Having already canceled three concerts this week over Nick Rhodes’ health, Duran Duran tonight scrapped the final three North American dates of its two-year world tour in support of All You Need Is Now — a trek that already suffered significant disruption last year when frontman Simon Le Bon lost his voice and was unable to perform.

This week’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour featured new and previously unreleased music from Ian McCulloch, World Party, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, and Mark Eitzel, plus old favorites from Game Theory, Monaco, The Sisters of Mercy, John Foxx, Hilary, Tones on Tail, The B-52s and more.

The all-too-brief early ’80s career of synthpop duo Yazoo — comprised of singer Alison Moyet and former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke — will be anthologized next month on a new 2CD set called ‘The Collection,’ which assembles singles, cuts from the band’s two albums and both vintage and recent remixes.

Former Orange Juice frontman Edwyn Collins will follow up 2010’s acclaimed ‘Losing Sleep’ with his eighth solo album, ‘Understated,’ in January, the singer recently revealed — and he’ll be the subject of an upcoming documentary called “In Your Voice, In Your Heart” that chronicles his recovery from a debilitating 2005 stroke.

A new 700-page biography of The Smiths by music writer and biographer Tony Fletcher will be published in the U.K. next week — but not in the U.S. until December — and promises, through “extensive research, dozens of interviews and unprecedented access,” to tell “the complete story” of the iconic Manchester band.

Bob Mould’s first new album in three years — the 10-track ‘Silver Age’ — arrives next week, and the former Hüsker Dü frontman today debuted the record via a full-album stream at RollingStone.com. He tells the rock mag it’s no coincidence the album sounds a bit like Sugar’s just-reissued 1992 debut ‘Copper Blue.’

With plans for a September tour of the U.S. fleshing out, World Party this morning released a new music video for “Everybody’s Falling in Love,” one of the 70 previously unreleased tracks on the ‘Arkeology’ box set. The video follows a sad black-and-white guy stuck in a color world where everybody’s making out all the time.

Long-running darkwave favorites Clan of Xymox — still centered around founding member Ronny Moorings — this fall will pay tribute to some of its own favorite bands with a collection called ‘Kindred Spirits’ that will feature covers of tracks by The Cure, Depeche Mode, Siouxsie and the Banshees and both Joy Division and New Order.

This week’s new releases include ‘The Seer,’ a new 2CD set from Swans, plus a soundtrack to the film ‘Lawless’ by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, a covers album from Juliana Hatfield, CD reissues of the This Mortal Coil catalog, a collection of synthpop remixes and the first new album in 22 years from Manchester’s The Distractions.

The playlist from tonight’s edition of “Dark Wave” — the Sunday night “darker side of alternative” show on Sirius XM’s 1st Wave — featured The Chameleons, Joy Division, Yazoo, Japan, Joe Strummer, Chris Connelly, Iggy Pop, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Roxy Music, Kate Bush much more.

Morrissey today announced that he will wrap up one of his busier touring years in recent memory with six concerts in Australia and New Zealand this December immediately following the close of his 35-date U.S. tour — which also will find Moz appearing on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and “The Colbert Report.”

Welcome to the Week in Rock, where we round up all of the headlines posted on this site over the past week. This edition includes items about Joe Strummer, R.E.M., “120 Minutes,” The Cure, Andy Partridge, Bob Mould, PiL, Mark Eitzel, Dinosaur Jr, Psychedelic Furs, Peter Gabriel and more.

Today we celebrate one of the more significant milestones in the college-rock era, the 30th anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s debut EP, ‘Chronic Town.’ the five-song record that launched the band and, in many ways, the ’80s indie scene. To commemorate this classic record we present audio of a 1982 concert.