Odds & Ends: Lisa Marie Presley, DJ E-Z Rock, Bon Jovi, Splinters Lawsuit

Lisa Marie Presley’s fans in Minnesota’s Twin Cities will have to find something else to do tomorrow night. Not only has the daughter of Elvis Presley nixed her April 29 appearance at the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant in Minneapolis but she has canceled the entire tour.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Presley bowed out of the tour per her doctor’s orders.  So far, there has been no report as to what medical issue is causing Presley to deep-six a road trip that was to extend into late July.

The bad news was announced Sunday.  The Star Tribune notes that some of her equipment had already been shipped to the venue, which hopes to reschedule the singer for 2015.

DJ E-Z Rock, who with Rob Base released the mega selling 1988 hit “It Takes Two” has died.

Considered a hip hop pioneer, Rock, whose real name was Rodney Bryce, grew up in Harlem with Base, according to Rolling Stone.  His first single with his boyhood friend was “DJ Interview” in 1986.  “It Takes Two” was based on a vocal sampling of “Think (About It),” which was recorded in 1972 by Lyn Collins.  Along with being sampled by everyone from Snoop Dogg to K-Pop’s 2NE1, “It Takes Two” has appeared in the video game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” as well as in the Sandra Bullock film “The Proposal.”

A cause of death has not yet been reported.

You can read about the rags to riches story of New Jersey’s Bon Jovi in a comic book bio to be released this week by Bluewater Productions.

Titled “Fame: Bon Jovi,” the book covers the band’s early years and details “how frontman Jon Bon Jovi gets a record deal and kept the band going for decades.”  The work was written and drawn by Jayfri Hashim.

“We get a lot of requests on subjects to tell their stories in this unique medium,” Bluewater publisher Darren G. Davis said.  “Bon Jovi has always been at the top of the list when people mention to us who they would like to see a comic book of.”

“Fame: Bon Jovi” is the latest music-themed book released by Bluewater April, which the company is celebrating as “Rock Music Month.”  During the past few weeks Bluewater has released biographic comic books based on the lives of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain and Queen frontman Freddie Mercury as part of the company’s “Tribute” series.

Speaking of New Jersey – a woman from the Garden State has filed suit against Live Nation, claiming that the bench she sat on during an Englebert Humperdinck concert gave her splinters.

Schoolteacher Linda Vanston attended Humperdinck’s April 29, 2011 show at The NYCB Theater at Westbury, in Westbury, N.Y., reports the New York Post.  But this is more than just a simple pain-in-the-butt lawsuit.  Apparently the problems began when she slid across the bench to make room for a fellow Humperdinck fan.

“She was not aware that the bench had exposed sharp shards of wood sticking out of it,” Vanston’s lawyer, Rosemarie Arnold, said.

“She stood up to look at what had happened, and she saw the frayed wood on the bench.”

Arnold claims that Vanston ended up with 1,000 splinters embedded in her thighs and buttocks and that the splinters have been extracted at a rate of about one dozen per day.  Vanston’s lawsuit reportedly claims that she has to undergo “painful injections to help dislodge” the wooden shards of agony and that the incident resulted in “limited mobility” and has caused her to miss work.

According to the Post, Vanston and her husband are seeking unspecified damages.