Al Gore calls his good friend Lenny Kravitz

Amongst those being called for the Rio leg of Live Earth: Lenny Kravitz, Macy Gray and Pharrell Williams.

It's barely even worth counting the excess air travel that clocks up, isn't it?

She wasn't lovin' it

Macy Gray didn't want to work with Justin Timberlake, it turns out:

"Will [I Am] and I were doing my album, then he got really, really busy with the Black Eyed Peas touring," she explained. "Then he got really in demand as a producer and had a lot of opportunities he didn't want to turn down. So I was kind of forced to work with other people because he was so busy.

"That is how I ended up going to the studio with Justin; it wasn't in the original plan but it worked out great."

So, then, Timberlake was a plan B, and Will I Am's faith in Gray was so high that as soon as someone called offering three weeks as pigman up Home Farm (or something) he was off. But it "all worked out great" - so great Gray already sounds like someone distancing themselves from the finished product.

U2 charity ego-wank pulled

That big Aids gig featuring U2, um, Macy Gray and... oh, Shaggy has been axed because "the proposed producers could not come to a satisfactory agreement with the [Nelson Mandela Foundation]." Dammit, Mandela never caused all these problems when they did the Free Nelson Mandela gigs, did he? Seriously, we don't know what the problems were, but we're guessing that it may have come down to problems with the arrangements to ensure Bono's massive sense of self-satisfaction was properly shaded from the cruel sun of South Africa.

The same old tricks, why should we care?

Macy Gray, Lil' Kim and Queen Latifah attempt to ride the coattails of Moulin Rouge ("team up for Chicago track").