So how will our North Carolina nominees do at Sunday's Grammy Awards? And can this year's model come anywhere near last year for all-around excitement? My suspicion is probably not, but see the preview in Friday's paper for prognostications; then come on back Sunday night, when I'll be live-blogging the telecast.

By David Menconi
dmenconi@newsobserver.com

DURHAM – Well, the fifth time was the charm. After standing the Triangle up four times on concert dates since 2005, Aretha Franklin finally showed up, holding forth Thursday night at the Durham Performing Arts Center. And the fact that she was actually good made for a nice bonus.

Franklin brought along lots of backup firepower, of course, a score or so of musicians billed as the Aretha Franklin Orchestra. She made exactly the sort of entrance you’d expect of a diva of her stature, striding onstage in a white fur coat to a breathless introduction: “Your queen, my queen, THE QUEEN of Soul – Aaaaaaaaaaretha FRANKLIN!”

It was an unusual concert, to say the least. Not many shows feature the mayor coming out halfway through to hand over the key to the city, as Bill Bell did Thursday night.

“You don’t need a key, we built this house for you,” Bell said with a gesture taking in DPAC’s plush environs. “So you got to come back.”

Whether she will or not, Franklin made her mark Thursday night, credibly pulling off everything from En Vogue covers to a bit of standup comedy. Franklin will turn 70 next month, and she has undeniably lost a step or two over the years. But reports of her voice’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Besides, Franklin at three-quarters capacity is still better than just about anyone else out there.

Although Franklin never directly addressed her multiple no-shows, she did offer up a song selected for atonement purposes, “I Wanna Make It Up To You.” Her gospel roots were never far away, with many songs – starting with “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” which came up second in the 90-minute set – going to church on the outro. And when she really reached down and wailed, she still made you feel it. “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” just about melted the house down, and “Chain of Fools” wasn’t far behind.

Best of all was “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the one song where Franklin sat at the piano to play as well as sing. She started out somewhere between church and honkytonk before quickly taking a turn for the verse into a full-on gospel raveup, complete with call, response and Hallelujah’s to the heavens. Even her band was applauding by the end.

The show closed with “Respect,” Franklin’s longtime signature, and she took her bows as the band vamped on.

“See you next time,” she said.

Promise?

Menconi: 919-829-4759 or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat

Oliver Gant isn't even in kindergarten yet, but he sure does have friends in high places. Young Oliver has been battling sacrococcygeal teratoma for the past year, so the local music and arts communities have been pitching in with a series of benefit shows to help out his family. The latest is "Racing the Cure," featuring an upper-echelon slice of the regional music scene playing multiple venues in downtown Raleigh on March 23. This might be the only time you'll ever see the Avett Brothers in a club around here where they're not headlining.

Tickets are $25 and allow entrance to all three clubs. They go on sale at noon today (Wednesday) at etix.com.

Kings
8:15-8:45 -- Jack the Radio
9-9:40pm -- Schooner
10-10:40 -- Filthybird
11-11:40 -- The Old Ceremony
midnight-12:25am -- Avett Brothers
12:30am -- Ivan Rosebud & JYU

Tir Na Nog
8:15-8:45pm -- Hooking Up
9-9:45 -- Hammer No More the Fingers
10-10:45 -- Whatever Brains
11-11:45 -- Lonnie Walker
midnight -- Annuals

Pour House
8:15-8:45pm -- Gross Ghost
9-9:45 -- Spider Bags
10-10:45 -- Patty Hurst Shifter
11-11:45 -- Birds of Avalon
midnight -- The Love Language

So did you enjoy Madonna's Super Bowl Halftime show in all its garish glory? Enough to want to truck over to Charlotte to see the expanded version in-person? Because yet another major tour is bypassing the Triangle to play the other end of the state instead. Madonna's world tour has been announced, with a Nov. 15 date in Charlotte.

Tickets go on sale March 5 -- more than eight months ahead of the show date. But it might not be a bad idea to wait. The tour schedule has open dates around Nov. 15, so it's possible that another date closer to the Triangle will pop up.

ADDENDUM: Madonna's Super Bowl show was...a Satanic ritual?...

Most of the Super Bowl's pre-game musical chatter centered on Madonna's halftime show, and her set was fine in a sensory-overload kind of way. But my favorite music during the game actually turned up right before halftime, in a Toyota commercial -- which featured the understated piano fanfare of "Hope You Know," a track on local trio Megafaun's eponymous 2011 album. Here, check it out.

By David Menconi
dmenconi@newsobserver.com

DURHAM – Kelly Clarkson is nothing if not a dramatist. Here’s someone who released an album titled “My December” a few months after turning the ripe old age of 25 – and Tuesday night she came onstage at the Durham Performing Arts Center preceded by a montage of headlines about various struggles (“Fat,” “Failure” and such) on the video screens.

Then she proceeded to blast those headlines into irrelevance. Because whatever her drama-queen tendencies, Clarkson can really, really sing, even if it’s often hard to tell just how good she is over when she has to fight to be heard over some of her backing arrangements.

As the “American Idol” it’s cool to like, Clarkson can pretty much do any style convincingly. Her biggest hits have been uptempo girl-power rock and dance-leaning pop, but she can also do convincing arena-level bombast of both the rock and country persuasions. Best of all, she's a fabulous torch singer when she turns the volume down.

Tuesday’s best moments were when she was accompanied by just piano, especially on a pair of covers – Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity,” and a soulful reading of Carrie Underwood’s “I Know You Won’t.” At one point during the latter song, a loud male voice rang out from the crowd:

“YES, M’AM!”

Actually, the crowd was pretty heavily distaff, gathered to bask in the drama of Clarkson’s story. Three of the set’s 21 songs had the word “Gone” in the title and another dozen or so centered on some variation of that theme, presented as epic narratives about female trials and tribulations.

Clarkson didn’t make anyone wait too long for the big hits, serving up “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and “Since U Been Gone” as the second and third songs in the set. Also present and accounted for were “Breakaway” (still gloriously catchy), “Miss Independent” and, of course, “My Life Would Suck Without You.”

The crowd just ate it all up, singing and chanting along on pretty much all the loud ones. Still, it was those quiet songs that hinted at what Clarkson can really do when she’s not having to strain to be heard. She’s coming to realize that herself.

The encore kicked off with “Never Again,” stripped down from the 2007 original version to just voice and piano, and the rage it conveyed was almost chilling. Afterward, Clarkson was perky as ever while drinking in the audience’s applause.

“I love that,” she said. “I sing that one quiet, and it’s even angrier!”

There’s a lesson to be learned.

Menconi: 919-829-4759 or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat

Ever wonder how ticket scalpers -- excuse me, ticket brokers -- always seem to wind up with all the best tickets for the big shows? Well, here's your answer: TicketBots.net, an online retailer where your wildest front-row dreams can be had starting for about $750, which will get you web-robot software capable of scooping up scalpable golden-circle seats by the bushel.

I'd like to tell you more about this site, such as who runs it and what, other than buying up blocks of tickets to scalp, one might use such a product for. But when I sent a message identifying myself as a newspaper reporter who covers the ticket-scalping industry, the agent on duty wrote back the following reply:

I don't think, I can help you with anything here..

Now that is a pity...

Onetime Chapel Hill regular Ben Folds is coming back to his old stomping grounds this spring, to play two shows with the NC Symphony. The pianist will be at Raleigh's Meymandi Concert Hall March 22-23, with associate conductor Sarah Hicks -- and word is that they'll do two different concert programs, not the same program repeated two nights. Ticket prices are still to come, but The public on-sale date is Feb. 6. This will be Folds' first show in the area since that fabulous Ben Folds Five reunion in Chapel Hill in the fall of 2008.

UPDATE: Ticket prices are $28, $37, $63 and $79.

WHOOPS: And it turns out that Folds played DPAC in 2009 and did an NC Symphony gig in 2010; so this will actually be his third show in the area since the 2008 Ben Folds Five reunion (thanks, Eric and Valerie).

When it comes to multi-disciplinary collaborations, it always helps things along if artists from different worlds hit it off on a personal level. And that's definitely what happened when Green Day guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong met Broadway director Michael Mayer while they were putting together the stage-musical version of "American Idiot." In no time at all, they were singing show tunes together.

"It was at a diner on Ninth Avenue," Mayer said in a recent interview. "The whole band was there, and Green Day is really [expletive] famous. They're not the sort of band that's going to be in a diner in New York's theater district in the middle of the afternoon too often. But there we were, singing 'Together, Wherever We Go.'"

At this point, Mayer paused to warble a bit of the song made famous by Ethel Merman in 1959's "Gypsy": We may not go far/But sure as a star/Wherever we are/It's together.

"Yes, between Billie Joe's androgyny and [drummer] Tre Cool's pink boa and tasteful pumps, Green Day's always been very campy," Mayer continued. "The whole thing was so much fun. I knew that, in some weird way, this was a soul mate. It was a beautiful thing."

There is an "American Idiot" movie in the works. Meantime, however, the touring version of the musical opens at Raleigh's Memorial Auditorium on Tuesday. For lots more on that (including the local member of the stage band), see the story in Sunday's paper. The first two rows in the pit have been designated as "student rush tickets" for each "American Idiot" performance, available only the night of the show for $26. A student ID is required.

ADDENDUM (2/2/12): Roy Dicks' review.

Not that it’s unusual to encounter Bob Dylan songs, but I still felt like the man’s songs were following me around on Friday night. Driving from Raleigh to Chapel Hill, I heard Peter Paul & Mary’s version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” on WKIX-AM. After that signal faded out, I switched over to WXYC on the FM band just in time to hear Van Morrison’s rendition of “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” Then I walked into Cat’s Cradle, where Old 97’s were playing, and they served up “Champaign, Illinois” – a rewrite of Dylan’s “Desolation Row.”

While it’s hard to argue with those other two covers, I think I dug the 97’s remake the most. There might not be a more purely likable act on the bar-band circuit nowadays, and they’ve gotten nothing but better since their mid-’90s breakthrough period.

Speaking of the mid-’90s, frontman Rhett Miller does not appear to have aged 15 minutes in the 17 years since the 97’s debuted with 1995’s “Wreck Your Life” (an album represented Friday night by a rollicking run-through of “Doreen”). Miller’s stage persona is the lovable loser who wishes he were cooler, but he’ll settle for knowing where you’ve been. And even if you’re not telling, well, he’ll still leave the back door open for ya.

The rest of the 97’s were all beyond solid, too, still rocking at the feverish pace of a runaway train (no, that name has never been an accident). They were great, and it was a surprisingly full house given that the 97’s are touring on an album that’s six months old. All in all, a real good night…