The Boss helps the marching band

Asbury Park, N.J. — Bruce Springsteen is providing some season’s greetings for a high school marching band.

Springsteen and other musicians performing three benefit shows this weekend at Convention Hall will donate some of the proceeds to the Asbury Park High School band. The money will help buy uniforms and instruments for the band, which was resurrected two years ago with seven members and now features 25 musicians.

The band also has been told that Springsteen, who earned his reputation playing clubs in Asbury Park, will donate 30 instruments. That has band members excited because the instruments they now play are in constant need of repair, the Asbury Park Press of Neptune reported Friday.

King remains hospitalized

Bangor, Maine — The pneumonia that kept Stephen King hospitalized for 10 days has “pretty much resolved itself,” his spokesman said.

But King’s Bangor lawyer, Warren Silver, said Wednesday that “since he’s in the hospital, the doctors want to work on his general health and leg issues to see if they can alleviate some of the pain that he’s had.”

King, 56, continues to experience pain in his right leg after being hit by a van in 1999 as he walked along the shoulder of a road in North Lovell.

He’s being treated at Eastern Maine Medical Center.

Finally, Rimes feels in control

New York — At 21, LeAnn Rimes has already been in the music business for nine years — and only now does she feel in control of her career.

“I’m just now, after suing people and all that stuff, I’m just now coming into my own and really taking control of my life. I’m really finally understanding it,” she told AP Radio recently.

Rimes sued her father in 2000, alleging that he and former co-manager, Lyle Walker, had bilked her company out of more than $7 million over five years. Wilbur Rimes filed a countersuit against LeAnn Rimes Entertainment Inc. They settled the dispute in 2002.

The Grammy-winning singer and Curb Records ended a yearlong legal standoff in 2001.

Rimes had claimed she didn’t understand the original contract she signed when she was 12. In 1996, at 13, she scored the hit “Blue” and became a star.

Rimes, who is married to Dean Sheremet, said she hoped to have children, but wouldn’t encourage them to have music careers as early as she did. But she will help develop their talents if that’s what they want to do.