Backstage Pass

Good news for Blues Traveler fans: The John Popper Project is heading out on tour. No NY dates yet, but given Popper's following here, that will probably change.

The tour has good timing: A new documentary on the now-defunct New York rock club Wetlands Preserve (titled "Wetlands Preserved") is reminding fans of the nascent days of the jam-band scene, when acts like Blues Traveler, Phish, Spin Doctors and Dave Matthews were still under-the-radar phenomena playing small clubs for stoned, barefoot, ever-twirling fans. The Popper Project may get some additional buzz (buzz, get it?) from the film. And the band is touring with Wetlands regular DJ Logic in tow.

So far, Popper has scheduled seven nights, all in Colorado, between Mar. 25 and Apr. 2.

Listen to the track "Took," from the group's self-titled debut (released by Relix Records, the music arm of the classic-rock mag, whose editor just happened to direct that documentary), here.

Kid Rock's "Rock and Roll Revival Tour" comes to Madison Square Garden on May 15 with an interesting supporting cast: There's Lynyrd Skynyrd, whom Rock inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame last year, but also Reverend Run and -- in one of the more unlikely musical pairings -- Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 22 through Ticketmaster.

Those two area dates for Van Halen have been rescheduled. They are:

Tuesday, May 13 at Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ

Friday, May 23 at Madison Square Garden, Manhattan

Rumors abounded about Eddie's unspecified medical ailment, which derailed the tour. Eddie has struggled with cancer and rehab, though his ex-wife, Valerie Bertinelli, claims the problem is not the latter. Still no official word, though.

The Police, with supporting act Elvis Costello and The Imposters, have added a second show at Nikon at Jones Beach Theater on Aug. 5 after the Aug. 4 date sold out.

Tickets range from $57.50 to $232.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday through Ticketmaster. 

Kanye West's "Glow in the Dark Tour" will come to Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, May 13, with previously announced support acts Rihanna, N.E.R.D. and Lupe Fiasco.

Tickets range from $49.50 to $154.50 and go on sale at noon Saturday through Ticketmaster.

PHOTO: Chris-pix.blogspot.com 

Kanye West has announced that Rihanna, Lupe Fiasco and N.E.R.D. will join him on his Glow in the Dark tour.

West announced the news by posting a "Star Wars"-style tour poster, right, on his blog.

No dates have yet been announced.

R.E.M. is the first act set for this summer’s Nikon at Jones Beach Theater concert season, hitting the amphitheater on June 14, as part of its tour to support the forthcoming “Accelerate” (Warner Bros.) album due on April 1.

A New York show is planned for June 19, though a location hasn’t been set. Modest Mouse and The National are set to open. No ticket sale info yet.

To prepare for the new album and tour, R.E.M. launched the Ninetynights website, which features a new video clip of the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers performing something every day. The one below is – I think – their take on Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”

No American dates have been set, but wouldn't they be a great addition to the All Points West Music & Arts Festival at Liberty Park in August? Just wishing out loud...

Yaz, "Don't Go"

Amid rumors of rancor within the Chris Brown/Bow Wow tour, the two hip-hop heartthrobs are calling off their Jan. 23 show at Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.

The date, announced in mid-December, was originally scheduled for Jan. 21, then quickly moved to Jan. 23. The cancellation was announced this afternoon.

Bow Wow recently laughed off reports of mid-tour rivalry that recalled the famous split between Jay-Z and R. Kelly. Various blogs and Websites alleged that Bow Wow spit on Brown following technical difficulties at a Dallas concert, but Bow Wow yesterday told MTV. com: "I just got off the phone with Chris. My mom called me and told me about the rumor. I called him and told him, and he started laughing."

So what's the problem? Perhaps Brown and Bow Wow oversaturated the market? Brown and Bow Wow already played Madison Square Garden on Dec. 21 and are due to play there again tomorrow. That show is still scheduled as planned, according to concert promoter Live Nation.

PHOTO: Getty Images/MTV.com

File this one under "For Die-Hard Fans."

Spice Girl Melanie C will play a special acoustic show Saturday, Feb. 9 at Manhattan Center's Grand Ballroom, an intimate venue in the same building as the Hammerstein. Mel C, aka Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, will play with a full band, demonstrating her solo material. The show falls between her six New York-area dates with The Spice Girls.

Two prime tickets -- Section A1, Row 26, Seats 11 and 12 -- for Miley Cyrus's Dec. 28 show at Nassau Coliseum are being auctioned off for charity, with bidding currently at $2,500.

The money will go to Free Arts NYC, which provides educational arts and mentoring programs to children. If you've got the dough, and the holiday spirit, check out www.charityfolks.com.

Ani DiFranco will kick off her 2008 winter tour at the good ol' IMAC theater in Huntington on Jan. 17. Opening will be Gail Ann Dorsey, a onetime session bassist for Bowie who also happens to have an impressive voice. DiFranco's tour also includes a stop in Nyack, NY, to join Pete Seeger's ongoing campaign against the Indian Point power plant there. Check out the IMAC site here.

With the Straylight Run/The Color Fred tour wrapping up on Friday at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza, the busy bands have already lined up their next moves. Straylight Run will team up with fellow Long Islanders Bayside for a national tour that runs from Jan. 25 and ends at the Crazy Donkey on Mar. 1. (Before they head out, Bayside plans to film a video for its next single "Carry On.")

The Color Fred has some serious plans too. The band will open for Angels and Airwaves starting in January, continuing the close bond singer Fred Mascherino built with the band when he was touring with them as part of Taking Back Sunday. The Color Fred has also signed on to the 2008 Vans Warped Tour, one of 6 bands that will be on the entire tour. Others making the full Warped trek include: Gym Class Heroes, The Academy Is..., Relient K, We the Kings and Reel Big Fish.

 PHOTO: Mascherino for Equal Vision Records.

Public Enemy will play two dates in New York this year, according to a press release from Live Nation.

The first is December 19 at the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza in Manhattan (tickets are $33), followed by December 20 at Warsaw in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (tickets are $28.50).

Tickets go on sale 10 a.m. Saturday through Ticketmaster.

Jay-Z has announced a short, five-date tour based on his upcoming album "American Gangster," according to Billboard.com. The tour kicks off in Los Angeles Nov. 6, the release date of the album, which is inspired by the movie of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. Jay-Z will play Manhattan's Hammerstein Ballroom Nov. 11.

The full tour schedule:

Nov. 6: House of Blues, Los Angeles
Nov. 7: House of Blues, Chicago
Nov. 9: Ram's Head, Baltimore
Nov. 11: Hammerstein Ballroom, New York
Nov. 12: Fillmore at the TLA, Philadelphia

Local pop-punks The New Rivals will be the opening act for old-school Irish punks Stiff Little Fingers for five U.S. dates, starting Nov. 11 at Highline Ballroom in Manhattan.

It's a perfect slot for Sayville's New Rivals, a quintet formerly known as If All Else Fails. Like many latter-day punk acts, the group owes a major debt to Stiff Little Fingers, whose gruff but tuneful songs ("Alternative Ulster," "Suspect Device") have become a blueprint for Green Day, Blink-128, Sum 41 and others.

Both bands are booked through The Agency Group, but the Fingers personally approved the Rivals after hearing some tracks, according to a rep for the younger band. "Essentially, Stiff Little Fingers felt as if they were a legitimate punk act as compared to a mall punk or emo band," the rep wrote in an email.

Listen to The New Rivals here. 

With concert dates scheduled in England and Los Angeles, The Sex Pistols seem to be teasing fans with the possibility of a tour.

The band has made no official announcement, but the signs add up. Consider:

• This year marks the 30th anniversary of their first and only album, "Never Mind The Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols." (The October issue of Spin magazine is dedicated to the punk movement, and features a young, zit-squeezing Johnny Rotten on the cover.)

• The Sex Pistols recently went back into the studio for the first time in nearly three decades. So far, the only officially-announced result of that is a re-recorded version of "Anarchy in the U.K.," to be included on the new videogame "Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock," due out Oct. 28.

• The band keeps adding concert dates in England. There's now a total of five.

• And yesterday The Sex Pistols announced they would play their first-ever concert in Los Angeles, a private, fans-only affair at the famous nightclub The Roxy, on Oct. 25.

Throw in the current reunion-tour mania (Van Halen, The Police, Genesis) and you've got a climate perfect for yet another Pistols comeback.

A spokeswoman for the band said today there are no plans beyond the current dates "as far as we know."

In case you hadn't heard about Trent Reznor's latest advice to music fans, check out the video below.

It's from a Sept. 16 concert in Sydney, in which Reznor delivers a speech blasting the high price of CDs, cursing the record industry and encouraging fans to retaliate by stealing music. "Steal it, " he urges. "Steal away. Steal and steal and steal some more, and give it to all your friends, and keep on stealing. Because one way or another these ---- will get it through their head that they're ripping people off, and that's not right."

Reznor then launches into the groaning track "The Day The World Went Away."

Five years ago, this would have been a pretty shocking stance to take. (Remember when even Lars Ulrich of Metallica wanted to crack down on illegal downloading?) These days, however, with the music industry apparently going up in flames, Reznor's rant seems like one more piece of kindling thrown onto the blaze.

Maybe the song Reznor should have played was "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)."

The good news: The Cure has announced its 2008 tour dates.

The bad news: The band won't reach New York until June.

That's an almost nine-month wait for fans who were revved up to see The Cure on Sept. 23 at Madison Square Garden. The Cure postponed this year's 19-date tour to allow more time to finish its upcoming double album, which still doesn't have an official title.

Eighteen of the 19 shows have been rescheduled, with the lone exception of the Seattle show. Instead, The Cure will play the Sasquatch! music festival in George, Wash.

"We apologize again for the inconvenience and upset the original postponement caused," the band said in a statement, "and will make sure that the new shows are more than worth the wait..."

The band's North American tour ends June 20 at Madison Square Garden.

Van Halen fans were stunned when the group (most of it, anyway) finally decided to reunite and tour this year, and now here comes another surprise: The opening act will be not Styx or Def Leppard or Journey, but reggae artist Ky-Mani Marley, son of Bob.

Whose idea was it to book a hip-hop-influenced reggae singer with a classic rock band? The official explanation is that Marley's distribution company, AAO Music Inc., proposed it, but that doesn't shed much light on the subject. We'd like to think the idea came from David Lee Roth, whose musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic. During his short-lived morning show on Free-FM in New York he played old funk and blues in the background (which upset the station's top brass) and he also recently released a bluegrass album.

At any rate, it's a high-profile slot for Marley, whose debut album "Radio" is due Sept. 25. Let's hope the aging Van Halen fans are kind to him.

Listen to Marley's single "One Time" here.

Two of the best whacked-out rock bands around, Britain's Art Brut and Brooklyn's The Hold Steady, are joining forces for a 26-date U.S. tour, starting Oct. 21 in Providence, RI. The tour ends Nov. 21 at the new venue Terminal 5 in Manhattan.

The tour poses a question: Whose head will explode first, Art Brut's Eddie Argos or The Hold Steady's Craig Finn? Both are terrifically spasmodic performers with shouty vocal styles and absolutely no inhibitions, but the smart money is on Argos, an excitable 14-year-old in a grown man's body.

Check out Art Brut's excellent and completely nonsensical toga-themed video for "Direct Hit," from their new album, "It's a Bit Complicated" (Downtown Records), below:



And for your viewing enjoyment, here's The Hold Steady's poignant video for "Chillout Tent," from their recent disc, "Boys and Girls in America" (Vagrant):