POP/ROCKRoss Returns: Diana Ross will begin her...

POP/ROCK

Ross Returns: Diana Ross will begin her first nationwide concert tour in more than four years on Wednesday, the former Supreme announced Monday. The tour, which begins at the Harborside Convention Center in Fort Myers, Fla., and includes a Sept. 30 concert date at Universal Amphitheatre, will promote her new Motown Records album, “Take Me Higher,” her first studio album since 1991. Ross recently returned from performing two concerts in Russia at the Kremlin Palace, the first concert performance there by a black female artist, her press representatives said. That followed a two-year tour of Europe, Latin America, Japan and Southeast Asia. Her U.S. tour is slated to continue on to Atlanta, Detroit, Boston, Cincinnati and other cities through the 1995-96 season.

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Interactive Zevon: Musician Warren Zevon and his band, Something Happens, will offer a unique telephone relationship with Century Cable’s Westside subscribers, as well as visitors to the Sunday-Aug. 11 Siggraph ’95 computer convention at the Los Angeles Convention Center, during their Aug. 9 live concert at Sunset Strip’s House of Blues. In a demonstration of New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program’s experiment “YORB: The Electronic Neighborhood,” “audience” members may use their touch-tone telephone buttons to move through a “virtual” 3-D House of Blues venue and interact with Zevon as he performs on stage. The 10 p.m. concert will be available to Beverly Hills and West Hollywood Century Cable recipients on Channel 76; Santa Monica viewers may interact on Channel 42.

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Watts Gangstas Out in Inglewood: The City of Inglewood has banned advertising for rap group Watts Gangstas’ debut album, “The Real,” on 30 bus benches in Inglewood. The ad features the album cover, which shows a scale with drugs on it and the band members turning their backs to the scale. The group’s record company, Hollywood-based Hood Rat Records (distributed by Priority Records, home to Rappers Ice Cube and Paris), said in a statement that the company is “appalled” by the ban. Hood Rat spokeswoman Phyllis Pollack said Monday that the album cover is intended as a positive statement about rappers rejecting the drug world to pursue music. The back cover, she says, features the rappers facing a scale filled with CDs and tapes.

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Just Say No: The punk rock band Thorazine may not get its drug name of choice--but band members aren’t giving up. The band members got a letter from SmithKline Beecham PLC in May saying they had until July to find another name for themselves. Instead, the group got a lawyer and went on tour, riding the publicity over the name dispute. Thorazine now has a booking agent, a spot at today’s Lollapalooza show in Pittsburgh and a two-month national tour beginning in September. SmithKline Beecham has said it doesn’t want the anti-psychotic drug it introduced in 1952 to be associated with the band.

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Wayne’s World: Wayne Newton’s financial woes are far from over. His former business manager says the entertainer defrauded him of $4 million. Mark Moreno, who has known Newton since 1959 and worked as his business manager from 1980 to 1992, claims Newton borrowed money from him, persuaded him to defer his salary and never intended to repay him. The complaint was filed last week in federal bankruptcy court in Reno. If Moreno succeeds in persuading a judge that Newton intentionally defrauded him, the entertainer could be liable for full payment. Under a bankruptcy reorganization plan approved in January, Newton will pay his unsecured creditors as little as a dime on the dollar for the more than $22 million he owes.

MOVIES

Not Just a Kiss: Madonna challenged director Allison Anders (“Mi Vida Loca,” “Gas Food Lodging”) after Anders left a key scene of the Miramax film “Four Rooms” on the cutting room floor. According to Mr. Showbiz, an entertainment magazine on the World Wide Web, Madonna went to studio chiefs to reinstate a kiss between her character and her juvenile delinquent female lover, Kiva (Alicia Witt). Studio execs reinstated the kiss.

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Atomic Documentary: Pete Kuran, special effects supervisor on Oliver Stone’s upcoming film “Nixon,” has completed his three-year documentary film project “Trinity and Beyond,” which chronicles the history of atomic weapons. According to Kuran’s publicists, the film includes newly declassified government film footage. The film is slated to be shown to Los Angeles audiences during the AFI Film Festival in October.

DANCE

Official Ballet Beverage?: L.A. Classical Ballet recently invited Wendy Kaufman, TV’s friendly “Snapple Lady,” to try a pirouette or two at a rehearsal of the company’s “Nutcracker.” Kaufman’s visit, which ended with refreshments including Snapple, “the favorite drink of the Los Angeles Classical Ballet,” was recorded by VH1, which will air Kaufman’s dance debut on a national commercial beginning Aug. 17. The company will perform its “Nutcracker”--sans Kaufman--in December at the Long Beach Terrace Theater and Pasadena Civic Auditorium.