The British arm of Kellogg's has produced a limited-edition box of cereal called Totes Amazeballs based on a Twitter suggestion by Tim Burgess, frontman of the long-running Britpop band the Charlatans. “I heard someone use the expression 'totes amazeballs,' and it sounded like something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” he told Adweek. “I sent a cheeky tweet saying I'd invented a new cereal and that Kellogg's were interested. But within an hour they'd got in touch.”

“We really try to make the most of Twitter here at Kellogg's, and when we saw the tweet, we knew we had to make something special for him,” says a representative for Kellogg's.

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Kellogg's only produced one box of Totes Amazeballs for Burgess, complete with an illustration of the singer on the front exclaiming “They're schhhhweet!” The contents of the box – a mixture of Rocky Road cake, Coco Pops Coco Rocks, marshmallows, shortbread pieces and raisins – is indeed very, very sweet.

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Codeine is primed for a noisy spring. The heavy, turgid Nineties rockers have reunited in support of the rerelease of their influential catalog and will hit the road on an American and European tour.

Pitchfork reports that the New York trio – whose aggressive yet glacial songs inspired scores of rockers in the mid- to late-Nineties – will tour from April to July. They'll hit New York twice and journey to Tokyo and London to perform in the tastemaking All Tomorrow's Parties festivals. Codeine's past three releases are being redistributed through Numero Group on May 22nd. Wayne Coyne and Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips have written new liner notes for the albums.

Confirmed Codeine tour dates:
4-09 Seattle, WA – Sunset Tavern
4-14 Tokyo, Japan – All Tomorrow's Parties
5-26 London, England – All Tomorrow's Parties
5-27 Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique
5-28 Groningen, Netherlands – Vera
5-30 Vienna, Austria – Szene
5-31 Bologna, Italy – Lokomotiv
6-01 Barcelona, Spain – Primavera Sound
6-08 Porto, Portugal – Primavera Sound
6-29 Brooklyn, NY – Bell House
6-30 Brighton, MA – Brighton Music Hall
7-01 Chicago, IL – Lincoln Hall
7-09-10 Seattle, WA – Triple Door
7-11 Portland, OR – Doug Fir
7-12 San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
7-13 Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
7-15 New York, NY – Le Poisson Rouge

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February 22, 1976: Florence Ballard of the Supremes dies
Talented, tragic Florence Ballard never got her due. As a founding member of the Motown sensations the Supremes, Ballard had the indisputable knock-out voice of the group; recording legend has it that she was made to stand almost 20 feet away from her microphone when she sang, just to save others' ears from her powerful pipes.

As the Supremes began to take off, Motown Records CEO Berry Gordy decided to pivot the group around the pleasant, less dramatic Diana Ross, and she became the lead singer (whereas she had often demurred to Ballard in the past). Ballard and Gordy butted heads constantly, and he fired her from the group in 1967. Ballard attempted a solo career that never ignited, and unsuccessfully sued Motown for unpaid royalties in 1971, but she lived out her last days on welfare with her children in Detroit. She died of cardiac arrest and coronary thrombosis in 1976, at age 32. Her story was later thinly fictionalized in the musical Dreamgirls.

February 20, 1991: Bob Dylan receives the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys and delivers a perplexing speech
Thirty years (and one month) after Robert Zimmerman arrived in Greenwich Village, New York, and changed the world's folk landscape, he was bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1991 Grammy Awards. During the ceremony, he sang his vitriolic song “Masters of War” (from 1963's The Freewheeling Bob Dylan), a pointed protest of the Gulf War, and was then presented the award by Jack Nicholson as his esteemed musical peers applauded wildly.

His speech was cryptic, to say the least. In accepting his industry's highest honor, he said (in entirety): “Well, my daddy, he didn't leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say: 'Son,' he said. He say, 'You know it's possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you. And if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.'”

Then he snatched the trophy and exited the stage. The words were later identified by Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy as a loose paraphrase of Psalm 27; its faithful recitation traditionally precedes Yom Kippur.

February 19, 1996: Björk attacks a reporter in Bangkok
Until her paparazzi smack-down in 1996 – a prescient move in pop culture, like so much of her music – Björk was widely perceived as a sort of benevolent, wildly eccentric art sprite. The musician had been a star in her native Iceland for much of her life, first with the electro-pop group the Sugarcubes and then through her haunting, nuanced solo fare.

In 1996, though, Björk showed a ferocious side to the media when reporters converged upon her at Bangkok International Airport. She had just completed a long flight with her son, Sindri, and later claimed that reporters had pestered him with intrusive questions. However, the reporter whom Björk assaulted had merely told her, “Welcome to Bangkok,” after which the singer jumped on her and knocked her to the ground.

Björk later insisted that the reporter, Julie Kaufman, had been harassing the singer and her family for days. She apologized to Kaufman, though, and no charges were filed.

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Bobby Brown arrived at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark today for the funeral of his ex-wife, Whitney Houston. He left the church after just fifteen minutes, however, following a dispute over seating arrangements.

Us Weekly reported that a visibly distraught and red-eyed Brown had arrived at the private service with a large entourage and tried to take seats in the front row. While Brown, who was married to Houston for 15 years, had been invited to the service, his nine guests were not admitted and when his guests were turned away, Brown left too.

The Rev. Al Sharpton wrote about the incident on Twitter: “I am at Whitney's funeral. I spoke with Bobby Brown trying to calm him down and not distract from the services. Today is about Whitney!” Sharpton followed up on the incident later in the day, tweeting “We are out of the service. I don't want anyone distorting Bobby Brown. He has shown love and respect today. Stop hatin.'”

Brown later released a statement addressing his departure:

“My children and I were invited to the funeral of my ex-wife Whitney Houston. We were seated by security and then subsequently asked to move on three separate occasions. I fail to understand why security treated my family this way and continue to ask us and no one else to move. Security then prevented me from attempting to see my daughter Bobbi Kristina. In light of the events, I gave a kiss to the casket of my ex-wife and departed as I refused to create a scene. My children are completely distraught over the events. This was a day to honor Whitney. I doubt Whitney would have wanted this to occur. I will continue to pay my respects to my ex-wife the best way I know how.”

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Michael Davis, the bassist for the politically-charged proto-punk band MC5, died on Friday of liver failure. He was 68.

Davis had been studying fine art at Wayne State University in Michigan when the Detroit-based MC5 recruited him in 1964. He promptly dropped out of art school to join the band. MC5 were soon taken under the wing of poet John Sinclair, whose affiliation with the radical-leftist anti-racist White Panther Party galvanized the band’s political energies. Kick Out the Jams, the first of the band’s three albums, was released by Elektra Records in 1969.

After MC5 split up in 1972, Davis went on to join the band Destroy All Monsters with Ron Asheton of the Stooges. He would later join MC5 again when they reunited for a tour in 2004. Davis also co-founded the non-profit Music is Revolution Foundation, which supports music education in public schools.

Davis died at the Enloe Medical Center in Chico, California after receiving a month-long treatment for liver disease. He is survived by his wife, Angela Davis, as well as three sons and a daughter.

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Nick Cannon has announced that he is giving up hosting duties of Rollin' with Nick Cannon, his radio show on Manhattan's 92.3 NOW, after doctors discovered blood clots in his lungs. Cannon will continue to host a syndicated radio show, Cannon's Countdown, and host NBC's America's Got Talent.

“Under doctor’s orders, I have been asked to put my health first and cut back on some of my professional commitments in order to allow my body to get the rest that it needs to keep up with the demands of my multi-tasking schedule,” Cannon said in a statement.

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Cannon has been dealing with a number of medical issues recently. He was hospitalized last month for mild kidney failure while on vacation with his wife Mariah Carey, and was hospitalized again last weekend for an issue with his lungs.

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R&B star Robin Thicke was arrested in Manhattan earlier today for marijuana possession. The singer was busted just after noon by officers who caught him smoking a joint while sitting in a Cadillac Escalade near Gramercy Park. “He wasn't driving,” an officer told the New York Daily News. “He was arrested and a small amount of marijuana was recovered on him.”

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Though Thicke was sitting in the car with another passenger, he was the only one arrested and charged with possession. The Daily News' sources say that the singer was cooperative throughout the arrest, and even signed autographs for the officers.

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Over the course of dozens of hours spent combing through more than 3,000 Woody Guthrie lyrics collected in upstate New York, the thing that Jay Farrar kept discovering was California.

“I found myself not aware of the California connection at the time I was going through and looking at those lyrics,” Farrar said of his exploration of the Guthrie archives that resulted in New Multitudes, his new album with My Morning Jacket's Jim James. “I guess that was an especially creative time for him, and I was drawn to the things he was thinking about at that time.”

Both songwriters said inspiration came easily during their separate trips to look through the collection of nearly every notebook, sketch pad and scrawl-covered napkin Guthrie produced during his 55 years that made him one of America's most legendary folk singers.

Known famously for his workers' rights and protest songs, the California-specific material on New Multitudes presents a more fragile, lonely side of Guthrie, who married and divorced his third wife and saw his health falter during his California stints in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

“Careless Reckless Love,” “My Revolutionary Mind” and “Talking Empty Bed Blues” are among the songs where Guthrie openly pined for love, while “Hoping Machine,” “Fly High” and “Old L.A.” show him trying to keep an optimistic stance as he moved into what would become his final, difficult years.

“I guess there's something in Jay that's attracted to L.A., and he found that in looking through Woody's lyrics,” said Nora Guthrie, one of eight Guthrie children and the caretaker of the Woody Guthrie foundation and archives. “That's true of everybody, because you end up finding yourself in looking at those lyrics. 'Your Smile Cured Me,' was written in '52 or '54 when Woody was dealing with his own sort of skid row, and 'When I Get Home' is so heart-wrenching, it's one of my favorite songs of all time.”
Both of the songs referenced by Nora Guthrie are found on the expanded version of “New Multitudes,” which Rounder Records will release on Feb. 28.

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Recorded in 2009 with Centro-Matic's Will Johnson and Varnaline's Anders Parker, the album is part of a year-long centennial celebration of Guthrie's birth that includes tribute concerts in all 50 states and an expanded boxed set release of Billy Bragg and Wilco's Guthrie-derived Mermaid Avenue albums released more than a decade ago.

A small parade of artists have released music from Guthrie lyrics in recent years, running the stylistic gamut from Boston punks the Dropkick Murphys and rocker Lou Reed to jazz artist Jonatha Brooke and Jewish traditionalist group The Klezmatics.

Guthrie said the Farrar/James collaboration made sense to her because the pair opted to carry a more personal side of her father's story to a new generation, and their country leanings had a direct connection to Woody Guthrie's recordings.

“I really wanted to hear something that returned to Woody's roots after working with The Klezmatics,” she said. “Hearing it reminded me of those sounds of guys like Phil Ochs hanging around in the Sixties in the living room. That's the visual picture I get when I hear it.”

When the quartet convened in a Brooklyn studio to complete the bulk of the record – Farrar had written and recorded some of the material on his own beginning in 2006 before James came on board – the mood was one of exploration and adventure. James took up the bass guitar and considered sticking with it upon returning to My Morning Jacket, Johnson put a musical saw to his spotlight song “Chorine” and Farrar sang in challenging keys and used song structures he'd never have attempted solo or with his main band Son Volt.

“It was a very symbiotic situation and in a way it was like we were all at music camp. We stepped away from our normal situations with our own bands and I liked that we were able to try things out that I wouldn't have done on my own,” Farrar said of his register-pushing vocal on “Careless Reckless Love” and the repetitive song structure of the title track, which he termed “Walt Whitman-esque.”

Writing and completing New Multitudes had lasting benefits for both men. The experience of working with another writer's source material made Farrar comfortable enough to embark on a similar journey with Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard for 2009's Jack Kerouac-sourced album One Fast Move And I'm Gone.

For James, the chance to explore a sort of musical wonderland at the Guthrie archives motivated him to be more studious with documenting the stray thoughts and feelings that become the source material for songs.

“What occurred to me was how important it was to capture this stuff, and I'm glad he did so we could look back on what he had to say,” James said. “You might not pay attention to what the voices in your head are telling you, but it's important to get all that stuff down. His mind was shooting out like a machine gun or cannon and it was amazing to see everything, drawings and doodles and stuff on napkins. It feels like his brain was this constant waterfall of creativity.”

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Guitarist Zack Wylde promised a big night of “hookers, payola and blow” at this year's Revolver Golden Gods Awards, set to erupt April 11 in Los Angeles. “We're creeping up on the porn awards,” he joked, standing among a crowd of hard rockers yesterday to announce the nominees in 10 categories.

“Within the next 200 or 300 years, metal and death metal and all the forms of metal will get top honors at the Grammys,” he told Rolling Stone. Until then, Golden Gods nominees for Best Album include Anthrax, Foo Fighters and Lamb of God, and Kiss bassist Gene Simmons will receive the Golden God for best embodying “the spirit of hard rock and metal.”

Last year's honoree was Alice Cooper, who attended yesterday's announcement and spoke to Rolling Stone about the awards, his upcoming summer tour with Iron Maiden (beginning June 21st in North Carolina) and the latest guitar virtuoso in his band, Orianthi.

What keeps you coming back to the Golden Gods?
I was watching the Grammys the other night – there was no rock & roll except for the Foo Fighters. I looked at the categories, and it said, “Hard rock – the Decemberists . . .” And I'm going, What? Foo Fighters were the only rock band involved. This is real rock. I feel more at home here. The Grammys used to be all rock & roll. Now it's sort of a novelty to have a rock band in there. I thought it was great when McCartney did “The End,” where you had all the guitar players up there. That was the rockest part of the night.

The Foos' name also came up a lot in the nominations today.
They are the best Seventies band. They would have fit right in. Dave Grohl and those guys write really good hard rock songs. So we need more Guns N' Roses out there, and we need more Aerosmith. That's hard rock, and we don't seem to be getting a lot in the mainstream.

In the Eighties, you really embraced the metal scene, and now the Golden Gods. Do you see yourself that way?
I never thought of myself as metal. I looked at it as a hard, hard rock band. If you sit Ozzy and I down, we would talk about the Beatles. Ozzy's melodies and my melodies are all very Beatle-oriented – or the Yardbirds and the Who. There's more influence of that in our generation than anything else. That's why I think a lot of things that are happening now will not have a very long shelflife. The further you get away from the Beatles, the less chance you have of having classic songs. They were good teachers.

Iron Maiden may have picked up a few stagecraft tricks from you.
Those guys are really good friends of ours. When you've been out for five decades on the road, there's a whole section of the audience out there that have heard of Alice Cooper but never saw Alice Cooper. So an Iron Maiden audience is a great opportunity for us to show them what Alice is all about. We do more theatrics now than we did back then.

How did you connect with Orianthi?
[Producer] Bob Ezrin and I both liked Orianthi. I don't think anybody has seen her really play. You saw the Michael Jackson stuff, but you watch her play a full set of 28 songs, and that girl can rock it. Halfway through the tour, she goes, “By the way, I am left-handed.” What do you mean? “I play better left-handed.” What?! She's awfully good right-handed. She's fun. I notice every night on stage there would be a little more [fake] blood on her mouth. By the end of the tour on her arms was “Help Me” and cuts [drawn] on her arm. She got freakier and freakier as the tour went on.

What are you going to do on this tour with Maiden?
You have to do the hits. The audience would kill you if you don't do “Eighteen” and “School's Out.” But then we've got to do stuff from the new album. And then you have to get what I call the underground hits – the real Alice aficionados want to hear those songs. Once in a while you throw a cover in there. We do a pretty mean “Brown Sugar.”

What do you have in the works now?
The new album charted higher than anything we've had since Trash. When we go out with Maiden this year, we're going to be doing a best-of Alice, and after that we'll be going into producing the Welcome 2 My Nightmare show.

What will that be like?
I stay away from things like lasers and pyro, because Alice is more vaudevillian than that. I want the show to look like a sideshow – that thing you don't really want to go into but are compelled to go into.

Do you see anyone out there following that tradition?
Black Veil Brides picked up on something and said, “How come nobody's doing this Sunset Strip Eighties rock anymore?” And I'm surprised, too. That whole hair-rock thing that went on was a really fun era. It was loud, it was fun, it was in your face.

Did you witness much of the Eighties Sunset Strip?
To me it was funny, because it was a resurgence of what we did in the Seventies. All of a sudden every band had a show. Bands like Poison and Warrant and Ratt and Cinderella – they all had a show, and it was fun to watch. I might not even have liked some of those bands, but I would look at the show and go “Wow, they actually rehearsed this.”

There's a lot of bands out right now that are afraid to be rock bands. They go up and they're way too polite. Everybody in the band looks like somebody you'd see on the street. A rock band looks like Black Veil Brides. You know what that guy does for a living. That's the way it was in the Sixties and the Seventies. Now I look at a group on stage and they've got acoustic guitars and they're singing about the environment, and I'm going, “What kind of edge is that?”

They had that in the Seventies, too.

They did, but nobody liked it. [laughs]

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Beyoncé may have given birth to her first child last month, but the singer is already planning two new projects to write and record in 2012. Ryan Tedder, OneRepublic frontman and co-writer of Beyoncé tunes such as “Halo” and “I Was Here,” says that he and other producers are cooking up raw material that the singer will have the option to complete in the studio. “All I can say is, you kind of feed her the best that you have and she's this phenomenal filter and she takes it all in,” Tedder told the BoomBox at the Grammy Awards ceremony on Sunday.

“The conversations about her next album literally just started and there [are] two projects happening,” says Tedder. The songwriter did not divulge the nature of the projects, though he did mention that he is submitting songs about motherhood and that the singer is not planning to chase current trends in pop music. “She's not interested in 2012, she's interested in what's [going to sound good for] 2013.”

It is likely that one of the two projects will be music for the soundtrack to Clint Eastwood's forthcoming remake of A Star Is Born, which will feature the R&B star as the female lead.

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