Top 9 Pop Stories for Sept 09

Scott Weiland Suffers Seizure on Airplane

Blabbermouth reports: Stone Temple Pilots/ex-Velvet Revolver singer Scott Weiland experienced a mild seizure during an American Airlines flight on Friday.

Sources close to Scott tell TMZ.com he suffered the seizure while flying from Los Angeles to Miami. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

UPDATE: A rep traveling with Weiland tells Rolling Stone that the airplane staff called for medical assistance over the loud speaker and had to administer oxygen to Weiland. Shortly after, Weiland had come to and was "in good spirits" as was taken off the plane for the hospital. - more on this story

Van Halen Accused of Scalping Fans

Blabbermouth reports: According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Van Halen netted an extra $1 million dollars in the fall of 2007 when up to 500 of the best seats to each of about 20 of the band's concerts were pulled from the Ticketmaster system and passed directly to ticket scalpers.

The brokers allegedly kept 30% of the marked-up sale price for themselves, and the remaining 70% was divided among Ticketmaster, the band and its handlers.

The move, according to the report, was part of Ticketmaster's initiative, codenamed "Project Showtime," to capture a piece of the sky-high prices charged by scalpers, which can exceed a ticket's face value by hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars. - more on this story

Metallica Is for Monkeys

(Rock Radio) It's official: Metallica is monkey music. That's the conclusion reached by a group of scientists who set out to discover how human music came into existence. And while the cotton-top tamarins ignored tracks by Nine Inch Nails and Tool, they responded positively to Metallica's 1991 Black Album track Of Wolf and Man.

The tamarin experiment involved playing different types of music to see if monkeys respond to music, or if only humans do. They played a variety of 30-second clips including music experts had devised from monkey sounds.

While they reacted to the monkey music, the only human music they paid attention to was Metallica's – and it made them calm and relaxed rather than the response straight-laced lab geeks expected. - more on this story

AC/DC Pull the Plug On Tour As Singer Recovers

AC/DC's Black Ice World Tour has been put on hold while lead singer Brian Johnson recovers from a medical procedure. Here is what the band had to say: [the tour] was set to hit Phoenix, AZ on October 1, will be postponed to a later date. Subsequent shows in Las Vegas, Louisville, Kansas City, Des Moines and Milwaukee will also be rescheduled. The tour will resume on October 16 in Washington.

Lead singer Brian Johnson recently underwent a medical procedure and at the advice of his doctor is taking some time to rest. [He is rumored to have had some kind of throat surgery but that has not been confirmed]

The Black Ice World Tour, kicked off in October of 2008 and has crisscrossed North America and Europe twice. This November, the Black Ice World Tour will visit Latin America and by early 2010 the tour will hit Australia and New Zealand. - more on this story

Weezer Admit First Hit Was A Complete Metallica Rip-Off

(Rock Radio) Remember (Welcome Home) Sanitarium, the last track on Side 1 of Metallica's 1986 LP, Master of Puppets? Remember Undone – The Sweater Song, the first track Weezer released in 1994? If you know both, do you detect any comparisons?

They're more or less the same song, according to Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo – although he didn't realise that when he was writing his version. He tells Rolling Stone: "It was the first Weezer song I wrote, back in 1991. I was trying to write a Velvet Underground type song because I was super into them, and I came up with the guitar riff. I picked up the guitar and the first thing I played was that riff.

"It just feels so classic to me. Even now when the band starts to play it, it takes over the energy in the room and you're transported into the world of Weezer. It wasn't until years after I wrote it that I realised it's almost a complete rip-off of Sanitarium by Metallica." - But guess what? The Metallica song itself was inspired by another hit

A New Rolling Stone Murder Suspect

Police recently decided to take another look into the 40-year-old case in the death of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones. Now the band's former road manager has come out publicly with his suspicion that another of group's former associates was involved.

Former Stones road manager Sam Cutler posted a blog on his website laying out what he believed happened to Jones. Here is part of that posting: It is now forty years since Brian Jones' demise, where (dependent upon one's sources) he either drowned or was murdered. No-one that was around the Stones at the time and none of the Stones' musicians, have ever offered a public opinion as to what happened to Brian. His death has been "shrouded in mystery" and characterised by police incompetence, an absurd and inadequate coronial enquiry, and very little sympathy from anyone other than his band mates and his immediate family. No-one, it seems, wishes to go "on the record" concerning Brian, and now (apparently) the police have new evidence regarding Brian's death. There is a possibility that the original police investigation will be re-opened. The original police enquiry was a farrago of incompetence that makes the keystone cops looks positively professorial. It's time for people to say what they think.

Brian Jones was murdered. Of this there is little doubt. He was not murdered by the man who was in charge of the building work at Brian's farm, a gentleman by the name of Thorogood who is popularly credited by conspiracy theorists with doing the deed. He was almost certainly murdered by the very man whose role it was to protect him, Tom Keylock. The man who less than forty eight hours after the murder, emptied the house of its valuable contents, and burnt substantial amounts of papers and personal items of Brian Jones on a bonfire in the front garden. - more on this story

Sublime Reunite For Pot Fest

(Reuters) Sublime, the chart-topping punk-reggae group that split up more than 13 years ago when its lead singer overdosed, is gearing up to play its first official gig with a new vocalist at a festival celebrating cannabis.

The trio, famed for such radio hits as "Date Rape" and "What I Got," will perform at the Smokeout festival, to be held October 23-24 at the San Manuel Amphitheater in San Bernardino, Calif., 60 miles east of Los Angeles.

Sublime's original lead singer, Bradley Nowell, died of a heroin overdose in 1996 just as the band was achieving its biggest mainstream success. Surviving members Bud Gaugh and Eric Wilson went on to form the Long Beach Dub All-Stars, but earlier this year played a gig with Northern California-based singer Rome that Gaugh later called a Sublime reunion. - They were later sued for using the Sublime name

Echo and the Bunnymen Member Killed

BBC reports: A former keyboard player with Echo and the Bunnymen has been killed in a motorbike crash on the Isle of Man.

Jake Brockman, who was 53 and married, lived in Bristol. He died when his bike was in collision with a converted ambulance near Kirk Michael on Tuesday.

Known to fans as the "Fifth Bunnyman", he had been associated with the Liverpool band since their 80s heyday and became a full-time member in 1989. In 1989 the band's first drummer Pete De Freitas died in a similar crash. - more on this story

Nirvana Vs Guitar Hero

MusicRadar reports: Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic are "dismayed and disappointed" in the Kurt Cobain avatar to be featured in the upcoming Guitar Hero 5 game, and today the two former Nirvana members issued a strongly worded statement regarding the situation.

The pair wrote, "We want people to know that we are dismayed and very disappointed in the way a facsimile of Kurt is used in the Guitar Hero game. The name and likeness of Kurt Cobain are the sole property of his estate - we have no control whatsoever in that area. While we were aware of Kurt's image being used with two Nirvana songs, we didn't know players have the ability to unlock the character. This feature allows the character to be used with any kind of song the player wants. We urge Activision to do the right thing in re-locking Kurt's character so that this won't continue in the future.

"It's hard to watch an image of Kurt pantomiming other artists' music alongside cartoon characters. Kurt Cobain wrote songs that hold a lot of meaning to people all over the world. We feel he deserves better." - more on this story

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