Rock News Two: The week in pop music

SONIC YOUTH WORKS ON REISSUE SET

Sonic Youth -- which is scheduled to release a new album, "Murray Street," in June -- is also working on three reissues.

Rolling Stone reported the first reissue, "Dirty," is scheduled for release this summer. "Daydream" and "Goo" will get the reissue treatment later -- all with new liner notes and a bonus CD containing new material.

Singer-guitarist Thurston Moore said "Dirty" is pretty well ready to go.

"We weren't too interested in putting live stuff on there," he said, "it would take forever to go through it. But there's lots of sort of weird stuff that we had on eight-track tape, like demos of us working out songs. And there's a couple of pieces that never came to fruition during the songwriting of that record that we discovered that we thought were kind of interesting. And there are all the B-sides that sort of existed around then. They'll be fully loaded, that's for sure."

Sonic Youth are also looking over 1986 concert tour footage, and asking fans with audiotapes from a handful of shows from that tour to lend the material for a movie that they hope to release some time this year.

PET SHOP BOYS TONE IT DOWN

The Pet Shop Boys have left the spectacular production behind in favor of a relatively subdued show at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York this week.

The New York Daily News reported that the band -- once known for extravagant staging, outré costumes and avant-garde dancers -- performed on a relatively bare stage. Besides that, the paper reported that singer Neil Tennant and keyboardist Chris Lowe even added two guitarists and a percussionist to go along with the usual assortment of synthesized dance beats provided by an offstage programmer.

"This is an evening with the new Pet Shop Boys," Tennant told the audience.

The Boys devoted almost half the evening to songs from their new album "Release."

RINGO READY TO ROCK ONCE MORE

Ringo Starr has a new record deal and is reportedly working on a new album, with plans to release it to go along with his next All-Starr Band tour.

Starr has signed with Koch Entertainment -- the same company that released his live boxed set "The Anthology ... So Far" in 2001.

The second annual Beatles tribute tour, "A Walk Down Abbey Road -- A Tribute to the Beatles," will hit the road in June. Todd Rundgren and Alan Parsons have signed on to do the tour again this year, accompanied by new artists to the line-up including Jack Bruce (Cream), Mark Farner (Grand Funk Railroad) and Christopher Cross ("Arthur," "Sailing").

The tour is scheduled to launch on June 24 in San Diego.

ALIEN ANT FARM CRASH

Singer Dryden Mitchell hurt his back, guitarist Terry Corso broke his ankle, bassist Tye Zamora injured his foot and drummer Mike Cosgrove was treated for cuts and bruises -- and the bus driver was killed -- when Alien Ant Farm's tour bus crashed into a parked truck early Wednesday on a highway about 120 miles west of Madrid, Spain.

AAF was traveling to Lisbon, Portugal, for one of the final scheduled performances on their 10-date European tour, which was scheduled to wrap Friday. They had planned to return to the United States Saturday and play the WHFS Festival on Sunday at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. -- but the appearance has been canceled.

P. DIDDY OUT IN FRONT

"P. Diddy & Bad Boy Records Present ... We Invented the Remix" debuted at No. 1 this week on the Billboard 200 album chart, with first week sales of 255,547 units.

That's the highest scan ever for a remix album and the first multi-artist remix collection to debut at No. 1. The project got some help from the lead single and video "I Need a Girl (Part One)," featuring Usher and Loon.

The set also includes the P. Diddy remix of "I Need a Girl (Part Two)" featuring Ginuwine, Loon, Mario Winans and Tammy Ruggieri, as well as a remix of Ashanti's "Foolish" entitled "Unfoolish," featuring Notorious B.I.G.

Cam'ron's "Come Home With Me" debuted at No. 2, with 226,000 copies sold. Weezer debuted at No. 3 on sales of 152,000 copies of "Maladroit."

Musiq's "Juslisen" fell from No. 1 to No. 5. Rush's first album of new material in more than five years, "Vapor Trails," debuted at No. 6.

The rest of the Top 10 are: "Ashanti"; "A New Day Has Come" (Celine Dion); "Now That's What I Call Music! Volume 9" and "C'mon C'mon" (Sheryl Crow).

NEW BECK

Beck has finished work in his seventh record, an as-yet-untitled set produced by Nigel Goodrich, who also worked on Beck's 1998 album "Mutations."

Beck's follow-up to 1999's "Midnite Vultures" is due in stores on Sept. 24.

For this record, Beck brought in collaborators including songwriter/producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Eels, Aimee Mann) and Dan "The Automator" Nakamura (Gorillaz).

GOO GOO DOLLS READY TO ROLL

As the Goo Goo Dolls prepare for their upcoming U.S. tour -- kicking off Thursday in Houston -- frontman Johnny Rzeznik told Rolling Stone he's "psyched" to get out there and start promoting the new album "Gutterflower."

"I like getting out on the road and getting together with the band and doing that whole thing. It keeps reality at bay," he said with a laugh.

Rzeznik said the show will not have much in the way of visuals, but it will rock pretty hard.

"It'll be lots of loud rock," he said. "Lots of loud rock, and that's it."

Sensefield will open for the entire tour, and Five for Fighting have been signed to open on some dates. The tour is scheduled to run through Aug. 16 in Wantagh, N.Y.

INCUBUS DVD DUE NEXT WEEK

Incubus have set May 28 as the release date for their second DVD home video release "Morning View Sessions."

The "Morning View" album has been certified double-platinum. Most of the footage on the DVD comes from a live in-studio concert the band played in October 2001 at the Sony Music Studios in New York City, which was aired on MTV and VH-1.

The DVD is the first by a musical artist to use the Sony CineAlta 24P production system that allows for 24-frames per second high definition video that looks similar 35mm film origination. It's the same system that was used to shoot "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones."