(The illustration for this post is from The Cranberries fan club.)

Brooklynvegan.com reports that the Digable Planets will be touring this fall...

Sadly, the tour will not visit our town—a town, by the way, that Macklemore describes in such loving terms in a track, "The Town," on The Unplanned Mixtape.

Oh Britney! Isn't it ALWAYS hanging out?

Hat tip: Cole.

Chelsea Werner has the review of their performance at SAM.

Matt Hickey has the full report:

Britney's opening act for the Circus tour?

Fuckin' K-Fed.

Word up.

Thanks, Hickey.

The closest it gets is Spokane. But I don't mind. I'm not a Cold War Kids fan anyway, and that's who they're hitting the road with (and Ra Ra Riot and Matt Costa too).

Dates are posted after the jump for those of you in the 20 cities the tour does hit.

...and still no refunds.

According to Seattle’s King5 News, Ne-Yo was a no-show at a much-anticipated New Year’s bash and has yet to issue refunds.

Billed as the biggest New Year’s Eve bash in the Bellevue area, featuring the “Year of the Gentleman” star, the Meydenbauer Center charged concertgoers $75 - $1,200 for tickets and exclusive VIP access - unfortunately for them there would be no Ne-Yo, no “Miss Independent” and definitely no performance of “Closer”.

Party-goer Michael Brandt told King5: “At 11:30 they had a pre-recorded message from Ne-Yo. He was on a plane from Nigeria and not able to come. They probably knew a day in advance. They could have cancelled or given a refund.”

Promoted for weeks, the Meydenbauer concert sold nearly 300 tickets but the promoters have yet to refund ticket holders who attended the bash with the hope of seeing Ne-Yo.

If you’re searching for a refund King5 says good luck. the sponsor Wet Entertainment can’t be found on the web and the local marketing manager’s phone no longer works.

I will file this incident under The Globalization of Black Entertainment.

Bad news can be found everywhere but here...

...big concerts:

The concert industry has so far bucked the recession, according to year-end data from trade magazine Pollstar, but promoters are bracing for a bumpy 2009.

Box-office receipts from North American concerts through December were $4.2 billion, up 7.8% from 2007. But the total number of tickets sold for the 100 top-grossing shows fell 3%, to 35.6 million, the second consecutive year of declines. The growth in revenue was the result of rising ticket prices. The average ticket to one of the 100 top-grossing shows cost $66.90, up $4.83, or 8%, from 2007 and more than double the average price in 1998.

That could spell trouble in 2009.

"At some point, this rampant unemployment is going to hit the concert industry," said Randy Phillips, chief executive of Anschutz Corp.'s AEG Live, the world's second-largest concert promoter by revenue, behind Live Nation Inc.

The Roots flipped their double-decker bus outside Paris a few hours ago, giving ?uestlove the opportunity to blog from the roadside:

i don’t wanna get all deep like it was an omen but those that know me (look at my twit/facebook/myspace/okayplayer/blip history) know that when not onstage i am glued to my computer, doing some sort of activity like converting music or tv shows. but this was a rare occurrence in which i actually went to sleep.
next thing i knew was the most surreal feeling ever….
was i upside down?
why am i covered in cereal?
oh shit….that coffee pot is coming for my face!!!
in reality the crash was all of about 7 seconds….but to do a 360 on the highway and end up ramped up (the van that crashed into ours was UNDER our double decker bus) in the air….is….well…
a frigging miracle.

And then whip out his cellphone: "Just wanna be the first celeb to twit... from an ambulance."

"Why am I covered in cereal?" That, my friends is the eternal question.

Who went to 2 Live Crew in funky Fremont? How was the show? Inquiring minds need to know!

^{Photos by Tyler/Rabid Child Images}