Chelmsford, day by day

Chelmsford's page reads the Essex-to-London circuit: 22 listings across 14 venues, 14 of them music. The O2 tops the venue list with four listings, and after that the names are the rooms Chelmsford gig-goers know from the train ride in: Union Chapel in Islington, where Azymuth and James McMurtry both appear; the Village Underground in Shoreditch, with Vic Mensa; the New Cross Inn; and Soul Mama in Islington, where the Soul Clash vocal nights run. Two of the listings stay in the county: Alison Moyet and the Sounds of the 60s show, hosted by Tony Blackburn, both at Southend's Cliffs Pavilion.

That mix is the point of the page. Chelmsford itself is a small-market town for touring acts, so its honest calendar is the circuit: Basildon 18 km, Southend-on-Sea 27, Colchester 34 and London 49, all in the Near row below with pages of their own. The digest re-issues weekly, and when a Chelmsford room does book a night of its own, it lands here first.