Macy Gray has signed on to produce and provide the voice and music for an animated television show called A Pretty Good Life, which will be based loosely on her life. An air date has not yet been set . . . Dennis Brown: The Complete A&M Years will collect three albums by the reggae legend onto two CDs. The set is due June 24th . . . Michael Jackson was briefly hospitalized in Indianapolis on May 21st for an "undisclosed illness" . . . 'N Sync's Joey Fatone will host Fame, NBC's talent search series and answer to Fox's American Idol. The series will premiere on May 28th . . .

Nelly won three honors at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards in Los Angeles Wednesday night . . . Jump, Jive and Wail will collect the best recordings by the Brian Setzer Orchestra from between 1994 and 2000. The album is due June 3rd . . . Canadian punk legends D.O.A. will celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary with the CD reissue of their classic Hardcore '81 and an upcoming summer tour . . . The Sleepy Jackson will release their new album, Lovers, on July 29th. The Australian band has lined up a three-date New York-area tour, to launch on June 2nd . . . Former Specials frontman Neville Staple will release his solo debut, Special Skank Ska Au Go Go, this summer . . .

Avril Lavigne is planning to release a live album and concert DVD culled from performances earlier this year on September 9th . . . Train will give a free concert outside of Tower Records in New York City for 200 fans on June 3rd to celebrate the release of their new album, My Private Nation . . . Cracker, the B-52's Cindy Wilson, Tim Easton, Kevn Kinney and others will perform at the AthFest Music and Arts Festival in Athens, Georgia, which runs June 19-22 . . . Bjork will begin a nine-date U.S. tour on August 8th in San Francisco . . . Savannah, Georgia, rapper Camoflauge (a.k.a. Jason Johnson) died on Monday after he was shot while walking with his child near his recording studio . . .

Blackstreet will release a new, seventeen-track compilation, No Diggity, on June 10th . . . Songs by Sigur Ros, David Grubbs, Black Dice and Matmos will be included on the two-CD Fat Cat Records collection, Branches and Routes, due July 22nd . . . Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown will sing together during VH1's Divas Duets, airing live from Las Vegas tomorrow night. Queen Latifah will host the event, which will also feature performances by Lisa Marie Presley, Chaka Khan, Celine Dion and others . . . Michael Yonkers' legendary lost album Microminiature Love (1968) will be released for the first time by SubPop on July 22nd . . .

Filmmaker Martin Scorsese is planning to direct a movie about Bob Dylan for release in 2005, including concert clips, studio footage and interviews . . . Steely Dan have added sixteen dates to their 2003 tour, which launches July 23rd in Costa Mesa, California . . . Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has pledged more than $5 million to a housing project for homeless people in London . . . Fountains Of Wayne will begin a seventeen-date tour on July 3rd in Milwaukee . . . Captain Beefheart's Magic Band will release Back to the Front, their first album in twenty years, in late-August . . . The Clientele will release their new album, The Violet Hour, on July 22nd . . . Lucinda Williams and Keb' Mo' make guest appearances on Colin Linden's new album, Big Mouth, due June 24th . . .

Jim Lauderdale and Donna The Buffalo have collaborated on a new album, Wait 'Til Spring, due July 1st . . . Patti LaBelle will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award and Tony Bennett will receive the Towering Performance Award at the Songwriter's Hall of Fame ceremony in New York on June 12th. Wynonna Judd, Pink, Billy Joel, Ben Taylor and Ray Charles are among the performers and presenters, while Queen, Van Morrison, Little Richard and Phil Collins will be inductees . . . Rodney Crowell will release his new album, Fate's Right Hand, on July 29th . . . Ed Harcourt will begin a seventeen-date tour on June 2nd in Los Angeles in support of his new album, From Every Sphere . . .

Radiohead will debut the video for "There There," the first single from their upcoming album Hail to the Thief, on the Jumbotron at the southern end of New York's Times Square Tuesday. The clip will run throughout the day . . . Eric Clapton, Ray Charles, B.B. King And Willie Nelson will perform at the Blowin' the Blues Away concert June 2nd at New York's Lincoln Center. As part of the Year of the Blues program, the event will raise money for music education . . . Beyonce Knowles, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu and Talib Kweli are among the performers at the sixteenth annual Essence Awards, to be held June 6th at Los Angeles' Kodak Theater.

Sheryl Crow, Emmylou Harris and the Oak Ridge Boys performed at June Carter Cash's funeral of on Sunday in Hendersonville, Tennessee . . . Texas indie rockers American Analog Set will release their fifth album, Promise of Love, on June 17th . . . Musician-actor Kris Kristofferson is writing a memoir to be published by Hyperion in 2005 . . . The Dixie Chicks will perform at Wednesday's Academy of Country Music Awards in Las Vegas live via satellite from their hometown of Austin, Texas . . . Ricky Martin is sponsoring People for the Children, a new charity initiative with the aim of fighting child pornography and prostitution worldwide.

(May 22, 2003)