Now that 2006 is more or less completely underway, the live music circuit is starting to come out of its Christmas lull. That means that some vaguely decent bands are getting it to tour this week.
Read that again – vaguely decent. Don’t expect Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Jimi Hendrix to miraculously rise from the grave to perform a specially written rock-opera that reveals the meaning of life or anything.
But fans of twee indie, Messianic MOR, pensionable heavy metal and genius bodypopping goat herders should perhaps allow themselves to get just a little bit excited, as this edition of the hecklerspray Gig Guide features performances from Belle & Sebastian, Chico & 4Tune, Deep Purple, Fall Out Boy, Katie Melua, Nizlopi, Richard Ashcroft and The Sunshine Underground…
Belle & Sebastian – What we like about Belle & Sebastian is
that they get a little bit better with every passing day. They started
off as the most indie-schmindie band to ever walk the Earth, but
now they can write something as amazing as Your Cover’s Blown – the best-ever B-side. They’ll be world-beaters by the year 2364,
mark our words. Click for dates and tickets
Chico & 4Tune - This is more like it; the best (read -
‘weirdest’) of last year’s X Factor contestants is going on tour with
the third-worst of last year’s contestants. Hopefully Chico will bring
that little dancing black boy along with him, so they can bust some
crazy-ass moves together. We’ll get sick of him soon, we promise. Click for dates and tickets
Deep Purple – We’ve heard that Deep Purple don’t actually play full
songs on tour anymore – they just do the riff from Smoke On The Water
over and over again for two hours. Click for dates and tickets
Fall Out Boy – Fall Out Boy are probably most famous for the time a
couple of weeks ago when hecklerspray linked to one of their videos.
Either that or the millions of records they’ve sold in America. Click for dates and tickets
Katie Melua – The question you should ask yourself about Katie Melua
is this: even though her music is horrible, would you be able to
lie and say you liked it if she asked you to be her boyfriend? It’s
something we’ve been struggling with for months, that one. Click for dates and tickets
Nizlopi
- Oh, you remember who Nizlopi are. They did that one-off novelty song
about diggers. They probably don’t realise that it was a one-off yet,
but let’s face facts. Catch the new White Town in a reasonably-big
venue while you still can. Click for dates and tickets
Richard Ashcroft – Last week, Richard Ashcroft said that he "feels
like Jesus." Hopefully someone will get round to hammering nails into
his hands at some point during the tour, then. Click for dates and tickets
The
Sunshine Underground – Here’s a band we literally knew nothing about
until about ten minutes ago. We just liked their name, so we thought
we’d do some exploring. And they’re really bloody brilliant. We’re
quite excited about this lot, you know. Click for dates and tickets
