Janet Jackson may enjoy her latest tour more than any other. During each concert a guy is picked out of the audience. After being tied down in a chair, Janet and her dancers do a striptease to her song "Rope Burn." In an issue of Jane magazine she stated, "To me, there’s nothing wrong with being blindfolded and having your hands bound and anticipating your lover’s every move." That ups the value of those really close seats up front during her MGM concert!

Dokken has added former Winger guitarist Reb Beach to their line-up, a replacement (finally) for the long-departed George Lynch. Beach has recently been on the road with Alice Cooper but he will be linking up with Don Dokken, Jeff Pilson and Mick Brown in time to record a new album. The band is still in the writing stages at this point but plan on powering up the console as early as next month, according to manager Nick John. The group is also expected to launch a short tour in October.

In related news, Kelly Gray, who produced Dokken’s last album, Shadow Life, has been officially announced as the new guitar player in Queensryche replacing Chris DeGarmo, who left the group last year and is currently playing in Jerry Cantrell’s band. Gray has been producing the new Queensryche album, which is nearing completion. According to their official website, they’re currently recording vocals.

Columbia Records will be releasing Redneck Wondeuland the latest studio album from Australian rock legends Midnight Oil November 3. This marks the band’s return to Columbia after a brief sojourn on Sony’s WORK Group label. Explaining the album’s enigmatic title, Midnight Oil lead singer Peter Garrett says, "There’s a piece of graffiti in Melbourne by the Yarra River scrawled on an electricity substation: a map of Australia and the words ‘Redneck Wonderland’ written across it. Underneath the map is a statement: 'Will the forest that survived the ice age survive the Howard government? Save Coolengook Forest.’ And those two words just stuck with us?"

New Order will be recording a new studio album in the new year and intend to play more shows including some performances in the U.S. according to the BBC’s 'The Net.' The band headlined the Reading Festival in England this past weekend, their second live show since basically breaking up at that same festival in 1993. Just last month, the group played a special reunion show at the Apollo in New Order’s hometown of Manchester, England. This years reunion and Reading appearance were initially scheduled as a pair of one-off performances, but Peter Hook told the network they were enjoying each others company and they were looking forward to the future.

StrangeLand a film written by and starring former Twisted Sister frontman, Dee Snider, will open on Oct. 2nd. To promote the film, Snyder will tour cities for a month prior to the film’s release. The film’s soundtrack will feature tracks from Marilyn Manson, Megadeth, Pantera, Anthrax, Coal Chamber, Sevendust, a reformed Twisted Sister, as well as the bands that will be heading out on the tour. Snider himself will act as MC on select dates of the tour.

The just announced itinerary for the first leg of Depeche Mode’s US tour didn’t include Las Vegas. There are a few gaps in the schedule and the end of the first leg is in Inglewood, CA (Dec. 18th) so there might be a few more shows on the west coast starting the second leg. The launch of the tour is coinciding with the release of the new double-album retrospective, The Singles ‘86-’98, and the band plans to release a new single recorded specifically for the compilation, "Only When I Lose Myself" to radio on Sept. 15th.

Pop divas Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey have come together for a new song, "When You Believe," the first single off the soundtrack for the upcoming animated film, Prince Of Egypt. The billing for the Houston-Carey track was also the subject of special negotiations between the singers’ respective camps. A spokesperson for Carey confirms reports that Houston's name will appear first on the initial set of the record’s pressings, while Carey’s name will flip-flop to the front on the album’s second pressing. No word on how it will look on the video.

With Aerosmith set to finally kick of its re-scheduled fall tour on Sept. 9th in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the band has announced plans to release a new live album, A Little South Of Sanity on Oct. 20th. The new Aerosmith double-album features 23 songs culled from the 1993-94 world tour in support of Get A Grip, as well as from earlier legs of the band’s current Nine Lives tour. Though the band has built a reputation for its blistering live show, Aerosmith has issued only three concert albums in its nearly three-decade career, including Live Bootleg (1978), Classics Live (1986), and Classics Live 2 (1988).

The only thing that could pull together metal godfather Ozzy Osbourne, hardcore rapper DMX, and big beat techno wizards the Crystal Method is the cultural force known as South Park. DMX is supposed to come in and rap over top of the Crystal Method song "Vapor Trail," and then this week on the West Coast, Ozzy is supposed to come in and sing the chorus. This has the makings of one of the oddest musical collaborations in recent memory. How will South Park work it into a story? That’s a mystery.