plus: John Phillips' "lost" album. Nelly Furtado joins Area: One. Shaquille O'Neal's album delayed. Napster's fingerprinting. The Stax museum. Bruce Dickinson flies for charity.

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On Thursday (4/19), David Lee Roth posted a streaming-audio statement on his official website, saying that he collaborated last year with his former bandmates in Van Halen.

From Friday's (4/20) Official Van Halen Web Site Newsletter:

"We're aware of all the rumors, and rumors are just that.

We are continuing to work in the studio creating music for our next record. For any updates, come here to our website first (http://www.van-halen.com).

We'll stay in touch." - Edward, Alex and Mike.

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"Pay, Pack and Follow," an unreleased album by the late John Phillips--once the leader of the Mamas and the Papas--has been unearthed and will be released on April 24, VH1.com reported. The album was produced by the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who--along with fellow Stones-at-that-time Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood--also perform on the album. The reported reason for the album's delay is that Phillips misplaced the master tapes.

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Nelly Furtado has been added to the lineup for the Area: One festival, Billboard.com reported. The festival will feature performances by Moby and OutKast, among others.

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Trauma Records announced that the release date for Shaquille O'Neal's forthcoming album "Shaquille O'Neal Presents His Superfriends" has been moved back to Aug. 8, due the NBA playoffs schedule.

That is so typical. Sports always wins out over music. It's not fair.

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Variety reported that Napster, to improve its MP3-file-filtering process, has licensed a technology that, if we understand it correctly, takes the acoustical properties of a song and turns them into a "fingerprint." That way, a song with a particular fingerprint can be screened even if someone places it on Napster with a misspelled name or with an alias.

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You know what? Forget what we said above about sports always winning out over music. As a sophomore in high school, we were in both marching band and cross-country--that's right, we were that kid--and whenever there was a scheduling conflict between the two, our crazy marching band instructor invariably got his way.

To any pre-high school kids who might be reading this: unless you have to join marching band as a prerequisite for, like, jazz band or something, don't. G-- damn, it's horrible. Probably the worst of all the many indignities are the horrible crazy band parents--kids, you have not seen a life lived vicariously through a child until you have seen a flock of like-jacketed band parents sitting in the bleachers at half time, cheering for the marching band with a psychopathic intensity designed to shield them from the knowledge that everyone else in the bleachers is counting the seconds until the marching band goes away.

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Construction for the Stax Museum for American Soul Music is about to begin in Memphis, RollingStone.com reported. The museum will be built on the site of the original Stax Records, which was home to such artists as Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes.

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From a press release:

Take to the skies with Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson.

eBay.co.uk is hosting a charity auction where several lucky bidders will win a trip of a lifetime. Heavy Metal legend and Iron Maiden's charismatic front man, Bruce Dickinson, has offered to pilot private flights to six pairs of bidders. ...

The winning bidders will be flown by Bruce himself, from High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England for a full 90-minute flight. And if that's not enough, one of the flights being offered has a special bonus, offering a full day of aviation for the flying enthusiast. The winning bidder for this special day will be flown by Bruce to Biggin Hill where they will be given the opportunity to test their piloting skills on a full motion airliner flight simulator, which is used to train airline pilots. From there they will be taken back to High Wycombe, taking in views of the River Thames and Windsor.

The two charities that will benefit are - the Iain Rennie Hospice Organisation ... [and] SCOPE ...