We’re busy gearing up to fly to Austin for Waynestock and the Axis of Audio day party, in addition to a dozen other events taking place during SXSW, so here are some afternoon links to enjoy in the meantime (though more posts are on the way shortly):

• Tom Waits was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night by Neil Young before performing 4 songs, including “Get Behind the Mule” with Young himself. While the broadcast won’t air on FUSE until Sunday (3/20), reports from the event have surfaced with a sneak peek at the ceremony. One great quote (of many) from Waits: “They say that I have no hits and that I’m difficult to work with, and they say that like it’s a bad thing.” For a longer excerpt of his speech, visit Anti Blog.
• Our esteemed friends at Drowned In Sound and yours truly teamed up for the latest chapter in our series of news round-ups with a brand new concept in which updates on artists are accompanied by their most recent streaming songs. Behold! Music News Mixtape #1, featuring Nick Cave, Bat For Lashes, Laura Marling, and many more.
• Iron & Wine covered George Michael’s “One More Try” for AV Club’s ongoing “Undercover” series. Watch the performance here.
• The Strokes are streaming LP4, Angles, in full on their website.
• David Lynch will direct a live webcast of a Duran Duran concert next week. Check out the trailer and other details here.

The latest chapter in David Lynch’s consistently interesting recent focus on music arrived today in the form of news of a 17-track charity compilation, curated by and set to benefit his David Lynch Foundation, which features exclusive tracks by Tom Waits, Iggy Pop, Peter Gabriel, Moby, Ben Folds, and many more artists. In exchange for a pledge of $18, DLF Music will provide all tracks in a digital format over the course of the next six weeks, with all proceeds going to their global effort to teach “stress-reducing, health-promoting meditation to one million at-risk youth and 10,000 veterans with PTSD.”

Waits’ exclusive contribution to the “Download for Good” campaign is a stripped-down live recording of “The Briar & the Rose,” a song the Rock Hall inductee wrote in 1993 for the album and William S. Burroughs-co-written play The Black Rider. You can hear a 90-second preview of the track alongside four more cuts from the comp right now and purchase/pledge thataway.

The best music news of the day just arrived via @tomwaits:

As if Tom Waits getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month wasn’t a cool enough news story already, it just got an epic injection via the addition of another NorCal-based icon to the ceremony: Neil Young will do the honors of providing the speech for Waits’ induction, Rolling Stone reports. The event’s other notable induction speakers will include Elton John for Leon Russell, Paul Simon for Neil Diamond, Rob Zombie for Alice Cooper, John Legend for Dr. John, and Bette Midler for legendary singer/Phil Spector collaborator Darlene Love.

While many of us, myself included, were first made aware of the undeniably adorable PS22 kids chorus — led by music teacher/Tori Amos fanatic Gregg Breinberg — when they took on Phoenix’s “Listzomania” last year (a cover that even pulled at the heartstrings of the band), Breinberg’s rotating cast of Staten Island, NY 5th graders have actually been filming versions of well-known pop, classic rock, and new wave songs, not to mention a few lesser-known indie faves (e.g. Beach House’s “Zebra”), for 10+ years. Their recent take on 2010 critical favorite “Round and Round” by Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti inspired me to dig through the PS22 YouTube archives for a few standouts and others that you may want to enjoy before they perform at next month’s Oscars. Here’s my uplifting, essential collection of 10 PS22 videos:

Ahead of the forthcoming release of Tom Waits and photographer/journalist Michael O’Brien’s Hard Ground, a collaborative photo and poetry book that hopes to raise awareness about homelessness, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s latest inductee will release a limited-edition chapbook of his poem “Seeds On Hard Ground” to benefit Northern California charities. While a rearranged, abridged version of the piece will appear in Hard Ground as well, the full poem will be available exclusively with the February 22 release via his record label, Anti.

You can pre-order a copy right now in Waits’ online store and read “Seeds On Hard Ground” here.

Ever since the sad news of Don Van Vliet’s passing on Friday, I — and surely many others — have spent the weekend revisiting a host of interviews, documentaries, Lester Bangs reviews, music (of course), and more on the late, great Captain Beefheart. While Cap and the Magic Band have inspired an incalculable number of music/art pioneers over the past 4 decades, one passage from Frank Zappa’s autobiography, which recalls studio sessions with Vliet for Trout Mask Replica, brought to my mind one of his most obvious successors: Tom Waits. Zappa wrote:

Well, here’s some great news: Tom Waits will join the likes of Alice Cooper, Dr. John, Darlene Love, and Neil Diamond next March as a member of next year’s inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the New York Times’ ArtsBeat reports.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect as rumor has it that the legendary troubadour/poet has been working on his next album in the studio lately and this might make for a great promo event for the release, as well. New music from Waits has been a bit scarce this year — aside from his excellent collaboration with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band on a cover of “Tootie Ma Is A Big Fine Thing.” Either way, I can’t wait for his sure-to-be-wonderful acceptance speech.

Congrats, Mr. Waits!

*Update: Waits issued a statement about the announcement:

“Poetry is a very dangerous word,” said Tom Waits in 1975, adding later: “I don’t like the stigma that comes with being called a poet - so I call what I’m doing an improvisational adventure or an inebriational travelogue.” Despite having issues in the past with the “very misused” word, however, Waits has embraced the format for many years, be it in song lyrics, through readings, or, most recently, while performing a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem. Next march, we can officially label Waits a “poet,” though, as the great singer-songwriter has teamed up with journalist Michael O’Brien for a book about homelessness featuring photography by O’Brien alongside poems by Waits.

According to University of Texas Press (via The Eyeball Kid), Waits and O’Brien’s 184-page book, Hard Ground, seeks to create “a portrait of homelessness that impels us to look into the eyes of people who live ‘on the hard ground’ and recognize our common humanity.”