plus: DMX [ tickets ]. MP3.com Summit. More major-label online-music news. Joy Division [ tickets ] box set. Could there be dishonesty in the music industry?

The August issue of Maximum Golf has an article on Eddie Van Halen [ tickets ], which was co-written by his golf instructor and another writer.

First off, die-hard Van Halen fans be warned: If you like golf, that's fine (well, no, it's not fine, you should know better), but if you don't, then don't spend the money on this magazine, because too much of it is "He drops another ball, swings again, and produces a robust shank. Ball three: a topspin dribbler to the first sprinkler head."

Anyway, this is what Van Halen had to say about the whole David Lee Roth/the band/will they/won't they thing:

"The last time I spoke to or saw Dave was back in September of last year," Eddie says hesitantly. "I played him a few new tunes, we bull-----ed a bit, had some laughs, and everything seemed cool. He was even kind enough to turn me on to his uncle, Jack Roth, a cancer surgeon and research specialist at--coincidentally--M. D. Anderson in Houston, where I had been going once a week for treatment.

"Everything looked pretty positive about gettin' together. But before you know it, attorneys are involved. These cats had me so beat down and confused, it made the cancer seem like a tiny zit on my ass. Everything seemed to fall apart once these guys got involved. I mean, we used to do it on a handshake. At this point, I don't have a clue what is going on.

"I write and play music for a living," Eddie continues to continue. "I'm not a businessman. It seems like all attorneys do is stir up trouble. They create problems that never existed and ream you for whatever money you got left. I'll tell ya, man, I don't see how these guys sleep at night. But what the hell are we talking about? This is Maximum Golf, not Maximum Dirt, right? So let's get back to my suck-butt swing..."

Prince [ tickets ]'s website has a section with this heading:

What do U, as members of the NPG Music Club, think of the latest "Best of" CD Time Warner has released, keeping in mind of course the fact that Prince makes virtually no money from the CD?

("Your honor! Counsel is leading the witness!")

On a related note, liveDaily reader Lisa Arledge Powell posed this question:

Do you think Prince cancelled his summer tour because he doesn't want to give Warner Brothers any promotional help in selling their new "best of" CD from Prince?

According to an Associated Press report from Buffalo, N.Y., "An Erie County grand jury has indicted rap artist DMX on charges he failed to show up at Cheektowaga Town Court to begin serving jail time for a traffic conviction last year."

TheStandard.com reported on Thursday's (7/5) MP3.com Summit held in San Diego:

The digital music services the major record labels plan to launch this summer will fall on deaf ears, and once-hyped wireless music services won't be taking off anytime soon.

... in his speech, [MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson], one of the leading spokesman for online music, predicted such services, also planned by Warner Music, Bertelsmann and EMI, will flop. That's because the services, expected to charge a monthly fee, will not allow consumers keep the music if they end their subscription or play the music on other devices, as they can do today with CDs. "There is no value there," he said. "That is going to be a disaster."

Robertson's predictions came despite his company's pending acquisition by Vivendi Universal for $372 million, announced in May.

Billboard.com reported, "As expected, Pressplay, the subscription service being developed by Universal Music Group (UMG) and Sony Music Entertainment, has cut a non-exclusive deal to distribute its content through Microsoft's Internet service provider."

Rhino Records will release a 4-CD Joy Division box set titled "Heartandsoul" on Aug. 7.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story on Friday (7/13) that states that "top record industry officials" are aware that "there is a coterie of independent consultants and merchants from Los Angeles to New York who have developed a system to distort sales numbers that are reported to SoundScan, the research firm that was supposed to clean up the once-shadowy world of music sales. There's nothing complicated about the scheme: It involves retail clerks swiping a CD numerous times across a scanning machine to falsely boost sales figures."

The way it works, according to the article, is:

An independent promoter, hired by a label, gives free CDs from the label to a retail store. Someone in the store then passes each CD over the store's bar-code scanner "numerous times," and it's the number of scans that SoundScan tallies up to determine its rankings for the week.

All of which reminds us of the question that we had last week, which we pose to you at the risk of displaying an unpardonable ignorance:

How did Alicia Keys' debut album hit No. 1 in its first week in stores? She has a single and video out--did that do it? Did she have Internet buzz? Any help will be appreciated.

(Also, the next time you're in line at the grocery store, and the cashier has to run your frozen pizza over the scanner a bunch of times, point at the cashier and yell, "I'm onto your scam, lady!" Of course, the problem with that is, she might pick up the phone and yell, "Whistleblower in aisle three!" and the secret grocery police will burst through the automatic doors and throw a bag over your head and toss you into a van with blacked-out windows, and the last thing you hear as you feel the syringe in your arm are the words, "Yes, Red Baron! It's all taken care of!")