Playlist

So Slipknot's All Hope Is Gone enters Billboard's pop albums chart at No. 1. That's not so surprising since the hardcore metal band's been a big seller for years. But the disc sold 239,516 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That number seems a little tepid, especially when you consider that rapper The Game's LAX landed at No. 2 with only 1,134 copies less. Is it just me or is Slipknot's popularity slipping? What do you metal fans out there think?

Photo: Those ominously masked Slipknot men (Paul Brown).

Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Beyoncé, Carrie Underwood, Rihanna, Sheryl Crow and Melissa Etheridge...is that enough star power for ya? All of these women will be part of the recording for "Just Stand Up," a charity single with proceeds earmarked for the Stand Up to Cancer effort. These women will debut "Just Stand Up" Friday (tomorrow) during Stand Up to Cancer, the one-hour commercial-free special that will air on ABC, CBS and NBC. The "Just Stand Up" single is available exclusively on iTunes.

Photo: Miss Mariah last month at the Teen Choice Awards (Chris Carlson).

Tina Turner is 68, but her career definitely still has legs. She's just added a slew of new shows to her U.S. tour, including an October 26 date at American Airlines Center (it's her first Dallas concert since 2000). In the late '90s, I asked her about the demands of dancing into her golden years. Her reply: "I've never used a trainer, I don't exercise. I don't do any of that. It's all body memory. I've done it for so long without stopping that my body has always remembered how to do it."

Huey Lewis tells our Michael Granberry that the News used to be a real "beer and hot dog band," like when they played at the old Bronco Bowl in Oak Cliff. As he's aged along with his fan base, he and his band are more likely to see a "wine and cheese set" in the crowd, like at their concert Thursday night at the Meyerson.

Have you attended a Huey Lewis & the News show in Dallas? Share your memories if you did. And if you plan on attending the Meyerson concert, come back and tell us how it went.

(Photo: by Aaron Rapoport)

By Matt Weitz, Special Contributor

Peter Frampton may have been one of rock music's essential "missing men" following his long years of '60s journeyman rock labor, subsequent pop ubiquity (with 1976's Frampton Comes Alive!), and an almost-as-swift decline due in part to the execrable 1978 adaptation of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

It seems that now, however, things have come full circle: Upon his initial return to pop music a few years ago, he played Bass Hall, then eventually downgraded to Billy Bob's Texas. Currently he shows up every six months or so, serving the needs of his still-faithful fans in mid-size clubs like our own House of Blues.

If you're, say, ten years old and you woke up Wednesday night duct-taped to your bed with a sock stuffed in your mouth, you can almost certainly bet your parents were members of the host of fifty-somethings that comfortably filled the room at HOB.

Or maybe they sprung for a babysitter. It doesn't matter -- the important thing is that your folks got to party like it was 1979, all over again, for one sweet night.

Full review

(2007 Photo by Ricky Moon/Special Contributor)