Someone has stolen Joy Division singer Ian Curtis's headstone from his Macclesfield gravesite. The morbid thief made off with the stone some time between Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. The local police are appealing for anyone with information on its whereabouts to come forward. Curtis's gravestone (click here for a photo) is inscribed "Ian Curtis, 18-5-80", along with the words "Love Will Tear Us Apart", the title of Joy Division's best-known song.

Summer in Vancouver is an exceptional time for outdoor events, with music and dancing at the jazz and folk festivals, and Shakespearean plays at Bard on the Beach, there are many ways to pass the time.

If you have any other suggestions, please feel free to post them below.

Here's the official word, according to a news release issued by Live Nation today:

The first single from the new album, Donkey, due out July 21.

Rhapsody launched an online music store today that it hopes will loosen Apple's grip on the online music market.

Having beef with other performers is a hip-hop tradition, and pissing everyone off is an Oasis tradition. A few months back, Noel Gallagher combined the two by opining that a rapper like Jay-Z had no place at Glastonbury, which is one of the world's biggest rock festivals.

Because of a pending court case, singer Boy George has been denied a visa to enter the United States. This has forced the former Culture Club front man to cancel his scheduled North American tour (which was to stop in Vancouver on July 21).

Over the past week, there has been a little verbal battle between Ice-T and Soulja Boy and not in the fun freestyle battle kind of way, but in an immature YouTube-video kind of way. Ice-T apparently doesn’t like Soulja Boy’s music, and says that Soulja Boy is killing hip-hop. (He makes some good points).

In a blog item posted on You Thought We Wouldn't Notice on June 13, the design company Alphabet Arm pointed out similarities between the cover of a new album by emo band Cute Is What We Aim For (see above right) and a Counting Crows logo (above left) that Alphabet Arm designed a few years ago:

Modern Guilt, the new Beck album, is scheduled to come out on July 8. Here's a suitably '60s-inspired teaser trailer for what sounds like a psychedlia-tinged effort.

In a recent interview with BBC 6, John Lydon responded to rumours that the Sex Pistols are planning a new album by neither confirming nor denying it. “It’s a nice rumour and it might possibly be true we are attempting to," the singer said. "It’s like all things Sex Pistols—it’s riddled in chaos. You know, who knows what the future will hold, maybe no future. So far I’ve proved that wrong. I’ve got a splendid future.”

LimeWire Music Blog has compiled some of the best on-stage rock-star meltdowns and audience altercations, from Bjork freaking out in the Tokyo airport to Kurt Cobain smashing his guitar into the face of an overzealous bouncer. Click here to check it out.

Like Sigur Ros's "Gobbledigook", this video features lots of naked people (mostly hot girls, to put it simply). However, it also features lots of black bars covering up what are arguably the best bits. Oh well. It's still a fun song.

According to an Associated Press article posted on Billboard.com, R&B singer R. Kelly was acquitted on all counts today in his child-pornography trial in Chicago.