The musician John O’Brien, who passed away in August, was best friends with Dave “Slash Couldn’t Even Spell My Damn Name Correctly in his Autobiography” Kushner. And so the guitarist — unsurprisingly, the only member of Velvet Revolver to drop off the face of the planet when the band went on hiatus four years ago — organized a reunion of his most famous project for a memorial concert in O’Brien’s honor, which will take place on January 12 at the House of Blues in Los Angeles.

Yes, that means that Scott Weiland is going to be performing with Velvet Revolver again.

And while the gig is currently scheduled to be a one-off affair, now Kushner tells Rolling Stone that Weiland could ultimately end up coming back to the fold for good:

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One of these men will not be on the new Kyuss album. Guess which one?

Kyuss Lives!, the ridiculously monikered Kyuss non-reunion which replaces Josh Homme with some dude no one has ever heard of, are apparently “thinking of doing another record,” according to this interview with vocalist John Garcia. I object to the use of the word “another” because in case these dudes haven’t noticed, they’ve never made a record before, but I’d like to think that the phrase “thinking of”* means “it’s not written in stone yet,” “there’s still time to stop the madness,” and “we said this to gauge the reaction of fans, possibly as represented by an incredibly smart, exceedingly handsome Jewish blogger from New York.”

So, assuming that Garcia was, indeed, trying to get a message to me to see what my thoughts were, I’d like to now respond by saying: I don’t think this is a good idea.

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I tried to land an interview with Slash when his solo album came out, but, alas, it was not to be. (Must be ’cause of all the nice things I’ve said about him over the past couple of years.) But one of the things I wanted to ask him about were how involved, or uninvolved, he was with the lyrics on the album. Each song is sung by a different celebrity singer who would be perfectly capable of writing his or her own lyrics, and the few times Slash has tried to lyrics, the results have been pretty disastrous. (Remember “Be the Ball,” the Slash’s Snakepit song about pinball? Yeah, no reason you would, but did I mention it’s about fucking pinball?) But the lyrics to at least one song in particular – the Ozzy-crooned “Crucify the Dead” – seemed so Slash-specific, I thought he might have had a hand in them.

See, “Crucify the Dead” features such lyrics as “Your ego cursed you till you bled,” “Decisions past leave you alone,” “Someday you look back and you wonder why you let it all slip away,” and a reference to – CAPTAIN OBVIOUS ALERT! – “A loaded gun jammed by a rose.” So, y’know. It seemed pretty clear that the song was aimed at one of Slash’s former collaborators. And I don’t mean Rod Jackson.

Well, Ozzy has answered my question – kind of – in a recent interview with VH1 Radio:

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All this talk about Slash’s upcoming solo album has got me playing “Fantasy Velvet Revolver” in my head once again. Though I still hold out hope that Axl’s idea of having Perry Farrell front the band comes to fruition, I know in my heart that there’s probably a better chance of Scott Weiland rejoining the band, which is admittedly a pretty remote possibility. Remote like Siberia.

So looking through the list of vocalists purportedly gracing the axeman’s new record, I see a number of qualified albeit unlikely candidates to fill Weiland’s still-vacant spot. Yeah, it would be a heavy music lover’s dream to have Ozzy Osbourne sing for the band, considering the craptastic nature of his last few solo albums. Realistically, that would be an unholy managerial nightmare with the potential capacity to yield a catastrophic clusterfuck to put the legal woes of Black Sabbath and Guns N’ Roses to shame. Dave Grohl’s too busy counting his money and playing geriatric rock with his idols to commit to yet another band. These days, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister have the commercial drawing power of, well, Alice Cooper and Lemmy Kilmister, and maybe would shift a few more units than a Velvet Revolver fronted by an unknown (anyone remember Eric Dover or Rod Jackson?) or that dude from Spacehog. Don’t even get me started on Fergie.

One other name on that list, however, actually makes sense…

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