According to NME.com, U2 [ tickets ] will perform at Los Angeles' House of Blues on Friday (12/1) and New York's Irving Plaza on Saturday (12/2).

Legendary '70's punk band Television will reform to play the U.K.'s All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in April, Billboard reported.

From a nothing records press release re: the Marilyn Manson [ tickets ] concert where the drummer was injured:

But it's not a tour until somebody gets hurt -- or at least inspires a comment from TV-commercial soundtracker Moby.

On Saturday, November 25th, the second of two sold-out nights at New York City's Hammerstein Ballroom, Manson was tearing down the drum set during the concert's finale and drummer Ginger Fish went with it, fracturing his collarbone in the process. He was attended to at St. Vincent's Hospital that night, and back on his perch the next date in Detroit.

Of the incident, self-appointed spokesperson Moby told the New York Post: "It was disgusting. I'm waiting to see if the police want witnesses. That kind of violence is totally unnecessary onstage," the music representative chimed-in for reasons as yet unknown.

"On my stage that kind of violence is completely necessary, it's just unfortunate that Moby wasn't injured," responds Marilyn Manson. "My drummer has offered to beat him with his good arm, though."

Published reports that we've read didn't mention that Manson was "tearing down the drum set" when the injury occurred.

Rapper Xzibit [ tickets ] will release his third album, "Restless," on Dec. 11 in the U.K. Produced by Dr. Dre, "Restless" includes contributions from beat makers Rockwilder, Erick Sermon and the Teamstas, as well as west coast hip-hop figures Mel-Man, DJ Quik, Soopafly and Battlecat. Celebrated rappers Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Goldie Loc, Defari and KRS One make cameos on the disc.

A limited-edition CD of 8STOPS7's song "Question Everything" from its album "In Moderation" will be on sale at Tower Records and at towerrecords.com, with the proceeds going to Children of the Night, an organization that helps sexually exploited teens.

On Wednesday, we quoted a GQ article by Joshua Clover about OutKast [ tickets ]: "An astonishing fact about this American life is that a band can move millions of records and remain underground, essentially unknown to the mainstream (read: white) audience. You don't need to cross over anymore to go platinum ..."

In response to that, reader Mike Remington wrote:

As far as the "white"-audience-representing-mainstream comment, that is very stereotypical in many ways. I think anyone who truly appreciates good music has a variety of tastes. So to assume that having "white fans" is the determining factor in mainstream vs. underground is ridiculous. And despite what this writer thinks, they [OutKast] have not gone unnoticed by the white, or any other race for that matter. I have been to several shows and their fan base is very mixed.

Useful comment--especially for us, as Mr. Clover's thoughts pretty much mirrored our own.

We asked readers to tell us how hip-hop managed to go platinum without national airplay.

Word of mouth, of course, was one way. (Quick aside: liveDaily Briefly has never been one of those people who can get their friends to buy an album based on their enthusiasm for it, and we've always thought that would be a cool thing to be.)

And MTV/music-video television was another, which reminded us of this: growing up in our small Midwestern city, being surrounded by nothing but crap rock radio, getting cable TV, and discovering MTV, which, for all of its countless faults, was one of the first media--along with the local college radio--to introduce good rock to us.

(The fact that hip-hop media swirls around the country without liveDaily Briefly being deeply aware of it reminds us of how Joe Camel was once a very prominent figure among American youth, and had been for some time before adults caught on, and the way that happened was that adults' lack of personal interest in youth-oriented media rendered them oblivious to the marketing of tobacco to kids. So if any parents of young children are reading this:

Tomorrow's Saturday. Consider watching Saturday morning TV with your kids. Chances are you haven't truly paid attention to Saturday morning TV for years--we know we haven't--and you never know who's trying to sell what to them.)

So there you go. Enjoy the weekend.

From staff reports, compiled by James Woster.