This story has gotten a lot of play in the past couple of days, but that doesn't make it any less incredible. Or credible, actually. Bob Dylan, wandering around a New Jersey suburb wearing sweats and carrying no ID, almost gets arrested for vagrancy by cops who don't recognize him, or believe he is who he says he is. Is it funny? Is it sad? It's very clearly both. But the opportunities it offers for ironically quoting Dylan songs—from "Just a Lonesome Hobo" to "Like a Rolling Stone"—remains peerless.

From Rollingstone.com:

Last month, police in Long Branch, New Jersey, responded to a call about a suspicious person peering into houses that were for sale during a rainstorm. Turns out, the potential perp was no criminal — it was Bob Dylan. The ensuing incident demonstrated anyone can be the victim of mistaken identity, and that Jersey cops need to brush up on their rock history.

Twenty-four-year-old police officer Kristie Buble approached Dylan, who “felt like going for a walk” before his performance that evening, Long Beach Police Department Sgt. Michael Ahart told CNN. At that point, according to the AP, the following exchange occurred between the rock legend and the fuzz:

“What is your name, sir?” the officer asked.

“Bob Dylan,” Dylan said.

“OK, what are you doing here?” the officer asked.

“I’m on tour,” the singer replied.

“She recognized the name, she just really didn’t believe it was Bob Dylan,” Ahart told CNN. “He was soaking wet because it was raining and he was wearing a hood.” That night, Dylan, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson were set to play a concert at a Lakewood, New Jersey baseball stadium as part of their minor-league ballpark tour (read our report from the tour here). Now, if this happened to say, Jersey boys like Bruce Springsteen or Bon Jovi, the cops would’ve just asked for autographs and left. However, the disbelieving police officers drove Dylan back to his hotel where the tour buses were stationed. Once there, members of the crew reiterated that Bob Dylan was, in fact, Bob Dylan, and the situation ended.

More reportage here.

You just can't please some people. Those people are named Morrissey, who has recently gone public to urge his fans not to buy the two EMI box sets of his solo singles and b-sides, nor, while they're at it, the Rhino box set of Smiths CDs or the Warner Brothers Smiths vinyl box. As expressed in a statement on his website, his reasons are simple:

"Morrissey does not approve such releases and would ask people not to bother buying them. Morrissey receives no royalty payments from EMI for any back catalogue, and has not received a royalty from EMI since 1992... Morrissey last received a royalty payment from Warners ten years ago, and, once again, he would ask people not to bother buying the reissued LPs or CDs."

They still just haven't earned it yet, baby.

If you were a kid in the '80s (they were a decade a few years back, just play along), you learned how to be young by watching the films John Hughes, who died yesterday of a heart attack at 59, wrote and/or directed. For good and ill, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Some Kind of Wonderful were the code that told you who you most likely were, how to be him or her, and, most importantly, what he or she listened to. Their key ingredients were Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and music. Here are a few of the songs Hughes favored in those films. With gratitude, sir.

 

 

 

 

 

Rest in peace, JH.

No one here is trying to make light of the fact that one of America's beloved entertainers has suffered an injury from falling off the stage during a concert. HOWEVER, Steven Tyler of Aerosmith fell off the stage at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota (you remember, that's where Nickelback shot their live DVD, duh), which would be newsworthy even if he hadn't been rushed to the hospital with head, neck, and shoulder injuries in a helicopter. But friends, this all happened while Tyler was "dancing around" as a lark after the sound went out during—could it have been any other song?—"Love in an Elevator" (as in, "livin' it up while I'm going down"). Sometimes life just does the hard work for you. Expect news about Tyler's relationship with pain pills very soon.

HuffPo has the scoop:

RAPID CITY, S.D. — Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, known for dancing with microphone stands adorned with scarves, was airlifted to a hospital early Thursday after falling from the stage during a concert at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

Tyler, 61, fell while entertaining the crowd by dancing around after the sound system failed during the song "Love In an Elevator," said Mike Sanborn, spokesman for the Buffalo Chip Campground, which hosted the outdoor concert.

Ed Aurand, a security supervisor at the campground who saw the fall, said Tyler stepped backward off the stage's catwalk.

"He does a lot of dancing on the stage and he does a lot of stuff with his mike stand. He put his stand down and twirled around and stepped backwards off the stage," Sanborn said.

Halfway through the performance, Tyler fell onto a couple of fans in the middle of what was a record crowd, Sanborn said. Security rushed to help him and the crowd cheered when Tyler got back up.

"He was good natured about it," Sanborn said. "He was in good spirits when he got in the helicopter. He was talking and joking with the physician."

"It was an unfortunate end to an extraordinary evening," he said.

Extraordinary.

 

...is live, so to speak, right here on MySpace, and can't be embedded, and the YouTube version above has no sound, so that's not very fun (thanks a lot), but as you can see it's animated and it's about whaling, and it's Modest Mouse, which means that yes, he sings like that, and if you like that kind of thing, you will like it. I don't think it's appropriate to go making any jokes about a death curse either, so let's not, shall we?

It was one thing when Scarlett Johansson made a record of Tom Waits covers. No one called it a classic, but no one needed to—I mean, she can hardly be blamed for wanting to try. It's not like when Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton made pop albums; Johansson at least had some guts to go with her nerve. But now she's doing a sophomore record, a gaggle of duets with Pete Yorn, so it's time to be Frank('s Wild Years) about the whole Scarlett-as-chanteuse conceit. And maybe, while we're at it, the whole problematic Scarlett-as-actress gambit. Perhaps its time to blow the lid on the whole sordid affair!

Or perhaps you could just read this puff job from Spin:

"After I kind of dozed off one afternoon for a few minutes, I just woke up and my heart was racing and I had this thing in my head ... 'I have to do a duets album, a guy-girl album,'" Yorn told Billboard.com. "I was really into "Bonnie and Clyde" at the time, by Serge and Brigitte [Bardot], and I thought, 'Brigitte ... Scarlett! She's Brigitte!' It was a really manic thought pattern that was going on. Within 10 minutes, I was texting Scarlett, 'We have to make a record!'"

And make a record they did. Break Up, due September 15, was recorded in February of 2007 in producer Sunny Levine's garage studio in Los Angeles. The album features eight songs written by Yorn and a cover of former Big Star frontman Chris Bell's 1978 song "I Am the Cosmos," and tells the story of -- what else? -- the end of a relationship.

Johansson -- who hadn't yet recorded Anywhere I Lay My Head, her 2008 album of Tom Waits covers -- only showed up for two days of the session, but Yorn said she nailed her parts right away. "She blew me away with how fast she learned the songs," he said.

Say what you will about her singing, or her acting, but never let it be said that Scarlett Johansson isn't a quick study.

If you insist on hearing more, ayou can hear the duo's first single, "Realtor," here.

...what Jill "I Kissed a Girl (1995)" Sobule really really thinks of Katy "I Kissed a Girl (2008)" Perry, Idolator has sussed it all out:

The other thing people inevitably ask about is “I Kissed a Girl.”

For those that don’t know or are very young, I had a song in 1995 called, “I Kissed a Girl.” When Katy Perry’s version came out I started getting tons of inquiries about what I thought. Some folks (and protective friends) were angry, and wondered why she took my title and made it into this kind of ”girls gone wild” thing. Others, including my mother, were excited because they thought I would somehow make some money out of it. Unfortunately you can’t copyright a title… bummer.

As a musician I have always refrained from criticizing another artist. I was, “well, good for her.” It did bug me a little bit, however, when she said she came up with the idea for the title in a dream. In truth, she wrote it with a team of professional writers and was signed by the very same guy that signed me in 1995. I have not mentioned that in interviews as I don’t want to sound bitter or petty… cause, that’s not me.

Okay, maybe, if I really think about it, there were a few jealous and pissed off moments. So here goes, for the first time in an interview: Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe “not good for the gays,” title thieving, haven’t heard much else, so not quite sure if you’re talented, fucking little slut.

God that felt good.

I, for one, was wondering.