Even for a summer packed with high-profile arena shows -- Oasis, U2, Coldplay, and even Jay-Z -- there's really only one gig in London this week: Blur are back.

"So this is the first show of our tour," Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland told the sold-out crowd at Los Angeles' House of Blues during the inaugural St. Jude Rock'n'Roll Hope Show, a new event to raise funds for children's cancer research. "Ready or not," he continued. "Ready or not."

"This is your anticlimax."

It's a match made in American Badass heaven: Kid Rock and Lynyrd Skynyrd, kindred souls in music and patriotism, kicked off their joint Rock N' Rebels tour Friday night at West Palm Beach, FL's Cruzan Amphitheatre.

Music fans are wise to be leery when they see phrases like "all-original lineup" and "long-anticipated reunion tour" followed by that cracked-out whore of the punctuation world -- the exclamation point. We all know what she's hiding: The fact that the band members are broke and temporarily putting aside mutual hatred for quick cash.

America, meet your new goth rock queen: pale and plangent-voiced ex-American Idol star Carly Smithson, who has joined with three former members of Evanescence -- including co-founder/principal songwriter Ben Moody -- to form a new band, We Are the Fallen. Hey, say what you want about Moody, at least he has a type -- when it comes to frontwomen.