the invigorating “Bittersweetheart,” during which Pirner did a little shimmey. He was way into “Sometime to Return” and the closing “Stranger,” during which he was demonstrative and emotional. It was maybe the only song he’d played all night without a guitar. By then, Eli had scampered off stage into Mom’s arms. 

Here is a set list (though I missed a couple of songs when I went to the restroom where there was a long line):

1. Somebody To Shove 2. All Is Well 3. Easy Street 4. Misery 5. Lately 6. Black Gold 7. Without a Trace 8. String of Pearls 9. Let’s All Kill Each Other 10. Just Like Anyone 11. Cartoon (?) 12. ?? 13. Black Star 14. Never Really Been 15. Runaway Train 16. Watcha Need 17. Bittersweetheart 18. Sometime to Return 19. Stand Up and Be Strong   ENCORE 20. Closer to the Stars 21. ??   22. Stranger

Here’s a postcard from the 757s, promoting their “opening” gig for Judas Priest at Taste of MN on Friday (they go on at 12:30 p.m.; Priest is at 8:30; works for me). Click to enlarge. Feel free to frame.

My favorite tracks are the ones I could easily hear getting radioplay, and I’m not just talking on NPR stations: “You and I,” featuring Feist on guest vocals, is a loose and pretty pop duet that’s sweet enough for Top 40 play, or at least Cities 97 (but not too sweet for old cynics like me to love it). Even better in the ballad department is “Country Disappeared,” a slow but gushing piano groove that shows Tweedy’s old-soul influence. Meanwhile, fans of the “A.M.”-style, straight-up, melodic Wilco rock sound should dig the cheeky rockers “Sonny Feeling” and “Wilco (the Song).”

What most of the reviews seem to agree on, as do I, is that this is also the band’s least ambitious disc since… maybe forever. Wilco’s not keeping up with Radiohead as envelope-pushing art-rock-gods, in other words. Again, not a bad thing. I’d kill to hear Radiohead make a more straight-up album like this again (as much as I loved “In Rainbows”). But there’s a little of that ”Yankee Hotel”/”A Ghost” innovation here. The fragmented and harried “Bull Black Nova” features guitarist Nels Cline at his freakiest, while “One Wing” is a bleak and brilliant epic.

As far as Wilco’s amazing live shows go, those latter two tunes are the ones I most look forward to hearing up at the 10,000 Lakes fest on July 23. But I’d also like to hear some of these songs on my preteen niece’s little pink boombox or her mom’s mini-SUV radio. 

This one could very well end up on my list of favorite shows at the end of the year, and three-fourths of the fans acted like it was the best concert they’d ever seen. Nas unfortunately cut most of his songs short (one verse, one chorus), but that seemed to heighten his delivery of them. He and everyone else enjoyed having the band (Marley’s) behind him alongside DJ Green Lantern.  Jr. Gong, meanwhile, was absolutely electrifying. The guy has Tommy-gun spitfire talent as a rapper, and he does his father’s legacy proud as a torchbearing (but hardly just a copycat) reggae singer. There was a clear chemistry between the two Jamaican-blooded stars, who just finished an album together, “Distance Relatives,” and are co-headlining the Rock the Bells Tour this summer. Their 80-minute set here was cut up into different parts. Here’s how it went down:

Nas solo: He opened with “Hip-Hop Is Dead” and tore through a flurry of classics, including “The World Is Yours,” “It Ain’t Hard to Tell” and “If I Ruled the World.”

Nas & Marley: The duo traded verses on Nas songs such as “N.Y. State of Mind” and “Represent,” then did a “One Love” riff.

Marley solo: He focused on his reggae side with “More Justice,” the riveting “Hey Girl,” “Love and Inity,” a feisty version of Bob’s “War/No More Trouble” and then finishing with “Jam Rock.”

Nas again: Focused on his topical tracks such as “Hate Me Now,” “Black President” (big cheers), “I Can” and “The Slave and the Master.”

Nas & Marley: Finished with “On the Road to Zion,” then encored with two songs off the new record, which sounded a little tepid but had a well-aimed come-together message.

BTW, dig the photo Rohan Preston shot above. Yeah, our theater critic.

My friend Ed voted for Kuti because his music was more complex. His wife Rachel opted for Ade because his groove was more satisfying. (Their son has a degree in ethnomusicology from UCLA.)

Multi-instrumentalist/singer Kuti, 47,  and his band came across like Africa’s answer to James Brown with more jazz pretensions and plenty of politics (sung in English, at times). While his music was more challenging, his band was not as rehearsed, crisp or tight as Ade’s, and his singing not as soothing.

Loved it when he was singing about why African men and woman can’t succeed: “because we like to drink beer too much.”

Ade’s ensemble was sort of like a percussion-heavy African answer to the Grateful Dead only a lot tighter. Ade, 62, was a smooth, soulful singer (with Pips-like backup vocalists and two booty shaking female dancers) as his many percussionists played mesmerizing rhythms that kept the crowd dancing. So many of these dancers had a camera in their hands that it almost looked like a new dance style; but they were merely happy to see and document these two Nigerian heroes. Good times.

Pretty soon the Zac Brown Band had the fans on their feet for pretty much the rest of the night. What was most impressive about Brown’s two hours onstage was that these six musicians truly enjoy making music together. It didn’t matter what style of music or whether it was an original tune or a cover, these guys genuinely dug playing together.

Brown is a strong singer who’s not afraid of unleashing his loud, robust voice or reining it in to manifest his sensitivities. He can be quiet and intense at the same time. He’s also a fast and expressive acoustic picker, and his bandmates distinguished themselves, especially slide guitarist Coy Bowles and fiddler Jimmy DeMartini.  However, we could have done without Clay Cook’s half-hearted attempt to do the Beatles’ “Blackbird” as a jazz guitar piece or his off-target falsetto vocals.

ZBB played most of the selections from their best-selling “Foundation” album, a new song and covers of the Band, the Beatles, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Ray LaMontagne, John Mayer, Stevie Wonder and Charlie Daniels. My favorites were the new, James Taylor-evoking “Colder Weather,” the gospelly “I Shall Be Released” and the evocative “Into the Mystic.”

Here is the set list: 1. Whatever It Is 2. Where the Boat Leaves From 3. It’s Not OK 4. Who Knows 5. Jolene 6. Different Kind of Fine 7. the Night They Drove Ol Dixie Down (the Band) 8. Let It Go 9. Highway 20 Ride 10. Devil Went Down to Georgia (Charlie Daniels) 11. Blackbird (Beatles) 12. Colder Weather (with a great line about being ‘born for leavin’”) 13. Toes 14. Isn’t She Lovely (Stevie wonder) mashup with Neon (John Mayer) 15. Free mashup with Into the Mystic (Van Morrison) 16. Chicken Fried  ENCORE 17. I Shall Be Released (Dylan) 18. Sic ‘em on a Chicken