Simple Minds today unveiled plans for a 16-date European tour early next year dubbed ‘5X5 Live’ that will see the band each night perform five songs off of each of its first five albums. The group also will release a new box set, ‘Simple Minds X5,’ featuring those five albums and previously unreleased bonus material.

This week’s round-up of click-worthy links includes news about Mick Jones playing Clash songs on a U.K. benefit tour, an interview with Simple Minds’ Jim Kerr via the Stuck in the ’80s podcast, interviews with The Sisters of Mercy and The Jesus and Mary Chain, and news that The Specials’ reunion will continue.

With a new best-of set due sometime early next year, Simple Minds on Monday announced plans for a unique summer trek across Great Britain: the seven-date ‘Greatest Hits U.K. Forest Tour,’ which is exactly what it sounds like — a ‘series of dates in spectacular woodlands locations.’

Jim Kerr reports that Simple Minds recently hit the studio to record tracks — including a ‘New Gold Dream’-era castoff — that are earmarked for both ‘an extensive compilation’ due out in early 2011 and what eventually will become the band’s 16th studio album.

Ex-Bauhaus leader Peter Murphy took to his Facebook page today to update fans on a number of projects, including his Dalis Car reunion with Mick Karn (sessions being ‘next week’) and the pending release of his new solo album Ninth (‘shouldn’t be too long now’).

Given that today is Jim Kerr’s 51st birthday, we dedicate this installment of Vintage Video to the Simple Minds frontman. Here’s a performance of one of the band’s most rousing anthems, ‘Waterfront,’ filmed Sept. 15, 1989, at L’Arena in Verona, Italy, during the band’s ‘Street Fighting Years’ tour.