The Crimea - US Diary! Merch! UK Gig! Erm…Win A Date With Owen!
The one where Owen gets lonely… and unless you wanna pay your own plane fare, UK entrants only please :o)
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The Crimea’s debut US album release Tragedy Rocks is now listed on a few US retail websites for pre-order, with an unconfirmed release date of June 14th. Amazon.com currently have it for $13.98 but make sure you add in the postage costs to that. And if you have a spare copy of the UK release, someone wants it :o) EDIT: I knew I should’ve bought more copies.
Update: Incase you’ve not read the comments yet, the release date on the US Amazon site has changed to July (that’s JULY) 26th. But it’s also been added to the Amazon UK site with the release still as June 14th changed to July 26th as I type. And Amazon’s never been known for it’s reliability with release dates, so expect them to change some more before it is released. I say beginning of July. Failing that, at least sometime in 2005. I’ve already heard of some people with promos of the album so it can’t be that far away. Getting of the point a bit here… err… Denyer’s been a huge help again and saved me figuring this stuff out myself: Tragedy Rocks order costs, shipped to the UK, from Amazon.co.uk is around ?13.50 after P&P, and from Amazon.com it’s only ?11.00 after P&P, and being under ?18 customs shouldn’t charge you anything for it, so right now that’s the cheapest place you can peorder if you really want to.

Head straight to the US tour diary page for a couple more entries; this time the band are taking SXSW by storm. Also making an appearance is the first of the band’s previous tour diary entries from October 2004. Check em out here.

The Crimea will be headlining the Kill All Hippies club night at Scala in London on Saturday 21st May. Also playing will be The Infadels and Three Miles From. The gig starts at 8.30pm and tickets can be had for ?7 from www.wegotticketts.com shortly, though if you fill in the guest list form on the Kill All Hippies website you can get in for just ?3. As always, for more details check the gigs page, and hit more to see the official flyer.
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As promised, more US band diary entries are now available for your viewing pleasure. This time the band find themselves in San Antonio and end up in a gay bar, gay bar (had to be done) and then move onto Austin, Texas for the first of their SXSW festival shows.
If you’ve not been yet, check out The Crimea’s MySpace.com profile where you can read an all new bio on the band and their first ever blog entry. Of course, there’s always the more button.
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So it’s all go for The Crimea stateside but here’s a couple of blog posts on their Spaceland gig in LA that weren’t too impresed with Joe’s looks, among other things. Well that just sucks, eh Joe? Click more for fashion tips.
Here’s another guy that wasn’t totally blown away. Maybe play Someone’s Crying next time lads? Then again, he should’a seen… err… is this site fully unnofficial yet? You should probably just click more and read somebody else’s ramblings.
More lukewarm reaction on the SXSW festival appearance can be found at NashvilleRage.com.
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War Child is currently rehabilitating child soldiers in DR Congo, operating a music therapy project in Bosnia, reconstructing livelihoods in Iraq and working with juvenile offenders in Afghanistan. Here’s a very quick and easy way to help War Child, the charity that works with the many children affected by conflict around the world.
Crimea tracks from the Lottery Winners On Acid EP are now available on www.warchildmusic.com for a very competitive ?7.99 per EP, or 99p per track. Each individual back catalogue track raises 20p, and albums up to ?1.50 for War Child.
Whilst at the site you can download from www.warchildmusic.com’s catalogue of exclusive tracks. This includes music unavailable elsewhere from Radiohead, The Bravery, Bjork, Tom Waits and many others. Because these tracks are exclusive to www.warchildmusic.com the charity gets even more money - 70 pence per track.

The next bunch of US Diary entries are now up, and see The Crimea dodging between bullets, bars and blue lights. Now I think about it, that sounds kinda bad… eh well, find out for yourself weather Joe’s done a Lee Harvey right here on the newly named Crimea Original Fansite. ‘Cos it is.
And, if you haven’t legged it straight to the diary page and are still reading, I have it on good word that Warner Brothers’ official Crimea website will be getting a redesign in the near future, so keep checking it at www.thecrimea.net for updates.

The Crimea’s US tour diary has been updated with a few more entries. Check it out as the band start their support slots for Ash and get used to sleeping in their RV.
Also updated is the official Warner Brothers Crimea website, which just seems to link back here alot :o) But their are some new comments and messages for the band on their photo blog.
And a man called Andy posted a link to a pic of The Crimea playing Spaceland in LA. Thankyou :o)

So Davey really likes this J.T. Leroy bloke then. On Monday he was a guest speaker, reading a passage from one of J.T’s books at a J.T. Leroy event at Foyles bookshop in London, along with Marianne Faithful and Beth Orton. Click more for a little pic or visit here for even more.
High Bias have their SXSW review online and include some stuff about The Crimea playing the Yard Dog Gallery on March 17th. Check it out in the extended entry section or visit their website.
And after much persuation via the messageboard, Crimea bassist Joe Udwin has got a couple of bass tabs together. Check out the Allah Was Wrong and Howling At The Moon tabs on the all new tabs page.
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The Crimea are back from their US tour with Ash, and as well as getting straight to sending out all the t-shirts you ordered, they also brought back a load of Lottery Winners On Acid EPs with them. If you’d like a copy, they’re ?5.50 including postage and come fully signed by the band :o). Details on how to order will appear shortly on the shop page but if you really can’t wait, try emailing owen.hopkin@virgin.net.
The band were also hard at work in the US taking photos and recording a diary of their trip. Some of the pics have been put on the site here and the diary is just being finished off so expect that pretty soon too.

Geetings, pop-pickers… err… wrong era. Moving on, here’s a note from Davey to anyone who was at the Ash/Crimea show at the Troubadour in LA on Sunday 27th March:
“i lost my silverbracelet onstage at the troubador in la last sunday night. it was on the stage floor and then it wasnt, if anyone has any information, please let me know, davey“
If you know anything then you can lemme know at webmaster@inaudible.co.uk and i’ll pass it on to Davey. He also says they’re busy shooting a music video on the ex-floating lighthouse ship “Frying Pan” in New York. So if he looses anything else then it’ll most likely only be his balance. Like it’ll make much of a difference :o|

The inevitable has happened; The Crimea now have their own profile on MySpace.com. No, there ain’t much on it. No, the songs don’t work yet. And no, the band still haven’t made enough to buy some new clothes yet. So you can’t blame them for looking a little sulky in their profile photo, but I’m sure it’ll all get updated soon. Point your browser to http://www.myspace.com/thecrimea and add them to your friends list.

Today I found a couple new places selling digital copies of 2003’s White Russian Galaxy single. KarmaDownload.com have it for ?2.67 along with a short bio of the band, and PlayLouder.com’s online store has it for ?2.97.
Much more interesting than that, though, is an interview with Owen Hopkin I just came accross in issue 3 of Blank Stares & Cricket Claps. Released shortly after the WRG release and before the death of the legendary Radio 1 DJ, you can’t really fail to miss the question titled “What would we do without John Peel?”. As mentioned earlier, issue 5 of the magazine also features a review of the Tragedy Rocks album, and you can download both issues and many others from the Blank Stares & Cricket Claps website.
Also found this on another MySpace blog. Looks like Joe’s working his magic across America. Well that’s the child friendly way of putting it anyway.

Crimea fans Screenages.pl have posted a recent interview they did with Davey MacManus up on their website. Although a Polish site, it’s been translated into English at the bottom of the page and is well worth a read. If you happen to be able to read Polish (or would like to translate it ;o) ) then they also have a review of the band playing the Windmill last year (actually they have two Windmill reviews, but this one I’ve not mentioned before) and a little news post that looks like it has something to do with the band. Anyways, click more for the interview.
Live New Orleans were at this years SXSW fetival and reviewed The Crimea’s gig, aswell as taking a few photos. “MacManus’ guitar missed Norton’s head by inches twice”. Oh my. Click more to see what caused that.
Google just brought up the following review of the SXSW gig on a Myspace blog. Looks like the lads made a new fan. Anyone else wanna comment on the guitar pointing thing?
And the Music For Robots blog has an entry on The Crimea’s gig at Spaceland, LA, a few days ago.
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