Several years ago musician John Doe toured with Wilco, who were taking fans' requests of what songs the group should perform onstage through their Website. That gave Doe an idea of doing something similar for his own band, X. So for the Los Angeles punk group's current 'Total Request Live' tour, X fans have the opportunity to vote for their favorite X songs for the band to play in their city. "It's fun," Doe, 56, tells Spinner about the experience. "It's a little bit more work but I have made so many set lists [that] it's not difficult."

On the group's official site, xtheband.com, fans can pick their five favorite X tunes from a list of approximately 40 songs prior to the group arriving at a tour stop. So far, it's led to some interesting picks. "'The Have Nots' was the biggest surprise," Doe says. "Even when we wrote it and released it, we didn't play it that much. Another big surprise was 'Under the Big Black Sun.' We never played that one very much either. It's also a little surprising that each night is very different."

Dredg frontman Gavin Hayes admits to Spinner that Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' is such a sick concept album that he remains "quite jealous of it." That might also explain Dredg's predisposition for recording concept albums. Or, at least, thematic ones. Initially inspired by a Salvador Dali painting, the band's stand-out 2002 disc 'El Cielo' dealt largely with sleep paralysis and their latest, 'The Pariah, The Parrot, The Delusion' was directly influenced by a Salmon Rushdie essay entitled 'Imagine There's No Heaven: A Letter to the 6 Billionth Citizen.'

"The concept unfolded after we had written a few songs," Hayes tells Spinner, recalling that guitarist Mark Engles stumbled across the essay and realized the content was directly applicable to material they had already been working on. "From that point on, we used the essay as an influence and template for the writing and art direction."

Rather than take the traditional released route with his new EP, "Weird Al" Yankovic embraced the inevitable, titled it 'Internet Leaks' and started putting out the tracks one at a time digitally. "My next album isn't going to be out for quite some time, I'm guessing next year, but I wanted to give the fans something new to keep them excited," Yankovic tells Spinner. "I thought 'you know, there's no point in holding these tracks back' so I decided instead of having them illegally to the Internet, I'll just leak them myself."

After last year's fast food-themed parody of T.I.'s 'Whatever You Like' and last month's Doors-inspired 'Craigslist,' the three remaining tracks from 'Internet Leaks' will be released over the course of the summer. "They're all originals, mostly style parodies of other artists and bands," Yankovic says, refusing to reveal any more about the content. "While 'Craigslist' was a live action video, the other three will be animated. I'm very happy with them and I hope the fans respond to them."

Sound Tribe Sector Nine are building a house in New Orleans but it's not called the Rising Sun. And they're not building it literally because they'll be too busy hitting all the major summer festivals nationwide, but they are doing their part.

It's part of the band's 2009 'Make It Right' drive in which STS9, who have a long history of social activism and charitable fundraising, are focusing all their energy on just one cause for the year: building a house in New Orleans for residents of the Katrina-torn Lower Ninth Ward.

"After visiting New Orleans multiple times since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, we realized we wanted to try and build a house," bassist David Murphy tells Spinner. To break ground for it, figuratively speaking, the band just released remixes of their most recent CD, 2008's 'Peaceblaster.' Featured remix masterminds on 'Peaceblaster: The New Orleans Make It Right Remixes' include the Glitch Mob, Pretty Lights, Nosaj Thang, Lazor Sword, Bluetech, Telepath and Ott.

Courtney Love isn't saying she's anorexic, but she concedes she's looking "painfully thin" lately. "I know I've got too skinny," the Hole frontwoman told the Daily Mirror. "I know I need to sort it out."

Love, who looked downright voluptuous a few years ago, says her doctor diagnosed her with malnutrition two weeks ago. "He gave me a massive shot of vitamins and told me to start eating," said the 44-year-old rocker, who reportedly weighs just 84 pounds and is five feet, 10 inches tall.

The tributes to Michael Jackson will surely keep coming, but we're betting none will top the Iowa State Fair's homage to the King of Pop for surreality. Now, it's not traditional State Fair, um, fare like fried Twinkees or Snickers in deep batter, but it's not far off.

The Des Moines Register reports that the fair is planning to honor Jackson with a butter statue. That's right, a likeness of the King of Pop made of dairy. The statue, which will reportedly sit in a cooler chilled to 40 degrees, will serve a two-fold purpose, and no, it's not for giant french toast. In addition to being a memorial of sorts, the moonwalking Jackson will also pay homage to the 40th anniversary of the moon landing.

''Lonesome" George Thorogood is far better equipped than most to speak about the ongoing steroids controversy in baseball. Prior to being 'Bad to the Bone,' Thorogood was a semi-pro baseball player who, even today, speaks as passionately about Sandy Koufax versus Bob Gibson as the Rolling Stones versus the Beatles.

So, who does the guitar slinger think is responsible for the steroids controversy that has dogged baseball for more than a decade and has implicated such major players as Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez? "If Keith Richards wrote the number one song of all time back in 1973 and he was mixing cocaine with heroin to do it, what do you think the president of that company and the producer of the record would give him?" Thorogood asks Spinner. "They all understood what was going on. Everybody knew what was going on. Nobody cared because the ball was going into the seats. That thing had been going on for years; somebody was gonna find an edge."