Photo: Evening Standard/Getty ImagesSports, the 10x Platinum album from the unusually straight and athlete-conscious Huey Lewis and the News band, is receiving an accountant-friendly '30th Anniversary Edition' to celebrate the album's 30th birthday. The original album will be remastered and a second CD of live versions of the songs is said to be included in this now-common exploitation come-on where record labels try to rectify their short-sightedness with modern music by convincing old music fans to simply buy their old albums yet again!

Kids today think music should be free, man. But you bought the album! You bought the CD! You bought the 1999 expanded edition! It's my hope that this new reissue will feature that awful super-hot remastered sound that has fans at audio discussion boards fuming over other reissues. But as someone who never bought the album in the first place, I'll just have to wait and read what the label did for this new reissue!

While in the past I pulled out all the good stuff that was often lost in

I'm amazed to report that by April 7, I had a solid 25 albums to bring to your attention. Usually I don't get here until late June, so either my standards are completely crap and I'm getting soft and stupid in my old age or the decline of the music industry and its butchering at the hands of the entertainment industry is actually a very good thing for musicians. Once you assume you cannot crossover to people who don't already like your kind of music, you stick to doing what brings you pleasure and it shows. Though I also fear by that measure that artists will become too complacent and play to the prejudices of their cult, this year it seems to be working.

To scare you further, the weeks following April 7 have brought me even more interesting albums, but I shall hold them for when I have another full 25 and can make it the blog of the century!

Ahh, what can you do? Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Considering that The REM's debut album Murmur is celebrating its 30th birthday this year and that I've already done a retrospective for 1983 back in 2008 when the year was 25 years old, I thought it would be mildly interesting if I narrowed my focus into a three-pronged approach.

I've assembled three blogs for 1983. This one handles the "college radio" type music that found its home on left-of-the-dial college radio stations whereupon it got its goofy categorization. The second blog covers the "punk" angle. And the third will cover the hits!!

I got a lot of work to do!

Beyonce [Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images]

2013 looks to be a weird year on the concert front. But this is likely to carry on for the rest of our lives, considering how weird the music industry is these days. The Rolling Stones are said to be lining up 18 shows, and Gwen Stefani seemed to commit to Jimmy Kimmel that No Doubt would see the sunshine. But U2 are napping, and how many times can Roger Waters keep building that same wall?

One Direction

If you have youngsters in your family — or you just love watching kids! — you're going to want to find yourself to one of these youth-group meetings hitting Florida on June 13 and remaining in North America and Canada until August 10. Then it's off to Australia where the child labor laws are very different! See tour dates.

Justin Timberlake

Justin Timberlake — the man, the myth, the nostalgia, the who cares? — will be playing baseball stadiums this summer with Jay-Z, who really deserves the hype, but we're contrary folk! Just imagine seeing fans trying to send Timberlake over the