'NSync has designed a T-shirt with the members' handprints on it. The shirt is on sale through Planet Hollywood, with a "portion of the proceeds," according to the restaurant chain, going to Challenge for the Children, which provides financial support to "children's programs and charities."

DMX [ tickets ] was released from the New York state jail where he was being held for 11 days for a traffic violation, MTV.com reported. The rapper's attorney claims that he was mistreated by a guard, and the article describes him leaving the jail "hobbling."

Gail Zappa, widow of Frank Zappa [ tickets ], is suing online music company Emusic.com for "more than $5 million" for making Zappa songs available for downloading without her permission, Billboard reported.

According to MCA/Nashville, "I Would've Loved You Anyway," the new single from Trisha Yearwood, is due in stores on June 5.

Tower Records is founding a record label called 33rd Street Records. According to a press release, the label hopes to use employees' knowledge of local music scenes to find bands to sign. Which, assuming it's sincere, is pretty shrewd on Tower's part--record store clerks have always been the first to know.

The New York Times Magazine ran a story on Sunday (3/11) about indie bands who allow their songs to be used in commercials. It features members of the Apples in Stereo, who licensed their song "Strawberryfire" to Sony for a commercial for the Sony Wega television. One of the Apples defends the practice thusly:

"It's more of a sellout to go to a commercial radio station and kiss someone's [expletive]," Robert [Schneider] says. "It's more of a sellout to do cheesy meet-and-greets for some major label. And having to work another job that takes all your energy from your music is even more selling out."

Even putting aside how precious and ridiculous that last sentence is ("You got a day job? F---in' sellout!"), you still have a defense that mirrors George Bush, Sr.'s defense/spin of accusations that running mate Dan Quayle used family influences to get out of serving in Vietnam: "He didn't go to Canada, and he for damn sure didn't burn the American flag."

And writer John Leland, "a Style reporter for The Times," seems to want more musicians to license their songs to commercials. Read this paragraph out loud, and see if it isn't it like the narration for a Scientology recruitment video:

Robert and Hilarie [Sidney] had always imagined that advertising meant striking a Faustian deal with a soulless corporation. But when the call came, it was nothing like that. It was their friend Tim, a fan of the band. [It always starts with a phone call from a friend, doesn't it?] He had directed its first video. He was as indie as the band was [whatever that means in the advertising industry], as genuinely interested in music. This made a big difference. "You imagine that it's a crass process," Robert says. "But it's not like Sony used our song in the commercial, which is how it looks to the indie kid. It's just one guy who liked our music."

Yeah, okay, but: Sony did use their song in the commercial. He doesn't believe otherwise, does he?

(We should admit here that no one's ever offered us tens of thousands of dollars to do anything--well, there was that 65-year-old heiress we met in Vegas, but we don't like to talk about that. And we should admit that, unlike Schneider and Sidney, we don't have a kid.)

That's the big question (at least, for those of us who spend time pondering these things): Do the people in this article really believe what they're saying? Like friend Tim the ad guy, who says that "We're able subversively to put some of these groups into the living rooms of America." Does he really believe that as an ad guy, he's subversive?

Reading this article, one sees the advertising industry as filled with a bunch of music fans and musicians who once received life inspiration from the music that they now need to drag down with them--there, yes, we said it, "drag down"--in order to alleviate the guilt that they now feel whenever they listen to it and remember that they ignored that inspiration and ended up in advertising.

Dimestore psychology, but we're sticking to it.