hecklerspray Gig Guide: The Strokes, A-Ha, Monsters Of Rock…

It’s almost February! That means bands are starting to tour again! That’s good news for you music fans - suddenly you won’t have to spend you evenings in getting a bit annoyed by Michael Barrymore on Celebrity Big Brother.

Instead, you’ll be able to dip your toes back into the live music scene, and hecklerspray is here to act as your tour guide - basically, that means we’re going to hold an umbrella in the air and talk quickly and quietly in broken English about all the forthcoming gigs in the next seven days.

And what a week for concerts you’re in for - this edition of the hecklerspray gig guide features live music by A-Ha, Nick Cave, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Frank & Walters, Goldfrapp, Ben Lee, Monsters Of Rock, The Ordinary Boys and The Strokes…

A-Ha - Now that A-Ha are back as a genuine (if mostly fanclub-led)
chart concern, they’re free to release as many songs as they like, safe
in the knowledge that A1 aren’t around to balls up any more cover
versions of their stuff. Click for dates and tickets

Nick Cave - This is Nick Cave touring without The Bad Seeds, so expect
lots of sad piano songs sung at God instead of loud angry bursts of dark fury. And
if you’re lucky, he might even tell about what happened to that script
for Gladiator 2 that he was supposed to have written. Click for dates and tickets

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah take time out from
privately cursing Arctic Monkeys for stealing their thunder to
promote their, admittedly staggering, new album. Click for dates and tickets

The Frank & Walters - This week’s ‘bloody hell are they still
around?’ tour. We remember The Frank And Walters being brilliant when
we were younger, but we’re basing that on a half remembered video we
saw on The Chart Show, and we might be thinking of The Bluetones
instead. Click for dates and tickets

Goldfrapp - Goldfrapp take the unusual step of promoting their music by
playing it live, instead of selling it to a load of adverts and then
wanking around with Jools Holland like they normally do. Click for dates and tickets

Ben Lee - We love cuddly lovely indie Ben Lee. Partly because he writes
songs that are aces, and partly because he wishes he was Evan Dando.
And, secretly, so do we. Click for dates and tickets

Monsters Of Rock - It’s not until June, and the full line-up hasn’t
been announced yet but, come on, Deep Purple? Alice Cooper? This is
going to be brilliant - we’re growing our hair and bottling our piss
already. Click for dates and tickets

Ordinary Boys - Now, we’re quite vocally not the biggest fans of all
that dreadful laddy Madness noise made by The Ordinary Boys, but it’ll
be fun to turn up to one of their forthcoming gigs to watch the
confusion that happens when the group’s old fanbase of beery Ben
Sherman-ed bellowing men meet all the 12-year-old girls standing at the
front screaming "PRESTON! PREEEEEEEESTOOOOONNNNN!" and wetting
themselves. Click for dates and tickets

The Strokes - The band that we hold directly responsible for all the
bands starting with ‘The’ come to these shores to play music.
Hopefully, the music they play will be weighted more in favour of when
they were good, and less heavily towards their horrible new album. Click for dates and tickets