Echo & The Bunnymen frontman Ian McCulloch will strike back out on his own next year with the release of both a new live album and his first solo record in nearly a decade — projects that he’ll support with a series of U.S. dates that so far include a single concert in San Francisco and two nights in Chicago in March.

Much has been made about the loss of album art in the download age, but pop-culture maven Matthew Chojnacki argues that even more endangered are the 7- and 12-inch single sleeves of the 1980s — ephemeral splashes of music history that he’s compiled in the new book ‘Put the Needle on the Record: The 1980s at 45 Revolutions Per Minute.’

A treasure trove of early ’80s concert footage shot at New Order’s legendary club FAC51 The Hacienda soon will make its way online thanks to a deal by Ikon — Factory Records’ video spinoff — to provide its remaining archive of performances to Peter Hook’s site fac51thehacienda.com.

To commemorate Ian McCulloch’s 52nd birthday today, here’s a full, 53-minute Echo & The Bunnymen live performance filmed in Madrid and broadcast on Spanish TV on Sept. 4, 1984.

This week’s new releases include a new single from Morrissey featuring two vintage unreleased B-sides, a Norwegian-released album from Robyn Hitchcock, audiophile vinyl pressings from Echo & The Bunnymen, INXS and The B-52s, and a 3CD reissue from The Icicle Works.

There’s less than a week left before that holiest of holy days for vinyl junkies: Record Store Day 2011, which, this year, will see special releases in the U.S. and the U.K. by R.E.M., The Smiths, New Order and Joy Division, Kate Bush, Sonic Youth and many more.

Echo & The Bunnymen today announced a 10-date North American tour this May that will find the U.K. rockers performing their beloved first two albums — 1980’s ‘Crocodiles’ and 1981’s ‘Heaven Up Here’ — in their entirety.