Former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones, best known to Angelenos as the longtime host of "Jonesy's Jukebox" on Indie 103.1 FM, will be returning to the terrestrial airwaves via L.A. rock powerhouse KROQ-FM (106.7). The news was first reported this morning on buzzbands.la.

Jones, known to his listeners as "Jonesy," lost his daily daytime show when the beloved Indie 103 went off the air in 2009. His gig on KROQ will launch on Sunday and will air weekly from 7 to 9 p.m.

Since Indie moved to online only, Jones has been the host of a version of "Jonesy's Jukebox" on the website iamrogue.com, a project funded by independent film financier and upstart studio chief Ryan Kavanaugh of Relativity Media. That stint recently ended.

Jonesy's arrival at KROQ has long been speculated, though with his quirky, loose-cannon interview style and wonderfully refreshing disregard for dead air and the fundamentals of radio announcing, the question has been whether his approach would work on a station with such a wide reach. On Indie, there was no telling from day to day what a listener would be getting, which was part of the show's charm. The big question is whether that would work on a more mainstream station.

"Wherever I go, I will still do my show the same; I wouldn't change it," Jones told The Times' Geoff Boucher in February 2009, a few weeks after he left Indie 103. "I don't think I should, and I hope any of these people that are thinking of hiring me aren't going to try to mold me into something else. I'd be bored out of me brain. I'd last two weeks if they had me reading some nonsense. If you want someone to read a piece of paper, just hire someone else. There's loads of people that do that."

-- Randall Roberts

Photo: Steve Jones, shot in February 2009. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Fistful of Mercy is a new band with an intriguing pedigree, embodied by a trio of distinctive singer-songwriters: Ben Harper, Joseph Arthur and Dhani Harrison. From the first moments of the band's debut performance Tuesday night at The Village studios in West Los Angeles, the sound could be unruly or tranquil, unveiling a modern, quirkier take on the Crosby, Stills and Nash model, colliding folk, blues, eccentric pop and gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies.

The eight-song performance for about 100 invited guests was hosted by KCRW, which is broadcasting the concert at 11:15 a.m. Thursday on “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” previewing material from the trio's new album, “As I Call You Down,” set for an Oct. 5 release on Harrison's Hot Records West label. The songs were agonized and joyous, impulsive and restrained, exploring themes that Harrison listed as “love, God . . .  music, peace.”

During much of the set, the trio sat with acoustic guitars, strumming jangly steel strings, with elegant slices of violin from Jessy Greene, who also appears on the album. Harrison moved to piano for the album's title song, as he, Harper and Arthur sang in warm harmony: “When I fall inside a hole I can't crawl out of / better give up my control as I call you down.”

The group then dove into some tough, agonized blues with “Father's Son,” a song inspired by Robert Petway's ancient “Catfish Blues,” harmonizing as Harper sliced away on an acoustic Weissenborn lap-slide guitar.

Brian Wilson discusses his latest effort, “Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin,” in an hourlong segment for Boston University NPR affiliate WBUR-FM that’s now accessible via podcast at the station’s website.

Wilson was the guest for “On Point with Tom Ashbrook” in a segment that WBUR officials invited me to join in on to offer a little historical and musical perspective. I interviewed Wilson recently about the ambitious project that brings together two composer-performers from drastically different times and places.

Ashbrook samples several songs from the CD that was released Tuesday during the course of the conversation; he also fielded several calls from station listeners during the live broadcast Friday morning.

The album also will be highlighted with another Wilson interview slated to air Sunday morning on NPR’s "Weekend Edition," which is carried in the Los Angeles area on KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica and KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena.

--Randy Lewis

Photo: Brian Wilson at his Beverly Hills home. Credit: Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times

“A Prairie Home Companion,” that bastion of Minnesota culture and whimsy from the skewed mind of host Garrison Keillor, will pick up a California accent on June 5 when the show comes to the Santa Barbara Bowl for a live broadcast.

Keillor has invited Sara Watkins, the Nickel Creek fiddler out of San Diego who released her first solo album last year, to join him as musical guest on the long-running program, now in its 36th season. The cast for the Santa Barbara show also is scheduled to include the Guy’s All-Star Shoe Band and the Royal Academy of Radio Actors: Sue Scott, Tim Russell and sound-effects specialist Fred Newman.

"A Prairie Home Companion" airs in the Southland on KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena, KCLU-FM (88.3) in Thousand Oaks and KPBS-FM (89.5) in San Diego, as well as on Sirius XM satellite radio. Tickets for the Santa Barbara Bowl show, which will be an afternoon event starting at 2:45 p.m., are on sale at Ticketmaster.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Sara Watkins. Credit: Jeremy Coward / Nonesuch Records

Roger Waters will talk about his new staging of Pink Floyd’s 1979 magnum opus “The Wall” in an interview with veteran KLOS-FM (95.5) DJ Jim Ladd slated to air Wednesday night at 10 p.m. on Ladd’s show.

Ladd, one of the signature voices of classic-rock radio, has a long history with Waters and the group. Back in 1980, when he was one of the DJs at KMET-FM, Waters pulled him and cohorts Jeff Gonzer and Cynthia Fox up on stage at the L.A. Sports Arena when the group mounted the show here. He later tapped Ladd as the announcer for his 1987 concept album “Radio K.A.O.S.” and took Ladd with him on tour for that project.

When Waters headlined at Coachella two years ago, he stopped by the station as Ladd’s in-studio guest. Ladd also popped up recently -- his voice anyway -- in the Doors documentary “When You’re Strange,” in a broadcast of the news of singer Jim Morrison's death.

In a note posted on the official website for the 2010-2011 “The Wall” tour, Waters writes: "Thirty years ago when I was kind of an angry and not very young lad, I found myself driven into defensive positions because I was scared of stuff, and I've come to realize that in that personal story, maybe somewhere hidden in there exists an allegory for more general and universal themes, political and social themes. It's really for that reason that I decided that I'd try and create a new performance of this piece using a lot of the same things that we did all those years ago."

Additionally, he noted that "Projection systems now are completely different from what they were then, which means that I would be able to project over the entire 250-foot expanse of the wall ... which we couldn't do in those days."

On his motivation for resurrecting “The Wall” now, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member said: "I recently came across this quote of mine from 22 years ago: ‘What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?’

“I believe this is still a supremely relevant question and the jury is out,” he wrote. “There is a lot of commercial clutter on the net, and a lot of propaganda, but I have a sense that just beneath the surface understanding is gaining ground.  We just have to keep blogging, keep twittering, keep communicating, keep sharing ideas."

--Randy Lewis

Photo of Roger Waters. Credit: www.outsidethewall.net

“Breakfast With the Beatles,” the weekly celebration of all things John, Paul, George and Ringo on KLOS-FM (95.5), went out live Sunday morning from the Laugh Factory in Hollywood. Several dozen Fab Four enthusiasts were treated by host Chris Carter and the show’s sponsors to their morning meal while soaking up three hours of the group’s music as it went out over the airwaves both from the group’s own records and in live facsimile versions by the Fab Four tribute band.

The local Beatles community was represented with fans spanning elementary school to Social Security-eligible and pounced for autographs and happy snaps with this week’s celebrity guests. Among them: Jackie DeShannon, the singer and songwriter who is the show’s latest “Beatle News” segment host, and saxophonist Edgar Winter, who is on the road this summer with Ringo Starr’s latest All-Starr Band tour. KLOS program director Bob Buchmann and longtime on-air personality Cynthia Fox also turned out, and Carter got regular assists during the morning from his 8-year-old daughter, Nicole, and from his wife, Allyson.

Onlookers gnoshed on scones, jam and English breakfast tea as the Fab Four delivered several spot-on renditions of Beatles hits during breaks. I lucked into a seat near DeShannon, whose voice added a sweet dimension as she spontaneously harmonized along with “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away.” (The group noted its plans to play the "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album in its entirety, with an orchestra, on Aug. 7 at the Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa during this year's Orange County Fair concert series.)

What scares horrormeister Stephen King?

How about terrestrial radio?

The prolific author has always been a passionate music fan, even moonlighting as a rock star on occasion as a part-time member of Dave Barry’s ad hoc literary rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. But over time King found less and less that caught his ears when he would spin the radio dial, which is part of what led him to take on a key role in Shooter Jennings’ ambitious new concept album, “Black Ribbons,” a project that's explored in a full Calendar feature in Saturday's paper.

“I'm a big alt-country fan, but I got to a place in my own musical listening where I was starting to not listen anymore,” King said when he called the other day to talk about volunteering his voice as narrator of Jennings’ atmospheric tale of a late-night radio talk show host who is the last voice of freedom in an increasingly restrictive society.

If only we all had a brother like Jason Derulo to pick up the pieces when we made a mess of our love lives. The Miami-raised L.A. transplant's hit "Whatcha Say" -- currently lurking in striking distance of Jay Sean's "Down" at the top of the Hot 100 -- is a shimmering entry into the canon of R&B apology songs, penned after his wayward brother was caught stepping out, and needed a bold intervention to keep his relationship together. To judge from "Whatcha Say," nothing short of a vocoder-heavy Imogen Heap sample and piano-and-808s balladry from producer J.R. Rotem (himself enjoying a second chart wind after helming the rise of Sean Kingston) would be sufficient. Did it work? We asked Derulo about make-up etiquette, being "soul mates" with Rotem and what a lovelorn pop star can learn from Shakespeare.

"Whatcha Say" comes from a long lineage of make-up songs. Did it do the trick?

My brother called me one day to tell me he'd cheated on his girl, but that he felt terrible and really wanted to stay together. I told him, "Tell her this!" That feeling was so real, people go through it every day. So I wrote the song, and he played it for her, and now they've got a beautiful baby.

I guess it worked then. Speaking of interpersonal chemistry, you're doing your debut album entirely with J.R. Rotem. That must take a lot of trust, to work so closely with one producer on your first-impression record. Why him?

Our energy and connection was like nothing I'd ever experienced. We have a chemistry like Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones; we're really like soul mates. We've done something like 300 songs together. I'd always wanted the usual prospects to work on my record, like Timbaland. But I've got so many influences -- rock, country, rap -- that I really needed someone special. I didn't want to come off as an R&B artist just because of the color of my skin. When you hear the rest of the stuff, there's rock guitars, there's live drums, there's even banjos. I've studied classical music and jazz, and ballet and tap dancing and musical theater and Shakespeare, and I wanted all of that in there.

Just how heavily did radio turn to the music of Michael Jackson after the news of his death? In the three days before Jackson was pronounced dead Thursday at age 50 at UCLA Medical Center, the title song from his “Thriller” album had been played 22 times on U.S. radio, satellite and cable music channels; by Sunday night it had logged more than 3,000 spins, according to the Nielsen BDS radio airplay monitoring service. That's an increase of more than 13,000%.

Eight Jackson songs registered more than 2,000 plays each from Thursday through Sunday evening. An airplay report issued Monday by Nielsen BDS tracked 20 songs by Jackson, either solo or when he was a member of the Jackson 5. All 20 exceeded 1,300 plays apiece through Sunday.

The most popular: “Billie Jean,” which registered 3,916 spins, followed by “Thriller” (3,548), “Rock With You” (3,343), "Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” (2,984) and “Beat It” (2,810), edging out “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” by just two spins.

A breakdown of airplay on Thursday showed, not surprisingly, that stations almost immediately deluged listeners with his music. The 20 most frequently played Jackson songs logged a combined 147 plays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., shortly before news of his death became widely known.

In the four hours from 3 to 7 p.m. after word spread, those same songs registered 3,664 plays across the country. That figure almost doubled during the 7 p.m. to midnight period Thursday, during which stations reported playing those same 20 songs 6,413 times.

— Randy Lewis

It’s the final countdown—again—for Casey Kasem.  The radio legend will wind up his “American Top 40” spin-off programs, “American Top 20” and “American Top 10,” on July 4— a date of significance: He created the franchise on July 4, 1970.

“Hosting various versions of my countdown program has kept me extremely busy, and I loved every minute of it,” Kasem, 77, said in a statement.  “However, this decision will free up time I need to focus on myriad other projects.”

But that famous voice (he provided the vocals for Shaggy on the “Scooby Doo” cartoon series) will live on. His classic 1970s and 1980s “AT40” countdowns will continue to be distributed by syndicator Premiere Radio Networks. 

The mausoleum for L.A. radio stations is getting awfully crowded this year. Starting April 14, the disco-leaning station (and most recent home of popular host Rick Dees, pictured) KMVN "Movin 93.9 FM" will pack up the rayon and spangles for good. At that point, Grupo Radio Centro, the Mexican radio firm, will assume control of programming and marketing, with a clause to buy the station outright within seven years. The $7-million deal means 93.9 will flip to a Spanish-language format, and Dees is currently out of a regular morning-show slot.

"These have been challenging times in media, and this is just the best move for us," said Jeff Smulyan, CEO of Emmis Communications, the company that had operated KMVN until the deal. "The hardest thing is that it had been trending up in ratings, and we think the world of Rick, but it's the right decision for us now."