There’s breathless excitement from Grammy.com: The Recording Academy today tapped Kid Rock, the Roots, and Dave Grohl to perform on the 45th Annual GRAMMY Awards. In addition, Ja Rule, Joe Pantoliano, Kylie Minogue, Kim Cattrall, and Fred Durst are scheduled to present awards. The 45th Annual GRAMMY Awards will take …

Bernard Weintraub has a great series in the NY Times, “The Music They Made,” profiling the “Legends of Rock Country and Soul.” Today’s story is on the inimitable Chuck Berry, the second greatest of the pre-Beatles rockers (after Elvis, of course). Chuck is still rocking at 76: Chuck Berry is …

I have no idea if Cleveland Imam Fawaz Damra is a changed man or has simply learned to be discreet, but a “youthful indiscretion” has turned up in a very serious federal case: A federal indictment handed up Thursday accuses a University of South Florida engineering professor, Sami Amin Al-Arian, …

Independent bands have always had a tough time of it getting the word out, getting noticed, achieving some kind of critical mass upon which to build a career. The Internet is an excellent outlet and resourse, but certainly hasn’t been the miracle that many thought it would be. So how …

Cellular systems may be outdated in five years: Originally a home-and-office product designed to link up personal computers without wires, Wi-Fi is an inexpensive way to send data over the airwaves at blazing speeds. Asia’s fixed-line carriers are capitalizing on that bang-for-the-buck to offer broadband access to the Internet in …

We mentioned last week that FCC Chairman Powell’s deregulatory agenda was in jeopardy, largely due to the efforts of fellow-Republican and Bush insider Kevin Martin. This has come to pass: With Republican FCC commissioner Kevin Martin staging a palace coup on Thursday and joining with Democrats on a key vote, …

We live in very strange times: on the one hand the world has become a very small place and there are no longer any true terrestrial frontiers. This is the psychological foundation for the space program: we need frontiers or we begin to feel hemmed in like rats in a …

Kazaa hooks up with MatchNet for “Love and Dating” service: Dating services company MatchNet has announced it has entered into an agreement to exclusively provide an online dating channel on Kazaa. Kazaa is the leading peer-to-peer file-sharing software with 186m downloads so far, and an active community of 70m users. …

Our picks for the Best New Artist of 2002: 1) Norah Jones 2) Avril Lavigne 3) The Streets 4) Interpol 5) Josh Groban

Our picks for the Best Reissues and Collections of 2002: bonuses] 1) Best of 1990-2000 & B Sides by U2 2) The Velvet Underground & Nico, remastered by Velvet Underground 3) Elvis 30 #1 Hits by Elvis Presley 4) Nirvana by Nirvana 5) Forty Licks by The Rolling Stones 20 …