Peter Hook last night christened his new Manchester club FAC251 — housed in the former headquarters of Factory Records — with members of The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays helping perform a career-spanning set that included the live debuts of an unfinished Joy Division song and a New Order outtake.

Turns out Peter Hook’s Freebass may not be the only Stone Roses/Smiths collaboration afoot: Ex-Roses vocalist Ian Brown this week told the BBC he’s planning to write and record an album with Johnny Marr, the Smiths’ erstwhile guitarist.
According to Brown, he and Marr hope to write soundtrack music for a friend’s in-the-works TV series: “The [...]

Yesterday, Slicing Up Eyeballs hit a somewhat negligible milestone, the six-month mark in its still-nascent existence chronicling the past, present and future of ’80s college rock.
To mark the occasion, I thought it would be worth noting the site’s most-viewed posts over that span, which saw more than 160 news items posted.
It’s something I’d actually been [...]

Rhino Records today released a digital version of its four-disc Factory Records: Communications 1978-92 box set via iTunes, collecting 63 tracks — spanning Joy Division to the Happy Mondays — from the famed Manchester record label.
The set initially was released on limited-edition CD in the U.K. this past January; in the U.S., it only will [...]

Details are scarce, but it appears ’80s stalwarts — and John Hughes soundtrack stars — The Psychedelic Furs are plotting a fall club tour of the U.S. with recently reactivated Madchester survivors Happy Mondays.
So far, just five dates have surfaced in September and October, spanning the East and West Coasts, with stops in Texas and [...]

Perhaps best known for his bio “The Stone Roses and the Resurrection of British Pop,” Brit rock scribe/musician John Robb has set his sights on the slightly broader picture for his next work: Manchester’s place in the world of U.K. music.
This week sees the release (in Europe, at least) of Robb’s “The North Will Rise [...]