Sixties artist, Edwin Starr, best known for his protest song “War,” died Wednesday April 2, 2003 at the young age of 61. Starr’s manager Lilian Kyle said the singer had died from a heart attack in his home near Nottinghan, central England. Starr who grew up in Cleveland, Ohio was one of the first artists to be signed to Motown Records. He had been scheduled to perform at the international music festival Womad, (World of Music, Arts and Dance), in Reading, Southeast England, this coming July. It's tragic that an artist so dedicated to promoting peace, would pass away during the first major war in 12 years.

Courtney Love, the widow of Nirvana lead signer Curt Cobain and front-woman for the band Hole, was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport today after reportedly being verbally abusive on a Virgin flight from Los Angeles to London. Two policemen took Love away shortly after the flight arrived. Love’s arrest comes just a few years after Peter Buck from the pop act R.E.M. was accused of similar bad behavior on a flight from Seattle to London. But that was before 9-11. In the old days of rock and roll, staff looked the other way when TVs went flying out hotel window and Harley’s were driven into elevators. Today, that kind of behavior will end you up in big trouble with the authorities. Love was supposedly headed to London to take part in a fund raiser hosted by Elton John and Kevin Spacey. Sources: CNN.com and Hollywood.com

Record producer Phil Spector was arrested in Los Angeles today after a shooting incident that left a female fatally wounded inside Spector’s Pyrenees Castle home in Alhambra, California. Bail for the producer was set at $1,000,000 and he has retained Robert Shapiro one of the Attorney’s on O.J. Simpson’s dream team. Spector is know for his “wall of sound” production techniques that lead to huge hit records including “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes and “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” by The Righteous Brothers. Spector was involved on the production of The Beatles last record, Let It Be, and worked on solo records with John Lennon and George Harrison. Source: CNN.com

At a panel at CES regarding the topic of emerging new music formats Alex Limberis, Microsoft’s Director of Business Development for their Electronics Digital Media Division, alluded to finding a way to “plug the hole” that the Compact Disc now represents in terms of copy protection. New music formats like SACD, DVD-Audio and WM9 come loaded with all sorts of new and exciting features like surround sound, added values and more but the most important feature for the future success of the music industry might be the copy protection on the new discs. For the most part, the protection works. Did hackers break the copy protection of DVD-Audio? Yes – within hours. Can the average computer user hack a DVD-Audio disc on their “dude you’re getting a” Dell? Not likely. Limberis suggests that copy protection schemes should be renewable, with the assumption being made that hackers will always break the original copy protection if ...

Billy Joel was released early Sunday morning from Stony Brook University Hospital after cashing his car into a tree the night before. Joel reportedly swerved into a tree while he was driving his Mercedes Benz in Sag Harbor Saturday night and was then taken to the hospital around midnight. Doctors and Joel’s publicist have yet to comment on Joel’s injuries or the cause of the accident. Source: cnn.com