Michael Jackson recently dropped by the home of former Bee Gee Barry Gibb, and the King of Pop and the Duke of Disco wrote a song together. Not to disappoint, but there's no word on where or when the result of the collaboration will ever surface. ...

Busta Rhymes is getting his hands wet for his next movie role. The rapper is in talks to play a dishwasher in the indie ensemble project "Waiting," which would co-star Ryan Reynolds ("Van Wilder"), Molly Sims and Jay Mohr as twenty-somethings who work at a busy chain restaurant. Shooting is scheduled to start in March in Los Angeles. ...

The full-length debut from the Mars Volta, the experimental offshoot of At the Drive-In alums Cedric Bixler and Omar Rodriguez, is expected to feature input from Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. The as-yet-untitled album is slated for release April 29 and will be preceded by three weeks of European tour dates, beginning March 5. ...

In support of their second album, Darkhorse, Crazy Town will saddle up and move out on the road with a string of tour dates that begin January 7 in Tempe, Arizona. A dozen shows are slotted between then and January 23 in West Hollywood, California. ... Macy Gray will embark on a club tour in February to promote her March release, The Trouble With Being Myself. The album's first single and video is "When I See You." ...

Better break in that new footbag you got from Santa, because the Bonnaroo festival is back. The three-day music and camping experience, which last year featured Widespread Panic, String Cheese Incident and Trey Anastasio, is set for June 13-15 and will return to the 600-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, where it was held this year. ... After several film-festival screenings, "Gigantic," the documentary on eccentric pop duo They Might Be Giants, has secured domestic distribution through Plexifilm, the company that brought Wilco's "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" to the silver screen. The film, which traces the band's two-decade history through interviews and performances, will open in May in New York, with other cities to follow. ...

12.27.02

She's worked runways in Paris and Milan, but now supermodel Naomi Campbell will be donning a different kind of couture. Campbell has signed on to be a spokesmodel for Jay-Z's Rocawear urban clothing line and will appear in the company's upcoming ad campaigns. The British-bred model has been spotted backstage at Jay's recent New York City concert and at various celebrity-filled parties lately with Jigga and his Roc-A-Fella partner Damon Dash. ...

This New Year's Day, the Queen of Soul will be showing some r-e-s-p-e-c-t for Michigan's newly elected governor, Jennifer Granholm. Aretha Franklin will sing the national anthem in Lansing, Michigan, at the inauguration of her home state's first-ever woman governor. ... When the Who's bassist John Entwistle passed away earlier this year, many fans figured the tour that followed would be a genuine final farewell. Don't be so sure. On his Web site, guitarist Pete Townshend writes that he has decided to start working on new Who songs. "Expect some new music to arrive in about a year, maybe later," he said. ...

R.E.M. offer a message of peace on their latest release, a holiday two-track CD sent out to fan-club members. Besides offering an acoustic cover of Big Star's "Jesus Christ" and Badfinger's "No Matter What," in a video portion of the disc Michael Stipe reads two sections from Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 work "Strength to Love," in which the civil rights activist wrote that we should love our enemies, since only love and light can drive out hate and darkness. The R.E.M. holiday package also included a calendar, a patch and a card. ... English modern pop band Supergrass have scheduled a handful of U.S. dates to promote the February 11 release of their new album, Life on Other Planets. The band will play three New York shows and three Los Angeles shows, starting February 8 at South Paw in Brooklyn and ending February 15 at Spaceland of Dreams in Silver Lake. A more complete tour will follow. ...

Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil had a pretrial motions hearing at the Beverly Hills Superior Court Thursday in his misdemeanor battery charge stemming from an altercation with a record producer in April. He's due back in court December 31. ...

On Christmas Eve at a private party at New York's Don Hill's, all-star New York Mets catcher Mike Piazza jumped onstage to sing with heavy metal band Nuclear Assault. Other guests that took the stage included Anthrax bassist Frank Bello, Trixter guitarist Steve Brown and bassist P.J. Farley, Monster Magnet guitarist Ed Mundell, Overkill vocalist Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth, T.T. Quick singer Mark Tornillo and guitarist Dave DiPietro and Halford guitarist Mike Chlasciak. ...

12.26.02

Linkin Park have chosen a name for their next album, though they're not yet ready to reveal it, they announced on their official Web site. They have, however, disclosed that the creation of the album was documented by director Bill Berg-Hillinger, who shot the footage for the band's DVD "Frat Party at the Pankake Festival." The clips will be used in an upcoming series of online shorts called LPTV. "On a couple of takes he just happened to be filming during the second that we came up with a guitar or vocal idea," wrote MC Mike Shinoda. "For anyone who wants to see inside our creative process at work, it's a great thing to look for." ...

When your last free concert resulted in a violent spectacle because you hired the Hell's Angels to handle security, you might wait a while before staging another freebie. Now, 33 years after the tragedy of Altamont, where a young male concertgoer was killed by the biker gang as the Rolling Stones performed their track "Sympathy for the Devil," the Stones have announced plans to play a free concert on February 6 at Los Angeles' Staples Center, which seats 20,000 people. The show is being staged to raise awareness of global warning. ...

What does Billy Corgan's new band Zwan have in common with Eminem, Queens of the Stone Age and Primal Scream? They're the latest to add a bonus DVD to their new album. Limited editions of Mary Star of the Sea will include a 35-minute DVD of interviews and behind-the-scenes studio footage. ... The 1999 radio-juggernaut "Smooth" is the top rock and roll song of the last half century, according to a new book written by Billboard columnist Fred Bronson. The Rob Thomas/ Santana collaboration caps off a list of the 5,000 top songs of the rock era that was tallied with an inverse point system devised by Bronson and applied to the Billboard pop singles charts from July 1955 to June 2002 and published in the third edition of "Billboard's Hottest 100 Hits." ...

Garage rock kingpin Gearhead Records will unleash its first "budget sampler" next year. Smash-Up Derby will feature a track from all of its releases, which includes records from the Hives, the Hellacopters and New Bomb Turks, as well as "some great bonus stuff (that actually is a bonus)," according to Gearhead's Web site. ...

Interpol will begin a short U.S. tour on January 10 in Columbus, Ohio, that will conclude with an appearance on "Last Call With Carson Daly" before the group crosses the pond to take part in an NME magazine-sponsored U.K. tour with the Datsuns, the Polyphonic Spree and the Thrills. ... Following two performances at Los Angeles' Knitting Factory with his band X, punk icon John Doe will set out on a U.S. tour in February, according to thejohndoe.com. ...