Promotional clip teasing the third episode of Denis Leary’s new “Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll” sitcom, airing July 30, 2015, on the FX television network, in which one of the charactes makes a reference to a certain music blog that is no longer with us.

On Feb. 20, 2009, Slicing Up Eyeballs launched onto the web not with a bang but a whimper, debuting with a simple 91-word declaration and a headline cribbed from an R.E.M. song that Google Analytics now tells me was not viewed by a single person that day.

Well, that’s embarrassing: We missed our own birthday. Exactly six years ago yesterday, Slicing Up Eyeballs launched with nothing more than a simple 91-word post announcing plans to provide “the latest info on new albums, reissues, upcoming reunions and tour dates.”

In what’s become a procrastination-abetted tradition, we’ll take this first day of 2015 to cast one last glance back at 2014, counting down what people have been reading on Slicing Up Eyeballs over the past 12 months. This time around, it’s news about The Cure, Annik Honoré, New Order, The Replacements and more.

We interrupt our (somewhat sporadic of late) regular programming for a bit of housekeeping: Slicing Up Eyeballs is taking a bit of vacation, and likely will be incommunicado for the next two weeks. Apologies in advance for the lack of news, but we’ll be back and ready to resume our regular news coverage and features by Oct. 20.

Put a some Eyeballs in your phone: Yes, Slicing Up Eyeballs is available in app form, for both iPhones and iPads, and Android devices. It’s the easiest way to stay on top of the latest album and reissue news, tour dates, streaming music and video content both new and delightfully vintage.

Today we debut our long-overdue web store — aka the Slicing Up Eyeballs Merch Table — and, to inaugurate it, we’re introducing a selection of three different buttons, one bearing the Eyeballs logo plus two featuring era-appropriate illustrations of cassette tapes.