Rumors of Britney Spears concert sweep Southern California

LOS ANGELES - Britney Spears fans snapped up tickets on Tuesday to three Southern California concerts by an obscure band known as The M+Ms on rumors that the oft-troubled pop diva would stage a surprise performance at one of the shows.

Britney Spears performs during her concert, 'The Onyx Hotel Tour' in Zurich,

in this May 20, 2004 file photo. [Reuters]

A publicist for Spears was not immediately available for comment.

A spokesman for Live Nation, the concert promotion company that recently bought the House of Blues chain where the M+Ms were to appear, would not comment on the rumors of a Spears show. The M+Ms shows were to take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Spears' singing career has remained dormant since her marriage to Kevin Federline in 2004, after she shot to fame as a teenager in 1999 and selling an estimated 70 million records.

Since her split last year from Federline, Spears made headlines for increasingly erratic behavior and was photographed in December wearing no underwear under her miniskirts.

On February 21, she checked into a Malibu rehabilitation center after shaving her head. She reached a divorce settlement with Federline in late March, a week after emerging from the rehabilitation center where she spent a month in treatment for undisclosed problems.

Both celebrity Web site TMZ.com and MSNBC cited the Spears concert rumor. MSNBC reported that the "current buzz" was that Spears will make a surprise appearance at one or more House of Blues clubs this week after canceling a show she had planned for Wednesday at a Los Angeles club called Forty Deuce.

If she does make an appearance, it is believed that this would be Spears' first public music performance since announcing shortly after her marriage to Federline that she was going to take some time off "to enjoy life" and "just chill." The star did make a guest star appearance on "Will & Grace" in February 2006.

One fan said she had bought a ticket for the Thursday show at House of Blues in West Hollywood just in case. She added she had never heard of the M+Ms.

Nielsen Soundscan, which tracks music sales, said no artists named M+Ms had a record registered with it.