The LA Weekly yesterday pointed out a trio of Depeche Mode home videos just uploaded to YouTube that capture the synthpop giants before, during and after their appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards on the Universal Studios lot in Hollywood on Sept. 9, 1988.

Andy Partridge is asking fans what he should include on Bric-a-Brac Breakfast, a forthcoming companion to XTC’s 1990 odds-and-sods collection Rag & Bone Buffet: Rare Cuts & Leftovers, which itself is being prepped for a reissue this year on the bandleader’s Ape House Records.

In some ways it’s the antidote to the schmaltzy, celeb-soaked remakes of “We Are the World” and R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”: a new Haiti benefit single recorded by iconic punk and post-figures such as The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave, Mick Jones of The Clash, the Sex Pistols’ Glen Matlock, Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie.

While U.S. fans await word of Bad Lieutenant’s stateside debut — following last fall’s aborted showcase concerts in New York and Chicago — Bernard Sumner’s New Order spinoff on Wednesday announced five new live dates in the U.K. next month.

The long-out-of-print Jane’s Addiction film “Gift” — a semi-autobiographical, drug-and-music filled feature created by frontman Perry Farrell and then-girlfriend Casey Niccoli — will receive its first-ever DVD release this year, Farrell announced via Twitter tonight.

Reunited ska legends The Specials have filled out their short trip to North America this April, adding, as promised, two more concerts — April 15 in Los Angeles and April 19 in Toronto — to the band’s brief itinerary.

Dead Can Dance’s Brendan Perry today unveiled a 20-date solo tour of Europe this spring in support of his forthcoming album Ark — his release first in 11 years — and said his previously announced co-headlining tour with Peter Murphy will open in mid-April in South America.

Southern California punk legends Bad Religion are celebrating their 30th anniversary this year, and will kick off the festivities with a springtime run of 12 West Coast club dates before hitting the studio to record their 15th studio album for release this fall.

It’s not much, but this 30-second promo for the Gorillaz’s forthcoming Plastic Beach is kind of exciting: It offers an all-too-fleeting glimpse of The Clash’s Mick Jones and Paul Simonon recording together for the first time since 1982’s Combat Rock.

Esteemed UK publishing house Faber & Faber has posted “An Open Letter to Morrissey” on its blog, imploring the former Smiths singer to not only complete his long-discussed autobiography but let the company publish it — noting that, “History demands it; destiny commands it.”

Today we launch MBV Watch 2010, a new — and, alas, most likely permanent — feature solely dedicated to tracking release dates for the long-gestating reissues of My Bloody Valentine’s two albums: 1988’s Isn’t Anything and 1991’s Loveless.

Rough night for the handful of ’80s college-rock vets nominated for Grammy Awards this year: Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, U2, Elvis Costello, David Byrne and Brian Eno, and Ministry all were shut out tonight for trophies in their respective categories, losing, in most cases, to more current acts.

Brit DJ/producer Tim Simenon’s alter ego Bomb the Bass returns in the coming weeks with both a brand-new album — Back to Light, only the act’s second full-length in the last 15 years — and an expanded reissue of its game-changing 1988 debut Into the Dragon.