Apparently, Steven Tyler’s earth-shattering decision to walk away from millions of dollars in touring revenue was short-lived after all, as his former band Aerosmith has decided to welcome him back with open arms.

According to Britain’s New Music Express, Joe Perry and company have agreed to set aside their differences (namely Tyler’s apparent addiction to painkillers) for the noble pursuit of making more money.

Download Festival promoters have already begun circulating news of their timely reunion in the hopes of drawing larger crowds to Donington Park in Leicestershire, England.

The festival runs from June 11-13 and will also feature headlining appearances from AC/DC and Rage Against the Machine.

Prior to the announcement, Aerosmith was allegedly auditioning several candidates to replace their drug addled frontman, including Mr. “Flesh For Fantasy” himself, Billy Idol.

It’s just a shame the Billy Idol thing didn’t pan out, since it would have likely rivaled the Jump To Conclusions mat as the worst idea ever.

However, while attempting to brainwash little Johnny into signing his life over to defend freedom, the US Air Force ironically failed to recognize that they were infringing on the White Stripes’ copyrights by including a near note for note facsimile of the infectious “Fell in Love with a Girl” in their advertisement.

“The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support,” the band wrote on their official website. “…We simply don’t want to be a cog in the wheel of the current conflict, and hope for a safe and speedy return home for our troops.”

Surprising to no one, the Air Force denied all allegations of misconduct and added that any similarities were purely coincidental.

“There was never any intention to utilize any existing music or to sound like any music by the band White Stripes or any other musical performer,” wrote a nameless government sponsored public relations firm.

Kem Kraft, the freelance composer who penned the jingle, pleaded ignorance and furthered the assertions that he didn’t maliciously violate copyright laws.

“I’m sorry it sounds the same,” Kraft told the New York Times. “It wasn’t my intention, truly, truly, truly.”

Like any good soldier, Kraft dived on the public relations disaster.

“…As far as I’m concerned, I’m responsible for this,” he said. “Just me.”

Desperate for cash and unable to pawn their platinum records, EMI has announced they will be selling the legendary Abbey Road recording studio for pennies on the dollar.

Best known for its association with the Beatles, Abbey Road also played home to many other notable music acts, including Pink Floyd, Duran Duran, and Radiohead.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, the sale would do little to offset the millions of dollars EMI and its main stakeholder Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. still owe to Citigroup to avoid defaulting on their loan.

If nothing else, the sale of Abbey Road signals the end of an era for the music industry, as technology has replaced nearly every facet of the recording and distribution process.

Leaving those with no vested interest to wonder what need if any one might have for its bloated corpse.

Mayer volunteered several less than favorable tidbits about his personal life during his now infamous interview with Playboy magazine, particularly his eagerness to sleep with anyone who isn’t African American.

“I don’t think I open myself to it,” he said. “My d*ck is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a f*ckin’ David Duke c*ck. I’m going to start dating separately from my d*ck.”

Continuing his racially charged diatribe, Mayer delved deeper into his apparent hatred for the entire black race with another inappropriate observation worthy of a Seinfeld episode.

“Someone asked me the other day, ‘What does it feel like now to have a ‘hood pass’?’” he said. “And by the way, it’s sort of a contradiction in terms, because if you really had a ‘hood pass’, you could call it a nigga pass. Why are you pulling a punch and calling it a ‘hood pass’? But I said, ‘I can’t really have a hood pass.’ I’ve never walked into a restaurant, asked for a table and been told, ‘We’re full.’”

Still unsatisfied with merely undoing centuries of social progress in the manner of seconds, a heavily intoxicated (At least I hope that’s his excuse) Mayer felt the need to comment on his many sexual escapades with the very buxom Jessica Simpson.

“Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me,” he said. “…Sexually it was crazy. That’s all I’ll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm.”

I’m not even sure why I bother getting upset anymore, since it has become abundantly clear to everyone by now that the Grammy Awards are a pointless celebration that recognizes mediocrity above all else.

Yet year after year I naively think that this will be the moment everything changes for the better, and bands that don’t regularly appeal to AARP card holders and/or brainless teenagers are finally honored by its out of touch voters.

Instead the Grammys once again chose the predictable route and gave an innocuous Pop starlet her first of presumably many more Album of the Year awards to come.

To put this into some perspective, The Who, Bob Marley, Diana Ross, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix have yet to receive a single Grammy award, but somehow Taylor Swift now has four of them lining her fireplace mantel.

Other baffling decisions included nominating two bands who released their first albums in 2006 (Silversun Pickups) and 2007 (MGMT) for a Best New Artist nod and giving the extremely hateable Jason Mraz anything other than a swift kick to the face.

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the Grammys are done, and it’s about time someone dragged it out to the backyard and put it out of its misery.

In an interview with CNN, Osbourne expressed stunned disbelief and gratitude for surviving a lifetime of debauchery.

“With the sexually transmitted disease, what I was doing is playing Russian roulette with sex,” he said. “With drugs, it nearly killed me on a daily basis. I did a lot of heavy drug taking for a long time and I survived it by the grace of God.”

Osbourne of course insisted that others avoid following in his footsteps.

“You might not be as lucky as me,” he said. “I’m living on borrowed time.”

The former Black Sabbath frontman also addressed the current state of music (as well as his obvious sweet tooth), claiming that many of today’s acts have far more in common with inferior Chinese products than they would like to think.

“It’s completely different – they’re manufactured people now…like ice cream,” Osbourne said.

However, Osbourne still believes there is hope for humanity, and that responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of Lady Gaga?

“Every now and then somebody comes out and I really like them,” he said. “I really like this Lady Gaga.”

Let this be a warning to the rest of you. Say no to drugs.

The much-maligned merger between concert promoting juggernaut Live Nation and service fee exploiter Ticketmaster has finally come to fruition, leaving many in the music industry to wonder, “What comes next?”

According to Reuters the outlook doesn’t look very promising for independent musicians and promoters, especially when their lone options remain choosing between corporate assimilation and finding a cold, dark corner to curl up next to and die.

“Letting this move forward and allowing them to keep the existing deals in place accomplishes nothing,” said I.M.P. Productions chairman Seth Hurwitz. “If they offer these incentives, and part of these incentives are things they can only offer because they have created a monopoly, then this is not a better mousetrap.”

While those who stand to gain the most from the merger continue to champion the union as a shining beacon for all of humanity, others such as Vans Warped tour founder Kevin Lyman are reasonably skeptical, given Ticketmaster’s less than stellar track record with service fees.

“Some good could come of all this,” Lyman said. “The veil of Ticketmaster being the greedy party has been pulled back, and we have now learned that there were few innocents, [with] promoters, artists and their managers all getting kickbacks on the [ticketing] fees.”

Having already secured a ludicrous profit margin from ticket sales during the previous fiscal year, Ticketmaster and its newest conspirator Live Nation stand to gain even more from an uneven playing field visibly lacking in competition.

According to local Jacksonville newspaper, The Florida Times-Union, fans are in an uproar over Conan O’Brien’s supposed defamation of the immortal “Free Bird” during his final show as host of the Tonight Show.

O’Brien was joined on stage by fellow accomplices Beck, Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top fame, and a tragically unfunny Will Ferrell, who was dressed up as the late Ronnie Van Zant.

Along with butchering the song, Ferrell regularly made out with his very pregnant fictional lady friend Dawn, a free-loving hippie caricature torn directly from the 60’s.

“It was nothing but DISGUSTING,” wrote one faceless Lynyrd Skynyrd supporter on the band’s official website. “My heart was deeply saddened when I saw Will Ferrell up there trying to look like Ronnie. Total DISRESPECT.”

Another disgruntled fan was moved to tears.

“This isn’t right,” they wrote. “I actually have tears in my eyes.”

But not everyone was as uptight about the performance as the handful of fist-waving detractors that have loudly voiced their opinions, and some even grasped the concept of humor.

“It’s nice that Conan gave a nod to Skynyrd,” one person wrote. “It’s funny, though. There are some opinions to the contrary at some other forums…I have to ask, what would Ronnie have thought had he seen it? Would he laugh?”

Those of you hoping to see a Guns N’ Roses reunion anytime soon need wait a bit longer, presumably when a cold front sweeps through the ninth circle of hell.

During a recent interview with GQ Slash made it abundantly clear that no amount of money could entice him to work with Axl Rose again.

In fact Slash claimed that he was approached on several occasions by interested parties and each time the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist left obscene amounts of money on the table.

“I can’t remember exact numbers, but it’s excessive,” he said. “Oh, you know – seven, eight digit kind of things.”

As refreshing as it may be to see a musician place ethics above profit margins, Slash insists that he’s not one to dwell on the past or waste his time with pointless hypotheticals.

“I am a pretty realistic kind of person, and don’t expend energy worrying, ‘What if?’,” he said. “If I hear great music we did together, I respect it for what it was and appreciate it. But I’m not like everyone else around the band who wants to somehow try to recreate it because there’s so much money to be made.”

I’m of course referring to the earth-shattering announcement that Simon Cowell is leaving ratings juggernaut American Idol after this season.

I mean, come on, what else could be more important than that?

Anyhoo, the man everyone loves to hate will allow his already lucrative $45 million contract with Fox to expire, in favor of signing onto an even more ridiculously profitable venture with the same network.

“I’ve always wanted to bring this other show here,” Cowell told the talentless Ryan Seacrest during a radio interview. “At one point I was going to do both. But you know about overexposure, Ryan. You can’t be on TV too much…I genuinely thought people would be sick and tired of me.”

The show in question would be none other than Britain’s wildly popular X Factor, which has already produced one international sensation in Leona Lewis.

The move likely signals the beginning of the end for the reality television darling, who already replaced the bizarrely entertaining spectacle/train wreck that was Paula Abdul with daytime television host Ellen DeGeneres.

Not to mention the fact that most people only watch that godforsaken show to see foolishly unaware contestants have their dreams crushed by scathing British wit.