NME Tours

The NME Tours consist of a variety of tours organised by British music industry publication NME. Throughout the year, NME sponsors numerous tours of the United Kingdom by various up-and-coming and established bands in a variety of formats. The tours are titled to reflect the genre and type of bands playing on them.

The ShockWaves NME Awards Tours (known without sponsorship as the NME Awards Tour before 1999, and the Brat Bus Tour before 1998) normally takes place in the lead up to the official NME Awards themselves. The tour has been known to sell out in just a matter of hours. The tour normally showcasts the main protagonists of the independent alternative rock scene, with a number of relatively unheard of bands usually supporting more mainstream acts. A number of previous support acts on the tour have gone on to become very successful commercially, such as Arctic Monkeys (support act in 2006) and Franz Ferdinand (who played the opening slot in 2004). Since 2005, the tour has been sponsored by unisex hair product company ShockWaves.

In 2007, the main NME Awards tour was split into two different tours of four bands each. The first tour, the ShockWaves NME Indie Rock Tour was created to reflect the growing indie rock scene in Britain throughout 2006-2007. The second tour, the ShockWaves NME Indie Rave Tour, displays the small number of bands currently associated with the New Rave music genre. NME editor Conor McNicholas stated that the reason for the tour split was to allow more fans to gain tickets to the Awards tour, and allow them to display more bands at the one time. The tours were played in a number of intertwined dates at the same time. This format was kept for one year, before reverting to one tour in 2008. In 2017, rather than organise a tour themselves, NME sponsored a series of previously announced headline dates by the band Blossoms.

The NME Radar Tour (formerly known as the Topman NME New Noise Tour in 2008, and the Topman NME New Music Tour before 2008) has taken place in venues throughout the United Kingdom since 2005. The tour is played by relatively unknown bands to gain them more mainstream exposure. In 2009, a second "Autumn Radar Tour" took place during September and October. In 2014, the event was rebranded the NME New Breed Tour; NME and headliners Superfood handpicked a different support act for each night of the tour. The tour did not return in 2015.

...
Wikipedia