Get involved with a festival that prides itself on unique commissions, and any artist should see it as an opportunity to test themselves.

That’s certainly been the outlook of Paul Heaton, founding member of The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, who has spent a 25-year career making his enduring impact on the music industry with a catalogue of familiar pop songs.

But give the man an inch to do something different and, as Manchester International Festival has discovered, he’ll take a royal mile. As with Bjork’s gig and Johnny Vegas’ theatre show for MIF, Paul’s ‘rock gospel’ The 8th has been one of the more unfathomable shows in the schedule.

Full Article Here

The box set has been priced at a staggering £30 so we’re guessing it’s really only going to be us completists who go out to fill our boots!  Here’s a link for the set:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL2VAn30KXM

Paul Heaton has announced a bunch of new dates for 2011.  The tour takes in the UK, Ireland and Germany! See below for dates and venues:

Thu 31st March 2011 Concorde 2 Brighton
Fri 1st April 2011 Koko London

Sat 2nd April 2011 Leeds 02 Academy Leeds

Sun 3rd April 2011 Norwich Arts Centre Norwich
Tue 5th April 2011 Joiners Southampton
Wed 6th April 2011 The Slade Rooms Wolverhampton

Thu 7th April 2011 O2 Academy Newcastle Newcastle

Sat 9th April 2011 Limelight Belfast

Sun 10th April 2011 Whelans Dublin

Fri 10th June 2011 The Atomic Café Munchen, Germany

Sat 11th June 2011 Luxor Koln Germany

Sun 12th June 2011 100 Jahre TUS Dietkirchen 1911 e.V. Limburg – Germany

Tue 14th June 2011 Quasimodo Berlin Germany

Acid Country release in August 2010

Mon 20th September 2010 O2 Academy2 Liverpool

Tue 21st September 2010 King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut Glasgow

Wed 22nd September 2010 O2 Academy2 Newcastle

Fri 24th September 2010 Academy 2 Manchester

Sat 25th September 2010 Thekla Bristol

Sun 26th September 2010 Glee Club B’ham Birmingham

Tue 28th September 2010 Borderline London

Wed 29th September 2010 Borderline London

Thu 30th September 2010 The Leadmill Sheffield

Tickets an be bought here: http://www.gigsandtours.com/paulheaton

Paul Heaton is going on tour and instead of whining for the good old days why not blog about it, the new album, how excited you are?

Jusf follow this link to set-up your own blog account and get started – have you been to a gig on the pedals and pumps tour? How did it go? Are you buying tickets to see The South – ooh, controversial!?

Come on, we’ll give it a go, then see if we can roll it out about more bands we good folk are into!

The Suitable Mouth

5 May The Flying Horse – Rochdale, Lancs
6 May The Red Lion – Winsford, Cheshire
7 May The Horseshoe Inn – Ratlinghope, Shrops
8 May The Durham Ox – Shrewley, Warwicks
10 May The Three Horseshoes – Radnage, Bucks
11 May The Star Inn – Alton, Hants
12 May The Plough – Coldharbour, Surrey
13 May The Monarch – Camden, London
15 May The Bulls Head – St. Neots, Cambs
16 May The White Hart – Ufford, Lincs
17 May The Unicorn – Gunthorpe, Notts
18 May The Rockingham Arms – Rotherham, Yorks
20 May The White Horse – Hutton Cranswick, Yorks
21 May The Original Oak – Headingley, Yorks
22 May The Royal Hotel – Great Harwood, Lancs
23 May The Southern – Chorlton, Gtr Manchester

Tickets can be bought through the shiny Paul Heaton Website

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

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