Which is the funnier piece of music news this week: that the Walrus of Love Barry White (right) spoke (to a rapturous response) at Oxford on Monday or that 'NSync are going to star in Grease 3? Now why in the world, if you're a multiplatinum-selling group, do you choose to star in the sequel to a terrible sequel? I hope this isn't them trying to "do a Bjork" and win prizes at Cannes. What makes people want to cross over from one medium to another? What makes them think they can succeed in multiple fields? Why is KISS bassist Gene Simmons creating a sitcom for VH1?

Actually, maybe we should get Barry White to speak at Harvard. I want voice lessons.

LET'S DO THE TIME WARP AGAIN

So it's like a time warp (Rocky Horror Picture Show 25th anniversary!) in the music store this week. On the new releases shelf sits a bizarro collection of performers that seem like a catalogue of my musical consciousness in the past: the Wallflowers, Collective Soul, Slash (recording with his Slash's Snakepit band, not with Guns N' Roses) and Tiffany. Tiffany! I half expected to see a new Wilson Phillips album.

COVER TO COVER

Which reminds me, I have to enter annoyance-management (anger-management's little kid brother) classes soon, since I get overly upset when people don't realize songs are cover versions. It's sort of understandable when the original is obscure (Soft Cell covering Gloria Jones' "Tainted Love"), but when the original was once a fairly big song (Tiffany covering Tommy James and the Shondells' "I Think We're Alone Now," Sixpence None the Richer covering The La's' "There She Goes") it just riles me. Riles me, I tell you!

Still, it's hard to truly hate cover versions. I feel anything that brings a good song back to attention is a good thing, even if the cover is execrable (hello, Sheryl Crow). Marilyn Manson is going to cover "Suicide is Painless"-the theme song to M*A*S*H-on the soundtrack to the Blair Witch Project sequel. Is it just me, or is the whole Manson thing way too tired? But it's a great song, so bleak ("Suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/And I can take or leave it as I please") that the lyrics had to be excised for the TV version of M*A*S*H, and the attempt to return it to cultural consciousness is well appreciated. (Actually, a great cover of the song already exists: the Manic Street Preachers did one way back in the early '90s.)

NEWS

Classical music aficionados should note that Symphony Hall is holding an open house this Sunday to celebrate its centenary. Meanwhile, local band Seventeen and Irish group the Young Dubliners (see our album review) perform this weekend at CollegeFest at the Hynes Convention Center, which has apparently made one Crimson arts executive (unnamed, initials SC) all excited because there'll be-wait for it-the presence of two people from MTV's The Real World.

But the big concert is hipster du jour Moby, performing at Avalon on Thursday. I would try to be excited, but since I'm instinctively anti-hype and since I think Moby is pretentious, I'm feeling blas about the whole thing. Plus, I'm getting tired of people proclaiming Play to be "the greatest electronic music album ever." But now you know.

Questions? Comments? E-mail dsng@fas