Reissue imprint Vinyl 180 is prepping an ultra-limited four-record box set that collects remastered editions of the first three albums by Gary Numan and Tubeway Army — as well as an LP of demos and rarities called ‘The Plan’ — on high-quality, 180-gram vinyl.

The first taste of Duran Duran’s long-in-the-works 13th studio album hit the Internet this evening after Mark Ronson — who’s producing the disc — played 30 seconds of ‘Blame the Machine’ on his East Village Radio show.

Record producer and engineer Stephen Street — who worked on three albums by The Smiths before producing and co-writing Morrissey’s solo debut ‘Viva Hate’ — will be the guest on this week’s episode of the ‘Sound Opinions’ radio program, billed as ‘the world’s only rock ‘n’ roll talk show.’

To commemorate Depeche Mode songwriter Martin L. Gore’s birthday — he turns 49 today — we present this rare solo performance of one of his best-loved songs, ‘Enjoy the Silence.’

Blaming the ever-popular ‘visa issues,’ reunited 2 Tone ska kings The Specials today pulled the plug on their free concert next month in New York City’s Central Park — but announced plans to ‘return to the U.S. in early 2011 for additional dates.’

Fans at Crowded House’s third-of-three shows at New York’s Bowery Ballroom last night got a rare treat: David Byrne joined the band during its encore to perform the Talking Heads classics ‘Once in a Lifetime’ and ‘Road to Nowhere.’

Twenty-two years ago, Robert Smith sat for a half-hour BBC2 documentary about The Cure that aired Aug. 8, 1988, as one of 10 installments of the series ‘That Was Then… This Is Now.’

With their North American tour now underway, Crowded House stopped by ‘Late Night With Jimmy Fallon’ last night to plug their new album ‘Intriguer’ with a performance of that disc’s ‘Twice If You’re Lucky.’

Former XTC figurehead Andy Partridge this week releases ‘Powers,’ a 12-track, limited-edition album featuring ‘aural sculptures’ inspired by the late sci-fi book-jacket artist Richard M. Powers. Hear audio samples from the album.

This week on the A.V. Club’s ‘Undercover’ series, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump goes solo-acoustic to offer his take on The Wedding Present’s 1987 single ‘My Favourite Dress.’

Now that EMI has come out defending its last set of expanded Duran Duran reissues, the label has pushed back the release of the band’s next pair: 1986’s ‘Notorious’ and 1988’s ‘Big Thing,’ both now due on Sept. 27, nearly four months after their original June release date.

We reported last week on news of Bryan Ferry’s star-studded new solo album ‘Olympia’ as well as upcoming Roxy Music reunion dates — and now comes the video for that disc’s first single, ‘You Can Dance,’ which premiered at RollingStone.com this morning.

Southern California fans longing for that old Oingo Boingo Halloween experience can still get a taste of those epic late-’80s, early-’90s shows this fall when drummer John ‘Vatos’ Hernandez rounds up some former bandmates for his annual ‘Dead Man’s Party’ bash.