Steven Van Zandt (of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band and The Sopranos) has laid hands on two swaggering CD collections due this coming Tuesday from his new Wicked Cool Record Co. imprint - near-religious extravaganzas that dust the weak and electrify the willing. Fueled by the playlists of his syndicated radio program Little Steven's Underground Garage, the 15 personally selected tracks on The Coolest Songs in the World: Vol. 1 are each monsters in their own right. Blasting off with cosmic power-poppers The Shazam, Cincinnati's favorite sons The Greenhornes, and the wigged-out frenzy of The Forty Fives, the CD also features the snarling Ellie Vie fronting The Charms from Boston, a Mooney Suzuki rouser from 2002, and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's prophetic "Whatever Happened to My Rock & Roll." The sweaty, dangerous fun continues in CBGB OMFUG FOREVER, a tribute to the iconic, now-shuttered club with liner notes by Lenny Kaye. Sixteen tracks made the cut, with hits such as Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone" from 1978 and The Damned's "New Rose" from 1977, along with a few rare songs including Japanese bonus tracks from Green Day and U2 (which covers The Ramones' "Beat on the Brat").

The sacred fairgrounds of the Monterey Pop and Monterey Jazz festivals will bear new children in June and July with an expanded reissue of the 1967 pop festival and a new label debuting unreleased jazz treasures. Hot off a new documentary that recently screened at SXSW, Starbucks and Razor & Tie Records are teaming up for the two-disc Monterey International Pop Festival, highlighted by previously unreleased songs by Buffalo Springfield and Simon & Garfunkel. And kicking off with its first five CDs in July, Monterey Jazz Festival Records taps into Louis Armstrong from 1958, Miles Davis from 1963, Thelonious Monk from 1964, and Shirley Horn and Grover Washington Jr., each from 1994.

With Spider-Man 3 swinging into theaters on May 4, next week the soundtrack comes calling in a variety of packages. Featuring exclusive songs from Snow Patrol, Wolfmother, The Walkmen, and The Killers, the soundtrack includes a track from the Flaming Lips that has my mind salivating with possibility at the title "The Supreme Being Teaches Spider-Man How to Be in Love." A limited-edition eight-inch box set is made to resemble Spidey's rubberized suit, with a 32-page hardcover book, collectible cards, and one more Flaming Lips song, as the band rips through the "Theme from Spider-Man." Turntable spinners aren't left out, either, as a two-LP gatefold set and a series of four different picture discs are due from Record Collection Records. Spider-Man fever is also burning up Broadway, as Tony Award winner Julie Taymor (of Lion King fame) is working with Bono and The Edge of U2 on an upcoming live-theatre production.

Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer tells about a friend who leads a group of people who knit for the local food bank. They'll set up somewhere and knit with a sign that reads, "Knitting for the Food Bank."

"People will come and talk to them," Newcomer said in a phone interview last week. "Folks who might not maybe go up to someone on the corner and talk to somebody who has a sign will sit down with a group of women knitting and talk about the issue. 'What's happening with the food bank?'"