Friends, Romans Crimeans lend us your ears… - Friday, September 28, 2007
Our last show with these guys was amazing and the after party is the stuff of legend. For real. Be there folks it’s going to be cataclysmic…
Love
The Crimea
Archive for the ‘Gigs’ Category
Crimea lead singer Davey MacManus was interviewed on Radio Five Live last Wednesday by none other than the band’s biggest fan Colin Murray. He was standing in for Simon Mayo and had an in-studio debate with members of the press and music industry on the effects of giving away music for free. There’s an excellent writeup of the show on the New Music Strategies blog but if you just wanna get down to listening, you can still listen again to the whole show (starts at 2 hours in) or download the slightly edited discussion in MP3 format from this podcast page. It’ll all be gone by tomorrow though so I’ll try to upload the stuff here asap.
Davey was also interviewed by Pop Matters on the band’s history and free album. Billy Corgan fans stay well away.
Also known as Kernel Krok, Davey’s resurected his solo career and should be playing the Abbey pub in Kentish Town on September 15th as part of the Abbey Village Fete, further details will follow I’m sure. This follows an apperance by him a few days ago at the Trans 2007 festival in Belfast.
The August edition of The Fly magazine features a review of the band’s show at the Borderline last month. Pick one up for free at your local indie music store of Fly venue, or just check it out online.
And one more place mentioning the album is GoingWare who link to it on a page about free legal downloads.
Huh. Not content with stealing my thunder as official site, some fool has gone and made a post there so informative and obscure the likes of which are hitherto unseen outside of inaudible.co.uk.
Yes, the Victoria line is down! Tube fans lament, while attendees of the Crimea’s Brixton Windmill gig tomorrow can get the 133, 159, 59 & 333, and “virtually every bus [that] goes from near Oval to Brixton”. Apparently it’s only 10 mins away, unless it gets jacked by some no good type. But only I’m that unlucky.
PS. they play at 4pm, doors 2.30pm. Hot tip: Get pissed, fall asleep outside, then wake up tomorrow around the same time for a BBQ and Abersytwyth’s 2nd finest export The Hot Puppies.
Sorry sorry sorry. It flooded. Not here like but any excuse’ll do… Just as you get used to the Crimea actually keeping the same line-up for longer than a year, Andy ups and leaves. Well good luck to you Mr, but who’s gonna join up next? Well watch this space, as I have a strangely psychic knack of predicting new Crimea members. Now, who else thinks that one from The Go Team! would fit well?
Ok, news. The Beijing Beat blog on Claus.com has a long story on the band’s first trip to China. Apparently they’re going back for more in September when they play the Pop Festival.
Free album stories haven’t gone away; the News & Star site features an update on the release with comments from Andy Stafford. Prospect Magazine have a quick mention in a wider free music article, the Independent have an even quicker name drop and the Guardian give em two lines. Though none of them are as pesimistic as Sweeping The Nation’s take on events though.
I think this stuff from La Burroteca is written in Spanish. Theres a donkey. And a pic of LWOA. I know no more…
Gig reviews now, and Dr Alex Hale III (yeah, sure…) was so impressed with the band’s Modest Mouse support that he popped along to see em headline at Birmingham’s Bar Academy too.
A windmill, a plane and a farewell…
The revolving door revolves once more. Norton fans, prepare yourselves…
The Crimea’s super-sized bass player Joe Udwin has sat down for a chat with Subba-Cultcha and told them all about his place in the band, the new album and his love for, among other things, Crimea b-side Sideways. I swear if another person mentions that track I’m gonna rip my head off, it’s been stuck in there for weeks and i hate it hate haaatteee iiittttt. Hospital rocks though.
There’s more Crimea love from High Voltage, this time they rate the album with four lightning bolts out of five. Which is three more than nearly hit my house last night, which really would have been one of “summer’s most jubilant and most poignant moments”. Alas, only the album gets that sort of praise.
If by chance a fan of these lot were hit by lightning, I may be seen to dance around exclaiming Burn Baby Burn. In commemoration, of course, as Ash’s songwriting skills now seem to be destined soley for hit singles such as the aforementioned 2001 hit after giving up the album game for good. Noting the similarity with management mates The Crimea, Music Towers gives the free album a very short mention.
If you missed it, here’s the online version of the NME’s album review. Now if only I could burn a few of those baby’s I have stocked in my closet 
Today’s gig review comes from the Sunday Mail who gave the King Tuts show 3 / 5 in last weekend’s edition, while Timeout London look forward to Monday’s Borderline show while giving it a recommended rating.
There’s plenty of new clips of the band on YouTube taken while on their current Secrets Of The Witching Hour tour. Here’s a roundup:
One of the band’s biggest fans, user roadmutha has vids of songs taken from over four seperate gigs.
Having almost the whole of the Southhampton gig recorded, stereop999 shows himself to be even more obsessive over recorded material than myself.
And finally yertlepower has a couple vids from Sheffield Leadmill, a full recording of which you can still download in MP3 format from the downloads page of this site.
Lucky attendees of the O2 Wireless festival in Leeds and London last weekend will have got to see The Crimea play their first festival dates of the year. If you missed it, or just want to reminisce, here’s some O2 Wireless leftovers…
The London performance gets a tiny mention in Virtual Festivals non-Firefox friendly review of the proceedings.
The official O2 Wireless website contains a better-late-than-never biography of the band and also three short video clips of Lottery Winners, Baby Boom and Talking Nonsense. If you just wanna grab the .flv files, they’re here, here and here.
To end with, here’s two longer but poorer quality clips from YouTube user MadeWithCheese, possibly taken in Leeds.
Here’s some gig reviews for you today, but before I start may I point you in the direction of Last.fm’s new Events pages, specifically the Crimea one. I’ll likely be using it to provide listings on this site in a short time, so I’m making sure it’s up to date with all the latest gig info, and you can add reviews and photos of gigs to each listing.
Anyway, on with the reviews. The band support Modest Mouse last month and here’s what The Music Magazine had to say about their performance in Nottingham’s Rock City.
Moving in to Wales, the band’s headlining slot at Wrexham’s Central Station is given the once over by Caught In The Crossfire, along with their thoughts on support band Undercut.
Controlled chaos is what BBC Nottingham called the band’s show at The Social, while High Voltage were more disappointed by the heat at Joshua Brooks than anything else.
No post here would be complete lately without the usual SOTWH news articles, and the Scotsman doesn’t dissapoint, while also plugging the band’s Cabaret Voltaire gig, taking place right now I do believe. They should be well in to Talking Nonsense by now. Speaking of which, here’s some Japanese nonsense from Sailor Music Record Box, also about - you guessed it - the album release.
The Crimea will be performing at this year’s O2 Wireless Festival at both Leeds’ Harewood House on Saturday 16th June and London’s Hyde Park on Sunday 17th June this weekend. Unfortunately the Leeds appearance is the reason behind the cancellation of the Aldershot gig planned for the same day, see more about that just below.
Breaking news, and it’s not great news either… Another gig has been cancelled for as yet unknown reasons. Aldershot’s West End Centre website says the gig has been postponed to a later date, and the venue themselves are said to have mentioned the band may be playing in Leeds instead. Not sure about the last bit, but expect official confirmation of the main cancellation in a bit.
UPDATE: Cancellation is confirmed, read more for the official e-mail explaining why, and there’ll be more on that in a bit…
There’s a very educated review of The Crimea’s gig at Birmingham Bar Academy up on the Fat Amp Music site, with the reviewer leaving quite impressed with the band.
The Sheffield version of This City has a preview of the Leadmill gig still up. It may be a little late with the gig having taken place four days ago, but this one isn’t: Evening News 24’s preview of the Norwich Arts Centre gig on the 14th is still valid and contains a little info on the support bands too.
Album stuff now, and Mark Stanley’s blog contains a recomendation and pointer towards the free album, while foreign blog (still not entirely sure where though) Muzak! contains a review of the whole thing. Unless they number things as differently as they write them, that 29% probably ain’t great.
Judge for yourself though, as the Indiestore wordpress blog points you towards the 7Digital Idiestore online shop, official Crimea online retailer, where you can download the whole album from instead of the official homepage. Strangely enough they also charge £1.50 for downloading the album as a whole. Possibly most interesting though is the last paragraph on the blog which mentions some very interesting stuff. Just don’t trust it any more than those Bombay Sapphire Coma rumours.
Here’s some vids I took the other night. The band’s cover of Je T’aime, White Russian Galaxy mixed with The Raconteurs’s “Steady As She Goes”, and Weird which goes out to all the street team, support bands and, oh yes, myself 
.
Two album reviews today with both Manchester Evening News and This Is Fake DIY giving it 3 out of 5, the former prefering the the previous album and the later liking the subtletie of the lyrics.
A little more impressed us Unkle Rupert who recommends the album in his blog.
Portuguese blog Remixtures also mentions the album and quite a lot more, though I’ll have to have some babelfish fun before knowing exactly what’s there…
Finishing with some gig based stuff, Room Thirteen review the band’s show at the Fez in Reading, giving it an eventual rating of 11 out of 13.
There’s a few new album reviews turned up on the web, and they’re not too shabby either. Stylus Magazine give the album a B rating, saying “Macmanus’s unappeased ache is the splintered reflection of the love-fearing adolescent in all of us”. Subba Cultcha also like the album, comparing The Crimea to Grandaddy, Brighteyes and Mercury Rev. And Manchester Music give a shorter review ending in a 4 out of 5 rating.
Pointing you in the right direction is the Morning Paper site with, dare I say it, hopefully one of the last album release stories I’ll have to write about here.
So, on to the gigs, and the BBC Berkshire site has a preview up of a gig last month. A bit late, but what can you do. More recent is the review of the band’s Wrexham Station gig a few days ago from Glasswerk, and this one from Fat Amp Music of the band’s recent Modest Mouse support slot in Wolverhampton.
