Peter Buck plans to release something he’s calling a new “monkey concept single” in the coming weeks on vinyl label Mississippi Records as well as re-press his 2012 solo debut — but without the song “LVMF,” because he only cleared its profane Sonny Boy Williamson sample for the album’s first 2,000 copies.
This week’s new releases including expanded reissues of R.E.M.’s ‘Green’ and The Breeders’ ‘Last Splash,’ new studio albums from The Fall and Primal Scream), five-disc box sets from Love and Rockets and Gary Numan, a vintage Devo live album, a Talking Heads vinyl reissue and a budget Simple Minds best-of.
R.E.M.’s ‘Green’ will be reissued this month in a deluxe 25th anniversary edition, and the fine folks at Rhino Records have provided us with five copies of the expanded 2CD edition and five copies of the 180-gram vinyl reissue to award to 10 lucky Slicing Up Eyeballs readers.
It’s a nearly unparalleled landmark in the history of ’80s college rock: R.E.M.’s peerless debut album, Murmur, was released on April 12, 1983 — exactly 30 years ago today. Today we celebrate this milestone by looking back at the building blocks of the album we know and love.
Robyn Hitchcock will hit the road in the U.S. later this spring to support his just-released ‘Love From London’ album, playing a series of dates on the two coasts with his latter-period backup band The Venus 3 and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck serving as opening act.
R.E.M. will reissue ‘Green ‘in a deluxe 25th anniversary 2CD set this May, packaging a remastered edition of the original 1988 album with a 21-song live set recorded at the penultimate concert on the band’s massive Green World Tour — a live set that will be previewed with a 5-song EP released on Record Store Day.
Four years, 3,149 individual posts, 2 million unique visitors, 6.4 million total pageviews. But out of all that, what are the most popular headlines on Slicing Up Eyeballs since this site launched on Feb. 20, 2009? Well, as you can see from the list below, they involve news about Nirvana, The Cure, U2, R.E.M., The Smiths and Depeche Mode.
It’s not exactly the return to music anyone would have guessed from Michael Stipe, but the former R.E.M. frontman is back with his first new recording since that band split in 2011: a duet with Courtney Love called “Rio Grande” off the new Johnny Depp-curated ‘Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.’
This week’s new releases include the U.S. release of the Bryan Ferry Orchestra’s ‘The Jazz Age,’ plus reissues of the debut from The Names, a two-for-one package by INXS combining ‘Shabooh Shoobah’ and ‘The Swing’ on one CD, and a five-disc box set from R.E.M. collecting all five post-Bill Berry albums.
For the second premiere in our series of archival videos from Wuxtry Records in Athens, Ga., we explore a more recent vintage with the debut of this full, hour-long set from the hugely influential Pylon, performed at the fabled 40 Watt Club in the early morning hours of Aug. 13, 2005, during the annual Athens PopFest.
The first weekend of Peter Buck’s three-weekend Todos Santos Music Festival in Baja California, Mexico, wrapped up Saturday night with what was essentially a reunion of latter-day R.E.M. minus Michael Stipe as bassist Mike Mills joined Buck and his steadfast R.E.M. sidemen Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin onstage.
Today we count down the best reissue of 2012 as voted on by Slicing Up Eyeballs in this year’s readers poll, and the Top 10 list includes releases by Icehouse, Ministry, The House of Love, Ian McCulloch of Echo & The Bunnymen, Yazoo, Bob Mould’s Sugar, My Bloody Valentine, Peter Gabriel and more.
R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe made a pair of high-profile public appearances last night, first popping up on “The Colbert Report.” to sing the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas” with Stephen Colbert and Mandy Patinkin, then joining Coldplay’s Chris Martin to perform “Losing My Religion” at 12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.
In February 1981, R.E.M. played three known concerts, including a pair in Atlanta opening for Joe “King” Carrasco at the 688 Club. Little of this period has been seen on video, but Slicing Up Eyeballs is thrilled to be able to premiere — courtesy of Wuxtry Records in Athens, Ga. — this 40-minute set filmed at one of those Atlanta dates.
Drew Crumbaugh — aka The Analog Loyalist, whose attempt to restore R.E.M.’s I.R.S. Records catalog was thwarted by Universal Music earlier this year — has taken a second crack at cleaning up the 1980 concert included on the reissue of Joy Division’s ‘Closer,’ and is offering the new version as a free download.
R.E.M. famously didn’t tour behind its two best-selling albums — 1991′s ‘Out of Time’ and 1992′s ‘Automatic For the People’ — but the band did play a single concert in support of the latter record, a Greenpeace benefit at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Ga., exactly 20 years ago tonight.
Seemingly out of the, uh, blue, R.E.M. this week debuted a music video for the song “Blue” off swan song ‘Collapse into Now.’ The clip, posted here, is directed by actor James Franco and features a hodge-podge of visual imagery, including shots of Lindsay Lohan.
For this week’s “120 Minutes” Rewind,we present a great 20-year time capsule: It’s the full, hour-long “120 Minutes Presents: The Alternative Year in Rock” special that aired on on Nov. 24, 1992 — the Tuesday before Thanksgiving — and features host Dave Kendall in what likely was one of his final “120″ appearances.
For a generation raised by MTV — particularly in the late ’80s and early ’90s — they were ubiquitous: those 30-second “Rock the Vote” promos featuring stars ranging from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe to Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Madonna imploring viewers to register to vote and cast their ballots.
