Jeff Giles

Over the last 15 years or so, R.E.M. fans have grown accustomed to three-to-four-year waits between new albums — but it looks like the band is speeding things up for its next release.

With its most recent album, ‘Collapse Into Now,’ a mere four months old, R.E.M. is already in an Athens, Georgia studio working on the follow-up — and fans can follow their progress via a series of snapshots that singer Michael Stipe is posting along the way.

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Poison frontman Bret Michaels is currently on the road with Mötley Crüe and the New York Dolls, but he’s never too busy to make an appearance on a reality television show — not even ‘Celebrity Ghost Stories.’

The Biography Channel series, currently in its third season, recently welcomed Michaels for an interview session about his own experiences with the supernatural, which apparently include a pair of visits from the spirit of his deceased grandmother.

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A little rock ‘n’ roll attitude and a whole lot of makeup can go a long, long way. Just ask the members of Twisted Sister. As Jack FM prepares for yet another Awesome 80's Weekend starting Friday Morning at 9 am, Twisted Sister is getting ready to celebrate their 40th anniversary next year — and are gearing up for the release of a double live DVD, fittingly titled ‘Double Live: Northstage Theatre 1982 / New York Steel Benefit show 2001.’

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It looks like Miley Cyrus was serious when she decided to name her latest run of concerts the Gypsy Heart Tour — during a recent Australian show, she pulled out a classic by rock’s reigning gypsy, Stevie Nicks.

During a set list that also included covers of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Poison’s ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ (she recorded the latter for her most recent release, 2010′s ‘Can’t Be Tamed’), Cyrus slowed things down for ‘Landslide,’ an oft-covered hit from Fleetwood Mac’s 1975 self-titled album.

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When they entered the studio to work on songs for a follow-up to 2009′s ‘Volume 4: Songs in the Key of Love & Hate,’ Puddle of Mudd had a hard time finding the inspiration for new material — so they decided just to have fun playing some of their favorite tunes by other artists.

“We were really burned out, and when we started trying to write again it just wasn’t time yet,” said guitarist Paul Phillip in a recent Billboard interview. “We had been doing (AC/DC’s) ‘TNT’ and (the Steve Miller Band’s) ‘The Joker’ and had so much fun with those that one thing led to another, and we decided to make a covers record. It was just something fun to do, and we had a blast.”

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Take three former members of Nirvana, put them together on a stage with their instruments and a stack of amps, and what do you get? The rock ‘n’ roll reunion of the decade — albeit one that played only briefly, and for an audience of one.

It all happened when lead Foo Fighter and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl invited his old compadre, bassist Krist Novoselic, to come out for a Foos show. During pre-concert rehearsals, as the two were warming up with Foo Fighters/ex-Nirvana guitarist Pat Smear, Grohl realized something special was about to happen.

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When you think of dangerous rock ‘n’ roll substances, red wine probably isn’t even on the list. But according to a friend of Jimi Hendrix, it may have been the cause of the guitar legend’s death.

In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mail, Meic Stevens recounted the last night of Hendrix’s life, saying he “was drinking lager or some kind of beer and he just poured the wine in to the pint glass. I don’t think he had ever drunk red wine before — he didn’t know how to drink it. He seemed okay. He seemed to be alright. But the next day I woke up late and somebody phoned and said Jimi’s dead. Apparently he choked on his own vomit.”

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For alt-rock fans with long memories, Johnny Depp isn’t just a world-famous actor, he’s also the guy who played guitar and bass for Butthole Surfer frontman Gibby Haynes’ short-lived group P. But for pretty much everyone else, the sight of Depp rocking out with Alice Cooper on a London stage comes as a shock.

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They burst out of the gate with a multiplatinum debut and a pair of top 40 singles, but then a not-so-funny thing happened to the Spin Doctors on the way to rock ‘n’ roll fame.

Actually, a series of unfortunate events befell the band, which enjoyed two of the most successful singles of the early ’90s in ‘Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong’ and ‘Two Princes’ — they ended the decade not only without a record deal, but without lead singer Chris Barron, who was diagnosed with a rare form of vocal paralysis that left him unable to sing or speak.

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Even if he were simply one of the most critically revered songwriters of the rock era, Brian Wilson’s life story would be ripe for the film treatment. Toss in decades of eccentric behavior and lawsuits, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a biopic.

At least, that seems to be the thinking over at River Road Entertainment, the production company behind Terrence Malick’s ‘The Tree of Life,’ where Oren Moverman — the writer and director behind the Oscar-nominated ‘The Messenger’ — has been hired to write the screenplay.

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Ryan Dunn’s death is really a story about a life ended too soon — and Dunn’s longtime friend and ‘Jackass’ partner, Johnny Knoxville, has issued a poignant reminder in a recent blog post.

Saying he was trying to work out emotions he’d been unable to express at Dunn’s memorial service, Knoxville wrote an impassioned letter to his departed friend, saying Dunn “had a pure, open heart,” and made him “feel 34 percent funnier” when he was around.

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Ah, Prince. Whether he’s changing his name to a symbol, scrawling slogans on his face, threatening to sue his fans, or publicly daydreaming about a world in which no one is allowed to cover his songs, he’s always good for a provocative quote or two.

His latest interview, with the UK’s Guardian, didn’t disappoint.

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