Wednesday Intermezzo: Heady Camera Phones

Want free tickets and press access to any show you want this summer? Do you like to write about and take pictures at concerts? If you answered yes to those questions, check out Billboard’s Mobile Beat contest.

Billboard is teaming up with LG to offer the winners press passes to any concert they want and a heady camera phone. In exchange they promise to post their photos and a brief review of each performance they attend. Two winners will be picked from every major metropolitan area. Simply create a photo montage of your own photos and write a 100-word essay on why you want to be a Billboard blogger. Check out the Mobile Beat web site for more information or to enter the contest.

We hope someone from our audience wins — we don’t want bunch of emo kids filing dour rants on why Dashboard Confessional has sold out.

We got plenty of links this week, so let’s get down to business:

• Prince to play a seven week residency in Los Angeles?!?!
• The Smashing Pumpkins returned to the stage last night with new band members and a varied setlist
• The American Babies are featured on Cold Turkey 611
• The lineup for the Monolith Festival at Red Rocks is out
• Ray White will be Zappa Plays Zappa’s special guest this summer
• Where did this amazing footage of Bjork’s entire Coachella set come from? [via Large Hearted Boy]
• The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Squeeze – Part One
• Lefsetz Letter takes on the $3,000 concert series
• Two great David Lee Roth-era Van Halen Bootlegs from The Roadhouse
• Burning Oak profiles Friday’s Summer Camp festival performers
• Sirius is launching a Grateful Dead channel — the Dead also continue to kick down serious jams through the Taper’s Section
• Leftover Salmon’s 2007 lineup includes Jeff Sipe
• Richard Thompson is touring the country this summer
• Watch the first episode of Flight of the Conchords, a Tenacious D-esque new comedy that debuts in June on HBO
• Velvet Revolver is teaming up with Alice In Chains for a August – October tour
• Stewart Copeland wants the Police to change up their setlist
• Michael Franti found out how the inmates at San Quentin prison were feelin’
• The confirmed schedule for Central Park SummerStage is out
• Syd Barrett had quite a bit of loot stashed before his death

As always, please let us know if we missed anything below….