Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. tomorrow for the Blur concert in Dublin's Point Theatre on Friday 28th November. This is the band's first Irish date since Summer 1996, when they played in front of 35,000 fans at the RDS. This time, however, tickets are limited to 8,000, so get that flask and sleeping bag ready.

The Pixies are coming back from the dead! 4AD release a 17-track career retrospective of the seminal US band, morbidly entitled Death To The Pixies. A single, Debaser, comes out on 22nd of this month, backed by other Pixies classics like Bone Machine and Gigantic, providing a taster for this delicious helping of 1980's alterno.

Got a lovely postcard from my dear friend Frances Black. She's having a very "exciting time" with her new Sony international deal, and she hopes to have her new album finished by the end of the year. "I'll see you soon . . . Love, Frances xx", she concludes in this elegantly typeset missive. I bet she says that to all the rock journos.