Chaka Khan received the Lena Horne Award for outstanding career achievements at The 1998 Soul Train Lady Of Soul Awards on Thursday. This show was co-hosted by LL Cool J.

The Beastie Boys will join the ranks of Madonna, R.E.M., David Bowie, and Peter Gabriel when the band picks up a Video Vanguard Award at this years MTV Video Music Awards next week. The Beasties will be rewarded for a careers worth of videos that range from party boy romps like "She’s On It" to the impressionist animation of "Shadrach" to pop culture spoofs like "Sabotage" and "Intergalactic."

BowieNet, David Bowie’s bold venture into the online marketplace, launched Monday with a cybercast that included appearances by Ani DiFranco, Spacehog, the Jesus and Mary Chain and a surprise turn by Bauhaus. The performance, which also included appearances by the Specials and the Jayhawks, marked the launch of www.davidbowie.com, the performers official website/Internet service provider. The service will offer the usual official site nuggets (news, music and video flIes, studio cameras, personal messages from the artist, etc.), and will also offer users Internet access, davidbowie.com email addresses and tech support.

Saying it would create a hazard for her and her child, Madonna filed an affidavit on Monday to halt construction of a YMCA building near her Lincoln Center residence in New York City. Madonna’s sworn statement was part of a lawsuit filed against the YMCA in a New York court room two weeks ago aimed at halting plans for the residential high-rise, according to The Associated Press. As part of her affidavit, Madonna cited last month’s fatal accident in New York’s limes Square, when one person was killed when scaffolding fell into a residential building adjacent to the construction site.

Former band members Nigel Harrison and Frank Infante are suing Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, James Destri and Clement Burke to stop the Blondie reunion album No Exit from being released, according to a 07/25/98 New York Post story. They claim that they are part of a previous partnership and the Blondie reunion can’t legally go on without them. Blondie is mixing its eagerly anticipated new album, No Exit, due out February 1999. Sources close to the band say the current band members have known about the lawsuit for months, and that it will not delay the release of the album. No Exit marks the first original record from the band in more than 16 years.

New Kids On The Block called it quits after their 1994 curtain call, Face The Music, tanked miserably. Now with clones the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, (among others) currently commandeering the pop music airwaves, the climate seems ripe for the reappearance of Jordan Knight (now 28), the unofficial leader of the group. Knight, who inked a seven album deal with Interscope Records in 1996, will see the release of his as-yet-untitled solo debut next January. He recently spent several weeks in a Minneapolis recording studio with legendary R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (Janet Jackson, Prince, Boys II Men), mixing four of the album’s 10 tracks, including the first single, "A Different Party." Knight plays keyboards on several songs on the album, which he describes as R&B-flavored but with elements of hip-hop and alternative as well.

Word still abounds about a new New Order release in 1999. Until then a New Order box set, tentatively titled Recycle, is on the horizon. Meanwhile, none of the band members have any intentions of quitting their post-New Order projects. Electronic’s third LP, now titled Twisted Tenderness, will surface in January; Peter Hook is polishing up Monaco's sophomore release; and The Other Two, who have labored over the follow-up to their 1993 debut for four years, have reportedly finished their sophomore album as well.

Its been two years since we heard from ex-Cult frontman Ian Astbury, in the form of the rushed, largely unnoticed Holy Barbarians project (his first since the Cult split up in 1995). The record tentatively titled Transcendental Youth Cult is his first true solo effort. "I know it’s the best thing I've done in 10 years," remarks Astbury. That means alot when 10 years encompasses every Cult album since 1987’s Electric. The Cult eventually toyed with the marriage of electronica and rock and roll on their 1994 curtain call The Cult, but it wasn’t until now that Astbury has found perfect harmony between sequenced loops and electric guitars via producer Rick Rubin.