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 INXS, James and Echo & The Bunnymen, R.E.M., The Sisters of Mercy, The Pogues, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Mission of Burma, Johnny Marr, Midnight Oil, Sugar, Morrissey and more.
Long-running Manchester act James has enlisted Echo & The Bunnymen for a 10-date tour of the U.K. this spring in support of the band’s ‘The Gathering Sound’ box set, a career-spanning collection that originally was due out in fall 2011 and then this past spring — and is now finally due for release next month in the U.K.
Had a great opportunity this past week to guest-blog on USA Today’s pop-culture hub Pop Candy while Whitney Matheson is out on maternity leave. Below is a collection of those posts if anyone cares to take a gander, spanning such pop-culture goodness as “Star Wars,” Record Store Day, “Doctor Who” and the demise of INXS.
Seemingly out of the, uh, blue, R.E.M. this week debuted a music video for the song “Blue” off swan song ‘Collapse into Now.’ The clip, posted here, is directed by actor James Franco and features a hodge-podge of visual imagery, including shots of Lindsay Lohan.
For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind, we present this 1990 appearance by Andrew Eldtritch of The Sisters of Mercy, who chats with host Dave Kendall about the band’s then-new third (and still final) album Vision Thing, in segments sandwiched between a showing of the video for that record’s epic single, “More.”
This Christmas marks the 25th anniversary of the boozy holiday classic “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and the late Kirsty MacColl, so, to mark the occasion, the band is reissuing the 1987 single in a variety of digital and vinyl formats with new cover art.
For our latest installment of Vintage Video, we turn, yet again, to the fabulous archive of the German TV show “Rockpalast,” this time for a full, 75-minute concert by the inimitable Siouxsie and the Banshees, filmed on July 19, 1981, in Colgone, Germany, just weeks after the release of the band’s fourth studio album, ‘Juju.’
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 