Hey, isn't Slash looking for work? After recording only one album -- 1995's One Hot Minute -- Dave Navarro has announced that he has amicably left the Red Hot Chili Peppers, making him the seventh guitarist to split. While the band hasn't settled on a replacement, sources close to the situation cite the availability of former Pepper guitarist John Frusciante. Before departing, Navarro recorded one song with the Peppers for their next album, which most likely will not be out until 1999. Navarro, who announced in December that he'd had a drug relapse, will now concentrate on his new outfit, Spread, with Chili Pepper drummer Chad Smith. Navarro added that he has talked with his Jane's Addiction band mate Perry Farrell about recording together. Says Navarro, "I'd work with him on anything." . . . Back to life: Screaming Trees frontman Mark Lanegan has just completed his third solo album, Scraps at Midnight, which is due out July 28th. Featuring longtime collaborators Mike Johnson and Kenny Richards, the album was recorded in two weeks this winter at a studio near Joshua Tree, California. "This one was a lot easier to make," says Lanegan. "I wasn't out of my mind this time." The singer, who had battled a heroin problem for years, entered a California rehab program last September. This summer, the now-clean Lanegan will likely tour with Tuatara -- the side project of Trees drummer Barrett Martin and R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck -- whose second record, Trading With the Enemy, will be released on June 16th.

Prior to the Tuatara tour, Martin will join Buck and the rest of R.E.M. for the Tibetan Freedom Concert, to be held this year at Washington, D.C.'s RFK Stadium on June 13th and 14th. The show will feature, among others, the Beastie Boys, Radiohead, Pearl Jam, the Verve and Pulp, and will also include R.E.M.'s first live performance without longtime drummer Bill Berry, something that has bassist Mike Mills a little nervous. "I think if we knew that Bill wasn't going to be in the band, we might have begged off [the show]," he says. "But we committed to do it, and we'll work it out. We're good musicians." . . . Sid and Nancy: The Sequel -- Mark E. Smith, the caustic singer for the seminal British New Wave band the Fall, was arrested at a Manhattan Quality Inn on April 8th for allegedly hitting and kicking his girlfriend, Fall keyboardist Julia Nagle. (Earlier in the tour, Nagle had reportedly given Smith a black eye by walloping him with a telephone during a band melee.) A New York judge ordered Smith to "get therapy and see a doctor" and observe a limited order of protection, which prohibits him from harassing Nagle. If Smith behaves, the case will be dismissed when the Fall return to the U.S. in September for another tour. . . . Rapper Kurupt -- best known as half of the Dogg Pound -- has inked a deal with A&M Records to form his own label, ANTRA Records. The label's first release will be Kurupt's own solo debut, the double-CD Kuruption, out July 21st. Kurupt is also working with Dionne Warwick (no, really) on a remix of her song "What the World Needs Now" as well as on an album with fiancee Foxy Brown (no, *really*). "It's a great thing, ya dig?" says Kurupt of his relationship with Brown. "We're going to be the Bonnie and Clyde of rap." (RS 787)

MATT HENDRICKSON