The Stargreen blog thing

Following triumphant festival shows at Glastonbury and Latitude, Mercury winners ELBOW are set to play their biggest show to date at Wembley Arena next March 14th. The band are "promising something special".

Tickets go on sale tomorrow (Tuesday). While you're waiting, you can also download their new single "The Bones Of You" - released today.

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RAZORLIGHT have announced a November tour to support the release of their third album, Slipway Fires. The album is in shops on November 3, and the band will be at Brixton on 13th November

"We're playing the best venues in the country, a proper rock and roll tour", says singer Johnny Borrell. "We're going to give it everything". Tickets on sale from Thursday morning.

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Dance duo BASEMENT JAXX have announced two new dates for February 2009 - their first tour in more than two years. The shows will coincide with a brand new Basement Jaxx studio album, released next year. Their last LP was 2006's Crazy Itch Radio.

20th and 21st February at the Roundhouse, tickets go on sale on Thursday.

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"RUSSELL PETERS is arguably North America's premier East-Indian comic" The Mirror (Montreal), 2001. He's at the O2 Arena, Feb 14th

Will you be performing new material?

I'm always working on new stuff. I know that sometimes people expect a new show every time they come to see me, but that's just impossible. Just so everyone knows, I don't do the same act that's on the internet. The Comedy Now special that was uploaded on the web was recorded in August 2003 and then broadcast in February 2004. I have a whole new act since then.

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My own recurrent nightmare on wax is the one where I'm falling off a cliff into a giant candlestick. NIGHTMARES ON WAX SOUND SYSTEM is apparently not the same thing at all. Rather, it "can't be classed as trip hop, dope beats, or be included with any of those fakers regurgitating and abusing classics. It's all about staying true, but taking the sounds of soul innovators to the new sound plateaux"

So now you know. 11th Dec at the Scala, on sale tomorrow.

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Busy week? Certainly seems like it. More onsales for tomorrow -

• SIMPLY RED is, according to Googlism , "just right". Or "an intensely refreshing tea and juice combination that is extremely flavorful". Their Greatest Hits tour comes to London on 2nd April

• KAISER CHIEFS are on tour to promote their new album "Off With Their Heads": Wembley Arena, 6th March

• ANGIE STONE, "American R&B, soul, and neo soul singer-songwriter, keyboardist, record producer, and occasional actress" - it's what we call a "portfolio career" - adds another three Jazz Cafe dates - 18th,19th and 20th Dec (on sale 10am)

• LEONARD COHEN CC GOQ announces a Royal Albert Hall date to go with his O2 shows: 17th November

• WAR OF THE WORLDS. The chances of anything coming from the O2 Arena are - well, pretty close to 100%, we 'd say. It's the 30th Anniversary Tour of Jeff Wayne's famous musical version of the Martian invasion.

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Priest feast? Buffet lunch for clergymen? No, it's JUDAS PRIEST, with MEGADETH and TESTAMENT, who are "set to rock the UK to its very core" - so, er, never mind the "lock up your daughters" cliche, for this one you'll need to strap down all loose objects and get onto open ground lest you be crushed under the rubble.

WEMBLEY ARENA, 21st February. On sale now.

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It's all about the 1940s: low lighting, antique fittings, crisp white tablecloths and leather seating. The PIGALLE CLUB has dinner, dancing, cocktails and unbeatable shows.

• 9th,16th October: the MOTOWN LIVE REVUE celebrates over 50 fabulous years of Motown and its greatest artists. Features songs from all the Motown greats, including The Temptations, The Supremes, The Four Tops, Martha Reeves and The Vandellas, Stevie Wonder and many more.

• 11th October: The FABULOUS BOOGIE BOYS have been performing around the world for over ten years. A five-piece soul and rock'n'roll band dressed in 1950s dinner attire, and using period instruments, the band delivers foot stomping hits from the 1930s to the present.

• 24th October: ALEXANDER O'NEAL is one of the world's finest contemporary soul singers, but did you know he started out as part of Prince's backing band before leaving to form a hard rock band? 25 years on Alexander is at the top of his field, working and collaborating with stars such as Patti Labelle, Mica Paris, Janet Jackson, Gladys Knight and Cherelle

• 25th October: KING PLEASURE AND THE BISCUIT BOYS are one of the most popular jazz & swing bands in the world, made famous by Ronnie Scotts clubs, performing classy numbers in Louis Jordan & Eddie Cleanhead style. From their beginnings in a Walsall coffee shop, they have made a name (a quite distinctive name, we'd say) for themselves with fantastic jazz and blues rhythms, crazy on-stage antics, musical humour and total professionalism

• 31st October: THE DR TEETH BIG BAND was formed over seven years ago to reinvent the great sound of jazz/blues and swing and serve it up for the new millennium. It says here that they play "hard hitting-smart arsed-driving-soulfull-boogielitious music", which must be a good thing, surely.

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A heads-up, so to speak: THE KILLERS have announced two dates at the O2. Tickets for their 23rd and 24th Feb gigs go onsale Friday 10am: more details when we have them.

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At this time we can't say how many other star systems they'll be visiting, but we can say that the DEPECHE MODE TOUR OF THE UNIVERSE will be landing at the O2 on 30th May. Tickets for this date go on sale Friday.

... always said there was something a bit flying saucerish about that place. Now we know.

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What's new? The PUSSYCAT DOLLS plus special guest NE-YO: at the O2, 27th January.

Tickets onsale Friday 9am

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AC/DC's widely-anticipated Black Ice World Tour is set to explode into the UK in April 2009. The band's first world tour since 2001, it promotes AC/DC's latest studio album: Black Ice, released worldwide this coming Monday.

Tickets for the 14th April date at the O2 Arena will go on sale at 10am on Friday 17th October.

"AC/DC", Wikipedia helpfully tells us, is pronounced one letter at a time, "though the band is popularly known as 'Acca Dacca' in Australia".

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• KEANE: now with added keenness! They've added a second O2 date on the 13th Feb

• The American "song and dance man" SEASICK STEVE plays the Apollo 31st Jan. The nickname is because "it's just true: I always get seasick."

• Slave to the rhythm GRACE JONES is at the Roundhouse 27th and 28th Jan

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METALLICA's "World Magnetic" Tour (they're right, that's how compassess work) comes to the UK next year: they're in London's O2 Arena on the 2nd March and 28th March. The Death Magnetic album was released in September, and hailed by critics as a return to form. Should be a good one, then.

On sale Friday.

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Noel Gallagher says: "These are going to be the gigs of next year, if not the decade for a certain demographic ... These are the gigs that people remember, they meet future wives."

So, buy tickets on Friday for OASIS, 11th and 12 July at London Wembley Stadium to make sure that when you meet your future life partner it wasn't at some second-rate small concert by, er, some band you can't quite call to mind now. What'll you tell the kids?

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It's time for another Monday theatre update. Remember you can only get these by telephoning or calling in at our shop - these tickets are not available on the web.

• STOMP "finds beauty and music in the mundane - from boots and bins to zippo lighters and plumber's plungers". Which might sound like instructions for building a Dalek, but it's actually more about "an uplifting, exhilarating show - top class entertainment which encourages the audience to redefine music. " Pay £45 regular price at the theatre, or £27.50 for the same ticket from Stargreen.

• RAIN MAN is the stage adaptation of the Oscar-winning 1988 film of the same name. When Charlie Babbitt's dad dies, Charlie discovers he has an autistic brother Raymond, and takes him on "a rollercoaster journey involving Las Vegas, gambling, learning to dance, and kissing". Raymond discovers the world beyond the hospital gates, and Charlie the meaning of unconditional love. Theatre price £47, our tickets are priced at £31

• JERSEY BOYS - the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, at the Prince Edward Theatre, London. From them: £60. From us: £38

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TAKE THAT confirmed that they're to hit the road next summer for a string of stadium dates around the UK. Take That Present The Circus Live - Summer 2009, will see Gary, Howard, Mark and Jason embark on their biggest tour to date with a monumental eight stadium dates across the UK. The Circus - Live, promises to be the bands most visually dramatic, diverse and exhilarating tour yet.

Kicking off at Sunderland's fabled 'Stadium of Light' on June 6, the band then travel to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, Glasgow's Hampden Park, three nights in their home town of Manchester at Old Trafford and culminating with two nights at London's state of the art Wembley Stadium.

Tickets go on sale today - Friday 31 October at 9am.

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