Anyone remember Soulja Boy? You know, that kid who went from working with Fruity Loops in a basement recording studio, to nabbing a major record deal and a Grammy nomination, to promptly being forgotten by everyone again, all in the span of a couple of years? Well, he’s still around. And apparently, in between making silly Youtube videos, he occasionally has a few unwanted visitors.

Over the holidays, a couple of masked men broke into Soulja Boy’s home and stole some things… or, uh, something. The details aren’t too clear. Either way, I suspect Ice-T.

(And speaking of that last link, you’ll never guess who came to the Boy’s defense.)

eBay is a crazy place. When sellers aren’t listing used tissues, they’re giving lucky buyers the opportunity to bid on their wives, a single Brussels sprout, or entire Nordic countries. And now, all of you rock memorobilia collectors out there will get the chance to place your money down for a, er, unique piece of rock history.

The family of J.P. Richardson, Jr., known to oldies fans as The Big Bopper, will soon put the casket of the seminal singer/songwriter up on the auction block. The decision makes sense, in a bizarre way: Today, the Bopper is best known not for how he lived, but how he died. But still… are they that strapped for cash?

Greetings and good afternoon! I hope you all are weathering the post-holiday haze well enough, as it’s been a rough past couple of weeks. (And no, I don’t mean because of that time when your aunt got sloshed on brandied eggnog and thought that the Christmas tree was her dead husband.)

Because of the holiday season, new music releases have been light lately - and, well, they’re still pretty slim. But at least the Music Gods have dropped something good this week to help you through the post-holiday cleanup. So while you’re tearing down those lights and ornaments, pour yourself a dram of good Islay malt and give a listen to…

In their self-titled debut release, Glasvegas carry on the “wall of sound” tradition of fellow Glasgow alt-rockers The Jesus and Mary Chain. Indeed, certain cuts from this album could easily be on a Mary Chain release circa-Honey’s Dead. Glasvegas’ music possesses that same noise-heavy production, except without being as raw and borderline-harsh as, say, Psychocandy.

However, what that description doesn’t let on is that the band is no mere rip-off. Not that that would be a bad thing in my mind, since 2009 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Mary Chain’s dissolusion; but I digress. Suffice to say, Glasvegas throws in enough twists to differentiate themselves from their roots and create a sound that’s entirely their own. I heard a few cuts from the album online and loved it enough to import a copy, but come tomorrow, you can find it right here in the good ol’ US of A.

And, well, that’s it for now. Tune in next week when I’ll hopefully have a few more interesting albums to talk about. In the meantime, if you want to catch the band in concert, Glasvegas have a few more tour dates coming up in the States.

Okay, maybe it’s more like a minor genocide, since only three people actually own Zunes (and two of them are Bill Gates*). But over the new year, those unfortunate few to actually have purchased the 30 gigabyte version of the device found that they had suddenly went kaput, en masse.

Word is that the device contained a firmware bug that caused everything to go higgledy-piggledy. Thankfully Microsoft has released an official fix, so if you’re that third person, you can now rest easy. But that still doesn’t answer the question of why you bought a Zune instead of its far more reliable competitor in the first place.

*A real (no, really!) representative from the US Census Bureau has this to say about “Wild Bill’s” status: “He’s so f****** rich that he might as well count as two g**d*** people. We ended up marking the bloke down twice just for good measure.”

I just stumbled across this today: DJ Earworm, a mashup artist based out of San Francisco, released a free musical collage of Billboard’s top 25 hit singles of the year. That’s well over an hour of music - compressed into just four and a half minutes. And what’s even better is that, surprisingly, it actually sort of works as a song.

If you enjoy the Youtube video above, you can download an MP3 of the mashup on DJ Earworm’s website.

Covers - that is to say, songs originally performed by one artist that another artist recorded a different version of - are a funny phenomenon. The practice of covering songs has produced some excellent tracks, as well as some, er, pretty terrible ones that only serve to sully the good name of original.

But some covers are so good that nobody even remembers the originals - these songs are the reason why new artists return to old standards so often. True, everyone knows that “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was made famous by Marvin Gaye, and that Bruce Springsteen originally did “Blinded by the Light” (sans the hilariously slurred “deuce/douche”), but it takes something truly memorable for a band or artist to make someone else’s song truly their own. In that vein, here’s the top five covers that most people would never guess were covers.

5) The Sundays - “Wild Horses.”  A minor hit for The Rolling Stones in 1971, “Wild Horses” in its original incarnation was a cheesy, over-the-top folksy song that had Mick Jagger adopting a horrible faux-country drawl. ’90s band The Sundays removed the cheese (and the drums) and reworked the song into an equally minor, but much more memorable, alt-rock radio staple that instantly made everyone who heard it forget the awful original.

4) 10,000 Maniacs - “Because The Night.” In a landmark live performance on MTV Unplugged, Natalie Merchant and crew took this 1978 Patti Smith single and gave it a moody, slightly unsettling, and decidedly epic vibe that the Smith version of the song was sorely missing. As a result, a generation grew up hearing this version on the radio without even knowing who Patti Smith is.

3) Led Zeppelin - “When The Levee Breaks.” Easily one of the best songs that Zeppelin ever recorded (in my opinion, at least), this tune is actually a reworked version of an obscure blues song written about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The best improvement - again, in my opinion - comes in the form of John Bonham’s echoing drums, which were played at the bottom of a three-story stairwell with the recording mics at the top. How cool is that?

2) Soft Cell - “Tainted Love.” Originally recorded in 1964 by soul singer Gloria Jones, “Tainted Love” found its true voice when ’80s new-wave pioneers Soft Cell recorded the version that everyone knows in 1981. As a result, every single post-1980 cover of the song seems to include that half-catchy, half-annoying “da! da!” synth part that glues itself to your mind’s ear and won’t let go. Ever.

1) Aretha Franklin - “Respect.”  Aretha’s chart-topping breakout 1967 hit was actually recorded two years earlier by Otis Redding - though the latter only made it to number 35 on the pop singles charts. Bet’cha didn’t know that.

On the heels of the Fab Four’s deal with Harmonix to develop a Beatles version of popular video game Rock Band comes the news that major label EMI seems to be delaying the re-release of the band’s remastered classic albums. The remastered version of the White Album, for example, was supposed to hit along with the album’s 40th anniversary a little while back, but what came of it? Nada.

So why the long delay? It seems that EMI is being a tad too demanding in its licensing deals. Go figure.

(Illustration of how this news makes us feel courtesy of our virtuoso ShowClix artist, Sir Jean-Jacques Eraflure de Poulet. Sir Poulet comments: “Pourquoi importe-t-il ? Paul était mort de toute façon.”)

Even if you’ve never heard of singer/songwriter Delaney Bramlett, you’ve definitely heard his work. He’s easily one of the most prolific songwriters of the twentieth century, having collaborated with artists as diverse as Bette Midler, Sonic Youth, Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, and Eric Clapton - the last of whom co-wrote classic-rock radio staple “Let It Rain” with him.

And sadly, on Saturday, he passed away in a Los Angeles medical center at the age of 69.

Bramlett is one more in the long list of great music names who passed away this year. I know that this happens every year, but I can’t believe that the world will be henceforth deprived of so much lovely music.

(Fake edit: This is the first I’ve heard of Mike Baker dying, too. Shadow Gallery used to be one of my favorite bands. Damn.)

 Okay, so it’s not exactly Christmas music, but Transatlantic’s warm, melodic prog-rock always manages to put me in the holiday spirit. Besides, if you’re like me, you’re probably sick of hearing fifty different versions of “Jingle Bell Rock” by now.

See you all after the holidays!

…how about if it came from this beauty?

Okay, it still sounds crazy. But this week, a tissue used by an under-the-weather Scarlett Johansson fetched over five grand on online auction site eBay. There is one sane part to the story, though: at least the proceeds are going to charity.

Ah, if only I were that famous too. (I could use the money.)