British synthpop pioneers Heaven 17 failed to appear at last night’s Violent Femmes-headlined ’80s Weekend #9 concert in Los Angeles, but promised fans today that the visa troubles that kept them away won’t derail their first-ever U.S. tour planned for this May. Full details and tour dates here.

With this week marking the 25th anniversary of the release of Depeche Mode’s landmark album Violator, we once again dip into the Slicing Up Eyeballs cassette archives, this time for a recording of the KROQ broadcast during the band’s infamous in-store appearance at a Wherehouse record store on the album’s U.S. release date.

Tuesday marks the 25th anniversary of Depeche Mode’s iconic “Concert For the Masses,” a daylong show at the 100,000-seat Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., that also featured performances by Wire, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Thomas Dolby — and was, of course, filmed and recorded for ‘101.’

The Depeche Mode promo juggernaut continued Friday night with the band performing a tiny club gig at The Troubadour in Los Angeles to a crowd of about 400 KROQ contest winners and VIPs — and then proceeding to stun fans with the first-ever live performance of “But Not Tonight.”

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the release of Depeche Mode’s classic, and still best-selling, ‘Violator,’ and to mark the occasion we thought we’d dredge up this vintage news footage about the band’s infamous near-riot outside a Wherehouse record store in Los Angeles.

We missed this when it was announced, but Spandau Ballet frontman Tony Hadley is in the midst of his first-ever run of solo shows in the U.S., a six-date tour that opened Saturday in New York and hit Chicago and Los Angeles earlier this week. Luckily for us, ex-KROQ/current 1st Wave DJ Richard Blade was on hand with his camera.

For fans who’ll be in the Los Angeles area this weekend, this year’s installment of the Smiths/Morrissey Convention — set for Sunday at The Music Box in Hollywood — features an added attraction: an actual member of The Smiths.

Reunited synthpoppers Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark wrapped up their first U.S. tour in 20 years on Tuesday in Hollywood, and ex-KROQ/current 1st Wave DJ Richard Blade offers up this quick backstage tour at the Music Box.

As a prelude to tonight’s Los Angeles tour stop, synthpop vets Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark played a half-hour in-store set at Amoeba Music in Hollywood yesterday afternoon — and you can watch the whole thing right here, thanks to the indie record chain.

Last weekend’s “4 for The Cure Memorial Weekend” special on Sirius XM’s classic-alternative station 1st Wave featured an unannounced and unexpected bonus: Robert Smith counting […]

Better late than never: Plans to turn over Sirius XM’s 1st Wave to Robert Smith and The Cure for a full week in April apparently […]

Details are still a bit sketchy, but Sirius XM’s 1st Wave channel — for longtime XM listeners, that’s the watered-down replacement for the late, lamented […]