The Cure’s set at Spain’s Bilbao BBK Live got off to a rocky start tonight — but was all the more memorable for it. As the band’s crew worked on keyboard problems, Robert Smith took the stage by himself and treated the crowd to a rare solo-acoustic set , performing “Three Imaginary Boys,” “Fire in Cairo” and “Boys Don’t Cry.”

]A photo posted on Depeche Mode’s Facebook page this morning has fans stirring: It’s a shot of former member Alan Wilder from 1990’s “Policy of Truth” video under a lone couplet from the song (“Never again/Is what you swore”). Is DM hinting that Wilder is back in the fold? Or just teasing fans a bit?

John Lydon will bring his reconstituted Public Image Ltd. back to the U.S. for its first North American performance in two years this November when the band co-headlines the FunFunFun Fest in Austin, Texas — with more North American dates promised to be announced “as soon as we can.”

Steve Wynn this week unveiled four concerts in Spain for his previously announced reunion of The Dream Syndicate this September, a short run of dates this fall meant to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the seminal Paisley Underground act’s debut album ‘The Days of Wine and Roses.’

Peter Gabriel this month will release a newly restored, HD version of his Grammy-winning 1994 concert film “Secret World Live” — filmed over two nights in November 1993 in Modena, Italy, during the tour for 1993′s Us — on both DVD and Blu-ray, and he’s offered up another preview of the set: “Shaking the Tree.”

ZTT Records next month will issue a new 2CD Frankie Goes to Hollywood compilation entitled Sexmix: Archive Tapes and Studio Adventures, Volume 1 that, as its name implies, pulls together “hundreds of miles of reels of tape, remixes, editions, edits and experiments” generated during the group’s “imperial reign” from 1983 to 1987.

Former Yazoo singer Alison Moyet will perform three intimate concerts in London this fall billed as ‘Alison Moyet: Rare & Obscured’ at which she promises to perform ‘a set of songs less-visited, focusing largely on her catalogue from the last decade — hits not expected to attend and curved balls may apply.’

As promised, Matador Records this week delivered a second track from Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore’s new band Chelsea Light Moving in the form of mid-tempo rocker ‘Groovy & Linda,’ which you can stream and/or download here. The band is expected to release an album on Matador in the future.

Tonight’s installment of the Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured brand-new music from Pet Shop Boys, Ride’s Mark Gardener and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins, and Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, plus old favorites from Toy Dolls, The Smithereens, Transvision Vamp, Gene Loves Jezebel and more.

Depeche Mode fans long have clamored for an official video release of the band’s mammoth 1990 World Violation Tour, although popular lore holds the group did not professionally film any of its concerts in support of breakout album ‘Violator.’ With taht in mind, we revisit the era with three complete concerts from the 1990 tour.

Echo & The Bunnymen guitarist Will Sergeant has enlisted former bandmate and current Wild Swans bassist Les Pattinson to take part in a new instrumental band called Poltergeist that he says falls ‘somewhere between krautrock and prog rock,’ and which already is rehearing in Liverpool in advance of recording a four-track EP.

With ‘Beautiful Friction,’ their first album in nearly a decade, out next week, New Wave rockers The Fixx have expanded their U.S. summer tour, with dates set next week in California, a smattering of free shows around the country in August and a pair of late-summer fair dates with the J. Geils Band.

Dennis Flemion, who co-founded the cult indie-pop act The Frogs with his younger brother Jimmy in Milwaukee in 1980 and rose to minor alt-rock celebrity in the ’90s, is missing and presumed dead in a Wisconsin lake, Matador Records co-owner Gerard Cosloy announced on the label’s blog tonight.