Soul singer Amy Winehouse’s court date in Norway on a drug possession charge has been postponed until further notice, the court in the western town of Bergen said Thursday.

“One of the people involved in the case, Blake Fielder-Civil, Amy Winehouse’s husband, is currently in jail in Britain and can’t make the trip,” Anne Vedvik of the Bergen courthouse told AFP.

Winehouse had been due to appear on Friday.

“The hearing has therefore been postponed to an undetermined date,” Vedvik said.

The 24-year-old singer, who recently won five Grammy awards, was arrested with her husband and her hairdresser in Bergen last October after they were caught with seven grammes of marijuana in their possession at a local hotel.

Winehouse was released after paying a 500-euro (380 pounds) fine, which she has since contested.

Agreeing to pay a fine in Norway is the equivalent of admitting to the charges, which could make it difficult to obtain visas in the future — as was believed to be the case for Winehouse recently when she was initially refused travel to the United States to attend the Grammy awards show.

The young diva has fought alcohol and drugs, self-harm and eating disorders in the public eye, and was hospitalized last year after an overdose.

Her husband has been on remand in prison since November awaiting trial on assault and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice charges.

He allegedly tried to bribe a barman not to testify against him in an assault case.

Now that the Spice Girls reunion tour has ended, Melanie “Sporty Spice” Chisholm is getting ready to release her fourth solo album in April.

“This Time,” on her own Red Girl imprint, will come out in the U.K. on April 2 and in Canada six days later. It marks the follow-up to 2005’s “Beautiful Intentions,” her final release for Virgin Records.

Chisholm — who also goes by the name Mel C — has been on the road since December 2 with the Spice Girls. The 47-date trek ended in Toronto on Tuesday. Along the way, Chisholm performed solo acoustic shows in New York and Los Angeles. She plans to play some Canadian dates in May.

Before all the publicity from the reunion, little had been heard from Chisholm in North America following the success of her solo debut, 1999’s “Northern Star,” which sold close to 3 million units worldwide. Her next two albums, “Reason” (2003) and “Beautiful Intentions,” were not released in the States.

Chisholm describes “Beautiful Intentions” as a rockier release, and says she wanted to do something different on “This Time,” which she calls “mature pop.” The first single, the upbeat pop track “Carolyna,” tells the story of a young runaway, but it’s the only issue-oriented lyric on the album.

“I think most of the songs on this album are more about relationships and personal feelings and fears and experiences,” she says, including being a child of divorce (”Your Mistake”) and love conquering all (”The Moment You Believe”).

Buddy Miles, the rock and R&B drummer, singer and songwriter whose eclectic career included stints playing with Jimi Hendrix and as the lead voice of the California Raisins, the animated clay figures that became an advertising phenomenon in the late 1980s, has died. He was 60.

Miles died Tuesday of congestive heart failure at his home in Austin, Texas, according to an announcement on his website.

A massive man with a distinctive, sculpted afro, Miles hit his peak of popularity when he joined Hendrix and bassist Billy Cox to form Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys, which the New Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll called “the first black rock group.” Miles had played with Hendrix on the guitarist’s influential “Electric Ladyland” album released in 1968.

The Band of Gypsys made just one album, a live set recorded on New Year’s Eve in 1969-70, and two of Miles’ songs, “Them Changes” and “We Got to Live Together,” were included on the album. He gave the recording a memorable drum riff on one of Hendrix’s signature songs, “Machine Gun.”

But, according to Miles, the Band of Gypsys association was brief and stormy. He told The Times in 1988 that Hendrix’s management, not the guitarist himself, fired him within a month of the concert. He thought Hendrix’s managers were leery of continuing with an all-black group.

“It had to be a racial thing,” Miles told The Times. “I think it had to scare them because of the political aspect at the time.”

Miles was born Sept. 5, 1947, in Omaha. He developed an interest in drums at an early age and by 12 was playing in his father’s jazz combo. Within a couple of years he was in demand as a session player and a sideman, working with top-name R&B groups, including Ruby and the Romantics and the Delfonics. According to the Rolling Stone encyclopedia, he played on the session that produced the Jaynetts’ 1963 hit “Sally Go Round the Roses.”

While playing with Wilson Pickett in 1967, he was approached by guitarist Mike Bloomfield, who asked him to join the blues, rock and soul group Electric Flag. Miles played on three of the band’s albums before forming his own group, the Buddy Miles Express, in 1968. Next came his association with Hendrix.

Over the years, Miles recorded two albums with Carlos Santana, one of which went platinum, and worked with other leading music figures, including Muddy Waters and John McLaughlin. He re-formed the Buddy Miles Express in the mid-1970s and had a hit with his song “Them Changes.”

By the late 1970s, however, Miles’ career came to a halt over convictions for grand theft and auto theft. He served time in the California Institution for Men at Chino and at San Quentin State Prison. He was incarcerated until 1985 and formed bands at both prisons.

After he was released, he sang with Santana’s group and got the raisin gig while working on an album with the guitarist. The popular television commercials for the California Raisin Advisory Board featured a quartet of singing and dancing Claymation figures with Miles, as Buddy Raisin, doing the lead singing covering Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

The commercial’s popularity spawned a million-selling offshoot album of remakes of rock and soul oldies, “The California Raisins Sing the Hit Songs.”

On Janet Jackson’s make-or-break new album, the beats attack with militaristic zeal, the vocals blur into a mind-numbing whir, and an army of synthesizers whiz, crack and blurt with mad abandon.

It’s a traffic jam of sound, a heat wave of attempted hooks that suggests someone here may be just a tad desperate.

Someone should be. Jackson’s last album, the lulling “20 Y.O.” released just 18 months ago, bombed. Its predecessor, 2004’s “Damita Jo,” did only slightly better. And they both deserved their financially draining fate. The truth is, Jackson hasn’t hit one out of the park since 1997’s “The Velvet Rope,” a stunner capping an amazing four-album win streak that stretched all the way back to her terrific breakthrough, “Control,” in 1986.

But that was then. Clearly, Jackson now had to do something. Instead, she chose to do everything.

“Discipline” shows none. It’s an unrestrained free-for-all, chasing “edginess” and “cool” with disquieting anxiety. While Jackson’s last few albums played down the tempo, “Discipline” aims greedily at the clubs. It’s a hyper-rhythmic poundfest writ large. Unfortunately, the beats pummel the melodies and overwhelm any sense of momentum. It’s all impact, with no regard for the groove.

The album - largely overseen by Rodney Jerkins and Janet’s main squeeze, Jermaine Dupri - wants eagerly to be seen as “futuristic.” So its trademark “interludes” (eight of ‘em here) use the motif of a talking computer. Likewise, the songs synth up everything, including Janet’s voice. While it would hardly be wise to go the “Unplugged” route with a singer like this, here Jackson’s voice sounds more treated than a sewage plant. Her vocals seem as worked over, and airbrushed, as Joan Collins‘ face in extreme closeup.

Throwing so much stuff at the wall, however, means some things have to stick. A few cuts have club potential - aided by the fact they sound suspiciously like songs that have scored there already. “Rock With U” has a great riff - which was even greater when it first appeared in Madonna’s “Into the Groove.” And “So Much Betta” sounds almost betta than it did last year when Kanye West and Daft Punk created nearly the same effect in “Stronger.”

“Discipline” may show real effort, but it does to the point of herniated strain. For an album that pines so hungrily to be seen as hot and sexy, the trying-too-hard air proves an ultimate turnoff.

After not seeing her boys for almost two months, Britney Spears has scored her second face-to-face visit in the past three days.

The embattled pop star received another in-home visit from one-year-old Jayden James and two-year-old Sean Preston on Monday, E! News has confirmed.

The kids were again shuttled to Spears’ home in Kevin Federline’s gray Dodge Viper truck, driven by Federline’s longtime security guard, at around 9 a.m. They departed shortly after noon.  News of the Monday sojourn was first reported by jfxonline.com.

While few details of Monday’s mommy-and-me session were available, during Saturday’s visit, Spears, 26, was not permitted to be alone with her sons.

Among those present at the initial visit were her father, Jamie Spears, a court-appointed monitor, a Federline bodyguard and an attorney from the Luce Forward law firm, which is handling Britney’s conservatorship for Jamie Spears. It was believed all parties were on hand again for Monday’s visit.

The boys have resided primarily with Federline, since October, when Spears was stripped of custody. The singer lost visitation on Jan. 3, after a custody standoff that ended with her being hospitalized and placed on a psych hold.

The recent visits were the result of negotiations between lawyers for Kevin Federline and Luce Forward last week, with Jamie Spears also sharing a large portion of the credit.

“None of this would have happened if Jamie Spears had not been involved. That’s for sure,” Federline attorney Mark Vincent Kaplan told E! News Friday. “He gets a lot of credit for helping make this happen. But we’ve worked very hard with the conservator lawyers, as well, to make this all work.”

Meanwhile, lawyers for the conservatorship filed new court documents Monday, urging a judge to end a civil rights challenge to Jamie Spears’ control over his daughter’s financial affairs.

Attorney Jon Eardley, who claims he was hired by the troubled singer earlier this month, has argued in court documents that Britney’s constitutional rights are being violated and is seeking to have her conservatorship case moved from Los Angeles Superior Court to federal court.

In their latest motion, the conservatorship attorneys argue that Eardley has both failed to prove that he legitimately represents Britney, and to meet the court’s filing deadline.

They have asked that the case be immediately returned to Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Reva Goetz and that Eardley be forced to reimburse the approximately $43,000 in attorney fees racked up as a result of his actions.