Chumbawamba have been chugging along for a decade now, but the anarchist octet was actually a Best New Artist nominee at this year's MTV Video Music Awards. So, to prove MTV has its head up its ass -- and that the group wasn't merely throwing Molotov cocktails for all those years -- they'll be releasing Uneasy Listening, a collection of pre-Tubthumper tracks from their first nine albums, plus live tracks and B-sides. Songs will include "Mouthful of Shit," "Morality Play in Three Acts," "Big Mouth Strikes Again," "Give the Anarchist a Cigarette" and "We Don't Go to God's House Anymore." The collection will hit stores some time in late November or early December . . .

Matthew Sweet will return to his Ming Tea roots when he provides the trailer music, "Psychedelic Scene Breaks," for the forthcoming Austin Powers: The Man Who Shagged Me, due in theaters next year. The trailer will begin airing this holiday season. It's not yet known if Sweet, who cameoed in the original Austin Powers film as the bassist for the fictional Ming Tea will get saucy again in the sequel . . .

Playing Marilyn Monroe to his John F. Kennedy, former Spice Girl Geri Halliwell will debut as a solo artist when she purses her lips and sings a special rendition of "Happy Birthday" to Prince Charles tonight at London's Lyceum Theater. Now, if the once Ginger Spice wants to complete the nostalgic recreation, the two will be knocking boots by the time Big Ben strikes midnight . . .

Kiss in the Nineties can get away with sounding like classic Seventies' Kiss, but when they start sounding like classic Seventies' Alice Cooper, you better believe the lawyers start putting on their own war makeup. According to Billboard Online, Six Palms Music Corp., publisher (as Bizarre Music) of Alice Cooper's "I'm Eighteen," has filed a complaint against Paul Stanley and former Kiss member Bruce Kulick for copyright infringement. Apparently the Stanley/Kulick penned "Dreamin'," from the new Kiss album Psycho Circus, bears what Six Palms feels to be an inexcusable likeness to the lurching Cooper classic. When asked about the case Wednesday afternoon, however, Cooper's manager Toby Mamis was unaware that Six Palms had filed suit, though he had heard that there were apparent similarities in the two tracks. Stay tuned as the plot unfolds . . .

By the time his new album, It's a Beautiful Thing, hits stores in December, rapper Keith Murray will likely have a very different worldview -- one from behind bars. The artist turned himself in Monday to begin serving a three-year prison term for assaulting a teenage fan with a barstool in 1995. Murray had been on the lam since Sept. 24, when he failed to appear at New Britain, Conn.'s Superior Court to commence his sentence. That delay could end up costing Murray, as it amounts to a felony charge carrying a $5,000 fine and/or up to five years incarceration . . .

How do you get Isaac Hayes, Next, Montell Jordan, country star Steve Wariner and a pack of NFL stars huddled together in one room? Simple: throw a New York press conference celebrating their new theme song for the United Way, "We're All In This Together." The Wariner-penned track, which also features Faith Hill, Foxy Brown, Randy Travis and a host of others, appears on both NFL Jams and NFL Country, and will be used in a series of United Way public service announcements scheduled to air during the rest of the NFL season. The commercials will feature footage of the song's recording as well as NFL players performing various good Samaritan duties . . .

Ten months on the road would turn anyone into a couch potato, so it's little surprise that when road warriors Portishead got home from supporting their self-titled sophomore release they promptly logged onto their computers. Yesterday, keyboardist Geoff Barrow and guitarist Adrian Utley chatted with cyber-journalists about their upcoming live album, PNYC, which will be released Nov. 3 in the States. Among the revelations: No gigs planned, no studio album planned, no hint of new directions, no idea what they're going to do with their free time and no fave albums of '98. We did learn that Adrian's got Radiohead in his disc player and that Geoff's spinning Nirvana. At least we didn't pay for an overseas call . . .

Speaking of Radiohead, if you're as tired as we are of cookie-cutter music videos (choreographed rows of scantily clad dancers, preening rockers and divas, lightning edits and the like), hold onto your remote for "Rabbit In Your Headlights," the Jonathan Glaser-directed clip for Thom Yorke's contribution to the U.N.K.L.E. compilation. This pint-size slice of cinema makes Glaser's video for "Karma Police" seem as comforting as a Hallmark card . . .

Had the roof of Manhattan's Roseland Ballroom caved in Sunday night, there'd be some serious shoes to fill on the Who's Who List of Media Mongers. Madonna, Puff Daddy and Lenny Kravitz waved royally from the VIP balcony at common people in attendance to see little miss Queen of Angst Alanis Morissette. Five hundred of the attendees won tickets from New York's Z-100; the remaining two thousand picked up free wristbands for entrance earlier that day. The rest of the world will have to wait for Nov. 2, when the performance will be aired as MTV Presents Alanis Morissette . . .

Speaking of Kravitz, it took considerably longer than a haircut, but the retro-rocker's latest album, 5 (released May 13), has finally been certified gold by the RIAA. This is Kravitz's fifth album to break the half-million mark; his best-seller to date remains '93's multiplatinum Are You Gonna Go My Way. Apparently most of the people that did back then have since taken a detour . . .

You know you're the Boss when your home state throws up a slavish "shrine" to you on their website. At New Jersey Online's brand new "Bruce Springsteen -- New Jersey Local Hero Website" (www.nj.com/springsteen), you'll find a wealth of N.J. newspaper clippings on Bruuuce, as well as photos, interactive tours of old Boss haunts like the Stone Pony, and something called the "Fantasy Concert Builder," in which you compile your dream setlist, pick a bootleg CD cover, and email it to all your Bruce buddies to compare and contrast. All this and a little human touch courtesy of Real Audio interviews with "Boss experts" like original E-Street drummer Vini Lopez . . .

Tuesday sees the release of Welcome to the Videos, a thirteen song compilation of Guns n' Roses clips ranging from "Sweet Child of Mine" to "Since I Don't Have You." Axl Rose, meanwhile, continues to whittle away at the mythical new GNR album, sifting through upwards of three-hundred tapes of material . . .

Is it just us, or does the Eels' "Last Stop: This Town" off their latest effort, Electro-shock Blues, sound eerily reminiscent of a certain painfully popular Hanson tune?

The RSN staff
(updated October 28, 1998)