Revenge of Die Fledermaus: madman Ozzy Osbourne, formerly of Black Sabbath, made headlines last year when he chomped the head off a dead dove in front of a group of record executives. This time he's really done it.

At a Jan. 20 concert at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa, 17-year-old Mark Neal tossed a bat at the performer. Osbourne, never at a loss for a come-back, bit the bat's head off and threw its corpse back into the audience. Bats are prime carriers of rabies, and Osbourne had to be hospitalized immediately for a series of painful rabies injections.

The bat, happily, was already dead. According to the city editor of the Des Moines Dispatch, Neal found the frozen bat lying outside his home, and simply couldn't resist the idea of taking it to the concert with him.

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Kinky Friedman, the self-styled "Texas Jewboy" will co-write a Broadway musical on the life of the Kingfish, former Alabama governor Huey Long. An album of Friedman's performance at New York's Lone Star Cafe will also be advertised shortly - exclusively through television.

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David Bowie, who has probably seen his last touring days, and has perhaps left his recording days behind, too, recently finished the soundtrack of Cat People with Giorgio Moroder. He will star in a new MGM film with Catherine Deneuve, called The Hunger, about a female vampire.

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English notes: Paul McCartney is suspected of having bought most of the Beatle items on sale at the recent Sotheby's rock and roll auction last month; there are serious rumours that he may be thinking of starting a Beatles museum... Adam Ant has begun marketing a new line of cosmetics in England for the Folkway Marketing Co.

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Underground Goes Public: the musical score for the teleplay Sense of Humor: Who Am I This Time? based on a short story by Kurt Vonnegut, which appeared on PBS last Tuesday, was written by former Velvet Underground songwriter John Cale.

Cale, who was dropped by his record label A&M last year, has also been busy writing songs with John Honeyman-Scott of The Pretenders (who are in Toronto next Monday.) Cale is also writing music for Sam Shepard's new work, Sad Lament of Pecos Bill on the Eve of Killing His Wife.

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Musician Magazine reports that the latest fun in New York nighttime activity is midnight bowling. A downtown Manhattan alley has been a gathering spot for such luminaries as Billy Idol (formerly of Generation), Siouxsie and the Banshees and several members of Talking Heads.

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Harry Nilsson, a close friend of the late John Lennon, is chairman of the End Handgun Violence movement. He organized a recent concert in Philadelphia, called Hooters Against Shooters, which included performers Stephen Bishop, Martin Mull and Robert Fripp and Andrew Belew of King Crimson. Phone calls were broadcast over the PA system from Ringo Starr, Joni Mitchell, Lee Oskar, Tommy Smothers, Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty and Graham Chapman. Another concert is planned for Washington in May.

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Up and coming: Talking Heads new double live album, entitled The Name of This Band Is The Talking Heads, will be out in mid-March, with the new studio album probably following as soon as June... Johnny Lydon's post-Sex Pistols band, Public Image Ltd. have fallen apart in New York City... Spaceman Gary Numan held a press conference in Cannes at last week's music trade fair, MIDEM, to announce he's un-retiring again. Numan, who is all of 23, goes through these changes of mind about as often as the equinox... Gary Courmier and Gary Topp are beginning to book new acts into Toronto's Cactus Restaurant. Openers for Sun. Feb. 14 are Kinetic Ideals (who have a new EP out), Fifth Column and DNA, founders of New York's so-called no wave music. On Feb. 21, saxophone great Ornette Coleman comes to Cactus for two concerts. Tickets are through BASS.