B2K will re-release their 2002 album Pandemonium on March 25th. The new edition will feature three previously unreleased songs, including the R. Kelly-penned and produced "Girlfriend" . . . John Hiatt will release his new album, "Beneath This Gruff Exterior," on May 6th on New West . . . Madonna's anti-war "American Dream" video will premiere in March . . . The Rolling Stones are planning their first-ever shows in China for early April . . . Former Verve guitarist Simon Tong will join Blur for a tour later this year, filling in for the departed Graham Coxon . . .

Daniel Johnston's first two handmade cassette releases from the early Eighties -- Songs of Pain and More Songs of Pain -- will be reissued as The Early Recordings Vol. 1, a two-CD set on April 15th . . . Bettie Serveert will release their new album, Log 22, on March 11th. The band will begin a twenty-one-date tour on March 21st in Brooklyn, New York . . . Jill Sobule will perform two songs when she appears in tonight's episode of The West Wing on NBC . . . Jazz trumpeter Ruby Braff died on February 9th in Chatham, Massachusetts, after a long battle with lung disease . . . Singer-songwriter David Wilcox will release his next album, "Into the Mystery," on April 8th . . .

Faith Hill will sing for soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Thursday morning. The performance will air on ABC's Good Morning America . . . Ashanti, Fat Joe, B2K, Jadakiss, Baby and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony will perform at a benefit for boxer Evander Holyfield's Main Event children's charity in Atlanta on February 15th . . . Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains will perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which runs April 25th through March 4th. The band features bassist Les Claypool, Guns n' Roses guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brian "Brain" Mantia and P-Funk keyboardist Bernie Worrell. Ween, Jack Johnson and Galactic are among other Jazz Fest performers . . .

Songs by Neil Young, Otis Redding, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and others will be profiled in Heartaches by the Number: Country Music's 500 Greatest Singles, a new book due March 14th . . . Yoko Ono will perform with DJ Danny Tenaglia at Arc in New York on February 16th to celebrate the release of her upcoming record, Walking on Thin Ice (The Remixes), due March 25th . . . Slum Village will launch the thirty-nine-date Family Tree Tour with Pharoahe Monch, Dwele, Phat Kat and Ess Band on March 20th in Kalamazoo, Michigan . . . Deep Purple's Roger Glover will release Snapshot, his first solo album in nineteen years this week . . .

(February 11, 2003)