This isn’t a hoax or a gimmick. It’s Frank Zappa and his label, Bizarre, being genuinely interested in music that wouldn’t have had a chance at proper distribution otherwise. Of course, it’s then a fair question to ask, why wouldn’t Wild Man Fischer have been able to secure a record deal otherwise?

Good question.

Well, being homeless and schizophrenic doesn’t usually make for a combination readying one for international stardom. Fischer, though, spent his days stalking up and down the Sunset Strip, sparing change. When he was actually able to pick up a few cents here and there, he rewarded the contributor with an original song (there’s a track on Fischer’s album detailing just this activity). And this is, presumably, how Zappa found Fischer.

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Just when it seemed that things in the Aerosmith camp had cooled down - albeit with the "help" of lawyers and managers - things may be in disarray again. Lead singer Steven Tyler has been dropping hints that he will be one of the judges for American Idol's upcoming 10th season. This hasn't been confirmed by either American Idol or Fox Broadcasting, but it's left a very sore taste in the mouth of Joe Perry, who again finds himself wondering what happened to the band he and Tyler started in 1970.

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Oh, the things we can do to celebrate the week of the King! My college writing professor had a “love to hate” thing going on with Elvis, as did I. When I was younger, I had quite a crush on the long-dead King, and played his music all of the time. When I read more about him and experienced many of his horrendous films—not to mention that weird relationship with his 14-year-old girlfriend/later bride (and what sounds like an equally unhealthy marriage; according to her, he raped her at least once)—I wasn’t such a gung-ho fan anymore.

Love him or hate him, Elvis will always be around (though perhaps not as physically as some people claim), and his influence on music and pop culture is here to stay.

Here are a few ways you can celebrate Elvis week.

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We, the people of the world, have lost another great performer of music. She sung jazz and wrote songs. She passed yesterday, Saturday, August 14th, in New York. She was eighty years old. Her name was (is as long as her music last and that will be as long as there are recordings of sound and images.) -- Abby Lincoln.

Abbey Lincoln is being remembered as a lady who knew how to sing and to say something while she was singing, and that is saying something.

"I learned from Billie (Holiday)," Abby Lincoln told The Washington Post in 2006. "It isn't about showing how good your voice is. It's about saying something."

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Richie Hayward, was an excellent drummer. He was the co-founder of the amazing jam band 'Little Feat', that played rock, country, jazz and blues. The band and Richie Hayward are being remembered for songs like "Willin."

The Associated Press reports that he died yesterday, Thursday morning, after complications of pneumonia. He was 64. Richie Hayward had liver cancer.

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The film industry should never be trusted to properly depict a current subculture. It takes a long time to make a movie, so long that the people of any given subculture have probably moved on by the time a script can even get funding. This slowness combined with the tendency of producers to protect their investments with art-killing mass appeal is a recipe for disaster when making a film about an ephemeral party culture. Whether it's a cash-in or a genuine labor of love, a music movie has a better chance of missing the point than it does of actually capturing the essence of the scene it celebrates.

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Pulling A Steven-Slater: It's In The Way You Quit Your Job

Sometimes the job gets to the best of workers, especially when the job requires dealing with the public, and among the public are more than a few very difficult customers. I've been there.

Yesterday morning, Steven Slater, a flight attendant at Jet Blue Airline, came to the point when he said enough is enough and became an instant Internet folk hero.

Who hasn't had days like Steven Slater and who, working in the service field, haven't had to deal with a difficult customer or two and wanted to pull a Steven-Slater?

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Talk to anyone who was coming of age in the millennial period and they'll likely tell you about growing up in two distinct periods. The first half, which ranges from roughly 1996 to the first half of 2001, was a time of optimism, innovation and diversity, albeit alongside a certain dearth of cultural maturity. The second half was a dramatically different time, an era of economic collapse, war, conservative politics and fear. To be a teenager in these two periods was confusing and rocky, and it often feels like the youthful drive that characterized the first half gets overshadowed by the grim, almost pre-apocalyptic feel of the latter half. It's difficult to look at, for instance, the comedies of the late 1990's as anything but hopelessly unprepared for the trying days ahead. The flamboyant party kids of the memorable high school movie Can't Hardly Wait were doomed to grow up to be the disaffected, over-medicated and generally floundering 20-somethings that dominate today's independent film scene.

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Despite their tongue-in-cheek self-description, New Zealand's Flight of the Conchords truly is their country's most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo. They've been churning out loving parodies of various musical styles for years, a talent they got to share with their widest audience yet during their self-titled, two-season HBO series. For those who have never seen Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement do what they do best, here's a quick primer.

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