Korn’s Davis counts platelets and blessings

THE bruises began appearing on Jonathan Davis’ body after a show in Hamburg, Germany, this month -- tiny purple blotches dotting the underside of his legs. Mysteriously, the dreadlocked frontman for nu-metal band Korn couldn’t recall falling or bumping into anything significantly enough to bring the injuries on. Then the bruising spread to his arms. When the group reached England on its European tour, he called the doctor.

A blood test revealed that Davis has been suffering from immune thrombocytopenic purpura, a disorder that prevents blood from clotting properly because of a low platelet count. The singer was immediately hospitalized, and Korn canceled the rest of the tour.

“If I continued headbanging on stage, I could have had a brain hemorrhage and dropped dead on the spot,” Davis recently wrote on the band website (www.korn.com).

Recuperating at home in Los Angeles last week, however, his platelet count was back to normal thanks to a regimen of rest and the prescription steroid prednisone. But the singer still sounds a bit thunderstruck by his recent ordeal.

“They don’t know what brought it on,” he says flatly. “It could have been ... a rare virus. There are all these theories. The concern was I was going to croak.”

Davis says his only consolation was being able to communicate directly with fans through Korn’s website, heading off the kind of rumors that have dogged rock stars dating to the “Paul is dead”-era Beatles.

“I let ‘em know exactly what was happening, and it felt so good to let people in our audience know the truth,” Davis says. “I got thousands of responses. I had people praying for me and wishing me good. I’m doing so much better now.”

That is, well enough to get back on the road.

Korn will resume headlining its Family Values Tour in Virginia Beach, Va., on July 27. (It reaches the Hyundai Pavilion at Glen Helen on Aug. 19.) As long as his platelet count remains high, Davis says, he has nothing to worry about.

So what does the rocker take away from his near-death experience?

“Health is the greatest richness in the world,” he says. “Money, fame -- you don’t got nothing unless you’ve got your health.”

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The Bronx pumps up the volume

PERHAPS out of some sense that, in an era when power pop is all over KIIS-FM and Green Day is winning Grammys, punk rock may be losing some of its in-your-face intensity, Los Angeles hard-core quartet the Bronx has found a novel way to give its music new visceral oomph.

This month, the group began offering fans Bronx-O-Vision -- 3-D glasses -- at select dates along its West Coast tour.

A message on the group’s website (www.thebronxxx.com) explains: “as purveyors of sonic and visual dissidence, we’ve decided to present our shows in 3D. we’ve had our scientists working overtime to ensure that optimum visual balance and musical gratitude are achieved simultaneously! actually, we’re just trying to give you a headache.”

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Happy birthday to you, mash-up

CALL it “bastard pop,” call it “bootleg” music, just don’t call mash-ups the new, new thing in town.

The songs -- which blend at least two preexisting songs to create seamless and often surprisingly original cross-pollinations -- have become a kind of generational touchstone. To wit: The all-mash-up club night, Bootie L.A. (at the Echo in Echo Park), celebrates its first anniversary July 1.

A spinoff of San Francisco’s 3-year-old namesake event -- one of the first in the country to devote itself entirely to the musical form that gene-splices the songs of, say, Pink Floyd with Nancy Sinatra, Dr. Dre with Jet or the Strokes with Christina Aguilera -- the club has apparently found its niche in the West Coast’s pop cultural psyche.

“We’ve gone through the trend cycle,” says Bootie S.F. co-founder Adrian Roberts. “First, it was the hot, new thing. Then it was tired and over. Now it’s like, ‘This mash-up thing, I guess it’s not going away.’ Because it isn’t a single genre so much as it is a concept. It draws upon the last 50 years of pop music as its palette. It’s cultural commentary you can dance to.”

DJ Paul V., whose show, the Smash Mix, is broadcast five days a week on Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM) and whose “mash-up of the day” for the station helped popularize the trend in the Southland, has presided over Bootie L.A. since its inception.

His experience shows that the more disparate the mash-up is -- Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” with Harry Nilsson’s “Everybody’s Talkin’ ” (from the movie “Midnight Cowboy”) for example -- the more ecstatic the audience reaction will be.

“Mash-up culture is the closest thing we have to punk rock right now,” he says. “It’s completely DIY, and everybody can do it. Although a lot of people play them as a novelty -- ‘Look at this goofy thing’ rather than ‘Here’s a serious piece of great music that a lot of work went into’ -- it’s a valid art form pushed to the limit.”

Some expected highlights from Bootie L.A.’s anniversary party: an audio/video mash-up by Toronto artist Smash Hitly, a live performance by Smash Up Derby (Roberts’ side project -- “the world’s first and only mash-up rock group”). And at midnight, San Francisco drag performer Princess Kennedy will mash up the music of Madonna with Kelis’ hit single “Milkshake” while blending real milkshakes for the crowd.

For more info see www.bootiela.com.