• Slash Says Stone Temple Pilots Will Reunite
• Vineland Festival Called Off
• News Ticker: Danger Mouse, Michael Jackson
• Anvil!: Sundance Rock Doc Standout
• Rihanna, Blige Named Grammy Performers
• Amy Winehouse Goes to Rehab Pre-Grammys
• Gnarls Barkley’s New Album: A Preview
• On the Charts: Alicia Keys, Juno

Top stories from earlier this week:

• New Music Tuesday: Cat Power
• Heath Ledger Passes Away
• Coachella Lineup Announced

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

• Radiohead magically appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone this week, and Rock Daily brought you a photo gallery tracking the band’s fifteen-year history and a look at the band’s musical and literary influences.

• Roger Waters, Portishead and Jack Johnson were named Coachella headliners; the New Jersey-based Vinelands festival bit the dust after Coachella’s promoters announced their own Jersey fest, All Points West.
• After the Writers Guild announced they won’t picket February 10th’s Grammy Awards, Rihanna, Mary J. Blige and Carrie Underwood were added to the show’s lineup of performers.
• Everyone who was anyone descended on Utah for the Sundance Film Festival: RS brought frequent updates from our own Peter Travers, a photo gallery of rockers on the scene and a report of the real This Is Spinal Tap: Anvil! The True Story of Anvil.
• Peter Travers also said farewell to Heath Ledger, who passed away this week at the age of twenty-eight in his New York apartment. We looked back at Ledger’s 2006 Rolling Stone cover story and examined his apparent Nick Drake obsession.

Before launching their latest interactive video Web site (for their Neon Bible track “Black Mirror”), Arcade Fire played a gig in Australia this week. For more photos of rockers in action from the past seven days — including John Mayer hanging with Miley Cyrus, Velvet Revolver performing at Sundance and more, click here.

In honor of today’s release of the latest chapter in the heartstring-tugging life of John Rambo, this weekend’s Rock List will honor those iconic movie themes from the 1980s, for better or worse. So get out the John Hughes boxset and let us know your favorites, and on Monday, we’ll reveal the Readers’ List. Here are our picks, with a bonus Frank Stallone music video (crooning the theme song to Rambo: First Blood Part II), which you can watch above:

• The Psychedelic Furs - “Pretty in Pink” from Pretty in Pink
• Irene Cara – “Flashdance… What a Feeling” from Flashdance
• Simple Minds – “(Don’t You) Forget About Me” from The Breakfast Club
• Joe Esposito – “You’re The Best” from The Karate Kid
• Huey Lewis & The News – “The Power of Love” from Back to the Future

It was the perfect setting for a metal showdown: a dilapidated Masonic temple in Brooklyn. Even better: this was the first area show in four years from Oakland experimental metal band Neurosis. The group — fronted by Steve Von Till, wearing what looked like red doctor’s scrubs (or a mental patient’s pajamas — your pick) — turned in a skull-fucking set that ranged from full-blown thrash to quieter, tuneful dirges (“A Season in the Sky” was a highlight). Equally good were Atlanta dudes Mastodon, who opened for Neurosis with a satisfyingly long string of tunes from all their albums. While they didn’t unleash any new songs, as fans were anticipating, it was one of the few times they’d performed “Hand of Stone” and “Trilobite” live. And despite the muddied sound (and two false starts at the beginning of “Aqua Dementia”), the four-piece still managed to sync up for some tricky lock-step grooves on jams like “Sleeping Giant.” Hit the jump for more photos. (more…)

Stone Temple Pilots will reunite this summer, according to Velvet Revolver guitarist Slash. The top-hatted axeman told Billboard that VR lead singer Scott Weiland will rejoin with his former bandmates, two-thirds of whom have most recently been teaming up with Filter’s Richard Patrick in the band Army of Anyone, for a handful of concerts to take place this summer. Slash’s comments echoed the quotes Weiland gave to the Miami Herald earlier this week, alerting fans they should be “on the lookout for an STP reunion in the coming months.” Velvet Revolver is currently touring in support of their second album Libertad, with songs by Stone Temple Pilots and Guns n’ Roses also featured in the set list. STP broke up in 2002 following the release of their fifth album Shangri-La Dee Da.

Related Stories:

• Scott Weiland Charged for DUI
• Scott Weiland To Pen Memoirs
• Scott Weiland Gets His Beg On With Notre Dame Coach

[Photo: Getty]

The Vineland Music Festival, scheduled to take place August 8-10 in Vineland, NJ, has been cancelled. The decision follows this week’s announcement that the promoters behind Coachella will hold their own festival, dubbed All Points West, during the same weekend at New Jersey’s Liberty State Park, less than two hours from Vineland. All Points West (which is rumored to have Radiohead and Jack Johnson as headliners) and large amphitheatre shows in Philadelphia and Camden, NJ, that week are cited for the Vineland cancellation. Promoter Charles Attal said, “Taking that into effect, there are a lot of ticket buyers that are going to be taken out of the market.” Even before the All Points West announcement, however, Vineland faced opposition from the town’s citizens and legislators, who banded together to form the Neighbors Against Rock Concert Site (NARCS). Even though the 2008 event has been axed, Attal hopes to get all the problems ironed out in time so that the Vineland festival can debut properly in 2009.

Related Stories:

• Coachella Lineup Announced, East Coast Fest Confirmed: Jack Johnson, Portishead and Roger Waters to Headline April Desert Festival
• Coachella Coming Eastbound; Radiohead, Jack Johnson Rumored to Headline
• New Mega-Fest Heading to Jersey Summer ‘08

Over the course of Mark Binelli’s interviews with Radiohead for his cover story in the current issue, the band revealed what music and books had influenced them during the recording of In Rainbows and in the past. Click here to browse some of Thom Yorke and Co.’s favorite pieces of culture, from M.I.A. and Fleetwood Mac albums to Gravity’s Rainbow and The Kite Runner.

[Photo: Cochrane/PA Photos/Retna]

• Producer Danger Mouse is set to collaborate with Van Dyke Parks and the Velvet Underground’s John Cale on one of his many upcoming projects. He will also produce Martina Topley-Bird’s new album The Blue God and, as we previewed earlier this week, Gnarls Barkley also has a new record in the works.

• New rumors on the Grammy front suggest that there is a ninety-percent chance of Michael Jackson showing up at the awards ceremony.

• The writers behind the Beatles-based musical Across the Universe are planning an animated film called Ruby Tuesday that incorporates Rolling Stones songs.

• Minor Threat drummer Jeff Nelson has taken to eBay to auction off many rare posters and vinyl records from the band’s run in the early 1980s.

It’s possible to be a hard-core rock fan and still be unaware of the existence of Anvil, the twenty-seven-year-old Canadian metal band that’s the subject of the new documentary Anvil! The True Story of Anvil. Director Sacha Gervasi screened the film at Sundance last week, and while some moments depicting the band’s struggles are amazingly reminiscent of This Is Spinal Tap, the band is indeed real. Here’s some proof: footage of Slash and Anthrax’s Scott Ian jamming on “Cat Scratch Fever” with the group at a Park City, Utah gig plus a few choice scenes from the doc.

[Video: Pete Maiden]

With Gene Simmons’ unceremonious exit from The Celebrity Apprentice last week, Rock Daily felt a certain emptiness. But clearly the Demon was saving the real juice for his guest spot on last night’s episode of Ugly Betty. In the tradition of the “Kiss Meter,” we rate Simmons’ performance based on one of his band’s classic albums.

This Week: Bubbly Amanda (the blonde in the above video) has been searching for her estranged father ever since her mother’s murder. She knew that she was the result of a hook-up at Studio 54 and had worked through a number of possibilities (including Jimmy “J.J.” Walker) before settling on Simmons.
Simmons’ Contribution: Despite the fact that Ugly Betty is fictional, Simmons seemed more himself on this show than he ever did on the reality-based Celebrity Apprentice. He admitted to regularly Googling himself and cracked a joke about annoying Cher—no doubt things he’s actually done in his life.
Kiss Album Rating: Simmons was clearly saving his best performance for the higher-rated show, as last night’s appearance was absolutely on par with 1976’s Destroyer. It was all the power and spectacle that the Demon can muster, cranked up to 11.

Rumors regarding rapper Nas being dropped by his record label over the title of his next album are reportedly false. Nas has been at the center of controversy since announcing his ninth studio album would be called Nigger. The story of the Queensbridge rapper being dropped was initially reported by Mediatakeover, who quoted an “insider” as saying “If Nas doesn’t change his mind, he’ll be dropped. And he doesn’t have to much time to come to that realization.” Rock Daily spoke to an Island Def Jam spokesperson who said of Mediatakeover’s claims, “That is absolutely ridiculous and untrue.” Nigger is tentatively scheduled for a February release.

Related Stories:

• Nas Talks To RS About New Album Controversy While Politicians Join Fight To Prevent Title
• Nas Modifies Album Title, Trades “A” For “Er” And a Controversy To Be Named Later
• Nas’ “Greatest Hits”: A Track-By-Track Journey With the Queens MC

[Photo: Getty]