• First Portishead, now this: After fifteen years of touring inactivity, a post on Leonard Cohen’s message board announced that the seventy-one year old Canadian singer-songwriter would tour in 2008. Full dates and details will be unveiled in February. Cohen will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10th.

• Following that video of Amy Winehouse smoking crack, Universal Music Group issued an official statement today voicing their disappointment and concern for the singer. Thus far, no one from the Winehouse camp has commented on the clip.

• Guitarist Slash says Velvet Revolver are “jazzed” about heading back into the studio to record the follow-up to 2007’s Libertad. Slash also wants to continue work on his solo album, which will feature a number of unnamed guest vocalists.

• Ludacris: Rapper, actor, restaurateur. Luda will co-partner the opening of the Straits Atlanta restaurant. The MC plans to open up another two Atlanta-area restaurants in the near future.

• Fat Joe’s Danjahandz-produced version of Eddie Murphy’s Rick James-produced 1985 single “Party All the Time” has been removed from his upcoming album The Elephant in the Room. The song was initially viewed as a potential single, but then again, that didn’t work so well the first time around.

• John Stewart, a member of 60’s folk group the Kingston Trio and, most notably, the songwriter behind the Monkees‘ hit “Daydream Believer,” died this past Saturday after suffering a brain aneurysm in San Diego. Stewart was sixty-eight.

[Photo: Getty]