Four. (Maybe four and a half if you count a brief aside about INXS.)

Kurt Cobain and Layne Stayley:

To paraphrase Kurt Cobain paraphrasing Neil Young, “It’s better to do a necrophilic comeback album than to fade away”—or whatever (I’m paraphrasing!). Point is, if Alice in Chains can shake off an old dead lead singer, replace him with a sound-alike whose old band was called Awareness Void of Chaos (no lie), and sell out two nights at the Paramount—then why not Nirvana? The only question is: Who could fill Cobain’s shoes (his figurative shoes, not his posthumously licensed Converse All-Stars)? The Stranger has compiled a handy chart to help make the choice easier.

Ian Curtis:

Friday 2/5

Editors, Princeton, Black Nite Crash
(Showbox at the Market) Editors is rather a cheeky name for this band of British mope-rock recyclers, don't you think? Plagiarizers might be a better one. Copy and the Pasters, maybe? I mean, practically the first thing you learn as any kind of an editor is that if you're going to rip off someone, you better either change things enough that folks won't notice or else put generous quotation marks around the material. Editors the band do neither, limply rehashing Joy Division—and, worse, all the copycats who've followed—without even so much as scare quotes. It's like if that band had been fronted not by Ian Curtis, but by his exhumed corpse. Or Interpol, only composed of four infinitely more anonymous suits. Better tonight to do like Curtis did, and just hang at home instead.

Michael Jackson:

What happened: Michael Jackson's insanely cloying "Earth Song" (yeah, MJ, what about rainbows?) was performed by his disembodied voice along with Celine Dion, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, and Carrie Underwood, all backed by a 3-D video of some unmolested FernGully rainforest being explored by a (hopefully also unmolested) child.

What should have happened: 3-D enhanced re-creation of the 1996 Brit Awards performance of "Earth Song," featuring a hologram Michael Jackson, complete with Jarvis Cocker storming the stage to pantomime passing wind—but in 3-D!

YOU'RE WELCOME!