This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour celebrates the tunes of 1985, with music from The Jesus and Mary Chain, New Order, The Cure, Kate Bush, The Sisters of Mercy, Simple Minds, The Dead Milkmen, Big Audio Dynamite, The Smiths, The Cult, INXS and more.
Belgian EBM/New Beat outfit A Split-Second — a member of the hugely influential Wax Trax! Records stable in the late ’80s — will make a rare live appearance in New York City this December in what’s being billed as the group’s first U.S. appearance in about a quarter-century.
Record Store Day’s Black Friday spinoff is still a good three months away, but we’re getting our first hint of what’s to come: Namely the first-ever U.S. vinyl release of The Replacements’ final album, 1990’s All Shook Down. As Modern Vinyl points out, Org Music has announced a pair of Black Friday pressings.
Bobbie Gillespie will bring Primal Scream back to the West Coast of the U.S. for the first time in four years this October when the band plays four concerts in four California cities — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pomona and Solana Beach — in support its 10th studio album, More Light, which was released earlier this year.
Tears For Fears have reconvened in the studio this summer to record a follow-up to 2004’s Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, and while that’s expected to keep Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith busy for the next few months, they did treat fans today to some new music: a cover of The Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start.”
The three long-out-of-print studio albums released by the original lineup of The Lords of the New Church — the so-called postpunk supergroup that featured frontman Stiv Bators of The Dead Boys and guitarist Brian James of The Damned — between 1982 and 1984 will be reissued on CD this fall.
Make room on those coffee tables, college-rock fans: Both The Replacements and Dinosaur Jr will be the subject of new oversized, photo-laden hardback books due to published this November, with the former compiled by the author of the recent ‘Mats oral history, and the latter authorized by the band itself.
Q&A: Daniel Ash on Love and Rockets’ reunion, his new band — and figuring out how to play “So Alive” 
Q&A: Chris Frantz talks Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club and new book ‘Remain in Love’ 
Q&A: Steve Wynn on The Dream Syndicate’s first new album in nearly 30 years 
Q&A: Bauhaus’ David J on his ‘accidental’ concept album ‘Not Long For This World’ 
Q&A: Peter Murphy on ‘Ninth,’ Bauhaus’ break-up, reuniting Dalis Car 
Q&A: Joey Santiago on Pixies’ ‘Doolittle’ tour, possible ‘Surfer Rosa’ shows, new album talk 
Q&A: Prefab Sprout’s Paddy McAloon on new album, changing the world with music 
Q&A: Peter Hook talks ‘Unknown Pleasures’ tour, re-recording Joy Division 