When Perla Hudson saw a photo of Slash’s hair — and not much else — in Rolling Stone, she knew she had spotted the man of her dreams. Get the E! True Hollywood Story: Rock Star Wives co-star’s take on Guns N’ Roses’ early days (and a hilarious story about a major groupie snafu) right here. Then take a look at our photo gallery of Sunset Strip girlfriends like Pamela Anderson and Stephanie Seymour, plus check out rock videos featuring legendary video vixens like Tawny Kitaen.

If you’re looking for Australian folk-rocker (and Dave Matthews Band tourmate) Xavier Rudd, he’s the one hidden behind more than twenty instruments — including three Yidakis (the Aboriginal name for didgeridoo). Rock Daily caught up with Rudd at New York’s Highline Ballroom last week and asked for a quick music lesson. For footage of Rudd explaining his work and shots of his amazing multi-tasking show, check out our video interview.

Before Rudd even takes the stage, the down-to-earth singer and multi-instrumentalist has a pre-show ritual that includes a half-hour session of yoga that helps him limber up. His bewildering solo performance involves fast switches between Yidaki, harmonica and vocals while playing a range of acoustic guitars as well as drums (snares, toms and bells). “I feel uncomfortable when I just do one thing,” he says. “I feel more comfortable when my whole body is involved, it becomes a full-body expression.”

Rudd wraps up the U.S. leg of his tour this week with five Dave Matthews dates and heads to play gigs in Europe and Australia. He’s also been asked to assemble the soundtrack for Matthew McConaughey’s new film, Surfer Dude, which stars Willie Nelson.

Finally! I can get the Dischord catalog on my phone! This morning, digital music retailer eMusic announced a deal with AT&T to sell songs from its indie-centric catalog to mobile subscribers over-the-air (ie. direct to your phone, like a ringtone). Users of phones with the service, like the Samsung Sync, can download five songs per month for $7.49, and buy additional five-song bundles for the same price any time. All tracks come with a duplicate that can be copied to a computer or iPod, and unlike with other mobile download services, all files come without copy protection.

This is the first foray into over-the-air downloads for AT&T and eMusic — the second biggest digital retailer, behind iTunes — and it’s the first to use the subscription model, but Sprint and Verizon have launched mobile download services in recent years that haven’t caught fire with users. Many consumers say the prices are too high, the downloads are too slow, the interface is clunky and, most of all, most Americans don’t listen to music on their phones. “We’re not going to mobile devices because a small screen is the best place to download music,” says eMusic CEO David Pakman.” But if you look three to five years out, there’s just no question that some percentage of your Internet access time is going to be spent on a smaller device, so we need to be sure that our service works really well there.”

Steve Jobs, meanwhile, has stayed out of the mobile-download business — no, you can’t download songs directly to the iPhone — saying the consumer experience is still unsatisfying. And since iTunes still sells about 75 percent of all digital music (Apple announced today that it passed the three-billion-download mark) it’s unlikely the public will change its mind until he does. And if Eminem has his way, iTunes won’t be selling his music at all: The rapper is suing Apple for copyright infringment, claiming his publishers haven’t issued the right to sell his music via download.

• Blondie’s Deborah Harry, 62, has revealed the secret to her youthful-ish looks: black-sheep embryos. Around the time she was experimenting with rap on “Rapture,” Harry also experimented with “fresh cell replacement” (and later with good ol’ plastic surgery).

• Joe Walsh says to expect a new Eagles album and tour in 2008 (the LP will be the band’s first studio release since 1979’s The Long Run).

• Lil Jon has recruited R. Kelly, Ice Cube, Kid Rock and many more to join him on his new crunk/rock album, appropriately titled Crunk Rock.

• Check out this 20-plus minute video about the making of the new Wu-Tang album, 8 Diagrams, and play our favorite new drinking game, “Count the Blunts.”

• Fueled by satanic, murderous lyrics, Ozzfest’s Denver stop almost degenerated into a full-blown riot, or Woodstock ’99.

International cinema lost a giant this weekend: Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, who directed the fun-loving, madcap cinematic thrill rides that put Stockholm on the party map. His films explored alienation and the emptiness of the universe, but let’s not forget the Ing’s wild side. Here are the scenes we’ll remember him by — the top rock & roll moments in Ingmar Bergman films!

The Seventh Seal
Medieval knight Max Von Sydow challenges Death to a game of chess, but it turns into one crazy dance-off, with Death doing the lawnmower with his scythe to INXS’ “What You Need.”

Winter Light
Ingrid Thulin, haunted by her repressed passion for suicidal Lutheran pastor Gunnar Bjornstrand, surprises him on the altar — with a steamy dance to En Vogue’s “Giving Him Something He Can Feel”! Then they kill themselves! Scanidav-ulous!

Scenes From a Marriage
It’s the end of the road for Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson — until a zany divorce hearing (watch for Charles Nelson Reilly in his cameo as the judge) ends up in a big courtroom karaoke rendition of ABBA’s “Waterloo.” Looks like love is Swede-r than ever! (more…)

Here is a good way to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Summer of Love without breaking your neck looking backward:

Dear Independence (TVT), the second album by Danish forward-freakbeat quartet the Blue Van, who find plenty of room in the sharp, tight songwriting of “Goldmind,” “The Time Is Right” and “White Dominos” for a strobe-light-R&B tumult as visceral as the vintage live recordings by the Move and the Who in my bootleg cupboard. In their fast forty minutes at the Spot Festival in Denmark in June, the Van – singer-guitarist Steffen Westmark, electric-church organist Søren Christensen, bassist Allan Villadsen and drummer Per Jørgensen – turned a riding-academy stable into 1967 at London’s Marquee Club, except for the mosh pit of teens up front for whom psychedelia was obviously just an eleven-letter word. Dear Independence has been out half a year, but it’s not too late for discovery. “Now the time is right/The time is right/For loving,” Westmark sings here. He’s right. (more…)

Now that you’ve had a day to process (the first 30 seconds) of Mark Ronson’s take on Bob Dylan’s “Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine)” we want your reviews. We’re thinking it sounds pretty solid: Ronson is famous for making contemporary pop stars sound retro, so it’s no surprise he didn’t totally mangle a forty-one-year-old song. Then again, after a few listens our ears were craving the original. So, your initial response was …

Photo: Getty

In honor of Prince’s stellar new album, Planet Earth, here’s a playlist of buried Prince treasures — songs that never became hits, songs he hid on contract-filling albums that no one ever heard, or songs he salted away on albums that were just plain terrible. All these tracks are guaranteed to be as great as “1999,” “Gett Off” or “Raspberry Beret.” But not as great as “Little Red Corvette.” Because if the Vanity 6 in the Sky had any other songs that good, she kept them for her damn self. The rest, she gave to us, which is why We Love Her. Take me away!

“Jack U Off,” on Controversy (1981)
How could this catchy tune fail to become a hit? Maybe because the title, chorus, and lyrical content consists of Prince helping some lucky sex-shooter get to third?

“One Of Us,” on Emancipation (1996)
You may not remember this icky Joan Osborne hit from the 1990s (Dr. Evil claimed he wrote it in Austin Powers), but the bluesy pain in Prince’s guitar and voice (“What if God was one of us — just a slaaaave like all of us?”) turns folk-pop theology into a funk-dread gem.

“Lady Cab Driver,” on 1999 (1982)
Where’s the twenty-fifth-anniversary deluxe-edition of this best-album-ever classic, from the guy Rolling Stone proclaimed 1982’s Rock Artist of the Year? All the songs are about having sex with cars (“Little Red Corvette”) or planes (“International Lover”); this one’s about getting fucked by a taxi.

(Keep reading for eleven more stealth Prince classics.) (more…)

Watch Rolling Stone editor Joe Levy tackle the Purple One’s Planet Earth and the Chicago MC’s Finding Forever. Plus, read the reviews of Planet Earth here, and Finding Forever here.

>>Watch every episode of our weekly New Music Tuesdays video podcast by subscribing via iTunes (when prompted, click “Launch application”). Every Tuesday, a new episode will be delivered to your iTunes. [If you don’t have iTunes, download it here.]

• On September 21, Martin Scorsese’s Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light will be released in both regular movie theaters and in IMAX. Light follows the band during their two shows at New York City’s Beacon Theater last fall.

• Britney Spears is officially divorced from Kevin Federline, though he may continue fighting for full custody of their two sons.

• Frank Zappa has been honored with his own street in Berlin, while Deadheads are prepping for the fifth annual Jerry Day to pay tribute to Jerry Garcia, who would have celebrated his sixty-fifth birthday tomorrow.

• Auditions for the seventh season of American Idol kicked off yesterday in San Diego, drawing 12,000 aspiring Aikens and Clarksons.

• Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba will embark on his first solo tour in five years this fall. Dates after the jump. (more…)

The big rock news at this past weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con is that Vertigo, the division of DC Comics that published The Sandman, will turn Neil Young’s 2003 concept album Greendale into a graphic novel. The story will follow Sun Green, “a teenager and burgeoning activist whose life is changed when a mysterious stranger pays a visit to her small town,” and will be written by Joshua Dysart, who recently crafted Avril Lavigne’s manga, Make 5 Wishes. My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way also confirmed his comic, The Umbrella Academy, will be published in September by Dark Horse, home to the likes of Hellboy, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Wars. Way, a self-professed comic fan, says his story is based on “a closet space alien [who] has adopted seven extraordinary children to save the world.”

Talk show host Tom Snyder, who passed away Sunday at his San Francisco home from leukemia at age 71, was known for his frank interviews with everyone from Charles Manson to KISS to Meat Loaf (who he evidently referred to as “Meat Ball”). With a jazzy catchphrase (”Fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air”) and an interest in questioning subjects from all reaches of the culture, Snyder was a truly curious — and rock & roll appreciating — television personality. Check out a few of his greatest hits — interviews with Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey, U2 and Public Image Ltd. — after the jump. (more…)

In the spirit of today’s celebration of guitar gods and the people who love them, here’s a clip of six-string wonder J Mascis — who has already proven his skills at Guitar Hero — joining up with a dozen-plus excited Canadian indie rockers for a joyous impromptu post-show jam session in Toronto. It’s a “sixty-two beers” fueled rendition of “Backed Out On The …,” a track from Broken Social Scene co-founder Kevin Drew’s upcoming Spirit If album.

This weekend’s rock list topic caused a bit of confusion, but by late Saturday everyone seemed to get what we were aiming for: A list of songs that don’t sound at all like the artist performing them. Thanks for your nominations of head-scratching tracks, and here’s the final list:

1. “Tusk,” Fleetwood Mac
2. “D’yer Mak’er,” Led Zeppelin
3. “Jump,” Van Halen
4. “Discotheque,” U2
5. “My World,” Guns N’ Roses
6. “Love Cats,” The Cure
7. “Lay Lady Lay,” Bob Dylan
8. “Helter Skelter,” The Beatles
9. “Beth,” Kiss
10. “Pepper,” Butthole Surfers
11. “Here Comes Your Man,” Pixies
12. “Rocky Racoon,” The Beatles
13. “What Condition My Condition Is In,” Kenny Rogers
14. “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress,” The Hollies
15. “Bang the Drum All Day,” Todd Rundgren

Photo: TTI/Retna 

When Devo’s Jerry Casale complained to Rock Daily about Korn borrowing his band’s “de-evolution” concept for a fake film trailer called Devolution: Nature’s U-Turn, the new-wave pioneer said he wouldn’t hold his breath for due credit. Well, we’re happy to report that Korn frontman Jonathan Davis has proven Casale wrong. “Korn never claimed to be the first to expose De-Evolution, our hats are off to Devo for that,” he said in a statement to Rolling Stone one day before his band is slated to perform a free show at New York’s South Street Seaport and hold court at a press conference at Times Square’s Armed Forces Recruiting Station. “They are pioneers for sure! However, we are glad to see that our efforts have them speaking up again! It’s good to have them back. They are needed in the fight!! In the meantime our researchers continue to uncover key evidence of De-Evolution at the highest levels (www.evolutiondevolution.com).”

Photo: Etheridge-Barnes/Getty