Rock Band

Chris Perez is staring at his 4-month-old daughter, Cassie, who at this moment rests in the arms of her smiling mother, Venessa Villanueva. Perez's bright and beaming face is nothing like it appears in the mournful publicity shots for "Resurrection," the debut rock album by his new group, the Chris Perez Band, due out on Hollywood Records on May 18. No. A grinning, affable new daddy just ain't what one would expect of the most famous 29-year-old widower in pop music.

ART English musician Will Sergeant is famous for being the guitarist in the darkly melodic Liverpool rock band, Echo & the Bunnymen. Now he's turned his attention to art, opening his first major United States exhibition, "My Own Worst Enemy," at the Substrate Fine Art Gallery. Abstract paintings, collages and screen prints open a window on this brash entertainer's inner vision. Substrate Fine Art Gallery, 709 N. Ridgewood Place, L.A. 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fri. Free. (323) 833-6459; facebook.com./substratefineartgallery.

Tonight and Friday, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Simon & Garfunkel, Metallica and other acts that started their careers in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s will perform at Madison Square Garden here to celebrate the silver anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The landmark events, which are expected to run 4 1/2 hours each and will air on HBO on Nov. 29, come at a tricky time for rock and for the rock hall itself. These days, Guitar Hero is a video game, Rockstar is an energy drink and ring tones routinely outsell albums.

The way Louie Pérez remembers it, there was nothing more all-American than growing up Mexican American in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Yes, there were serious economic and social roadblocks to Latinos joining the middle-class mainstream. But Pérez and his friends danced to the same music as their non-Latino peers, wore the same clothes - Sonny and Cher furry vests, anyone? - and tuned in and turned on to the same groovy counterculture experiments. They stood shoulder to shoulder for the same social causes, and many of them died fighting in the same southeast Asian war. "The Chicanos in the '60s didn't live in a vacuum," Pérez, principal lyricist and multi-instrumentalist of the legendary East L.A. rock band Los Lobos, said recently.

It's easy to understand musician Dhani Harrison's antipathy toward the general concept of being in a rock band. After all, he got loads of priceless firsthand information from his father about the ups and downsides of making it to the absolute peak of pop music success during his tenure with the Beatles. FOR THE RECORD: Dhani Harrison: An article on musician Dhani Harrison in Tuesday's Calendar identified Activision as developer of The Beatles: Rock Band. The game was created by Harmonix, MTV Games and Apple Corps Ltd. — It was George Harrison who famously said, "The biggest break in my career was getting into the Beatles in 1962.

Vincent Neil Wharton, lead singer for the heavy-metal band Motley Crue, is known to his fans as a hard-driving rock 'n' roller who once bragged that he drank a case of beer and a half a fifth of gin on his days off. He is no longer bragging.

Vincent Neil, former lead singer for the rock band Motley Crue, and four companions got into a scuffle with security guards at the Universal Amphitheatre on Sunday night, which ended with guards and rockers making citizen's arrests of each other. Neil, 31, his wife Sharise Neil, 27, Robert Montejano, 23, and two other men were apparently trying to leave the Bryan Adams concert early via a backstage exit, according to Sheriff's Deputy Britta Tubbs. They were stopped at about 10:30 p.m.

Viacom Inc. has been ordered to pay an additional $383 million to the makers of Rock Band, the latest development in a long and costly saga surrounding the media giant's failed attempt to enter the video game business. In a regulatory filing, Viacom, the owner of MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, said accountants in a private arbitration process determined that it owes the money to former shareholders of Harmonix Music Systems Inc. on top of a $150-million bonus payment that it previously made.

Michael Been, a singer, songwriter, guitarist and founding member of the Northern California modern rock band the Call, which broke out with the 1983 MTV hit "The Walls Came Down," has died. He was 60. Been (pronounced Bean) died Thursday after suffering a heart attack at the Pukkelpop festival in Hasselt, Belgium, where he had been serving as a sound engineer for his son Robert's band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. His death was announced in a statement from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's publicist, Juliana Plotkin.

The Guitar Hero and Rock Band video games have become huge hits, generating $1.6 billion in North American sales last year from players who love jamming along with music legends. But now customers may be singing an old blues classic: "The Thrill Is Gone." After surging 68% in 2008, sales of music games are expected to be stagnant this year. Though new versions still do well, they don't catch fire the way they used to.

A week ago Saturday, at a house party near Indio, a photographer nabbed Alex Kandel for a shoot. The 19-year-old singer for the Kentucky rock band Sleeper Agent slunk across the concrete pool deck just outside the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival grounds, surrounded by party girls, a bathrobe-clad designer Jeremy Scott eating barbecue, and chiseled-jaw dudes at an open vodka bar. Kandel and her band were slated to play both Sundays on...

MUSIC For scholars of indie rock, the union of Mary Timony and Carrie Brownstein as Wild Flag is notable not only for the pedigrees but for what they signify. The former was the voice of Boston lethargy rock band Helium, the latter (along with Wild Flag drummer Janet Weiss) a member of Portland's Sleater-Kinney. And what has the merger wrought? Rock, with guitar solos, mean riffs, barks, yowls, "shoop-shoops," grooves and an inherent understanding of swagger and energy. At its best, as on the masterful "Short Version," which takes a Tom Verlaine-inspired guitar line, dumps it in gasoline and sets it on fire, the fledgling concern races like it's been together for years.

When the Hives last played the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, the appearance could have been considered a victory lap for the band. It was 2003, and the practitioners of lean, fashionable rock 'n' roll had a year earlier seen their air-guitar-ready scolder "Hate to Say I Told You So" crack the top-100 on the U.S. pop charts. The success of the song ultimately led the band to a multi-album global deal with Universal Music U.K. said to be worth seven figures. Rock 'n' roll, it seemed, had been very, very good to the Hives.

We already knew that Dropbox had an all-star lineup of investors. Now the hot San Francisco startup revealed in a tweet two more: Bono and the Edge , the singer and lead guitarist of the rock band U2. The pair apparently took part in Dropbox's $250 million funding round last year that valued the company at $4 billion. This was the first time that Bono was identified as an individual investor in a tech company, but he's no novice tech investor. He's a co-founder and managing partner in Elevation Partners, which has sunk money into Facebook and Yelp and is raising a new $1 billion fund.

Michael Davis Bassist for rock band MC5 Michael Davis, 68, the bassist of influential late 1960s rock band MC5, died Friday of liver failure at Enloe Medical Center in Chico, Calif., said his wife, Angela Davis. The Motor City Five, later known as MC5, rose to prominence in 1964, making waves with incendiary anti-establishment lyrics and a blistering early punk sound, starting with their first album "Kick Out the Jams," released in 1969. Known for its live performances, the band played outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago before rioting ended the concert.

On a fall afternoon in New York's Central Park, hundreds of curious onlookers and paparazzi watched as two comely young actresses, Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough, performed a scene on a park bench. When a rock band sound check across the park disrupted the scene , the movie's director trotted off to ask the band for a reprieve. "The entirety of Central Park followed her," said Riseborough, "and left Abbie and I sitting on the bench, at which point we just looked at each other like, 'Well, this obviously isn't where it's happening.'" That filmmaker has held crowds in thrall every time she's left the house for the last 30 years.

Bob Bogle, the co-founder and original lead guitarist of the Ventures, the influential instrumental rock band whose hits included "Walk -- Don't Run" and the "Hawaii Five-0" TV theme, has died. He was 75. Bogle, a resident of Vancouver, Wash., who suffered from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, died Sunday in a local hospital, said Don Wilson, who co-founded the Ventures with Bogle.

Viacom Inc. has found an unlikely buyer for Harmonix Music Systems, the creator of its Rock Band video games. The media giant announced Thursday that it had sold the Cambridge, Mass.-based Harmonix to Columbus Nova, a private investment firm in New York. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but several analysts said the price was probably less than $100 million, significantly less than Viacom paid to acquire the development studio in 2006. One person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak about it for attribution said Viacom wanted to sell Harmonix by Dec. 31 to improve its tax position in the current year.

SERIES Whitney: Roxanne (Rhea Seehorn) hires Whitney (Whitney Cummings) as her office assistant, but the job description includes more than typing and filing. There's also a bit of spying. Kathy Griffin, Dan O'Brien and Maulik Pancholy also star in this new episode (8 p.m. NBC). American Idol: Hopefuls in Aspen perform (8 p.m. Fox). Nature: Some 1,700 brown bears take up residence in the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska in the new episode "Fortress of the Bears" (8 p.m. KOCE)

MOVIES Remembering Marilyn Monroe Five decades after her death, Monroe continues to captivate audiences. This program seeks to illuminate her mystique through newsreel clips, outtakes and the 1966 documentary "The Legend of Marilyn Monroe. " The film's director, Terry Sanders, and Susan Bernard, author of the new book "Marilyn: Intimate Exposures," will participate in a discussion after the screening. Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd., L.A. 7:30-9:30 p.m. Free. (310) 825-8787.