Archive for May, 2009

Online radio outlet WOXY’s 20th annual Modern Rock 500 wrapped up this week by crowning a new champion: the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?,” which claimed the top spot in the station’s week-long countdown.
The Surfer Rosa classic moved up from No. 6 on the 2008 list to beat out The Smiths’ “How Soon is Now?” [...]

This week saw the release of Simple Minds’ first new record in four years and 16th studio album overall — a collection that could have marked the first time the band’s original lineup had worked together in 27 years.
But it apparently wasn’t meant to be.
The nine-track Graffiti Soul — out now in Europe, with a [...]

The  Pixies have released a second short film previewing their upcoming — and pricey — box set Minotaur, this time delving into the creative process behind the set’s all-new Vaughan Oliver artwork.
The new collection, which can be pre-ordered in $150 and $450 editions starting June 15 (although it won’t ship until mid-September), will feature repackaged — [...]

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 down his Top 30 songs from the ’80s.
The two-hour show — featuring Smith intro’ing songs by everyone from My Bloody Valentine to Chaka Khan — is being repeated at 4 [...]

The increasingly trouble-prone Depeche Mode and Morrissey tours continue to shed dates left and right, although the former act now promises to resume its trek June 8 after the band today revealed that singer Dave Gahan underwent surgery to remove a gall-bladder tumor.
Meanwhile, Morrissey — apparently under doctor’s orders not to sing — continues to [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: Siouxsie and the Banshees
RELEASE: At the BBC
BACKSTORY: This 3CD/1DVD box set collects 84 tracks — Peel sessions, live concert recordings, TV performances — recorded between 1977 and 1991. It also features a 30-page hard-bound book with an introduction by Siouxsie [...]

Beloved Web-based radio outlet WOXY this morning kicked off the 20th installment of its Modern Rock 500, a countdown of the last 25 years’ worth of indie and alternative music.
This year, the countdown is being aired on WOXY Vintage in four 125-song installments through Friday. “We wanted to run this year’s 500 at a time [...]

Buying a ticket to see Morrissey on his current  Tour of Refusal is becoming an increasingly risky endeavor, as the illness-plagued singer continues to cancel shows even as he tries to reschedule others.
This morning, the City Hall venue in Salisbury, England, announced Monday night’s Moz show “has been postponed,” an announcement that comes just days [...]

With a new album in the works, former Bauhaus frontman and current Chase bank pitchman Peter Murphy has lined up a U.S. club tour that will keep him on the road much of June and July.
After playing the Wave Gotik Treffen Festival in Germany on May 31, Murphy will open his stateside tour June 2 [...]

Keeping in tune with the latest in concert fads, longtime UK rockers The Cult will perform their classic 1985 breakthrough Love in its entirety on a just-announced late-summer/fall trek aptly dubbed the Love Live World Tour.
The band —Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy, plus assorted sidemen —promises a main set featuring the full album, including fan [...]

R.E.M. has set a June 23 release date for its Reckoning: Deluxe Edition, previously reported on here. According to the band’s press release, the second disc will include a concert recorded July 7, 1984, at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, featuring live performances of eight of Reckoning’s 10 songs, plus “Gardening at Night” from the Chronic Town [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: Flipper
RELEASE: Love and Fight
BACKSTORY: After reunited a few years ago, seminal San Francisco punk act Flipper returns this week with not one but two new releases: the band’s first studio album since 1993, Love; and Fight, a live album recorded in [...]