Everything will kill you, eventually. Pay enough attention to media reports and you’ll discover that consuming just about anything will lead to your early demise.

A pair of big-selling 1980s albums from either end of the rock spectrum get the deluxe reissue treatment, one the then-emerging indie-rockers R.E.M. and the other the confirmed pop-rock stars Huey Lewis and the News.

If 1987′s Document heralded the moment when R.E.M. started to get away from us, the follow up Green confirmed things: This wasn’t going to be our little secret anymore.

“It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” is one of the longer song titles in rock ‘n roll and one of the more oddball releases from R.E.M. (probably only superseded by “Leave” from New Adventures In Hi-Fi).

Peter Gabriel doing Tom Waits. Not a bad way to stumble into a circle of re-interpretations by various artists on a just-released music-based peace effort for Africa called Home Recordings, Vol. 1.

Strictly speaking, the Mayan calendar doesn’t end at all — not on Friday, not ever. December 21, 2012 is simply the end of a 5125-year cycle. Now that we’ve got that cleared up, we can address the real problem: WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE ANYWAY.

When I originally picked up R.E.M.’s best of In Time: 1988-2003, a good overview of the group’s middle years of output, I was actually glad to see it

It’s not like Peter Buck hasn’t been busy. In fact, he’s kinda been everywhere since R.E.M. split, participating in a number of side projects

Peter Holsapple, long-time leader of the newly reunited dB’s, takes over our regular One Track Mind feature

When Peter Holsapple decided to reunite with the rest of the original dB’s, they vowed to take their time.