• 50 Cent Sues Taco Bell
• Rock Video Games Battle for Bands
• Randy Newman Debuts New Songs in L.A.
• She & Him Kick Off Tour in Toronto
• The Nick Jonas & Selena Gomez Controversy
• My Chemical Romance to Cover Bob Dylan
• Katy Perry on the Warped Tour
• On Tour: Jessica Simpson
• Mariah Carey Plots Tour, Dispels Rumors
• Gorillaz Pimp Olympics for BBC
• Backstreet Boys At Work On Sixth Album
• News Ticker: Gnarls Barkley, Pretenders

Top stories from the last three days:

• The New Issue: The Jonas Brothers
• Nas Delivers Petitions to “Racist” Fox
• Townshend E-Mails RS to Talk Rock Honors
• On the Charts: Nas Reigns Supreme
• Breaking Artist: Love as Laughter
• George Clinton Celebrates 67th Birthday
• Ozzfest Plans Dimebag Darrell Tribute
• Behind the Scenes With The Jonas Brothers
• Metallica Reveal “Death Magnetic” Track List
• Dr. Dre Says “Detox” Almost Done
• Slayer Think About the Future
• 10 People Who Escaped the Music Industry
• Britney Spears’ E! True Hollywood Story
• New Reviews: U2, Nas, CSS, Dr. Dog
• Exclusive Clip From “CSNY: Deja Vu”
• Kanye West Gives Back To War Vets
• Karen O Debuts Side Project
• New Music Report: CSS and Dr. Dog

Scroll down for full news stories, commentary and much more in Rock Daily.

We know My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way likes comics. Luckily for Way, the director of Watchmen — the movie based on the Holy Grail of graphic novels — is a fan of My Chemical Romance. And everyone likes Bob Dylan. Thus, director Zack Snyder has recruited MCR to cover a Bob Dylan song for next year’s Watchmen. The song will likely play over the end credits, with Snyder telling MTV “[MCR will perform] like a cover of ‘Desolation Row,’ or something like that.” Earlier reports had MCR covering Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” As the film takes place in the decades prior to 1985 and is adhering to the Forrest Gump method of soundtracking, My Chemical Romance will be the lone post-Reagan artists appearing on the soundtrack. That didn’t prevent Snyder from putting the Smashing Pumpkins in the trailer, however.

Jessica Simpson 3.0: The Country Singer schedules a quick tour, two Australian Breaking artists — Cut Copy and the Presets — co-headline a jaunt and Kris Kristofferson plots a handful of California shows. Check out the full list of tour dates after the jump.

(more…)

“I wanna conquer the world,”
Katy Perry says. “People hear me on Warped that would otherwise never hear me.” The unlikely pop star has ridden the success of “I Kissed a Girl” to Warped Tour notoriety. Click below for hers and
Gym Class Heroes frontman Travis McCoy’s impressions of the summer’s finest traveling mall punk circus.

• Katy Perry, Gym Class Heroes Big Warped Tour Adventure

[Photo: Mike White]

Check out the Travers Take for this week’s Peter Travers Video Review, where the Rolling Stone film critic takes a look at the return of the cult sci-fi phenomenon The X-Files and the Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly buddy comedy Step Brothers. Do the mysterious aliens and government conspiracies deserve your cinema dollars, or are you better off with the movie producer Judd Apatow described as “The Parent Trap with dick jokes”? Click below to find out.

• Peter Travers Video Review: The X-Files and Step Brothers

Is there an emptiness in your life that only more
Backstreet Boys music can fill? Great news! The Backstreet Boys are working on their sixth album. The now-quartet recently hit up the studio while touring Europe, and plan to work on some more new material when their U.S. tour wraps in early September. Backstreeter Howie Dorough even says the group might work with pop producer extraordinaire Max Martin, who teamed with the Boys on their hits “I Want It That Way” and “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely.” But wait, there’s more: Both Dorough and A.J. McLean are nearly finished working on their respective solo albums. Release dates for those solo discs have not been announced yet.

[Photo: Lovekin/Getty]

Last year, “Rock Band” and “Guitar Hero” combined to do more than a billion dollars in sales. With each game getting big sequels in the fall, the arms race is on to acquire the exclusive use of some of the biggest bands in history. Deals have already been struck to secure tracks from
Jimi Hendrix,
Guns n’ Roses and
the Who, as well as the all-
Aerosmith version of “Guitar Hero.” Click below for a peak inside the business of getting songs into the video game market.

• Rock Games Battle For Bands

Every week on the Breaking blog,
the Hype Monitor pans the riverbed of the Internet to find three bits of gold amidst the mud. Click below for the latest round-up, which includes the much-ballyhooed New Wave revivalists
Black Kids.

• Hype Monitor: Black Kids, Ida Maria and Sic Alps

What It Is: A pair of truly badass high-powered headphones designed by the man who brought you Doggystyle, 2001 and The Chronic.

Who It’s For: For anybody fed up with the tyranny of iPod earbuds and who want their music huge. (more…)

Even though the album came out in April,
Mariah Carey is finally plotting out a tour in support of her E=MC². “We’re looking at November right now,” Carey told MTV. “Please don’t hold me accountable if it turns out to be December 5 or December 7 or January 18!” Before she hits the road, Carey will perform at both the Teen Choice Awards on August 4th and Fashion Rocks at NY’s Radio City Music Hall on September 5th. Much like her last tour — when Carey changed her wardrobe nine times over the course of one concert (kinda like her episode of MTV’s Cribs) — Mimi promises the shows will be “elaborate.” As for the rumored troubles between her and husband
Nick Cannon following their self-promotional shotgun wedding, Carey says the couple are “good.” “Life is beautiful, and things are going well,” Carey said before asking fans to just be happy for her and stop rumor-mongering.

[Photo: Bedder/Getty]

There’s a small controversy brewing over a photo accompanying Rolling Stone’s new cover story on
the Jonas Brothers. In the piece, Jason Gay writes of a backstage incident where the magazine’s photographer snapped a shot of the band that got their publicist quite anxious. The photo in question? A pic of Nick, Joe, Kevin and new Disney Channel star Selena Gomez (i.e. the next Miley Cyrus) with her arm around Nick (who previously dated Cyrus). Today Gomez issued a statement denying she’s seeing the youngest Jonas, saying she’d prefer a romance with Shia LaBeouf, but a source tells Us Weekly they’ve been an item for several months.

• The Jonas Brothers: The Clean Teen Machine
• Gallery: A Short History of the Jonas Brothers
• Video: Behind the Scenes at the Jonas Brothers’ Cover Shoot

[Photograph by Max Vadukul]

“You guys all look so great and you sound so great too!” gushed actress
Zooey Deschanel (the titular “She”) to a smitten audience at the Opera House in Toronto, opening their premiere North American tour. “So do you!” shouted one concertgoer in return.

Whether you were lost in Deschanel’s baby blues or not, original songs like “Black Hole” and “Change Is Hard” boasted a rootsy, alt-country flavor, relayed by an experienced band that includes
Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark. But there’s also a “Him” involved in this equation: (more…)

Last night at L.A.’s 280-capacity Largo,
Randy Newman performed the entirety of his excellent Harps and Angels (due in stores August 5th) for a VIP-packed crowd that included
Mandy Moore, Jason Schwartzman and ex-That Dog frontwoman Anna Waronker, whose dad Lenny co-produced Harps with Mitchell Froom. “It never hurts to start with a religious tune,” Newman said by way of introduction after opening the show with the album’s title track, in which an unbeliever takes a memorable trip to heaven.

Harps contains no shortage of Newman’s trademark social satire: He got big laughs from Largo’s limousine-liberal contingent with “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” which puts Dubya’s foibles in perspective by comparing them to Hitler’s and Stalin’s, and the Sondheim-esque “A Piece of the Pie,” whose gentle
John Mellencamp dig Newman said he hoped wouldn’t offend the heartland rocker. (more…)

Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn — the duo behind
Gorillaz — have created an animated clip promoting the BBC’s coverage of the Beijing Summer Olympics. The video draws heavily from the duo’s most recent collaboration, the opera Monkey: Journey to the West, based on a classic Chinese novel. The video itself doesn’t seem very Olympic-y until the Monkey character uses a spear to both pole vault and javelin. Visually, these guys are a lot easier to look at than the Gorillaz’s Murdoc, and the music of the opera sounds like Steve Reich composing over an android orchestra. Plus, it’s much better than those Morgan Freeman-narrated Visa commercials we’re getting over here to promote the Olympics. Take a look at the full video here.

• Check out the new video for
  Gnarls Barkley’s “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul?” here. Catch it online, as there’s no chance you’ll ever see this gory (but hilarious) video on TRL.
• Keeping with MTV, the network is developing a remake of the cult classic musical Rocky Horror Picture Show.
• The Pretenders are getting creative with the release of their new album Break Up the Concrete. Chrissie Hynde and Co. will give away every track, one song each week, leading up to the record’s physical release on September 23rd.
• Raekwon has a new track called “Blood Missiles.” The song is expected to appear on Only Built 4 Cuban Linx II, which is reportedly due out January 2009.

[Photo: Getty]