Singer/songwriter Chris Whitley, whose last album, Soft Dangerous Shores, was released in July, passed away from lung cancer on November 20. He was 45. On Whitley's official Web site, his daughter Trixie wrote, "I would like to make it clear that the people he needed and loved the most were with him when he left in peace. I would also like to ask you to understand there is a very fine line between Chris Whitley the legendary musician and Chris Whitley the father, brother and lover." His brother Dan wrote, "I hope you all will mourn my brother's death, but more importantly, celebrate his life as Chris was all about life and living. I started the celebration by cranking up [1998's] Dirt Floor in his honor." Billboard says a new release from Whitley, Reiter In, is due in mid-December on vinyl and will appear on CD sometime next year.

KoRn will bring along eight U.S. soldiers on their upcoming "See The Other Side" contest. The soldiers are currently on leave in Europe, and will join the band and 40 contest winners on a global trek that will end up at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York on November 29. In a statement, the band said, "We already have the private plane arranged and we were thinking, ‘Who else can we bring with us to New York City besides the contest winners?' We just figured, 'Who really needs to get away and spend a few days in New York City?' So we thought it'd be cool if we were joined by some soldiers on the plane and bring them back to U.S. soil for a real taste of home and some U.S. rock and roll right after Thanksgiving. We're absolutely honored to do this." KoRn's See You On The Other Side is out on December 6.

More than 50 members of the "Hot-lanta" music community gathered together for a historic photo shoot last week, including T.I., Ludacris, Bobby Valentino, Ying Yang Twins, T-Mo and Kujo Goodie, TLC's T-Boz, the ladies of Crime Mob, Killer Mike, Jermaine Dupri, Boys N Da Hood and Young Jeezy. The Rappers gathered to recreate the famous 1958 "A Great Day In Harlem" photo by Art Kane, in which he assembled close to 60 members of the Harlem Jazz community to pose together. MTV says the Atlanta gathering will be part of the upcoming special My Block: Atlanta. "It's a positive thing," producer Rico Wade of Organized Noize said to MTV. "It's a blessing that MTV's showing Atlanta love. And it's a blessing that we got the people, we got the talent. It's so many cats that's been holding it down -- T-Boz is out here, who I've known since '93 -- and then you have guys like T.I. and Jeezy out here, a lot of cats that's keeping it going, too." The Atlanta special will premiere on December 11 at 4:30 p.m. on MTV2.

The surviving members of Alice In Chains are confirmed to perform with the band Heart as part of a special show on February 17 in Atlantic City. The show will be filmed for an episode of VH1 Classic's Decades Rock Live and will showcase "Heart and friends," according to Heart's Web site. The concert, which will take place at the Trump Taj Mahal casino, also will include appearances by other as-yet-unannounced acts.

Poetry written by Bob Dylan while he was in college was sold for $78,000 at New York auction house Christie's on Monday. The handwritten poems were penned by Dylan in 1960 when he was just a 19-year-old freshman at the University of Minnesota. An unidentified private European interest bought the collection, titled Poems Without Titles, according to the New York Daily News. Christie's said that its Rock & Pop Memorabilia auction fetched $661,536 in total, including $36,000 for Eric Clapton's 1959 Fender Composite Stratocaster guitar.

It's unclear whether ex-Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha's solo album will ever come out, but he is among the musicians that will appear tonight in Los Angeles at a concert to help the South Central Farmers organization. The event will raise awareness about the group's fight to save a local community farm in the city. Members of Ozomatli and Quetzal also will appear.

Tegan & Sara's upcoming DVD, If It's Not Fun, Don't Do It, will include a full concert recorded last year in Toronto, the band's videos and some comical fan-created content as well. "We had a fan e-mail us and say she was making marionettes of our band. We get tons of e-mails about crafty things, but this girl made puppets of our entire band!," Sara told Billboard. "So we told her, 'If you film the marionettes, we will put it on the DVD.' And she made drums and amps and filmed a video and a 10-minute documentary of the marionettes talking on the bus. It's so weird and bizarre, but it's great." The DVD is due on February 7.