SMALL FACES

With the Lakers going for the NBA championship, it would seem an opportune time for Columbia Records to release star guard Kobe Bryant’s debut album. That had been the plan, but the venture has been temporarily taken off the company’s schedule. A spokeswoman for Columbia says it’s merely because Bryant isn’t available to promote it until after the playoffs are done and that a new release date will be announced soon. . . .

There may be complaints about the membership of the Supremes who are joining Diana Ross on their summer tour, but all the parties will be represented on a career-spanning four-CD boxed set due from Motown at the end of August or early September. The 88 songs--including 26 rare or previously unreleased tracks--will run from the group’s lone pre-Motown single (under the name the Primettes in 1960) through late ‘70s songs done after Ross left. . . .

Tool fans taken with A Perfect Circle, the side project featuring Tool singer Maynard James Keenan, may also want to check out the first U.S. release of “Giving Birth to Stone,” the only album by Tool bassist Justin Chancelor’s previous band, Peach, due in October. Chancelor first came to Tool’s attention when Peach opened shows for Tool on a U.K. tour. . . .

Eliza Carthy, daughter of English folk music stalwarts Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson and a rising star in the U.K., has signed with Warner Bros. Records, with “Angels and Cigarettes” due as her U.S. debut in October. Los Angeles veteran Van Dyke Parks is among the musicians on the album, which takes Carthy in a pop-folk direction.