Wow. I didn't see this one coming. When my TwitchGuru colleague David Konow, who know's a thing or two about heavy metal, told me what the guitar hero formerly known as Eddie Van Halen is up these days, I didn't believe him. But it's true. It turns out that Eddie's newest material won't be featured on a Van Halen record or even a solo album. Instead, Eddie is cutting songs for a porno.

I swear, I'm not making this up. I've seen the headlines. I'm hoping and praying
this is all an elaborate hoax but it looks like it's real. According to a report
from Adult Video News (AVN.com)Van Halen has committed to writing and recording
two new songs for the upcoming porno "Sacred Sin." According to AVN.com, Van
Halen is friends with the director, Michael Ninn, who refers to himself as
"adult film's greatest director." It seems Van Halen agrees, since he told
AVN.com that Ninn is "like a [Steven] Spielberg to me."

I see. How far the mighty have fallen. And to think that people complained about
Jimmy Page doing the "Deathwish III" soundtrack. Ah, the good ole days...

A while back, an old co-worker of mine told me that an early death is a belssing
for rock stars because they often falter as they get older and become parodies
of themselves. If a rock star blows his or her brains out or overdoses on pills
at a young age, he or she suddenly because an icon, a martyr and a hero all at
once. Just look at Jim Morrisson and Jimi Hendrix. Dead rock stars never give
people a chance to see you sell out and make crappy albums while getting fat and
bloated (well, except Elvis). All the fans have are idealized memories of them
at their absolute peaks. If Axel Rose choked on his vomit, died in car crash or
had a bizarre gardening accident 15 years ago, he'd be worshiped like Kurt
Cobain. And if Cobain hadn't decided to eat a shotgun back in '94, he'd be
writing pop songs for the "Pirates of the Caribbean" soundtrack and while
working on "Nevermind: The Musical!"

Gomez has been one of my favorite bands since I first heard the album "Liquid Skin" back in 1999. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they're not more popular. They have a die hard following of fans, but they haven't broken through to become a household name. I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard a Gomez tune on the radio. Maybe that's a good thing, because I can still get to see the band play smaller, more intimate venues like the Wiltern in Los Angeles.

Gomez played the Wiltern last night and it was one of the best concerts I've ever seen, right up there with Metallica at Foxborough Stadium in 1993; Phish at (hard to pick one, but here goes...) the University of Virginia in 1994; Rush at Great Woods in 1997; Radiohead at Suffolk Downs in 2001; Wilco at the Orpheum in 2002; and Los Lobos every time they play the Paradise in Boston.

The first Gomez show I saw in New York years ago probably belongs in that list too, but last night's show was better. It reminded me why, with Phish retiring, there is no better live band than Gomez. They jam, they improvise, and they play with an infectious enthusiasm rarely seen by most acts today. Some of the highlights of last night's gig included kicking the show off with "Here Comes the Breeze," rocking, jam-filled renditions of "How We Operate" and "Blue Moon Rising," and an encore of "Devil Will Ride," which might be my favorite tune.

I love this band and everything about them!

Before joining Tom’s Hardware, I wrote a book called Bang Your Head, where I tried to penetrate the world of heavy metal. To this day, I’m still having nightmares about having to deal with the hair bands. I still go to the metal websites, like blabbermouth.net, and metalsludge.com, from time to time to see what’s going on in the music business, before it completely goes out of business, and of course saw the news that Motley Crue were suing Tommy Lee’s manager for $20 million.

The charges? “Self dealing,” and trying to “divert revenue from [the band]…” Yet the really funny charges of the suit is the band claiming Lee’s manager “engaged” the drummer “in ‘reality’ projects that were bad career moves” that hurt “the Motley Crue brand and Lee’s own image,” further adding the show Tommy Lee Goes to College made Lee look “incoherent, lazy and incompetent.”

This is truly a hair band at its finest, suing your manager for making you look dumb. The bands I wrote about often have a self-important leader who really makes the decisions, like Axl Rose, Gene Simmons, or Motley’s bassist and founder Nikki Sixx, yet whenever a stupid move is made, the management screwed it up, the record company dropped the ball, blame flies everywhere. Yet it’s hard to convince people someone else made a boneheaded decision when you’re convinced you’re smarter than everyone else in the music business, and you’re really the one calling the shots.

In his autobiography, Where Did I Go Right, manager / producer Bernie Brillstein recalled when Garry Shandling, then in his prime with the Larry Sanders Show, sued Brillstein’s firm and painted himself “as an innocent comedian who’s been taken advantage of by an unscrupulous manager.” “Come on,” Brillstein scoffed. “Does Garry truly expect anyone to believe that he of all people could be so easily taken in?” Brillstein’s partner, Brad Grey, told the press, “This notion of a poor guy who was out there on his own is crazy. And the notion that the guy who creates the most intelligent half-hour on the inner workings of television doesn’t get it, well, you just can’t have it both ways.”

Writing on Yahoo! Music, Lyndsey Parker also hit it right on the head. Tommy Lee’s manager didn’t advise Vince Neil to be the grand marshal at the World’s Largest Chicken Dance at a Cincinnati Oktoberfest. Nor did Lee’s manager make Neil “undergo an Extreme Makeover like transformation on the VH1 reality show Remaking (only to regain all his excess weight and wrinkles in record time).”

And as recently reported on tmz.com, Neil just launched his own tequila company, despite the fact he killed the drummer of the band Hanoi Rocks while he was driving drunk (nor did the band give much thought about calling one of their greatest hits box sets “Music to Crash Your Car To”).

As far as the charges of making Lee look “incoherent, lazy and incompetent,” Parker also made a good case for the band doing a good job of that themselves with their over-rated, smoke and mirrors autobiography The Dirt, and Lee’s autobiography, Tommyland “featuring entire chapters told from the point of view of, um, Tommy’s most famous body part…” Was any of this the fault of Lee’s manager?

In a rare display of candor, or reality, for a hair band, Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille once told Guitar World why the band really fell apart, not blaming managers, the label, grunge, the janitor down the hall, or anyone else within spitting distance. “You look back, and you realize we were a bunch of spoiled f*cking brats,” he said. “How dare we complain? I had everything, and I just didn’t see it. It’s embarrassing that we could be so childish. We were clearing a hundred grand a night doing what we loved, and we argued constantly about pissy stuff. They should hand everyone who enters Hollywood an owner’s manual for real life. We certainly could have used it.”