Briefly News and Comment: Aaliyah, Grateful Dead, Smoke Out

plus: VH1 on grunge. E to act. Jessica Simpson on God and body. Brando at Michael Jackson's anniversary.

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The National Transportation Safety Board stated on Saturday (9/8) that the plane that crashed last month, killing singer Aaliyah and others, was "significantly overloaded," the Associated Press reported.

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Rhino Records will release "Grateful Dead: The Golden Road (1965-1973)," a 12-CD box set, on Oct. 16. The set includes six of the band's Warner Bros. albums--"The Grateful Dead" (debut album), "Anthem of the Sun," "American Beauty," "Workingman's Dead," "History of the Grateful Dead, Volume One (Bear's Choice)," "Grateful Dead" (Skull & Roses), "Live/Dead," and "Aoxomoxoa"--and seven hours of previously unreleased material.

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The Cypress Hill Smoke Out festival date that was to have taken place on Sept. 29 in Holmdel, N.J., has been postponed while producers search for another New York-area venue for the event, Billboard Reported. In addition, the tour's Honolulu stop has been moved from Oct. 14 to Oct. 21.

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From a VH1 press release on the network's forthcoming special on grunge music:

By the end of '92, the hype was out of control--everything associated with grunge became ripe for mass consumption. A Sub-Pop [record label] employee named Meagan remembers the height of the absurdity: "This kid calls up and he's like, 'Hi, I'm doing this piece in the style section of The New York Times, and we would love to include a lexicon of grunge' .... And I'm sitting there just going, 'You're kidding me.' So he's shooting out phrases or words like 'what's up,' 'how's it going' .... And I'm giving him these totally ridiculous things and rather than him saying, 'Get out, that's not true,' what I hear is typing noises.

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"God gave me my body, you know. I'm just doing what I can to make it look good."

--Jessica Simpson in Monday's (9/10) Los Angeles Times

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German director Wim Wenders has tapped E, the leader of pop band the Eels, to play the lead in his next film, titled "Amerika," according to the New York Post.

Wenders directed the video to the song "Souljacker Pt. 1" off the recent Eels album "Souljacker," which is not yet available in the U.S.; the video is viewable on Wenders' website.

Wenders is best known to American audiences as the director of the Cuban-music documentary "Buena Vista Social Club."

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From the Associated Press' coverage of Michael Jackson's anniversary shows:

... [actor] Marlon Brando took to the stage, his large frame resting on a couch. Though the crowd cheered at just the sight of the Oscar-winning actor, they soon became bewildered as Brando spent the next few minutes mumbling about child poverty, abuse and disease.

"I saw kids in the last stages of starvation, and it was something you didn't want to see," he said.

It was also something the audience didn't want to hear, as boos began to drown Brando out until he said Jackson was donating money to create a children's hospital in Florida. His exit drew another standing ovation.