Los Angeles punk icons Social Distortion today announced that their seventh album — ‘Hard Times and Nursery Rhymes’ — will be released Jan. 18 on Epitaph Records and preceded by the release of first single “Machine Gun Blues” via iTunes on Nov. 9.

Saturday night, following a U.K. solo-acoustic gig, The Alarm’s Mike Peters discovered someone had walked off with his lyric book. And he wants it back: ‘Mike has been using this book extensively… to play lesser-known songs requested by fans,’ according to a post on the Alarm’s site.

The week’s new releases include a host of reissues from the likes of The Church (‘Of Skins and Heart,’ ‘The Blurred Crusade’), The Soft Boys (‘A Can of Bees,’ ‘Underwater Moonlight’), Dexys Midnight Runners (‘Searching for the Young Soul Rebels’), Gary Numan (‘Automatic’), The Wedding Present (‘Live 1989’) and Nick Heyward (‘North of a Miracle’).

Notable spins on tonight’s installment of ‘Dark Wave’ include not one but two cuts off The Teardrop Explodes just-reissued 1980 debut ‘Kilimanjaro,’ a track from Bauhaus’ 2008 reunion album ‘Go Away White’ and a lesser-played Yazoo album cut.

With his North American tour now underway, former Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder today offered up a free Recoil multimedia EP — ‘Want: The Architect Mixes’ — that fans can download from Mute Records in exchange for a name and e-mail address.

Bassist Eric Avery, who has now twice quit Jane’s Addiction, has decided to open up for the first time about his experience on last year’s reunion tour by submitting to a series of video interviews conducted by long-running fan site Xiola.org.

Bob Mould’s turning 50 today, so to celebrate, here’s a clip of Sugar — whose debut, ‘Copper Blue,’ is arguably the former Husker Du leader’s finest moment — playing ‘Helpless’ on the BBC in 1993.