The so-called "Party of the Century" won't see the popping of so much as one champagne cork. Due to poor ticket sales, promoters have pulled the plug on the soiree, which was to go down New Year's Eve at New York's Javits Center and feature performances by STING, ARETHA FRANKLIN, CHUCK BERRY, ANDREA BOCELLI, ENRIQUE INGLESIAS and TOM JONES. People just weren't willing to shell out $1,000 to $2,500 for a night on the town. Go figure...

To commemorate World AIDS Day, QUEEN and DAVID BOWIE will give "Under Pressure" one more chance, by releasing a new mix and video of their 1981 collaboration. Beginning Dec. 1, the video, which features archival footage of Queen and Bowie spliced together, can be downloaded for free at www.widowsmedia.microsoft.com. The site will also contain information about the disease and urge visitors to contribute to Queen's Mercury Phoenix Trust charity, named for Queen singer FREDDIE MERCURY, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1991. Hollywood Records will release the new version of "Under Pressure" as a single on Dec. 6 ...

MICHAEL HUTCHENCE's ashes were scattered in the Himalayas this week to commemorate the second anniversary of his death. Friends, family and fans showed up at Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens in Sydney to pay their respects and view the new bronze bust of the late singer ...

Oregon college student Jeffrey Gerard Levy has been sentenced to two years of probation for violating the 1997 No Electronic Theft Act by illegally distributing copyrighted music, movies, and software over the Internet. During that time, he has to relinquish his CD burner and home Internet account. That sure beats a $250,000 fine and three years in the clink, the maximum penalty Levy faced...

TLC may have temporarily squelched rumors of their breakup - generated mostly by a Nov. 5 Entertainment Weekly article where ROZONDA "CHILLI" THOMAS and TIONNE "T-BOZ" WATKINS expressed their unhappiness with the behavior of LISA "LEFT-EYE" LOPES -- but now it appears that there is some lingering animosity. Lopes wrote a letter to EW making the following dare: "I challenge Tionne 'Player' Watkins and Rozonda 'Hater' Thomas to an album entitled The Challenge. A 3 CD set that contains three solo albums. Each...will be due to the record label by October 1, 2000." The "winner," Lopes suggests, would be determined by Billboard and would be paid $1.5 million by the group's label, LaFace. Responding, Watkins and Thomas said: "We think it'd be best to paraphrase the great poet Iyanla Vanzant and her poem 'All Roads Lead to the End' from her book Acts of Faith: 'At a time when unity is so desperately needed it is significantly lacking...The nature, experiences and perceptions of individuals help mold the ideals they hold...Unity does not mean we will all believe in or do the same things. It means we will agree to do something without battling over how and why.' Meanwhile, LaFace COO Mark Shimmel has said that the label is "always open to new marketing ideas and concepts." This could get really good...

GEORGE MICHAEL has inked a North American deal with the Virgin Music Group. Though he has been signed to Virgin internationally since 1995, his recent U.S. deal was with Dream Works. Michael's debut Virgin U.S. release will be Songs From the Last Century, due out on Dec. 14. The collection will include his takes on the Police's "Roxanne," Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and The Passengers (U2 with Brian Eno) and Luciano Pavarotti's "Miss Sarajevo," as well as popular standards like "Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?"...

BACKSTREET BOYS fans must get bigger allowances than we thought. At the band's Oct. 31 show in Denver, more than 1,000 tickets were sold by scalpers charging at least $110 each for the $38.50 tickets. The always do-right Boys were so horrified when they heard about this mass bamboozling of their fans, they asked the show's promoter - the House of Blues - to donate $75,000 to the Columbine College Fund. What's more, the band will be working with the Web site tickets.com to distribute 1,000 tickets via auction to each show during its spring 2000 tour. "With us, the fans always come first," said the band in a statement, "and anything that compromises our connection with them will always be addressed and properly investigated."...

December isn't just the holiday season, it's also (drum roll, please) radio festival season! One of this year's most promising events is Los Angeles radio station KROQ's tenth annual Almost Acoustic Christmas show, to be held on Dec. 11 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim, Calif. Scheduled to perform this year are FIONA APPLE, the FOO FIGHTERS, BECK, OASIS, 311, TORI AMOS and repeat performers BUSH and BLINK-182, both of whom are also featured on the new album The Best of KROQ's Almost Acoustic Christmas. The album, available only in record stores in Southern California, includes past performances from HOLE, LIVE, and NO DOUBT, among others...

Only days after being jailed for his elaborate digital collection of child pornography, GARY GLITTER is already learning that payback is indeed a bitch. According to Reuters, the glam rocker has reportedly been placed in solitary confinement, where he will be protected from fellow inmates, one of whom suggested that the convicts "mete out a little jail justice."...

That darn rapper! OL' DIRTY BASTARD was in court again last Friday, pleading no contest to charges of wearing body armor (a no-no for convicted felons) and making threats to a security guard at the House of Blues. According to reports, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marsha Revel sentenced the WU-TANG CLAN rapper to a $500 fine, one year in a drug rehabilitation program and three years probation...

Every band, lounge singer and drunken lamp-shade-wearing buffoon in the world is bound to break out into PRINCE's "1999" when midnight creeps around Jan. 1, but if you wanna hear THE ARTIST himself do the honors, you'll have to sign up for the pay-per-view (or more specifically, Viewer's Choice -- soon to be renamed "iN DEMAND") special. For $19.99, The Artist and his N.P.G. crew (including LARRY GRAHAM) will perform live in your living room (via a satellite from the Paisley Park studio in Minneapolis). No word yet on whether or not a tour of the purple premises will be included in the package . . .

In what's becoming a grand millennium tradition, another band is playing New Year's Eve in their hometown. In fact, G. LOVE & SPECIAL SAUCE are not only being true to their city but to their school. The Sauce will take the stage of Philadelphia's Electric Factory for a benefit for nearby Settlement Music School, which counts Mr. Love as a distinguished alumnus ...

Rumors have swirled since PAVEMENT released Terror Twilight back in June that it would be the band's final album. Well, singer STEPHEN MALKMUS fanned those rumors on Saturday night by announcing "This is our last show," from the stage of the London Brixton Academy. According to a spokesperson for Pavement's label, Matador Records, there has been no official word of the band's demise yet. Stay tuned...

"The power to end extreme poverty is now online," goes the NetAid slogan -- but what if no one bothers? The organizers of NetAid stressed from the beginning that they were more interested in raising awareness than money, with the three Oct. 9 concerts designed less to rack up huge donation numbers a la Live Aid than to attract people to the NetAid Web site (www.netaid.org) where they could learn more about how to help fight world hunger, aid refugees or save the environment. Still, the mere $1 million raised so far (combining ticket sales and online donations) has to smart -- especially given that the site received a record forty million hits during the concerts and a billion people tuned into the three shows on radio and TV. According to The Washington Post, only 6,000 visitors to the Web site have thus far signed up to volunteer for a cause ...

KORN are not known for their exemplary behavior, but last week the rockers were particularly rude. According to a report in the New York Post, the band sashayed into Manhattan restaurant One 51, which was teeming with people, and demanded that four tables be set aside for their pals. When the wait staff refused, the band became abusive, but didn't exit until one employee reminded them, "You're not Metallica -- you're Korn."

Those squeaky clean BACKSTREET BOYS went a long way towards tarnishing their image on Saturday night. According to a post on an online bulletin board at E! Online, the boy band invited a dozen strippers to their rooms at a pricey (but unnamed hotel) in New Orleans. We would never have known about their late-night hijinx if it weren't for a very large sum of money that went missing from their rooms. The band grilled hotel employees about the substantial loss, but never even figured it might have been the scantily clad ladies that purloined the cash. A rep for the band did not return calls by press time, but hotel employees posted at E! that the Backstreet Boys' very generous $100 tips stopped immediately after the theft...

OZZY OSBOURNE isn't letting any grass grow under his size-9 feet before he finally pulls the plug on BLACK SABBATH on Dec. 22. The old bat-biter has posted on his Web site (www.ozzy.com) that he's currently holed up in an Los Angeles rehearsal studio with FAITH NO MORE drummer Mike "Puffy" Bordin, bassist Robert Trujillo and guitarist Joe Holmes, getting ready for the Ozzmeister's next solo album. Osbourne has been interviewing producers, but so far he hasn't settled on anyone. He also had a powwow with director Penelope Spheeris, who did the Decline of Western Civilization rockumentaries, with an eye to hiring her to whip his Ozzfest footage into a state-of-the-art documentary...

Now that MARIAH CAREY has handed over a week's royalties from her new album, Rainbow to help British charity Rainbow Trust, which aids terminally ill children and their parents, Britney Spears must have realized that it was time to make her own deposit in the karma bank. The soon to be 18-year old announced the creation of the Britney Spears Foundation, a charitable organization that she is forming in conjunction with the Giving Back Fund. According to a press release issued by her label, the foundation's first gift will be the creation of a performing arts-based summer camp for underprivileged children. Scheduled to open in the summer of 2000 the camp -- which will be located in the Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts -- will enable 100 children from urban areas to spend two weeks completely free of charge. To kick off the foundation, Britney is holding a contest to name the camp, which fans can enter via her official website (www.britneyspears.com)...

If a tour boasting METALLICA and KID ROCK doesn't seem hard enough for your tastes, check this out: Funkdafied metal band SEVENDUST have just been added to those groups' January tour of the U.S. But before that ass-kicking lineup lines up, the 'Dust will head out on a headlining tour of their own, with opening acts STATIC X and DOPE on deck. The band's confirmed headlining dates are: 12/5: Water St. Music Hall, Rochester, NY; 12/6: Metropol, Pittsburgh, Pa.; 12/7: Voodoo Lounge, Scranton, Pa.; 12/8: Annie's, Cincinnati, OH; 12/12: State Theatre, Portland, ME; 12/13: Avalon Ballroom, Boston; 12/17: Piere's, Fort Wayne, In.; 12/18: Harpo's, Detroit, Mich. With Metallica and Kid Rock: 12/28: Orange Bowl, Miami, Fla.; 12/29: Tropicana Field, Tampa, Fla. 12/31: Pontiac Silverdome, Detroit, Mich. (w/ Metallica, Kid Rock, Creed & Ted Nugent); 1/1: Gund Arena, Cleveland; 1/3: Bradley Center, Milwaukee, WI; 1/4-5: All State Arena, Chicago; 1/7 & 1/9: Target Center, Minneapolis...

Don't bother leaving the igloo New Year's Eve -- there will be no toasting the millennium with JEWEL at the Sullivan Arena in Anchorage, Alaska. She's cancelled the date -- reportedly citing Y2K jitters -- but sluggish ticket sales (only 1,000 out of 8,000 $65 to $99 tickets snatched up a month after the on-sale date) may have been a significant factor in her decision as well...

Transcendental Texan singer/songwriter JIMMIE DALE GILMORE is in the midst of recording his sixth solo album with producer BUDDY MILLER in Nashville. The collection -- Gilmore's first since 1996's acclaimed Braver New World and the first on his own label Windcharger -- will feature a handful of new originals as well as covers of songs by the likes of TOWNES VAN ZANDT and JOHN HIATT. The album is currently slated for a March 2 release. In related news, next year Gilmore will hit the road with JOE ELY and BUTCH HANCOCK for a string of FLATLANDERS dates beginning in February.

BILL CRANDALL, JENNY ELISCU, CHRISTINA SARACENO, RICHARD SKANSE, JAAN UHELSZKI
(November 23, 1999)