Streaming Oldies - Listen On Demand - ROCK & ROLL NEWS YOU CAN USE

A Reunion, Racism and A Piano

The Cars are teasing fans about a possible reunion by posting a photo of the bandmates working together in the studio on their Facebook fan page. The group split 22 years ago, three years after enjoying a massive global hit with Drive.

Guitarist Elliot Easton and keyboardist Greg Hawkes reteamed for a mini-Cars reunion in 2005, but failed to convince frontman Ric Ocasek and drummer David Robinson to join them. Instead, they hit the road as The New Cars with Utopia stars Todd Rundgren, Prairie Prince and Kasim Sulton.

The new photo features Ocasek and Robinson and an accompanying caption reads: "Anyone in the mood for a reunion by The Cars?" The fifth member of the band, bassist/vocalist Benjamin Orr, died of pancreatic cancer in 2000.

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If Mel Gibson has proved anything, it's that you're never more famous than when you're being racially insensitive.

Don't think that Oliver Stone hasn't noticed. He's been watching Mel's rising profile with jealous eyes, waiting for an opportunity to leap in and blurt out a regrettable statement of his own … and he has finally succeeded.

Stone decided to use an interview to say that Jewish people didn't really do that badly in World War II compared to the Russians. Yeah, he actually said that, according to the New York Times.

"Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein," he said. "German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people." Mr. Stone then proceeded to discuss what he called "the Jewish domination of the media," adding with an expletive that Israel had 'messed' up "United States foreign policy for years."

Needless to say, the American Jewish Association declared Oliver Stone to be an anti-Semite. Stone has now apologized for the comments, saying, "In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret."

Yeah, we know this had nothing to do with rock & roll music but come on, how could we ignore such idiocy?

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Elvis Presley's white grand piano and a 1955 record contract are going up for auction in Memphis next month.

Sorry, no autopsy equipment or toe tags involved this time around.

The piano, which he bought in 1957 and kept at his Graceland home, is expected to sell for more than $1 million.

A contract with RCA Records, signed by Presley, his father and manager, Colonel Tom Parker, is expected to receive a top bid in excess of $150,000.

The 1957 Graceland purchase agreement is among other items for sale at the August 14 auction. It has an estimated price of $35,000, while a four-page handwritten letter to girlfriend Anita Wood from 1958 is expected to sell for $75,000.

Other items being auctioned include some gold-framed sunglasses and Presley's address and phone book.

Doug Norwine, of Heritage Auctions, said the piano was "an emotionally-charged prized possession of the King himself." Oddly enough, a spokesperson for the auction house which was to auction off embalming instruments said to have been used on Presley following his death in 1977, had used an almost identical quote to highlight the value of the equipment.

Mary Williams, a spokeswoman for Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago had said, "It's really about owning a piece of the celebrity themselves... and how much closer can you get than the actual embalming instruments?"

Last week, those charming instruments were removed from the auction block. Bad taste, it seems, does have its limits.