It’s the first of the month, which means it’s time to unveil the results of Part 3 of our year-long Best of the ’80s feature, a year-by-year poll of Slicing Up Eyeballs’ readers to determine the best albums of each year of the 1980s — and then we’ll run a monster best-of-the-decade poll to crown the overall champs.

R.E.M.’s ‘Green’ will be reissued this month in a deluxe 25th anniversary edition, and the fine folks at Rhino Records have provided us with five copies of the expanded 2CD edition and five copies of the 180-gram vinyl reissue to award to 10 lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs readers.

Tonight’s Slicing Up Eyeballs Music Hour on Strangeways Radio featured brand-new music from Kim Deal, Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and OMD, plus old favorites from Midnight Oil, Heaven 17, Ramones, Mojo Nixon, XTC, Steve Kilbey of The Church, Judybats, The Primitives and more.

Pet Shop Boys today announced full details of their forthcoming album Electric — the second release from Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant in less than a year — and revealed the itinerary for a month-long, 19-date tour that will bring the duo back to North America for the first time in four years this September and October.

Martin Lloyd — half of early ’80s minimal electronic duo Oppenheimer Analysis, famously known for its self-released New Mexico cassette — died this morning due to liver failure, according to a statement released by Lloyd’s record label, Minimal Wave.

To celebrate this month’s American release of Simple Minds’ impressive new best-of set Celebrate: The Greatest Hits+, the band’s label has hooked us up with two copies of the deluxe 3CD, 50-song edition as well as two more copies of the 2CD, 36-song edition to give away to four lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs readers.

She may be busy with her Breeders reunion and Last Splash box set, but Kim Deal’s still got time to churn out new music — the latest being the second installment of her new “Solo Series” 7-inches, a two-song single that’s now available digitally and can be pre-ordered on vinyl.