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Legendary singer-songwriter and guitarist David Crosby has drawn the ire of VAN HALEN fans for seemingly minimizing the talents of recently deceased guitarist Eddie Van Halen.After a Twitter follower asked Crosby for his opinion of Eddie, David replied simply: "Meh ...." His bluntness was seen as out of line by a number of other Twitter users, including TESTAMENT guitarist Alex Skolnick, who chimed in: "I appreciate @thedavidcrosby too much for this to get in the way, but a much better answer would have been: 'I know he meant a lot to so many but his sound & style just weren't...

On June 2 HBO, MTV, and a host of celebrities will be joining Michael Bloomberg and other pro-gun control groups to watch participating mayors proclaim “Gun Violence Awareness Day” in their cities. Those participating will “wear orange” and MTV will “change its on-air logo — as well as several of its social media avatars — to orange in recognition of National Gun Violence Awareness Day.” According to PRNewsWire, participating celebrities–aka, “cultural influencers”–include: Julianne Moore, Russell Simmons, Sarah Silverman, Michael Stipe, Patti Smith, Aasif Mandvi,Alyssa Milano, Padma Lakshmi, John Hodgman, Amanda Peet, Perez Hilton, Melissa Joan Hart, Tiffani Thiessen, Tunde Adebimpe...

<p>It is hard to escape the conclusion that Pope Francis would like to turn the whole Catholic Church into the pastoral equivalent of the decadent and dying Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, where Catholics — as in all of South America — are defecting to Protestant sects, there are no vocations, and the former Archbishop Bergoglio “authorized ‘curas villeros,’ the priests sent to the peripheries, to give communion to all, although four fifths of the couples were not even married.”</p>

Patti Smith is to play this year's Vatican Christmas Concert in Rome next month. The punk singer will perform live at the Italian city's Auditorium Conciliazione on December 13 following a personal invitation from Pope Francis, according to The International Business Times. The entire event is set to be broadcast live on TV. Smith's booking has evoked a mixed response from Christian groups, with Catholic organisation Portosalvo apparently describing the decision as "blasphemous", following the singer's 1975 song 'Gloria', which famously featured the lines: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine". The singer met Pope Francis at St. Peter's...

When the Dixie Chicks made their snide comment about President Bush, hundreds if not thousands of people lined up at radio stations across America to dump their Dixie Chicks CD's.Let's face it, artists are paid to entertain us, they are the jesters of society and true they are allowed to have a personal opinion, they should keep their opinion to themselves and not use their social position to promote their idealology. We all have an opion but few of us have a sounding board to share our opinion with thousands of people.Some folks commented that dumping their Chicks CD's did...

The two-hour set was loosely organized around a protest theme that had genuine moments of insight and power. But by the end of the night, Smith's viewpoints about President Bush, the war in Iraq and the forthcoming election smacked of overkill, if not preaching to the converted.