"Still recovering from having gotten COVID at the end of February. I'm still dealing with the residual effects... Still coughing. There's still lung damage" - Tool's Maynard James Keenan told AZ Central about suffering from Covid-19. Hal also talked about wearing face-masks and freedom: "We wear seatbelts. We don't smoke in trains, planes or taxis anymore, or even restaurants. There's reasons for those things... Freedom is the ability to pursue your lifestyle, pursue what you want to do for your family, for your future, what education you want to get. And with that freedom comes a responsibility to look out for yourself, for your neighbor, for your family, for everybody".

Ted Kessler, final editor of Q Magazine has praised Beautiful South singer Paul Heaton for his generosity, revealing how Heaton supported staff when the publication closed, BBC reports. Kessler explained how the star made a large donation to the magazine this summer, which was shared amongst 40 staff and freelancers working for Q at the time. "It was just meant to make sure people weren't left on their arse" - Heaton said.

Windchimes melt black metal, hardcore and post-rock on 'Zetsubo//Succumb To'; Big Boi, Sleepy Brown, Killer Mike & Big Rubequite released a protest song 'We The Ones' in the vein of funk-infused southern rap; Channel Tres shows how it sounds when hip-hop and house combine on 'Skate Depot'; Stevie Nicks looks to the heavens on 'Show Them The Way'; proggy rockers Transit Method released a video for four of their recently published songs.

Former Happy Mondays tour manager Anthony Murray was arrested along with 15 others at a port in Istanbul when authorities found 500 pounds of cocaine aboard a ship from Colombia, The Sun reports. Turkish police - who thought his drugs gang was called the Happy Mondays - allege Murray was "management level" in the operation and was known as "Doctor". Murray claims he was "only heading to the country for a nose job". This is not the first major drug arrest for Murray - in 2014, he was sentenced to three years in prison over a 64 pound cannabis deal.

Van Halen saw an uptick of over 6,000 percent in album and song sales in the US in the day after Eddie Van Halen's death, Billboard reports. The total rise came from 40,000 copies of collected Van Halen albums and songs sold on Oct. 6, compared to just under 1,000 on the day before. Going by just album sales, Van Halen's catalog reportedly sold 9,000 copies on Oct. 6, an increase of 5,835 percent when compared to a negligible amount from Oct. 5. As far as songs, the group sold 31,000 single tracks on Oct. 6, with the most popular song, 'Jump', going in 3,000 copies.

Rapper T.I. has offered a monetary reward for anyone able to help with a kidney donation to his fellow rapper Scarface, SOHH reports. T.I. is offering a "bag of money". 49-year old Scarface is looking for someone to donate their kidney to him after a long battle with the coronavirus left him with permanent organ damage this year.

Streams of mental health playlists on Spotify have doubled this year, during the coronavirus pandemic, Independent reports. Playlists related to "mindfulness", "calm", and "self-care" have been streamed 57 per cent more in 2020 than they were last year. Podcasts related to self-help and self-care have seen a 122 per cent increase in streams.

Berlin-based drummer and keen modular synthesist Merlin Ettore filmed himself from an overhead perspective while playing his instruments. His exclusive set for the Fact magazine shows Ettore playing his drum kit and the Eurorack modular system.

The Flaming Lips are planning a concert in their hometown of Oklahoma City where both the band and the audience will be in giant bubbles, Brooklyn Vegan reports. Band's Wayne Coyne said they started the bubble thing in 2006 as a joke "and now it's becoming kind of serious and real". Coyne says three people fit in each giant bubble, adding, from his personal experience, that it holds a lot of air. The idea is to hold a big concert, maybe even two concerts in one night.

Foo Fighters have launched a new digital zine The People of Rock and Roll, featuring countless memories directly from Foo Fighters fans. Readers can filter through the 135 pages of stories at the time of publication by narrowing down to a specific bandmember or location.

Rapper Tory Lanez, real name Daystar Peterson, has been charged with shooting rapper Megan Thee Stallion in his car in the Hollywood Hills earlier this year, New York Times reports. Lanez is charged with one felony count each of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle. He also faces a gun allegation and that he personally inflicted great bodily injury shooting Megan Thee Stallion at her feet. If convicted as charged, Lanez faces a possible maximum sentence of 22 years.

Listeners to BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the 80s have chosen U2's 'The Joshua Tree' as the best album of the 1980s. Released in 1987, it made U2 one of the world's biggest bands, thanks to anthems like 'With Or Without You' and 'Where The Streets Have No Name', BBC reflects. Dire Straits' 'Brothers In Arms' came second in BBC's survey, followed by The Stone Roses' eponymous debut, Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' on fourth and Guns N' Roses' 'Appetite for Destruction' on the fifth spot.

The unusual story about Britney Spears' conservatorship just got a new twist - singer's court-appointed lawyer Samuel Ingham told an L.A. judge she lacks the capacity to sign a declaration expressing her wishes and compared her to a "comatose" person. Furthermore, according to Billboard, Ingham filed that the conservatorship is voluntary, and if Spears wants out, Ingham can file the paperwork.

47% of music listeners feel it is important for the industry to offer livestream performances or virtual concerts, new Music 360 Report by MRC Data shows. So far only 25% of music listeners have tuned in to one of these shows, Billboard reports. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren estimates the current value of the business at around $1 billion, with the potential to grow to the "tens of billions" within three years.

"Shamir’s music makes the listener want to wake up. Listening to it is like being shaken awake, blinds thrown open... This music is wildly fun to listen to" - Consequence of Sound writes in a review of Shamir's self-titled album. NME says it's "hugely focused, each song short and sharp and coated in precise production". Under the Radar rightfully says ''Shamir' is a pop album... Succinct. Catchy. Honest".

New York’s jazz festival Vision has been rescheduled and adapted for the sour times we live in now - it will take place both live and online starting Thursday, October 8 with a livestream solo performance by trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith, Jazz Times reports. A series of events - including performances by Oliver Lake, Andrew Cyrille, Amina Claudine Myers, and William Parker - will follow through Monday, October 12 that will be both livestreamed and held in front of an outdoor audience. The outdoor edition will be limited-capacity, socially distanced. Daily outdoor tickets are $75, and virtual tickets are $15.

MixMag questions the moral dilemma of reopening clubs during the pandemic. Some believe it is not worth the risk of transmission, and possible lockdowns, the others say we need to start reopening our societies. The magazine talked to promoters from Italy, Czechia, Germany and UK about their experiences and attitudes.

Something Old, Something New blog presents several YouTube music critics who do their critics in a different way, closer to YouTube as a medium, and to today's audience. The two SOSN takes out WillNE, a funny British guy, and Caitlin Marie Reacts who listens and reacts to classic albums.

The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick is a new band playing atmospheric emo - 'We Love You So Much'; Divide and Dissolve play classical doom on 'We Are Really Worried About You'; Dizzee Rascal is in good form on 'Act Like You Know'; CocoRosie summoned together ANOHNI, Big Freedia, Brooke Candy, and Cakes da Killa on 'End of the Freak Show' in an effort to vote the American president out of the office; Bicep go natural and ambient on 'Apricots'.

Venom were the first truly important band when it came to extreme metal - the Quietus writes in a great article about how Venom got together and started what is now known as black metal. Band's frontman Cronos explains: “I love the idea of extreme metal. I just think you can't go too far... so long as it's just within the music y'know. The further the better, the more extreme the better, the more notorious, the more hardcore”. Band's 'Sons Of Satan: Rare & unreleased demos 79-84' is out now.

Pantera's late guitarist Dimebag Darrell was a big Van Halen fan, so when a limited edition guitar with EVH's signature tape-stripping was about to be launched, Darrell called Van Halen trying to buy on. Van Halen said no, but promised to bring him one personally. Darrell was killed on-stage soon after, so when Eddie van Halen came to his funeral he put one of these hand-taped guitars in his casket.

Johnny Nash was a singer-songwriter, actor, and producer, who started as a pop crooner to evolve into an early reggae star, releasing on the way the million-selling anthem 'I Can See Clearly Now', has died at aged 80 of natural cause, Variety reports. A rare American-born singer of reggae, Nash has also helped launch the career of his friend Bob Marley.

Nomcebo Zikode released 'Jerusalema' at the end of 2019 in South Africa, soon becoming one of the biggest local songs of the summer there. The song has since reached the top five on music charts in Belgium, France, Hungary, Netherlands and Switzerland. It has been streamed almost 55m times on Spotify, the music video has been watched more than 170m times on YouTube and 385m on TikTok. In September 'Jerusalema' became the most Shazammed song in history. Guardian tells the story of the birth of the song.

Guitarist Joe Satriani shared his thoughts on Eddie van Halen with the Billboard, after the virtuoso guitarist's passing: "The little technical things that guitar players can talk about for hours, they get picked up by a million people in a second. Everybody can copy the technical bits, but nobody could put the heart and soul and personality into each little bit like he could and no one delivered it like he did. He wrote great songs that were fun". Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello looked up to him: "Eddie Van Halen was one of the greatest, most inventive, truly visionary musicians of all time. He was an unparalleled titan in the annals of rock & roll". Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan was also an unexpected fan: “I am truly saddened by his loss; and isn’t it strange that a man who played an instrument spoke directly to so many in an unmatched way that rivals only a few: Coltrane, Hendrix, Parker, Miles, Django”.

New Zealand singer-songwriter Anderson Rocio wrote a dreamy, nostalgic tune called 'Paradise' after binge-watching international news on the pandemic. The song was picked by the producers of Netflix hit 'Lucifer' to play over a dramatic scene in season five, which aired last month. “Life’s not paradise, and we all know that, but it’s pretty great regardless of all the challenges. And that’s what we felt about the lockdown” Rocio told the Guardian about the song, which is now celebrated as hymn to post-Covid hope.

American president Donald Trump has ordered a halt to talks over a package of COVID-19 relief bills that included more than $10 billion in aid for independent music venues, agencies and music companies indefinitely shut down by the global pandemic, Billboard reports. National Independent Venue Association has been warning that without federal assistance, more than 90% of its 2,500 members would go out of business. Now, NIVA says the collapse is happening.

Van Halen guitarist and co-founder Eddie Van Halen has died at the age of 65, from cancer, the New York Times, who calls him "virtuoso of the rock guitar" reports. Eddie and his brother Alex formed their first band in 1972, eventually adopting the Van Halen family name for the group in the mid-'70s. The band released 12 studio albums, including the Diamond certified '1984', which has sold over 10 million copies in the U.S. The band was awarded a Grammy and got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Eddie van Halen's skills were also heavily sought out by many of his peers. He famously delivered the guitar solo for Michael Jackson's 'Beat It' off the 'Thriller' album. He's also worked with KISS, Black Sabbath, Brian May, Roger Waters, Steve Lukather and LL Cool J among others.

The US supreme court has declined to hear the case brought against Led Zeppelin by the estate of Randy Wolfe, late frontman of US band Spirit, in a long-standing copyright battle over 'Stairway to Heaven'. It was alleged that Led Zeppelin took the opening notes to 'Stairway to Heaven' from Spirit’s song 'Taurus'. Following a six-day trial in 2016, Led Zeppelin were cleared of plagiarism. That verdict was overturned in 2018. The case returned, but in March this year a US appeals court reinstated the original 2016 ruling. The only remaining recourse for Wolfe’s trustee team was the US supreme court, whose rejection of the case means it has finally ended, CNN reports.

“We have made the best of it. We’ve really done what we should have done” Billie Eilish told Jimmy Fallon during their guest appearance on The Tonight Show about the pandemic. "We’ve made a lot of music. I don’t think we would have made it otherwise, if we hadn’t got this time. So as much as it’s been terrible to have this going on in the world, I think it has birthed some things. We have been really lucky with it”.

There are 19 things Brassland label co-founder Alec Hanley would tell people contemplating starting a record label, after running Brassland for 19 years. The Creative Independent shared these.