Some of you will have gone to V this year, or Reading. Or the Glastonbury one. A few of you might even have been to all of them. You probably had a great time. After all, what’s not to love?

You got those middle management guys staring into the middle distance nonchalantly twirling fire on a rope as if that suddenly makes them at one with the earth. You’ve got loud HR workers chewing their own mouths off in the dance tent. You might even have found yourself in the reggae area, desperately attempting to hold down a gush of puke having mixed a brewski with a marijuana joint. Festival season – it’s just brilliant.

But before you pull your dreads apart and return to civilisation with tales of how great Blur were, or how Dizzee Rascal is totally blowing your mind right now, take a deep breath and scroll through our top five list of the greatest live performers ever. Prepare to be amazed…1. Ian Brown

A humble northern gentleman, Ian Brown likes to let the music breathe. Hence, the intros to songs tend to swirl around teasingly for at least seven or eight minutes, as he strolls back and forth across the stage, counting the beats to check that he comes in at just the right moment. And when he does, the sweetness of his vocals – which sound almost exactly the same as getting told off by a tired bus driver – somehow drown out the rest of the music. It’s like being underwater, and hearing the sound of dolphins. Brain damaged, slow motion dolphins.

2. Amy Winehouse

These days, with all your Twitters and Face Face, it’s important that an artist interacts with his/her fans. They need to make these screaming maniacs feel that they’re part of the show at a live gig. Bono does this by wandering through the crowds, randomly licking people’s faces to make them feel special. But no one can quite beat the Amy Winehouse method, which simply involves a couple of deft jabs with the elbow, then a full lunge with a closed fist. Preferably into a teenage girl’s smiling happy face.

3. Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan famously angered his loyal following when he stopped playing the guitar-plus-drum-on-back-plus-symbols-on-knees instrument, instead hiring actual musicians to play the bits that he had once done himself. The upside of this was that the music bit sounded much better live. The downside was that without a one-man-band to marvel at, the audience was forced to listen to his singing voice properly for the very first time. The results of this were not good.

4. Wu Tang Clan

Rap music at its most lethal can be a thrilling experience. But, then, on other occasions, it can look like a dozen men lolloping around on stage with towels covering their faces, all grunting slightly out of time. It was a common problem for the teenage hardcore grime crew, Blazin Squad, and it even effects old timers like the Wu-Tang Clan. Thankfully in the above clip they’re performing in Paris, so no one in the audience will really understand what’s going on.

5. The Beatles

From about 1966 onwards, The Beatles became exclusively a studio band, which meant that audiences around the planet were robbed of their blistering live shows. Shows that could often include Paul McCartney half-heartedly inviting a very reluctant George Harrison to sing a song, before all groaning wearily into their individual microphones in unison. Like the Wu Tang, the above clip is totally forgivable, as they were in Japan at the time.

This was a guest blog by Josh from Interestment, and jolly good it is too.

Follow hecklerspray on Twitter

The ‘annoying sounding one’ from the pop legends told of his choice to abstain in an interview with The Independent, saying his decision came about as a result of the ongoing expenses scandal.

For those not in the know: the people in charge of Britain spent a great deal of taxpayers money on personal items like houses for ducks.

HOUSES FOR DUCKS.

It’s enough to make anyone mad – and it clearly did, as voter turnout was a pathetic 30 per cent. But now at least those of us who chose to avoid it have a spokesperson for the ages. A man who is as timeless as his face. One who can unite us and help us to speak with one voice.

Speaking to the lovely lefty Indie, Bionic Commandette’s ex-husband said:

“I didn’t vote in the last election. All that expenses rubbish has made me disillusioned with British politics.

“I didn’t feel comfortable using my vote to get any of them in power. All of them seem to be up for ripping off expenses and making themselves as powerful as possible and I don’t want a part of that.”

Now – not that we’re ones to judge, of course – it could be said that this sets something of a poor example to the masses who are still influenced by Liverpool’s favourite son, Jason McAteer… sorry – Paul McCartney.

Why? Well – maybe – because of the fact that, just possibly, the idea of abstaining from voting can leave the door open for more extreme, normally marginalised parties to get their foot in. For an example, see the BNP. In these most recent elections. That just happened. That Paul McCartney didn’t vote in.

So basically, it’s Paul McCartney’s fault that the BNP have two seats in the European Parliament.

First Wings, now bringing about the new dawn of fascism in Britain? Thanks Paul. We’re not going to forgive you easily this time.

Well, now you can, thanks to a new video game which allows you to sing, strum and drum along to your favourite Beatles tracks – and Octopus’s Garden.

The Beatles: Rock Band was officially launched by Sir Paul McCartney and Starr at the start of E3 in Los Angeles and will be released in September.

They were even joined by Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, the wives of the dead half of the Fab Four, John Lennon and George Harrison.

Macca said: “It’s a fun idea which broadens the appeal of The Beatles. I like people having the opportunity to get to know the music from the inside out.”

For those of you who have never played Rock Band or Guitar Hero, it is basically a game where you and your mates can pretend you are actually musically gifted by hitting buttons on plastic guitars and drums.

The Beatles: Rockband

Ever modest, Starr announced: “The game is good and we were great.” ‘Were’ being the important word there.

McCartney showed just how much he was involved in the making of the game, by adding: “Whoever would have thought we would have ended up as androids?”

Mind you, having seen the game played on stage, it does look pretty good. Thankfully, Yoko did not feel the need to have a go.

The remaining Beatles’ surprise appearance came at the start of a formidable line-up for the Xbox 360.

Trailers for Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Forza 3, Final Fantasy XIII, Splinter Cell: Conviction, Joyride and Halo 3 ODST, among others, all looked pretty impressive, but the star of the show for us was Modern Warfare 2, which is due to be released on October 11 and simply looks brilliant.

Even more exciting was the news that Metal Gear Solid is coming to the Xbox. However, there is no release date for Metal Gear Solid: Rising.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

9 - More slow motion goodness, this time ridiculously beautiful – YouTube

8 - The new Star Trek movie would have been better if any of these aliens had been included – Cracked

7 - The Beatles Rock Band game is quickly becoming the best way for rich idiots to look authentically stupid – Gearlog

6 - Oh, the law. You’re funny – Trutv

5 - The world’s oldest dog is younger than Lindsay Lohan. Dogs are crap - MSNBC

4 - Why Barbarella died. Also, thank goodness Barbarella died – Movieline

3 - Iron Man 2! It exists – Paphotoshelter

2 - Old school computer death the way it should have been – Geekologie

1 - The best thing Guy Ritchie has ever had a hand in (insert Madonna joke here)…

There’s nothing more we love then seeing a band reunite so they can relive former glories.

Of course, it would be cynical of us to see it as a money making money opportunity, but what do we know? Perhaps in fifty years time, the current writing staff of hecklerspray will get together in a grotty boozer to relive the past.

Plenty of bands such as Led Zeppelin, Take That and – despite no one wanting them – Crowded House have reformed for gigs and spanking new material. Now one of the world’s finest bands have come back together, just minus a couple of key band members.

The Beatles were comprised of George, John, Ringo and Paul. Sadly, George died in hospital and John got a psycho Japanese lady on his case as well as being shot in New York. Taking these two core ingredients away is kind of like baking a yummy loaf of bread without yeast and flour. It results in a dull, lifeless and overhyped product. Something like Razorlight, Kasabian or The Enemy.

With half of The Beatles gone, it still didn’t deter nutjob fans from gathering in New York of all places for a special charity show for the David Lynch foundation. With the band being formally out of action, we have since known Paul McCartney as the man who took on crazy pegleg vegan Heather Mills in a divorce settlement. This all comes whilst Ringo Starr continues his transformation into a miserable bastard who refuses to sign autographs and stars in appallingly bad insurance adverts.

However, it may be worth crediting the two performers with knowing more about the wider world then we actually thought they would. During the gig, Paul McCartney also dedicated the song Blackbird to US president Barack Obama. So what does this mean? Well using military technology from the 1940s, we can deduce the following:

A) Paul and Ringo have magic powers which they are slowly going to unleash on the world. Their next big performance is to paint every building brown to show their support to PM Gordon Brown.

B) They are supporting Barack Obama because he’s, um, black like a blackbird.

C) They wanted to look popular in America, just like Monty Python, pork scratchings and ocean blue paint.

For Beatles nerds, it would have been ace seeing their heroes performing briefly together on the same stage. Let’s face it, we know that the full band line up is going to be pretty hard to sustain.

That’s unless John Lennon has been pulling a massive joke on us all along! Ho ho ho, the cheeky Scouse scamp.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Which it doesn’t – and it never has. For years the only thing our resume has had printed on it are the words me, work and good. So far no takers, likely due to the economic climate.

Our resume is probably in need of a makeover – once we have our absolutely real degree in advanced Beatles-ology from Liverpool Hope University – that’s probably when potential employers will stop pushing us out of things.

Art degrees are probably gonna start to look pretty good on a resume now that they’ll no longer be soaking in the absolute bottom of the useless barrel. They really were the bottom, you know – the worst of the worst. They’d sit shamefully down their stewing in the sour juices trickling down to them from slightly less embarrassing degrees like ‘Social Science’ and ‘French.’

If you had an art degree, chances are anyone to whom you slid your resume across a big oak desk would look at it, and then remained puzzled the rest of the day as to why you chose a blue and yellow fresco background to print things out on. Seriously, that crap might work at a craft supply store – but you’re graduated now! Time to look responsible! Time to use straight-forward fonts!

Don’t worry though. Your chances of getting hired have just increased slightly. That’s because if an employer is trying to pick between two resumes – yours and one that says ‘Majored in the Beatles,’ well let’s just say you might have your pick of cubicles.

The Beatles have suddenly become a bona fide graduate degree – we’re serious here. Don’t believe us? Then just you read what we found on Liverpool Hope University’s own website:

“Liverpool Hope University has launched a brand new MA in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society, the first of its kind in the world. The new course, which can be studied both full and part time, covers four modules with specific issues relating to The Beatles and Popular Music, consisting of four 12-week taught modules, plus a dissertation…

“…’Forty years on from their break-up, now is the right time and LIverpool is the right place to study The Beatles. This MA is expected to attract a great deal of attention, not just locally but nationally and we have already had enquiries from abroad, particularly the United States.”

We’ve heard popular classroom activities will be playing that one Beatles-infused video game, and drawing what you think Heather Mills’ missing leg might look like this very second. We would pencil sketch a motorcycle boot covered in worms.

There are actually jobs you can get with that Beatles degree, you know. For instance, maybe you could work at a bagel shop. If not, maybe the school will help you find some post-scholastic employment. We’ve not heard if they actually offer any sort of job placement after you walk across their stage, but we’re guessing not.

By that point they’ll have packed all the tuition you gave them into a suitcase and gone somewhere to launder it.

Because that’s what you do with stolen money. You launder it.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

Paul McCartney from The Beatles has announced that none of his band’s music will be available on iTunes for the foreseeable future because everyone is arguing over money. But Paul McCartney says he wants The Beatles on iTunes, EMI wants The Beatles on iTunes, and iTunes wants The Beatles on iTunes, so all is not yet lost.

Until then, the music of The Beatles is still available on something we’re told is called a Seed Ee, and you can put these Beatles Seed Ees into your computer and download them onto iTunes that way. But this Seed Ee-buying method does involve leaving the house, and that’s so old-fashioned that they may as well be asking to go into the woods and kill Beatles songs with rocks for food. What do we look like, bloody Luddites?

As we speak, The Beatles are everywhere. You can buy CDs by The Beatles, movies by The Beatles, books about Beatles, posters of The Beatles, soon there’ll be a videogame about The Beatles and if Paul McCartney has his way you’ll also be able to buy 14 unlistenable minutes of The Beatles pissing about on drugs. The Beatles are everywhere.

OK, not everywhere. Type ‘The Beatles’ into iTunes and you’ll be presented with the following albums:

* A Tribute To The Beatles by The Silver Beatles

* The Bornagen Beatles Play The Beatles Greatest Hits

* Butchering The Beatles – A Headbashing Tribute

* Lullaby Renditions Of The Beatles by Rockabye Baby

* The Bingo Kids Sing Beatles Hits For Kids

That last one, by the way, is so close to being a work of demented genius that if we don’t finish this post it’ll be because the overwhelming power of it hypnotised us and drove us insane and we had to throw ourselves out of a window to rid our bodies of its evil. But we digress.

The thing you don’t get when you search for The Beatles on iTunes is The Beatles. But this isn’t something that anybody wants, which is why The Beatles had been working with EMI and Apple to fix this issue in recent months.

Notice the word ‘had’ there. According to Paul McCartney, the talks are mired up in all kinds of red tape and it’ll be ages before everyone realises that nobody cares either way because they all borrowed their dad’s Beatles CDs and downloaded them onto their iPod about four years ago. Reuters reports:

We’d like to do it,” McCartney was quoted as telling the BBC. “We are very for it, we’ve been pushing it. But there are a couple of sticking points, I understand. Last word I got back was it’s stalled at the moment,” McCartney added. “But I really hope it will happen because I think it should.”

Despite Paul McCartney’s caginess over the exact issues preventing The Beatles from being included on iTunes, we think we have an idea – iTunes wants a bigger slice of the sales, EMI wants a bigger slice of the sales and Paul McCartney is waiting for Ringo Starr to die so he can sell all the old Beatles albums under the new name Paul McCartney Presents: Paul McCartney And The Paul McCartney Four Sing The Hits Of Paul McCartney And A Couple Of Other Dead Blokes.

We’re only joking, of course. But The Beatles had better hurry up and get their act together – they longer they keep iTunes waiting, the more people will think that iTunes only included Ringo Starr’s solo albums in its catalogue because it actually likes his music. And that’s nothing short of a bloody insult.

You! Follow hecklerspray on Twitter!

It’s strongly rumoured that MTV is about to announce a forthcoming Rock Band: The Beatles edition. If it’s true, then Rock Band: The Beatles would be a truly landmark game. Not only would it mark the first time that The Beatles have licensed their music to a videogame, but also, if the song In My Life gets included in the tracklisting, it’ll also mark the debut of the Rock Band harpsichord peripheral.

It’s expected that Rock Band: The Beatles will be so realistic that it’ll actually feel like you’re one of The Beatles. For instance, John Lennon’s guitar will have easy, medium, hard and expert levels, George Harrison’s guitar will have easy, medium, hard and expert levels, Paul McCartney’s bass will have easy, medium, hard and expert levels and Ringo’s drums will have one very easy level that even a baby could play.

The battle between Rock Band and Guitar Hero is getting more and more intense by the second. On one hand, there’s Rock Band 2 – a tried and tested party favourite that comes with such a tidal wave of downloadable music from exclusive bands that you’d never ever get bored of playing it. And on the other hand there’s Guitar Hero: World Tour – the game that has less songs, more lukewarm reviews and happens to be what we’re getting for Christmas. Tits.

And now, just to make matters worse, Rock Band is on the brink of announcing that it’s secured rights to bring out an exclusive game based on the music of The Beatles. Here’s how Variety is reporting the impending Rock Band: The Beatles:

MTV is set to announce Thursday what it promises is an “unprecedented global music project” with Apple Corp., administrator of the Beatles catalog. Videogame industryites are widely speculating that at least part of the project will involve getting Beatles songs for MTV’s music videogame “Rock Band.” The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that just such a partnership will be announced.

Rock Band: The Beatles is just another sign that The Beatles are slowly coming to accept digital distribution. Several of The Beatles’ solo works are available on iTunes now, plus the release of their Love album in 2006 demonstrates a new willingness to jump on any passing bandwagon, no matter how crappy, if it means that Paul McCartney will get a little bit richer.

But what of Rock Band: The Beatles itself? Well, we hear that the game will take players through all the stages of The Beatles’ career, starting with their black and white moptop days, through into their golden period of musical experimentation and then finally a section where players earn points by glumly refusing to talk to each other and having protracted legal battles about money.

Then, depending on what instrument you’re playing, the final stage either involves being shot in the head, being stabbed by an intruder, having half your points taken away from you by a weird old one-legged woman (Rock Band prosthetic leg peripheral sold separately) or going a bit mental because people keep sending you letters.

But anyway, now that Rock Band: The Beatles looks like it’s going to be a reality, perhaps one of the music games can get around to bringing out an expansion pack based on the biggest band of them all. That’s right, The Spin Doctors. You know it makes sense.

This is new information recently come to light due to some guy’s brand new money-grubbing book. Well, actually the reverse information came out in his book, meaning of course that tucked away in one of his chapters is a little segment where Lennon wanted to fertilise all of Paul’s lady-eggs in the worst way.

Since the book came out someone asked Paul point blank if it was true – and he said aside from a little light necking, John had never, ever expressed any such desires.

Or something like that anyway. We’re actually not sure if that ‘necking’ part was really in McCartney’s answer or not.

The babies John Lennon and Paul McCartney made together were musical ones – and chart climbers at that. There was absolutely no semen involved, and none of the vinyl records ever divided into zygotes. If they had we probably would have noticed baby bumps on one of the two men. Or possibly both.

We’re not really sure how it works when two gay men decide to make a baby together. If it’s twins, sure, why couldn’t they each carry one? If not now, then maybe in the future when science has successfully made plaster wombs that are surgically implantable just above a gentleman’s menstruating gonads.

Anyway – there’s an author named Philip Norman who calls himself a Beatles biographer. He just wrote a gay themed book (called John Lennon: The Life) about Lennon and McCartney, and in it he says, according to the Sun:

“…that John wanted to form a gay relationship with Macca.”

The book also claims their best songs were written:

“…while McCartney & Lennon had their nipples slathered in mustard and firmly pressed together.”

Many creative liberties taken on that second quote. That first one is the real deal though! Isn’t that exciting?!

McCartney denies it all flat out:

“I don’t think (the gay claims) are true. John never ever tried anything, I slept with him a million times. I’ve seen him on tour roaring drunk, out of his mind in the early days before he sobered up and went to rehab. Roaring drunk and it was always with a female, never once. If you’ve got a little gay tendency and your roaring drunk I’d have caught him once.”

Well that’s a blow to the gay community, but a boon to those of us who love Freudian-incest. We meant those of you. Well that last sentence must be confusing. But maybe this next quote, also about the new book’s content, will explain things:

“It also accuses the legendary singer of fantasising about having sex with his own mother.”

In John’s defence, his mother had her hair done at least weekly, and her lips were perfectly plump.

As the story goes, McCartney and Yoko Ono are pretty ticked about John’s newfound man-drooling, mother humping ways, and they deny everything outright.

But their edit wouldn’t move as many copies now, would it?

However, every successful star has a downfall, and he had a couple. But unlike today’s woozy musicians, like the moon crater face bloke from Keane, the copious amounts of drugs he took didn’t knacker him up. Instead, it was a stumpy Japanese woman called Yoko Ono.

Once she got hold of him, he kind of went a bit soppy, writing billions of songs in her honour. His other silly mistake was getting naked on a 1968 Rolling Stone cover with her. Not a pleasant sight. After John Lennon got his brains splattered across New York, she disappeared for a while. But still reappeared now and then to tell us that she was married to a Beatle.

Now she’s back to defend peg-legged Heather Mills. Another ex-Beatle’s wife. But, while Linda McCartney left us nothing but a horrible line of frozen food meals, Paul McCartney’s latest divorcee hasn’t quite done anything on such a scale. Probably because she isn’t dead yet. Though she is quite well hated now by a) gold-diggers who didn’t get to Paul first and b) legions of deluded Beatles fans who worship the ground their hero walks on.

Does it matter if he puts out a totally strange and crap classical-sounding album? Of course not, these fans will lap it up. The same fans who undoubtedly know where their hero buys his burgers and jockstraps.  

The ongoing Heather Mills v Paul McCartney feud has been gripping the nation for months. We’ve even been told that Hollywood wants to make a five-hour epic movie starring the two. Heather’s story will be told as a poor pauper girl who one day meets Paul, the man of her dreams at a vegetarian cook-off competition.

After discussing the ins and outs of leaf and pinecone soup, the two marry, argue and then fight. But it’s no ordinary fight. Their anti-meat diet gives them super powers. Powers where they fight through distant galaxies – in the past, present and future.

Rat milk drinker Heather recently got a fair slice of her ex’s wealth in last month's divorce settlement. How does £24.3 million sound? Not bad by anyone’s standards, but Heather was still hopping mad. And, no, it wasn’t because some cruel bastard nicked her false leg.

With that sort of money at her disposal, she can now afford a leg for all occasions. White and pasty; tanned and gorgeous; or battered and bruised.  

The press have never been kind to poor Heather. Ever since the two announced their marriage, plenty of people, including Paul’s own daughter Stella, said it would never work out.

Everyone was right, and if we’d been bothered to put a bet on, we would have been rolling in the money. Just like Heather is now. So while everyone shakes their fist at Heather Mills in anger, an unlikely source has come to her aid. That’s right, the former squeeze of John Lennon, Yoko Ono. She told Now Magazine:

"It's not very easy for a woman to be associated with The Beatles. I think all the wives did suffer, but suffered quietly and endured."

How it would be hard is beyond us. If we happened to be attached to someone famous, we think we could cope. Of course, our egos would swell and we’d demand vintage 1989 Tango, but is that so much to ask?

As our other-halves made all the money, we’d sit buy and count it all up – before throwing it in the air and re-counting it again.

Read More -  Yoko Ono defends Heather Mills saying its hard to be married to a Beatle – Now Magazine