The mudslinging continues in the “are-they or aren’t-they Aerosmith” breakup that probably should have occurred fifteen years ago. Amidst rumors of a Billy Idol takeover (setting this story’s relevance back to, say, 1985), and even Paul Rogers of Bad Company (ok, 1975), Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry has confirmed to Classic Rock Magazine that his current sparring partner/ supposed former lead singer Steven Tyler did try out for Led Zeppelin after Robert Plant declined to tour in 2008.

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Every typical rock star wannabe’s very first mission is to successfully play Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” It was the most popular song of 1971 and it’s still famous today. That Jimmy Page guitar is what makes the song, but it’s also known for being terribly long (or not long enough for you hard core glam rockers out there today).

The song itself is 8:02 minutes. That amount of time for a song was incredibly lengthy back then and it still is today. However, we now find out that lengthy Zeppelin song was also perfect for DJs and their cigarettes.

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It turns out our little hunch about the supergroup, Them Crooked Vultures, was right on! The super rock group formed by Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme unveiled themselves at the Lollapalooza’s after-show and fans were not disappointed!

After a hot and sticky then wet and rainy three-day festival, everyone was psyched to catch the first Them Crooked Vultures show in history. Rumors were flying around and tickets were bought (no scalper would accept less than $2,000 according to Stereogum) and the anticipation for speculation to become reality seemed to give everyone in attendance an extreme high that night.

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After numerous online speculations about Foo Fighters‘ Dave Grohl, Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme forming  a supergroup, it turns out that the rumors are ACTUALLY true! The three musicians collectively call themselves Them Crooked Vultures and apparently, they’ve been working on a studio album for three years.

If you’re happy with that mere tidbit, then you’ll be stoked to hear that Them Crooked Vultures have potentially been booked to play Lollapalooza’s aftershow! Perhaps this also will soothe fans of the Beastie Boys and those not-much-fans of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. The band name wasn’t officially announced but the sign above with the three symbols each representing 1/3 of the supergroup was posted.

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At the 2009 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) in Taiwan, UC San Diego electrical engineering Ph.D. student Luke Barrington presented a new model for music analysis (pdf) that can capture both the sound of a song and how it changes over time. The system is being used for a new search engine, dubbed Google for Music, and users would search for descriptive words, like “mellow jazz”, instead of song titles, album names or artist names.

The algorithm labels tracks differently; it cuts them into segments such as verse, chorus and bridge. It’s more accurate because it gives labels to smaller sections of a song, rather than attempting to broadly label the entire thing. But the computer must be taught, so Barrington’s team has made a game for Facebook, called Herd It, which asks you to identify instruments, genres, artist names and emotions triggered by a song.

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Former Guns N’ Roses axeman Slash is going to record a cover of Led Zeppelin’s song Kashmir with electronic string quartet Escala. The artists are set to record in Los Angeles later this week, after being brought together by Escala’s manager Simon Cowell.

Escala rose to fame when they reached the final of the second series of the show “Britain’s Got Talent” in 2008. The Sun reports that:

“He was looking for someone unexpected to work with the girls and asked if he’d be interested. [Slash] really liked the idea and jumped at the chance.”

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With less than a month before the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival reveals its 2009 lineup, to take place June 11-14 in Manchester, TN, music fans are getting antsy. And we all know what happens when music get antsy about lineups: they start rumors. Here’s are some band names floating around so far:

Led Zeppelin: I’ve got four words for everyone: Here we go again. Yes, John Paul Jones played Zeppelin classics with Ben Harper in two separate performances in 2007, and yes, Robert Plant jammed on some of the band’s tunes with Alison Krauss at last year’s festival. But let’s face it, there are Zeppelin-at-Bonnaroo rumors every year. Sadly, the dream of seeing Zeppelin headline Bonnaroo may be nothing more than a fantasy, especially considering Robert Plant’s informal announcement that he will be focusing on other performances for the next two years and recent comments from Jimmy Page’s manager, Peter Mensch:

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Jimmy Page’s manager Peter Mensch told Musicradar that the band is over and will not tour any more, despite many indications to the contrary. After Robert Plant received a CBE from the Queen of England, and said he would not be doing a reunion tour with the band, it looks like the 2007 concert at the London O2 Arena was Zeppelin’s last.

“Led Zeppelin are over,” Mensch said, “If you didn’t see them in 2007, you missed them. It’s done. I can’t be any clearer than that.”

He added: “They tried out a few singers, but no one worked out. That was it. The whole thing is completely over now. There are absolutely no plans for them to continue. Zero. Frankly, I wish everybody would stop talking about it.”

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Music fans have given NME their votes for the greatest voice in rock. Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant came out on top with Freddie Mercury of Queen and Paul Rodgers of Free and Bad Company following closely behind. It’s a pretty big honor and a very broad one at that.

Do you agree with this outcome? Let us know what you think!

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