R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey joined Pearl Jam in Berlin last night to rip through the MC5’s classic ‘Kick Out the Jams’ at a concert that also featured the Seattle rockers debuting a new cover of Public Image Ltd.’s ‘Public Image.’

Word emerged this spring — via bandleader Colin Meloy’s Twitter feed — that R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck would be contributing to The Decemberists’ upcoming sixth album — and we’ve now got photographic evidence, thanks to a series of snapshots posted on R.E.M.’s official site today.

Attention tapeheads: The ever-iconoclastic Robyn Hitchcock is releasing an ultra-limited run of his new album ‘Propellor Time’ — on which he’s backed by members of R.E.M. and The Smiths — on ‘hand-assembled’ cassette.

This week’s new releases include new albums from David Byrne & Fatboy Slim (’Here Lies Love,’ about Imelda Marcos) and Robyn Hitchcock (’Propellor Time’), plus expanded reissues from David Bowie, The Colourfield and Squeeze.

Robyn Hitchcock has just released a new video for ‘Ordinary Millionaire,’ a song co-written with The Smiths’ Johnny Marr that serves as the first single off the 3-years-in-the-making ‘Propellor Time.’

[tweetmeme]Robyn Hitchcock this spring will release the 3-years-in-the-making Propellor Time, an album recorded with current back-up band The Venus 3 — R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Young Fresh Fellows’ Scott McCaughey and ex-Ministry drummer Bill Rieflin — and featuring guest turns by the likes of The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, Nick Lowe and John Paul Jones of Led [...]

Retired drummer Bill Berry and bassman Mike Mills jumped onstage last night with Peter Buck and the rest of The Minus 5 for a near-reunion of R.E.M.’s classic lineup in Athens, Ga. — a get-together that could have spawned a full reunion, since Michael Stipe was in the audience at the 40 Watt Club, according [...]

R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn and Young Fresh Fellows’ Scott McCaughey will tour the U.S. this summer and fall under a trio of musical guises — The Minus 5, The Baseball Project and The Steve Wynn IV — that apparently are all one in the same.
The triple-bill concerts, which run Aug. 26 through [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: The Screaming Blue Messiahs
RELEASES: Gun Shy, Bikini Red
BACKSTORY: Perhaps still best known for the semi-hit “I Wanna Be A Flinstone,” the punk- and rockabilly-influenced U.K. act sees its first two long-out-of-print albums, the latter of which contains the aforementioned single, [...]

With touring and promotion of 2008’s Accelerate now finished, R.E.M. this year will issue, at a minimum, a pair of archival releases, hitting both ends of its long and fruitful career.
According to a post on the band’s Web site, R.E.M. is preparing a deluxe edition of 1984’s Reckoning that “will be done in the same [...]

Record Rack: A weekly round-up of the pertinent new releases hitting stores this Tuesday:
ARTIST: U2
ALBUM: No Line on the Horizon
FORMAT: CD, LP, download
BACKSTORY: Bono and Co.’s 12th album leaked nearly two weeks ago, prompting the band to stream it on MySpace well before its official release date. The disc finds U2 working with longtime associates [...]