PowerBlogs: Rumour Mills

Depeche Mode singer Dave Gahan (GAHN) is recovering from surgery to remove a low-grade malignant tumour in his bladder.

The tumour was discovered while doctors were treating him for gastroenteritis.

Gahan’s doctors have ordered him to rest until June 8th.

Depeche Mode plan to do a concert that night in Leipzig, Germany.

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Alice In Chains bassist Mike Starr is going public with his recovery.

Starr will be one of the participants on “Celebrity Rehab 3” on V-H-1.

Country singer Mindy McCready, actress Mackenzie Phillips, basketball player Dennis Rodman and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss are also taking part.

It will follow their real experiences as they go through treatment for addictions with Dr. Drew Pinsky.

The series will premiere early next year.

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The gong Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham used to set fire in concert is for sale.

The brass gong is more than 75 centimetres across and has two Chinese characters on it.

Bonham used to set it on fire using lighter fluid.

It’s expected to sell for an estimated 80-thousand-to-120-thousand dollars at an auction sponsored, coincidentally enough, by Bonhams auction house in Los Angeles on June 14th.

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Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance is a father.

His wife, Mindless Self Indulgence bassist Lyn-Z (zee), gave birth to a girl on Wednesday, according to People magazine.

They have named her Bandit Lee Way.

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Kid Rock and his tour sponsor, Jim Beam, are donating 50 cents from each concert-ticket sold to Operation Homefront.

The organization helps U-S war veterans returning home from duty.

Kid Rock’s tour kicks off June 26th in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The tour will hit 25 cities across North America.

Kid Rock will also serve as grand marshal for the LifeLock 400 at Michigan International Speedway on June 14th.

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It looks like Weezer will have a new album to promote when they hit the road with Blink 1-82 later this summer. Weezer’s site says after recording a bunch of songs last winter with producer Jacknife Lee, “The band has more new songs they are excited about, so they will be doing some more recording soon.” And while the site denies a rumored July release date, it says to expect the first single in the summer and that the album may come out in the summer or fall. Weezer joins Blink 1-82 on the road August 23rd in Toronto.

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Are The Rolling Stones gearing up for a new album and tour? A post on the website of It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, the Stones’ fan club, says, “Ronnie [Wood] has been recording solo stuff in Los Angeles this winter. Mick [Jagger] has been active recording in L-A as well, Keith [Richards] has been doing stuff in New York City, and Charlie [Watts] is guest playing at shows in London this spring… Rumors are they are getting ready for a world tour to be announced sometime later this year.” A spokeswoman for the Stones was unavailable for comment.

Linkin Park join an all-star roster of bands on the soundtrack for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. The disc includes Linkin Park’s theme song “New Divide,” Green Day’s “21 Guns” and tracks from Cavo, Taking Back Sunday, Nickelback, Theory of a Dead Man, Staind, Avenged Sevenfold and Cheap Trick. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: The Album is due in stores June 23rd, the day before the film hits theaters.

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Here’s what every Weezer fan needs — the band’s own version of the Snuggie. Frontman Rivers Cuomo is a big fan of the blanket with sleeves, and has designed his own version — the Wuggie — that has a leopard print design. Cuomo tells Rolling Stone, “A Wuggie is basically exactly like a Snuggie, except it says Weezer on it. The people at Snuggie are doing it with us and promoting it with us. It’s a totally legit Snuggie.”

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Fox says “American Idol’s” results are fair, accurate and verified.

That’s even though Idol sponsor A-T-and-T says a few of its employees helped Arkansas fans vote by text at viewing parties.

The phone company says it did not influence the results that gave Kris Allen the win over Adam Lambert.

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Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor’s efforts to raise funds so his friend Eric De La Cruz can get a heart transplant have exceeded all his expectations. More than 850-thousand dollars had been raised through the selling of V-I-P packages for the Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction tour. Reznor says he’s had to shut down the V-I-P sales because “we simply can’t accommodate any more people.” Reznor adds that they are still accepting 10-dollar donations and that for a thousand-dollar donation fans will get a signed skateboard from Tony Hawk and an autographed copy of the very rare Nine Inch Nails C-D Still.

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Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler will take time out from band rehearsals today to attend Book Expo America convention at the Javits Center in New York. He’ll deliver the keynote address with E Street Band saxophone player Clarence Clemons. Both artists have autobiographies due this fall — Clemons’s Big Man is scheduled to be published on October 12th, and Tyler’s Does the Noise in My Head Bother You is due out on October 27th.

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KISS’s upcoming North American tour will be extensive, with more than 50 shows planned so far. They’ve also tapped Buckcherry as the opening act for the entire run. KISS will kick things off in September, but won’t announce dates until fan voting for their tour itinerary wraps up on June 30th.

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Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown slips down one spot to number-two on the Billboard album chart.

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Motley Crue’s Tommy Lee, Velvet Revolver’s Matt Sorum and 30 Seconds to Mars’ Shannon Leto all make guest appearances on Street Drum Corps’ upcoming album Bang’s Big Noise.

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Coldplay postponed their show last night in Saratoga Springs, New York due to illness. The band hopes to reschedule the show at some point this summer.

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Daughtry will make an appearance at the 2009 Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards 40th Anniversary Gala June 18th in New York.

Two and a-half years after James Brown died, his estate is finally being divided up.

A judge in Columbia, South Carolina, has approved a settlement.

It gives nearly half the estate to Brown’s charitable trust, about a quarter to his wife, Tomi (TAH’-mee) Rae Hynie Brown and her young son, and the rest to Brown’s adult children.

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The new hot destination for weddings?

Jack White’s back yard.

He hosted a double wedding on Friday at his home in Nashville.

One couple was White Stripes drummer Meg White and rock guitarist Jackson Smith.

He’s the son of Patti Smith and guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith of the M-C-5.

Bassist Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and of Dead Weather also married his girlfriend, Jo McCaughey, at the same time.

The wedding was attended by a small party of close friends and relatives.

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Metallica will document their year long Death Magnetic tour by filming three shows in Mexico City — June 4th, 6th and 7th. Their July 7th show in Nimes, France will also be filmed for possible inclusion on the D-V-D, which is expected out in time for Christmas.

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Chickenfoot — the new group featuring former Van Halen bandmates Sammy Hagar and Michael Anthony along with Joe Satriani and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith — has launched a podcast series in which they share some background on each song on their self-titled debut album. Check it out at Chickenfoot-dot-us-slash-12Days. The album will be released on June 5th exclusively at Best Buy stores. They perform tomorrow night in New York.

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Beastie Boys have titled their new album Hot Sauce Committee. The disc is expected out in September. Two songs from the album, “Lee Majors Come Again” and “B Boys in the Cut,” have already been released on a seven-inch single that the band included in random copies of the recent Check Your Head deluxe vinyl re-issue.

A deluxe re-issue of Beastie Boys’ 1994 album Ill Communication is due out on July 14th.

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Neil Young: Don’t Be Denied, the B-B-C documentary tied into the release of the Archives Volume One, will get its U-S debut on the P-B-S series American Masters next month. Some P-B-S stations will air it on June 3rd, with the majority of them airing it on June 10th. The documentary includes interviews with Young, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, James Taylor and the E Street Band’s Nils Lofgren, plus performance footage.

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A new Blur compilation will be released on July 28th. The two-disc Midlife: A Beginner’s Guide to Blur features all of the band’s best-known songs, as well as the long out-of-print 1992 single “Popscene.” The release will coincide with the band’s reunion shows in Europe in July. Rumors of U-S dates have been circulating for a couple months, but nothing has been announced yet.

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Judas Priest has announced what songs will be on their next live album, A Touch of Evil: Live, due out in July. All 11 songs were never released live before and they include “Judas Rising,” “Hellrider,” “Between the Hammer and the Anvil,” “Riding on the Wind,” “Painkiller” and the title track. The songs were recorded during the band’s 2005 and 2008 world tours. Priest starts their U-S tour, which will feature their 1980 album British Steel in its entirety, on June 29th in Indianapolis.

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Dave Matthews Band’s new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King is streaming now on Pandora. It’s the first time a band has used the popular online radio site to debut an entire album. Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King will be in stores Tuesday.

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Queensryche frontman Geoff Tate is following in the footsteps of Tool singer Maynard James Keenan by doing signings for his brand of wine, called Insania. Tate will appear at Whole Foods in Chandler, Arizona on Saturday to autograph some bottles. Tate will perform with Queensryche that night in Phoenix.

Other artists with signature wines include Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Mick Fleetwood, Journey keyboard player Jonathan Cain, The Rolling Stones, Paul Stanley of KISS, KISS, The Doobie Brothers, Eddie Money, John Lodge of the Moody Blues, Mick Hucknall of Simply Red and Jim Kerr of Simple Minds.

It’s premature to say that Queen are impressed enough with Adam Lambert to offer him a job, but let’s just say they’re keeping in touch.

Guitarist Brian May tells Rolling Stone magazine it was too much of a furore during the “American Idol” finale for him to talk to Lambert, but May and drummer Roger Taylor are hoping to have a meaningful conversation with him at some point.

Queen and Paul Rodgers recently parted ways after four years together, and May says Queen isn’t ready to work with a new singer yet.

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Saving Abel have had fans so rabid that they swipe personal belongings off the bodies of band members.

Guitarist Jason Null says he’s learned the hard way not to jump into the crowd and give high-five’s because fans will steal jewellery right off him.

Null says fans haven’t tried to cut off a lock of his hair, but many will ask him for something like his ring or a bracelet as a keepsake.

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You have to wonder if Aerosmith really had to abandon recording their next album this spring when singer Steven Tyler came down with pneumonia.

“It’s like walking pneumonia. You don’t even know you have it and I didn’t know I had it and I still don’t and I don’t even think I have it anymore. So there you have it.”

Tyler and Aerosmith are getting ready for their summer tour with Z-Z Top. The tour starts June 10th in suburban St. Louis with Z-Z coming on board June 21st in Virginia. Z-Z Top starts a European tour tonight in Prague with dates through June 14th in England.

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On March 31st in Chicago, Z-Z Top filmed an episode of the V-H-1 series Storytellers. It will premiere on V-H-1 on June 27th and on V-H-1 Classic and the Palladia channel on July 4th. In addition to telling stories about some of their classic songs, including “La Grange” and “Sharp Dressed Man,” they also answer questions from the audience, and singer Billy Gibbons, who is also a reverend, renews a couple’s wedding vows.

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Pearl Jam have been sending members of their fan club a Christmas single every year since the club was founded in 1991 (except 1994) — but they’ve never been this late sending it out. The 2008 Christmas single just started arriving in mailboxes last week. The sleeve has a note that says, “Happy holidays, no matter what time of year.” The single includes an original called “Santa Cruz” and a cover of “The Golden State,” a song by John Doe.

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The Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog re-issue project continues today with the release of a newly re-mastered version The Concert, their 1970 live album, and a new compilation called Creedence Covers the Classics. The latter includes songs from most of the band’s studio albums, as well as versions of Dale Hawkins’ “Susie Q,” …which John Fogerty has this to say about it.

“I heard it when it first came out, in I believe in 1958. I was sitting in my mom’s car and ‘Suzie Q’ came on and the beat was so incredible I started pounding on the dashboard of the car. I was getting primal, you know. I really was energized by ‘Suzie Q’ and I went and bought the record almost immediately. I still feel that way about that track. It’s really primal. It’s rock and roll at its very best.”

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Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee has re-activated his late ’90s side project Methods of Mayhem. He’s been recording songs with his collaborators D-J Aero and guitarist Kai Marcus in between Motley Crue tours this year, and he recently had Evanescence and Dark New Day drummer Will Hunt in to add some drum parts. There’s no word yet on when the album might be released.

Many “American Idol” fans had no idea Kris Allen is married, but he insists there’s no cover-up.

Allen says it’s absolutely untrue that the show’s producers told him to avoid the subject of his marriage so he could win more female votes.

He says it was his wife who told him there was no need to mention her.

They’ve been married only eight months.

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iTunes does not disclose sales figures for “American Idol” contestants while the show is still going.

Since it’s over, now we know that Kris Allen and Adam Lambert are dominating.

Allen takes 14 positions on the iTunes top 100 singles, and Lambert has 12.

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The former member of Wilco who had taken the group’s lead singer to court recently has died.

Jay Bennett was 45.

Reports say he died in his sleep at his home in Urbana, Illinois.

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Surprise singing sensation Susan Boyle has made a new television appearance.

The shy church volunteer gave a rousing, but occasionally nervous, performance on the “American Idol”-style show “Britain’s Got Talent”.

Boyle performed the song “Memory” from the musical “Cats.”

Members of the public voting in a telephone poll picked her as the best of eight performers who appeared yesterday.

It means she’ll sing again in the contest’s final on Saturday.

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There is actually someone with more ridiculous hair, a faker tan and tackier man-jewelery than magician Criss Angel … his wax sculpture.

The 41-year-old flat-ironed his weave and put on his best velveteen blazer for the unveiling of his Madame Tussauds mannequin in Vegas.

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Billy Joel is being sued.

Liberty DeVitto, Joel’s former drummer, is laying a beat down on the singer’s wallet. DeVitto tells the NY Post he hasn’t been paid his proper royalties for over ten years.

The biggest retail outlet in the U-S wanted Green Day to censor their album, and Green Day said no.

Singer Billie Joe Armstrong says Wal-Mart refused to carry their new C-D, “21st Century Breakdown,” unless curses and adult references were taken out.

Armstrong says there’s nothing dirty about the record.

Wal-Mart says it will not stock any C-D with a parental advisory sticker.

Armstrong says they’ve never censored themselves before and he feels like he’s in 1953.

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We barely have time to react to Kris Allen winning “American Idol” when it’s time to start all over again.

The audition cities for the next season have been announced.

The “Idol” judges will be searching for talent in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Orlando and Denver.

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Buckcherry have recorded a cover of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” to promote T-N-T’s summer coverage of NASCAR. A video for the track, which mixes the band performing the song with various race highlights, is streaming now at the NASCAR-dot-com. Buckcherry will perform the song live before the Coke Zero 400 in Daytona Beach, Florida on July 4th.

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Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor is helping to raise money for his friend Eric De La Cruz, who needs a heart transplant. Reznor is offering up special V-I-P packages to fans for the band’s current tour with Jane’s Addiction. If a fan already has a ticket and donates one-thousand dollars, they can hang out with both bands before a show of their choice, eat dinner backstage with the band take pictures, get autographs and watch the show from the side of the stage. Fans that have tickets that donate 300 dollars can see soundcheck and meet both bands. Reznor says over 260-thousand dollars was raised in just the first day the V-I-P package was offered.

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Work continues on Eric Clapton’s Visual Anthology, which was first announced in April 2006.  On Wednesday night, the fourth of his 11 shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, Clapton announced that it was his Aunt Sylvia’s birthday, and the sold-out crowd serenaded her with “Happy Birthday.” Among those in the audience were Roger Waters and Z-Z Top guitarist Billy Gibbons.

“Friend of Eric Clapton.’ Yeah, we’re still pals. I’m still listening to his records trying to learn all that stuff.”

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John Fogerty is shopping for a record deal for his next album, The Return of the Blue Ridge Rangers, a sequel to his 1973 disc. The album is done but no word on when it will be released.

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Dave Matthews Band’s June 1st show at New York’s Beacon Theater will not only air live on Fuse, it will be streamed live on Hulu. It’s the first concert the site — best known for its archive of T-V shows — has webcast. The show will also be available for on-demand streaming starting the next day, which is when D-M-B’s new album Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King hits stores.

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Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson joined The Tragically Hip on stage the other night in Toronto.

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Slash has teamed up with Simpsons writer Mike Scully on an animated show that the duo have already pitched to Comedy Central.

Green Day had the best-selling album of the week.

What’s significant is that it wasn’t out for a full week, just three days.

Their new album, “21st Century Breakdown,” sold more than 214-thousand copies, according to Reprise Records.

It was released Friday and the sales tracking week ends on Sunday.

The album is also number one in Canada, the U-K, Japan and 10 other countries.

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Were you shocked that Kris Allen won “American Idol” last night?  So, was he.  He couldn’t come up with anything to say to Ryan Seacrest when his name was announced.

Adam Lambert is the supreme diplomat.  Some wonder if the loss is because he may or may not be gay?  Lambert says Kris won because he’s a great artist and he says he was happy to be a runner-up to that.

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A year ago today, reports surfaced saying that Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler checked into rehab. A week later, after numerous rumors, Tyler issued a statement saying he was being treated for painkillers he’d been taking following foot surgery.

“That whole bout with the drugs again, it’s not easy with your feet, you know. My feet, Joe’s [Perry] knee, I know that the drugs that they gave me for the pain for my feet were the exact drugs that I love. So, you know, it kind of took me down a little and I got some really good friends and I knew where to go and how to address it and how to take care of it.”

Tyler and Aerosmith are getting ready for their summer tour with Z-Z Top, which starts on June 10th in suburban St. Louis. Z-Z joins the tour on June 21st in Virginia.

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Sting will join Sheryl Crow and others tonight for the One Night Live benefit at the Air Canada Center in Toronto. Proceeds will help the Sunnybrook Foundation’s Women and Babies Program build a state-of-the-art home for mothers and their children in the program.

On Tuesday, Sting was in the Windy City, where he performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at its annual Corporate Night fundraiser.

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Lynyrd Skynyrd have announced the title and release date for their first studio album in six years. God and Guns will be out on September 29th. It contains 13 songs, with the first single being “Still Unbroken,” which they’ll shoot a video for next month in Nashville.

Skynyrd will co-headline the Rock Rebels tour with Kid Rock this summer, starting on June 26th in West Palm Beach, Florida.

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Depeche Mode have postponed three more shows on their European tour so singer Dave Gahan can recover from the stomach flu — Saturday in Poland, Monday in Latvia and Wednesday in Lithuania. The band had already postponed six dates because of Gahan’s illness.

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Universal has censored The Rolling Stones on the re-release of Goats Head Soup. The line in the song “Star Star” that contains a slang word for vagina has been altered.

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You can check out a trailer of the Ozzy Osbourne documentary Wreckage of My Past, which is being produced by his wife Sharon and son Jack, at WreckageOfMyPast-dot-com. It will be in theaters next year.

An auction house plans to sell a poem Bob Dylan wrote at summer camp in 1957.

Dylan — then known as Bob Zimmerman — wrote the poem “Little Buddy” for the Herzl (HURT’-zuhl) Camp newspaper in Webster, Wisconsin, when he was 16.

The poem is about a boy whose dog dies.

Christie’s is expecting the poem to sell for ten thousand to fifteen thousand dollars at auction June 23rd.

Fellow camper Lisa Heilicher (HY’-lik-er) kept everything she had from camp and discovered she had the poem.

She says she has decided to sell the poem to help benefit the camp.

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The reason Blink-182 are reuniting is simply because it’s the right time.

Bassist Mark Hoppus says a lot of stuff that happened four years ago seems trivial now.

He says they’ve done their own things and they realized what makes them happy is making music together.

Drummer Travis Barker’s injuries in a plane crash in September were part of the reason they started speaking.

Guitarist Tom DeLonge reached out to him after the crash and they started hanging out again.

Blink-182’s tour begins July 24th in Las Vegas but don’t look for too much nudity on stage.

Hoppus says they did the “What’s My Age Again” video when they were in their early 20s but now they’re in their mid-30s and “gravity takes its toll.”

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Last year, there were rumors that Steven Tyler was being considered for the vocal slot in Led Zeppelin after jamming with them in England.

“I went to London to give Jimmy Page his lifetime achievement award and Jimmy and I are close, hung out, and they were playing and I thought, ‘What a great chance to sing with Led Zeppelin.’ No biggie, no baddie, now downy, no uppie. It was just, you know, a thrill of a lifetime.”

That wasn’t the first time Tyler sang with Zeppelin. He shared the microphone with Robert Plant when he and Joe Perry inducted Zeppelin into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Aerosmith got together yesterday in the Boston area to start rehearsing for their summer tour with Z-Z Top, which starts June 10th in suburban St. Louis. Z-Z joins the tour on June 21st in Virginia.

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Coldplay fans trying to download their free live album Left Right Left Right Left might have experienced a few glitches over the past couple of days. That’s because close to three-million people have downloaded it since last Friday. The site has gone down a couple of times when too many fans have tried to access it at once, but was back up running as of yesterday.

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John Mellencamp will offer his fans a two-for-one C-D release on June 23rd. That’s when he bundles together his last studio album, Life Death Love and Freedom, with his new live disc, Road Tested: Life Death Live and Freedom, in a deluxe tour pack celebrating his summer outing with Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson. The eight live tracks were recorded on his 2008 tour in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Toronto and Red Deer, Canada. The songs are direct off the mixing board and were not tinkered with in the studio. Mellencamp starts his tour with Dylan and Nelson on July 2nd in Illinois.

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Judas Priest will release a live album in July (the exact date has yet to be announced). A Touch of Evil — Live will contain 11 songs, all of which have never been released in a live format. The songs were recorded during the band’s 2005 and 2008 world tours. Priest starts a summer tour on June 29th in Indianapolis with Whitesnake joining on July 1st in Saint Charles, Missouri.

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Tantric will return with their fourth album, Mind Control, on July 21st. Ex-Dark New Day singer Brett Hestla produced the disc. Tantric will hit the road in support of the album in July.

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Before Tool hits the road this summer, singer Maynard James Keenan will do a tour of Whole Foods stores around the country signing bottles of his wine. The signing tour kicks off June 3rd in Milwaukee and runs through June 18th in Springfield, New Jersey.

The Cult will hit the road this summer on the Love Live Tour, and each night they’ll perform the 1985 album Love in its entirety. The tour kicks off August 19th in San Diego and runs through mid-September.  And how weird is this…they’re playing in Abbotsford August 28th at the Ag-Rec Building.

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A-C/D-C started their outdoor European tour last Thursday in Germany, and it didn’t take long for people outside the show to complain about the noise. That happened on Friday in Munich, when more than 100 people as far as 12 miles away called police to say the show was too loud.

A-C/D-C’s Black Ice tour is in Koln, Germany tonight.

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In the summer of 2007, former Blind Faith bandmates Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood got together for a charity show in England, followed by Clapton’s Crossroads benefit in Chicago. Both shows went so well that they booked three nights at Madison Square Garden in New York in February 2008 and the results are Live From Madison Square Garden, a double C-D and double D-V-D, both in stores today.

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You can now preview a disc from Neil Young’s long-awaited Archives Volume One on his website. The demo is for disc eight and is called The North Country (1971). Though the preview doesn’t include any of the videos featured on the D-V-D and Blu-Ray versions, it does have all the songs (including most of Harvest), photos and other memorabilia. Archives Volume One is due in stores June 2nd.

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Carlos Santana will perform a medley of hits with the contestants on the season finale of American Idol tomorrow night. The show will be broadcast live from the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. In addition to Santana, there will also be performances by Queen Latifah, Black Eyed Peas, Lionel Richie, Cyndi Lauper and Keith Urban.

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Radiohead have started work on the follow-up to In Rainbows. Bassist Colin Greenwood says, “We just went in last week. It was really good. It was really noisy and chaotic and really fun. We’re at the stage where we’ve got the big Lego box out and we’ve tipped it out on the floor and we’re looking at all the bits and thinking, what next?”

Greenwood doesn’t know if the band will debut any new songs on their European festival dates later this summer.

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Pearl Jam will be the first musical guest on The Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien, which debuts on June 1st.

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Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer and bassist Tom Hamilton are auctioning off drum and bass lessons to raise money for the Music and Youth Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to funding free afterschool music programs for inner city youth. For more information, go to CharityBuzz-dot-com.

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Cheap Trick’s new album will be called The Latest and will be released before their tour with Def Leppard and Poison starts on June 23rd in Camden, New Jersey.

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3 Doors Down will open up Aerosmith’s pre-Z-Z Top shows — June 10th in St. Louis and June 13th in East Troy, Wisconsin.

Chickenfoot — the new group featuring Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony, Joe Satriani and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith — start their nine-city tour tonight in Seattle. Their debut album is not due out until next month, but that didn’t stop fans from buying up all the tickets to these shows.

“We’re playing small little places, clubs and stuff, but yeah, it was pretty cool that people want to come out and check it out. It’s a new thing so we gotta go play our songs and hopefully they’ll like them. It’s fun, it’ll be great to have that energy of being in the clubs again, you know. I’m looking forward to that.”

They’ll be in Vancouver at the Commodore tomorrow night.

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When Aerosmith hits the road, it will give fans the chance to open for them by playing “Guitar Hero.”

At each tour stop, the group will choose two winners to play “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” on stage in front of an audience.

The performance will be taped and posted on the group’s YouTube channel and on AeroForceOne-dot-com.

Winners will also get tickets to the show, a chance to visit with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and a special package of stuff Guitar Hero-related stuff.

To enter the contest, fans need to make a video of themselves playing “Guitar Hero: Aerosmith” or playing air guitar using the “Guitar Hero” controller.

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Motley Crue make a guest appearance on tonight’s episode of the FOX T-V series Bones. The Crue will be seen performing at “The Lab” nightclub, and will also interact with some of the characters. Guitarist Mick Mars says that FOX has been trying to get them on the show for a while…

“FOX T-V have been talking about this for awhile and we pulled it together. And it’s kind of to do a little launch on Crue Fest 2. We play “Dr. Feelgood” on Bones because we’re playing the Dr. Feelgood album in its entirety on Crue Fest 2.”

The show airs at 8 p-m PT.

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Motley Crue’s Mick Mars has his sights set on finally doing a solo album, and says he wants to break new ground with it. The guitarist says he’s looking to do something that’s as different from everything that’s out now as classic albums like The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s and The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced and Electric Ladyland were when they were released.

“Not to be who I’m not, but to take myself into another direction to be more cutting edge and to kind of reinvent myself but still be me, and put a lot of different music together. If I could take Ella Fitzerald and mix her with, like, Buckethead and a salsa rhythm section, or something like that. There’s gotta be something different and innovative out there and I haven’t quite hit on it yet.”

Mars says he wants “to work with a lot of people,” and already has commitments from “some people who were on Electric Ladyland” and Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzman. He also cites singer Joe Cocker and drummers Josh Freese and Stephen Perkins as people he’d like to have on board. He says he hopes to release the album “as soon as I get it right.”

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Dave Matthews Band will play at New York’s Beacon Theater on June 1st, and the show will air live in high-definition on Fuse. Proceeds from the concert will benefit the band’s Bama Works Fund, which supports programs in the Charlottesville, Virginia area.

D-M-B’s new album, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, will be in stores the next day.

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It looks like Tool will be doing more than just a couple of festival appearances this summer. The band just added show a July 25th in Grand Prairie, Texas that comes between their appearances at the Mile High Music Festival outside Denver on July 18th and at the All Points West Festival August 1st in Jersey City, New Jersey. A cryptic note about the Grand Prairie date on the band’s site says, “And being that it’s such a big state, who knows, maybe more.”

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Bruce Springsteen may not be a happy camper — fans who bought premium seats to his show next Monday in Washington, D-C are being told they don’t actually have tickets. Ticketmaster’s re-sale company, TicketsNow-dot-com, says it sold too many tickets, and company representatives have been calling fans with the bad news. They’re offering those fans free seats to the show, albeit further from the stage, as well as refunds.

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Confirming a month-long rumor, Blink 1-82 and Weezer will tour together this summer. Singer-bassist Mark Hoppus confirmed the rumor on his Twitter page yesterday, adding that Fall Out Boy will be the opening act. The tour will kick off July 24th and run through October. Dates will likely be available next week.

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Queensryche’s May 19th show in Clearwater, Florida will be streamed in high definition at CDPulse-dot-tv.

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Shinedown’s The Sound of Madness has gone gold.

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Jack White has joined the Nashville Music Business Council, which will advise Nashville’s mayor on music issues.

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Kings of Leon will perform on the M-T-V Movie Awards May 31st.

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Ex-Rob Zombie guitarist Riggs has opened his own tattoo parlor called Riggs’ Monster Tattoo in Branson, Missouri.