Who Wants to be a Headliner?

>>> For a while now, we've been hearing about the Blood Drive, a huge Halloween-themed show to be held Oct. 28 at Hidden Valley (behind Verizon Wireless Amphitheater) featuring the Damned, the Misfits, the Supersuckers, Zeke, the Bleeders, Throw Rag and a bunch of other bands (and a car show and vendors and all the obligatory festival concert hoo-hah). We also heard the Cramps were on the bill, and then we heard they weren't, and now we hear X is the headliner. A source close to the Blood Drive told us that fliers for the show featuring the Cramps as the headliner began appearing before the contract with the band had been finalized, so the band got pissed and pulled out. “They felt like we jumped the gun, and we did,” said the source. Other choices for headliner were Motrhead (according to our Blood Drive Deep Throat, they wanted to do the show but had European tour obligations), the Cult, Rob Zombie and Danzig, who didn't think the supporting acts worked with his type of music. And now there's X, who are confirmed to headline. “You've got LA punk legends, New Jersey punk legends and England punk legends. It's never happened before, and it'll probably never happen again,” said our Man on the Inside. For more info, visit www.blood-drive.com. (Alison M. Rosen)

>>>WHO WANTS TO BE AN OFFSPRING FAN? Yo, Dexter. This thing about throwing the new album, Conspiracy of One, on the Net a month before it hit the stores? It sounded great—really, a truly fine, upstanding, for-the-fans gesture. But let's be real: you knew you were gonna catch a world of poo from the label peeps at Sony. And from what we've read, they were none too pleased with your brazen attempt at artistic control. Swinging clubs at stuffed dummies made up to look like the Backstreet Boys onstage may be one thing, but basically doing the same with a deep-pocketed international conglomerate is quite another. You were gonna get squashed, and now the whole thing smells like nothing more than a publicity stunt, done to drop word about the new album. But whatever. So now you only get to throw the new single, “Original Prankster,” up on the Offspring's official website (www.offspring.com). Still cool, but we can't help feeling uncomfortable with this contest thing you've also got going—download “Prankster,” and become registered to win a cool $1 million. On the surface, we think this is pretty lame—isn't this kinda like buying fans? A punk rock take on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? A troublesome harbinger of a rock N roll future in which only bands with the fattest wallets count? Where art and greed become interchangeable? Sigh . . . we don't know, but we like to think you're shrewder than this. Our more optimistic guess is that the contest is your way of culling info from your audience, a method of establishing a database of Offspring fans so you can let them know about future albums, tours and projects—jobs that record labels have traditionally done through their marketing and publicity departments. Eventually, when your Sony contract is up, we think you guys are gonna ditch labels altogether and go for nothing but Net. Anyway, can't wait for the new one—we're sure it'll be grand. Just hope that when everything settles down, you won't regret leaving Epitaph. (Rich Kane)

>>>WHO WANTS TO SIT ON THEIR ASS FOR FIVE HOURS DURING THE TAPING OF A SHOW AND THEN NOT EVEN SEE THEMSELVES ON CAMERA? With one of us receiving a real invitation and two of us weaseling our way onto the guest list, OC Weekly was representing hard at the taping of VH-1's Storytellers featuring No Doubt. Now the network is airing the episode—our episode, if you will—and if you look closely in the scene in which Gwen's singing, and you squint and look to the lower left corner, you can just . . . barely . . . not . . . see . . . us . . . at . . . all. Not at all! Nowhere to be seen: our beautiful faces, our shimmering hair, the backs of our perfectly shaped heads and our sore heinies, upon which we were forced to sit for about five bathroom-breakless hours. And do we mind? Hell yes, we do! (AMR)

>>>WHO WANTS TO WEAR GWEN'S HAIR? Speaking of Gwen, we recently drove by a wig shop (Genevieve's Wigs in Costa Mesa) and noticed a pink-and-platinum feathery wig hanging in the display that looked remarkably like her sculpted locks. Could it be? We called the shop to find out, and though they knew of the wig (“The one that looks like a Farrah Fawcett look, right?”), they didn't know about Gwen (“Oh, I don't know. . . . It's called 'The Kelly.'”). The shop received the wig in their Halloween shipment, though, which makes us pretty sure it's a synthetic Gwen 'do. The store's already sold a couple, according to the woman on the phone. “It really is a beautiful wig,” she gushed. Um, okay. (AMR)

>>>WHO WANTS TO WAKE UP SCREAMING? We woke up yesterday from the strangest dream, where we were singing an impassioned duet of Bonnie Tyler's “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with Red Hot Chili Peppers front man Anthony Kiedis. We woke up with our face scrunched up in the about-to-cry position. The song tugged at our heartstrings for the rest of the day, which was weird, but not as weird as the fact that we've had Starship's rousing hit “Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now” stuck in our head for about the past five years. We are not kidding. It's truly been in our head for that long. Do you have weird dreams about music? Do you have horrid tunes stuck in your head? Do you enjoy the scrumptious sounds of Yanni? Write and let us know. At the very least, we can laugh at your aural misfortune. (AMR)