Saddam Hussein asked us to create the soundtrack to his execution shindig this weekend. Thoughts?

• “Dead Man Walking,” Bruce Springsteen
• “25 Minutes to Go,” Johnny Cash
• “Gallows Pole,” Led Zeppelin
• “Let Him Dangle,” Elvis Costello
• “Hang On,” Teenage Fanclub

One of our numerous resolutions for the new year is to be more optimistic, so when we got a copy of this hysterical book called Secrets of the Superoptimist, we knew that we were on the right track. (Thanks for the hint, God!) Immediately we were inspired to create a list of all the upbeat songs we could think of as a preventive measure just in case we start to feel that old negativity creeping back up on us (like, say, in the wake of our inevitable New Year’s Day hangover). We invite you to contribute your warm fuzzy tunes for our 2007 Pursuit of Happiness initiative.

• “Violently Happy,” Bjork
• “Party Hard,” Andrew W.K.
• “This Is the One,” The Stone Roses
• “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” The Beach Boys
• “Dancing in the Street,” Martha Reeves

Little tikes can only explain so much. Sure, they remembered pedophile congressmen and Mel Gibson’s love/hate relationship with Jews, but what was glaringly forgotten?

• Eminem has been real quiet for the last year, but he’ll be all talk on New Year’s Eve when he helms a live broadcast on his Shade 45 channel on Sirius Satellite Radio. Starting Sunday at 8 p.m., Mr. Mathers will count down his twenty-five favorite hip-hop tracks of 2006 (and state the facts about his personal life!!). Sirius will also be broadcasting a plethora of uncensorsed live NYE concerts from around the country, including sets by Patti Smith, Hatebreed, My Morning Jacket, Chris Isaak and String Cheese Incident. A veritable cornucopia of music!
• Hyphy music is indirectly being blamed for the deaths of two people. “Ghost riding the whip,” a stunt in which a driver gets out of his car and dances around on top of the slowly moving vehicle to a thumping hip-hop beat, claimed the lives of a thirty-six-year-old Canadian man and an eighteen-year-old California boy. When did Teen Wolf become the new Scarface?
• The Paul McCartney/Heather Mills divorce is becoming more brutal than “Helter Skelter.” According to our pals at Us Weekly, the former Beatle removed $19.5 million worth of paintings from the sprawling Peasmarsh, Sussex, estate that the couple used to share, and then changed the alarm codes on his way out. Ouch.
• Long-running punk rockers The Queers have posted two songs from their forthcoming Munki Brain album on their MySpace page. The Ramones-obsessed rockers will start a major North American tour on January 9th and are also rumored to be involved in this summer’s Warped Tour. Happy birthday to us!

One of the best battle of the bands of 2006 had to be Guns N’ Roses versus Eagles of Death Metal. To quickly recap, EODM were kicked off the successful arena tour after only one show, during which Axl famously knighted them the “Pigeons of Shit Metal” from the stage. And poof! A beef was borne.

The other opening acts who performed that fateful night — Sebastian Bach, the Suicide Girls’ Burlesque Show — didn’t have much to say about the feud from behind the scenes. But we at Rock Daily got one of the Suicide Girls to open up and give us her exclusive take on the whole sordid affair. (more…)

While Diamond David Lee Roth has spent years and years convincing everyone — from fans to the band — that the original Van Halen needs to reunite, he seems unsure of himself now that Eddie has put an offer out to him. He told TMZ.com: “A Van Halen reunion is a lot like NASCAR — are you there to see the winner or the crash? In this aspect, we’re a lot closer to Jerry Springer meets Knots Landing, which, to me, sells T-shirts.”

Meanwhile, the other former Van Halen vocalist (who isn’t Gary Cherone) showed his support for the project. “Dave and Ed working together? I don’t see it in a million years . . .” Sammy Hagar told a Cleveland newspaper. “Dave’s gonna want it to be all about him. Ed’s gonna want it to be all about him. And that’s a tough one right there. I’ll probably just be sitting over in the corner, cracking up.”

As for Eddie Van Halen’s fifteen-year-old son Wolfgang replacing Michael Anthony on bass, Hagar said, “I really have no idea what’s going on. Michael and I are friends, which is why he isn’t in the band anymore.” We smell a reality show. Or a Spanish-language tele-novela.

You’ve spent the last six months storyboarding a video for Weezer. After you’ve made your presentation to the band, you notice Rivers Cuomo sulking and unimpressed. “We kind of wanted to be in a TV show again,” he says, while playing with his shoelace and daydreaming of skateboarding as a child. You have to think fast. Which vintage show do you suggest, who will play what role, and which original cast member will you track down for the cameo?

Alas, today concludes our week of fantasizing about the covers that never were. But we saved the best for last. Is it us or does geriatric Axl look alarmingly like George Carlin?

• You know your career has taken an odd turn, when you go from shooting heroin, wearing socks on your dicks, and singing misogynistic anthems about Catholic-school girls to having two of your biggest hits used at California’s Disneyland Resort. The mouse-friendly resort have licensed the Red Hot Chili Peppers hits “Higher Ground” and “Around The World” for two of the theme parks most popular rides, Space Mountain and California Screaming. Isn’t this a wee bit like the Army using Liberace’s music?
• B.B. King Blues Club & Grill have announced that Chaka Khan will fill in for the late Godfather of Soul’s New Years Eve performance at B.B. King’s in New York. Not quite the same, is it?
• Have System of the Down broken up? Not even vocalist Serj Tankian is sure, but let us hope not. The music world needs their brand of hyper-political protest metal.
• The man who titled an album The Queen Is Dead is probably the last person you’d expect to complain about his prospects of being knighted, but Morrissey is indeed in a tizzy about this exact subject. The Mozzer now feels he is more deserving, and, in fact, would be delighted to accept such an honor. My, oh my, how people change with age.

The government says it’s safe to eat meat or milk from cloned animals, but some companies will be labeling their food as “clone-free.”

• “Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own,” U2
• “You Outta Know,” Alanis Morissette
• “Inspection Station,” Bouncing Souls
• “God Only Knows,” Beach Boys
• “Natural’s Not in It,” Gang of Four

Time is running out to nominate your pick for our week of year-end dream covers. Who should our final cover be? Barack Obama? Axl? Britney? Maybe you’ve heard of Bob Dylan? Let us know.

Sex tapes, world hunger, racial profiling…all more fun on strings.

• Pissed off that Kurt Cobain is now the #1 grossing dead musician, Elvis Presley is about to launch a massive campaign to win the hearts and hips of young America. The company that owns the right to license Elvis’s merchandise will start marketing to youth-oriented outlets like MySpace and YouTube. Wow, did they just figure out that those two sites exist? Hey, I got an idea, why don’t they get on this whole new blogging thing as well.
• Some sick bastard stole Lily Allen’s dog from the back of her van. Full text of her note after the jump. Maybe Diddy did it?
• Entercom Communications is the latest major music company to get smacked down by Eliot Spitzer’s payola probe. Entercom, which owns 105 radio stations around the country, agreed to pay $3.5 million to fund music education and appreciation programs, and an additional $750,000 to the state of New York for expenses incurred from the probe. The deal means that Entercom will refuse payments and other inducements from record labels in exchange for radio play, banning payments from independent promoters, and the hiring of an internal compliance officer to monitor promotion practices.
• Christina Aguilera may have softened up her public persona, but the girl is still dirrty. The sultry songstress admitted that she fancies a wee romp with the ladies and finds nothing wrong with it. Well, neither do we. Neither do we.
• Have the egocentric Swedish rockers The Hives really named their next album, The World’s First Perfect Album?

(more…)

After a successful headlining summer tour, where they previewed tracks from their forthcoming A Weekend in the City, Bloc Party decided to broaden their appeal to emo fans by accepting the opening slot on Panic! at the Disco’s fall theater tour.

After only three shows, Bloc Party pulled out because drummer Matt Tong’s lung collapsed. And while any fan of Silent Alarm could have predicted that touring with the ultra-popular emo-pop stars would be a mistake, the members of Bloc Party seem to have come to that realization only recently.

Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke told MTV News, "The preferred course of action would’ve been to finish the tour, because we would’ve warmed into it…We’ve only done one support tour before…It was a challenge, and so we tried to step up. I don’t know, we got lots and lots of MySpace friend requests because of it. But to be honest, I’ve never heard any of [Panic’s] music,"

Tong was not as diplomatic, saying, "I’d like to think those who saw us on [the Panic tour] did take it into their hearts and were concerned with the intention of the lyrics, but I do know that to some people it’s just about hearing a song on the radio or having it on their phone."

Let the mudslinging begin.

Andy Warhol’s ghost appears to you one night while you’re in the attic looking for an old coat that’s come back in style. “Oh, hi,” he drawls, “I was hoping you could tell me what I’ve been missing all these years. I’m so bored.” He promises to do a silkscreen of your cat Netty if you bring him up to speed. That kitty portrait will be worth millions and also be very cute. Only problem is, he can only stay on this terrestrial plane for fifteen minutes. What are the five greatest achievements of the last twenty years, why and what would Warhol’s reaction be?