The Suitable Mouth

New Beautiful South have announced a new autumn tour for November.  The band, which will include new Bass player Steve Nutter, will take to the road with 14 dates pencilled in, they are:

NOVEMBER 2009

10 Birmingham 02 Academy

11 Manchester Academy

12 Birkenhead Pacific Rd Arts Centre

13 Islington Academy

14 Day Off

15 Norwich Waterfront

16 Leeds Uni

17 Oxford Academy

18 Day off

19 Lincoln Engine Rooms

20 Sheffield Plug

21 Aberdeen Lemon Tree

22 Day off

23 Glasgow ABC

24 Newcastle Tyne Journal

25 Bath Komedia

26 Cambridge Junction

The band will be performing a short acoustic set this Thursday 13th August at THE DONKEY, LEICESTER as part of the SUMMER SUNDAE FRINGE FESTIVAL.

This is a fund-raising event for a local hospice that has 9 venues and over 35 bands around Leicester taking part.

All venues are linked by 3 open top buses dropping and picking up wristband wearing punters.

If you are near Leicester come and check the evening out.

NBS will be onstage at 7.30 prompt for a 25 minute slot – hopefully out in the garden weather permitting. Tickets £4

Mojo Magazine have a great writeup on the recent reissue of “London 0 – Hull 4″  Featuring clippings from Paul Heaton’s personal scrapbook you can relive a golden era when supporting the Miners made you gay (apparently)!

The Housemartins 2009

IN THEIR FIRST FOUR-CORNERED interview since the departure of drummer Hugh Whitaker called time on the band’s classic line-up, The Housemartins reform this month for MOJO magazine.

Although their post-fame journeys were darkened by drummer Hugh Whitaker’s five years in jail for an axe-assisted assault, singer Paul Heaton’s alcoholism and bassist Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook’s troubled years of DJ infamy and tabloid intrusion, they insist that “nothing bad that happened in our subsequent lives can be blamed on the Housemartins”.

The quartet took gospel harmonies and left-wing politics to the top of the charts between 1986 and 1988, and their musical legacy is confirmed with the re-release this month of their classic debut album, London 0 Hull 4.

But another angle on their story is provided by the diaries and scrapbooks kept by Heaton, a zealous collector with OCD tendendies. His 1986 diary testifies to the volume of work undertaken by the band (106 gigs in 1986), but also to the more prosaic realities of a lad in his early 20s: a preoccupation with Sheffield United jostling with the band’s chart positions and a record of his intake of pints.

The scrapbooks – a home for photos and cuttings documenting the band’s rise from their earliest musical stirrings – testify to Heaton’s drive, publicity-awareness and humour. They’re a Proustian rush for any pop fan active in the mid-’80s, or anyone curious about the pop biz as seen from the inside.

Get over to the Mojo site for clippings etc. Here

It seems we’re to get another new release of old material – however this has the hallmarks of having some involvement from the people originally involved.  London 0 Hull 4 – The Housemartin’s debut album is to be reissued with the tracks digitally remastered!  This is great news, especially since the quality of the originals, even on CD to date has been poor!

London 0 Hull 4 (Deluxe Edition)

The new release will take place on 8th June under the Universal label.  It wll include a bonus 2nd disc with a number of B’Sides and also some unreleased live tracks;

DISC 1 (original album)

• 1. Happy Hour
• 2. Get Up Off Our Knees
• 3. Flag Day
• 4. Anxious
• 5. Reverends Revenge
• 6. Sitting On A Fence
• 7. Sheep
• 8. Over There
• 9. Think For A Minute
• 10. We’re Not Deep
• 11. Lean On Me
• 12. Freedom