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• Watch Lady Gaga, Beyoncé’s “Telephone”
• Phil Spector Appeals Murder Conviction
• News Ticker: The Clash, Metallica
• Conan O’Brien Announces Bonnaroo, Tour
• Pearl Jam Plot May Tour Dates
• Corgan on Mayer’s Career-Destruction
• Idol to Tackle Rolling Stones Songs
• Pink Floyd Halt Single-Song Downloads
• Strokes Confirm Lollapalooza Slot
• Actor Corey Haim Dead at 38
• Kate Nash Talks My Best Friend Is You
• OK Go Split With EMI, Form New Label
• Faith No More Announce East Coast Show
• U2’s Spider-Man Loses Evan Rachel Wood
• Watch Exclusive New Runaways Clip
• Beastie Boys Delay Hot Sauce to Late 2010
• Exclusive Premiere: Yeasayer’s “O.N.E.”
• MGMT Unveil New Song “Flash Delirium”
• Win a Trip to See STP at SXSW!
• T.I. Announces Return With “I’m Back”
• Foo Fighters Team With Vig For Heavy Disc
• Win the White Stripes’ Box Set

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Lawyers for producer Phil Spector have appealed his 2009 murder conviction, claiming he didn’t receive a fair trial. Last May, Spector, now 70 years old, was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison for shooting actress Lana Clarkson at his California mansion in 2003. Citing judicial error and prosecutorial misconduct, his legal team requested the conviction be overturned and he be given a new trial, the AP reports.

The Rise & Fall of Phil Spector: Photos from his famed studio sessions.

In papers filed Wednesday, the attorneys claimed prosecutors improperly used testimony from five women who claimed that Spector threatened them with guns in the past. The accounts, they wrote, “became the heart of the state’s case” and were used to persuade jury members to convict Spector “based on his bad character and evil propensities.” His lawyers said their testimonies had nothing to do with Clarkson’s death and that none of their stories “involved events in which Mr. Spector put a gun in someone’s mouth, much less fired it.”

Phil Spector on trial: photos from the crime scene to the courthouse.

Spector’s lawyers criticized the actions of Judge Larry Paul Fidler, citing that he allowed prosecutors to use the word “pattern” more than 40 times in describing Spector’s history with women and guns. They also decried the judge’s decision to allow jurors in the second trial to see a taped hearing from the first trial that was conducted outside the presence of Spector. On the tape, the judge was seen interpreting a forensic witness’s testimony about the position of the blood spatter on Clarkson’s body. “Under California law, a judge may not offer evidence in a trial over which he presides,” the appeal states, adding that the judge could not be cross-examined by the defense on what the prosecutors said was the most important fact of the case — whether the blood spatter showed who pulled the trigger.

The state attorney general’s office is expected to file a reply brief next month.

Related Stories:

• Jailhouse Rock?: Charles Manson Reaches Out to Phil Spector
• Phil Spector Moved To California Facility For Prison Sentence
• Full Coverage: The Phil Spector Trial

Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty

• The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon both play on Gorillaz’s new Plastic Beach, and AP reports. Ray producer Stuart Benjamin is working on the project.
• Amy Winehouse is getting into the fashion business. launching a new line for Fred Perry. The singer’s Website announces that her 17-piece black and pink-dominated collection features polo shirts and pencil skirts and is due in October.
• TIcketless Metallica fans rioted in Colombia earlier this week, leading to more than 100 arrests and eight injuries outside the band’s show at Bogota’s Simón Bolívar Park. Pollstar reports.

Lady Gaga and Beyoncé’s anxiously awaited video for their The Fame Monster collaboration “Telephone” has arrived as a nine-minute-and-thirty-second mash-up of lesbian prison porn, campy sexploitation flicks and insidery winks at the two divas’ public personas. If Quentin Tarantino and Russ Meyer remade Thelma & Louise as an orgy of product placement with fiercely choreographed interludes, this would be the result. The video was scheduled to premiere on E! at 11:30 p.m. tonight, but hit the Internet early via a leak. Jonas Åkerlund, who previously helmed Gaga’s “Paparazzi” video, directed the clip.

Check out Lady Gaga’s wildest looks.

The mini-movie opens in a women’s prison, where guards strip Gaga bare and mutter, “I told you she didn’t have a dick,” fanning the flames of one of the most persistent rumors about Stefani Germanotta’s gender identity. Almost immediately the self-referential nudges and brand names appear: the boom box in the exercise yard blasts Lady Gaga’s “Paper Gangsta,” a fellow inmate wears Monster Heartbeats earbuds, Gaga has a Virgin Mobile phone tucked in her pants and sports Chanel shades and Diet Coke cans in her hair as makeshift curlers (nice touch!).

The song kicks in just before the three-minute mark as Gaga (in a spiked bikini and what appears to be Karen O’s jacket from the “Zero” video) takes a call in jail and launches into the most appealing afternoon imaginable behind bars — a tightly choreographed routine that has Gaga and four tattooed backup dancers stamping through the cell block.

When Beyoncé’s scheduled interlude arrives, the song breaks for another dramatic sequence. A guard perusing dating Website Plenty of Fish on a Beats by Dre laptop informs Gaga she’s been bailed out. Beyoncé (nicknamed Honey Bee, a nod to Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction) rolls up in the Pussy Wagon from Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Volume One, informs Gaga, “You’ve been a very bad girl” and feeds her a sticky treat. Simply being in Tarantino’s car inspires some Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield banter (”You know Gaga, trust is like a mirror. You can fix it if it’s broke…” “But you can still see the crack in that motherfucker’s reflection”).

Beyoncé launches into the song’s bridge as Lady Gaga snaps photos of her with a Polaroid camera, then the pair pull up to a vintage diner where Beyoncé entertains a gentleman pal (played by Tyrese Gibson) and Gaga mans the kitchen, slipping poison into the food along with Miracle Whip and Wonder Bread (cue another awesome dance sequence, this time with cooks prancing around the stove in a moment that could have been borrowed from Madonna’s “Hung Up” clip). Beyoncé takes a moment to toy with her squeaky-clean image — busting out the line, “I knew you’d take all my honey, you selfish motherfucker” as Gibson keels over at the table — and another dance sequence begins, this time with Gaga and B in patriotic garb.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s Jai Rodriguez arrives as a news reporter broadcasting word of the mass homicide (dubbed “The Telephone Effect”) as Gaga and Beyoncé speed away in the Pussy Wagon dressed in white and black veils. “We did it, Honey Bee, now let’s go far, far away from here,” Gaga says as the two clasp hands and hit the accelerator.

The clip is certainly cinematic and oddly feminist, and gasps at a larger statement about consumer culture. As Gaga told E!, she was preoccupied with “the idea that America is full of young people that are inundated with information and technology and turn it into something that was more of a commentary on the kind of country that we are.”

Related Stories:

• Lady Gaga’s Sexy, Cinematic “Paparazzi” Video Hits the Web
• Lady Gaga Premieres “Bad Romance,” Her Craziest Video Yet
• Photos: Lady Gaga’s New Monster Ball Tour

Photo: Venema/WireImage
While Billy Joel takes the next few months off, Elton John soldiers on with a new round of April dates. Plus, Diana Ross announces her “More Today Than Yesterday” greatest-hits tour and Bone Thugs-n-Harmony reveal a fresh trek in support of their upcoming reunion album Uni5: The World’s Enemy. Full details for all three artists below.

Elton John
Apr. 9 – Lubbock, TX @ United Spirit Center
Apr. 10 – Austin, TX @ Frank Erwin Center
Apr. 15 – Hoffman Estates, IL @ Sears Centre Arena
Apr. 16 – Des Moines, IA @ Wells Fargo Arena
Apr. 17 – Green Bay, WI @ Resch Center
Apr. 24 – Grand Rapids, MI @ Van Andel Arena
Apr. 25 – Toledo, OH @ Lucas County Arena
Apr. 30 – Reading, PA @ Sovereign Center
May 1 – Youngstown, OH @ Covelli Center

Diana Ross
May 15 – Boston, MA @ Citi Performing Arts Center
May 16 – Mashantucket, CT @ Foxwoods
May 18 – Red Bank, NJ @ Count Basie Theatre
May 19 – New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
May 21 – Atlantic City, NJ @ Caesars Atlantic City
May 25 – Bethesda, MD @ Music Center at Strathmore
May 27 – Chicago, IL @ Chicago Theatre
May 28 – Cleveland, OH @ State Theatre
May 29 – Detroit, MI @ Fox Theatre
May 31 – Toronto, ON @ Roy Thomson Hall
June 2 – Knoxville, TN @ Tennessee Theatre
June 4 – Atlanta, GA @ Chastain Park Amphitheatre
June 5 – Memphis, TN @ Live At The Garden
June 6 – St. Louis, MO @ Fox Theatre
June 9 – Los Angeles, CA @ NOKIA Theatre
June 11 – San Diego, CA @ Humphrey’s
June 12 – Saratoga, CA @ The Mountain Winery

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
Mar. 24 – Minneapolis, MN @ First Avenue
Mar. 25 – Milwaukee, WI @ Eagles
Mar. 26 – Sauget, IL @ Pop’s
Mar. 27 – Chicago, IL @ Congress
Mar. 28 – Cleveland, OH @ HOB
Mar. 29 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Vogue
Mar. 31 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Mr. Smalls
Apr. 1 – Columbus, OH @ Newport
Apr. 2 – Buffalo, NY @ Town Ballroom
Apr. 3 – Lancaster, PA @ The Chameleon
Apr. 5 – Boston, MA @ Middle East
Apr. 6 – New York, NY @ Irving Plaza
Apr. 7 – State College, PA @ Mezzanine
Apr. 8 – Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live
Apr. 9 – Wilmington NC @ The Rox
Apr. 10 – Charlotte, NC @ Amos Southend
Apr. 11 – Charleston, SC @ The Music Farm
Apr. 13 – Athens, GA @ 40 Watt Club
Apr. 14 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade
Apr. 15 – Orlando, FL @ Firestone
Apr. 16 – Los Angeles, CA @ Gibson Amphitheatre
Apr. 20 – New Orleans, LA @ HOB
Apr. 21 – Dallas, TX @ HOB
Apr. 22 – Houston, TX @ HOB
Apr. 23 – San Antonio, TX @ Scoutbar
Apr. 24 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s
Apr. 26 – Tulsa, OK @ Cain’s Ballroom
Apr. 27 – Colombia, MO @ The Blue Note
Apr. 28 – Council Bluffs, IA @ Harrah’s
Apr. 29 – Kansas City, KS @ Harrah’s
Apr. 30 – Denver, CO @ Gothic Theatre
May 1 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theatre
May 2 – Phoenix, AZ @ Celebrity Theatre
May 3 – Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theatre