Maverick band's latest CD is a 'Steal'

STEAL THIS CD?: System of a Down recently released Steal This Album!, the first disc of its kind to hit retail. The maverick Los Angeles hard-rock band of Armenian descent -- yes, parents, they are the guys with the long, spindley, braided beards -- scored with 2001's Toxicity, which topped the charts and many critics' Best lists. The band was miffed because unfinished outtakes from the Toxicity sessions that didn't make the album got onto the Internet, where fans could download them.

The twist? Singer Serj Tankian and guitarist Daron Malakian told the New York Times last week that they didn't mind fans grabbing the goodies for free, they just didn't like the crummy versions fans were hearing. So the band went back into the studio to gussy up the tunes with new guitar and vocal parts and better production, winding up with Steal This Album!, a nod to 1960s Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book. Cynics may say System of a Down stands to make only more money from the project, but the fact is, bands aren't the real beneficiaries of sky-high record sales; their record labels are. Besides, "If I was money motivated," Malakian said, "I wouldn't have joined a rock band with three other Armenian guys."

BOOK: Ego Trip was one of the more interesting magazines of the late 1990s, hip on all sorts of music from hip-hop to punk and filled with witty insights about popular culture. No topic was taboo. The magazine folded, but the spirit lives on in Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism (Regan Books, $22.95), a hilarious account of race relations. The book features stirring, sometimes sinisterly funny essays by some of the 'zine's sharpest writers, including a chapter on really icky racist moments in rock that finger-point at stars such as Jim Morrison of the Doors.

An expanded paperback edition of She's a Rebel; The History of Women in Rock & Roll (Seal Press, $19.95) hits stores this month. Originally published a decade ago, the book is the first full history of chicks in rock. Arranged chronologically, it tells the stories of the great R&B singers of the 1950s, the Motown groups, the 1960s girl groups, up to the present, with profiles of recent acts such as Bjork, Sleater-Kinney, Ani DiFranco and pop tarts Christina Aguilera, Destiny's Child and Nelly Furtado.

PRESENTATION: Jazz lovers, head to the Tampa Museum of Art at noon today to hear WUSF-FM 89.7's Larry Martin discuss the work of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Martin, host of the station's Jazz Legacy program, presents the talk, "New Orleans, Louis Armstrong and the Roots of Jazz," as part of the museum's brown bag "Art For Lunch" series.

GAME: Fans of singer Gwen Stefani will no doubt want to play the new action video game Malice (Sierra Entertainment), featuring cartoon Malice, a pig-tailed, red-headed gal who runs around with a giant hammer causing mayhem, with voice provided by Stefani. (Other No Doubt members provide background voices, and the band contributes music, too.)

Stefani told Spin magazine that she enjoyed the project though she's not much of a gamer herself, preferring slo-mo Ms. Pac Man to Tomb Raider's Lara Croft. "She has a very repetitive life," Stefani said of Ms. Pac Man. "Just runs around in mazes chomping up dots. I feel the same way when I'm on tour. Wake up, do shows, talk about myself all day long."

-- To contact Gina Vivinetto, e-mail gina@sptimes.com .

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