A while back, New Zealand born Ausie raised Julz Parker played lead guitar for The Crimea, but left just under a year later to continue working with her own band Project Winterhaven. Not so long later, her band produced their third album “Don’t Look At The Monkey” and I made sure to grab a few to give away. It’s taken a while but I’ve finally got round to it, and not a moment too soon either as Project Winterhaven’s fourth album is due out mid September.

I’ve got three copies of Don’t Look At The Monkey lying around and to win one, i just wanna know the name of either:
? one other member of Project Winterhaven, or
? the name of the guy who replaced Julz on lead guitar in The Crimea
(i’m guessing some PJW fans might find their way here). Send that answer along with your name and address to competition@inaudible.co.uk and three correct entries will be drawn from a hat after the comp ends on midnight Thursday 15th September.

In the mean time, have a listen to the first track off the Don’t Look At The Monkey album, Placating. And if you’re impressed with that, two of PJW’s members including Julz are also currently playing with Austrailian band The Love Bus, who hail Julz as “the best female lead guitarist in the world”. I don’t doubt it, but check out www.the-love-bus.com to hear their work and decide for yourself.

Just add it to the list. The September issue of Elle magazine (yes, that fashion one) features a plug for The Crimea’s new album. Check out what they have to say here, but I know you’re just waiting for the Playgirl Crimea special. It’ll happen.
Unfortunately these usually only appear on Google after the event, but anyways, icWales have a Cardiff acoustic preview.
October 13th, as well as being only four days away from the Tragedy Rocks UK release, is also now home to John Peel Day. In memory of the late Crimea backer and Radio 1 DJ, the station are putting on a special gig in London and also asking other bands to organise their own gigs in memory of the man. You know it makes sense, boys.
And to end with, here’s why I’m more than happy to see hear Regina Spektor’s voice at the begging of Crimea gigs. Your Honor.
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The Crimea - Dates, times and a very special birthday…
First Andy, then Davey, now even Owen says it’s October 17th. I might just believe this one…
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Album release rumours abound, not content with having a single ever-changing release date there’s now two; one for the US release and one for the UK. It’s still early 2006 for the US but mentioned on this site’s message board is mid-october for the UK one. Yeah, sure… Jagermeister cap for whoever spots one in the shops first (scan of receipt’ll do).
The Crimea are on another compilation CD. You can pick this one up free with copies of Filter Magaine, or check out the PSSST! Summer 2005 website for more details and streams of each track on the CD.
Over on the official website’s message board, rogerh2o found some Bombay Sapphire Coma tab at UltimateGuitar.com. Dunno where the rest of it is, unless it really is the simple.
The band are also mentioned on Curt Mangan’s Fusion Matched guitar strings website. Apparently they use em. Probably not Owen though, who’s the only one pictured. Hit T for an even smaller than usual Owen, and a link back here. Obviously some still think I’m an official site. I’m not. Rah.
Jon Birch’s photos of the Gallery show have been uploaded to the images page. Why do they never have bubbles at the gigs I go to?
And hopefully I’ve solved the wee problems I had with this blog yesterday. If the site goes down at all in the near future then this news program is prolly why, and no doubt I’ll be back within a couple days.

Losing passages of time, like there’s no tomorrow. closing doors on fingers. remember, don’t forget walls have ears. revel in honesty. at all times. don’t be a prick. think. think. there are things in life that are enjoyable. I just have to stop asking questions. don’t practise what I preach. I built my house on the beach. I hate people. I hate the concept of being a person. the idea of aesthetically conforming, the fact I am actually bothered about this, the fact other people are. when I was younger I fantasised about wrecking my face somehow. in order to take myself out of the equation, so I didnt care anymore, I think I’d read too many books about burnt world war two pilots falling in love with their nurses, in fact the book is called ” the long haired boy” anyhow, the concept of not having a face is appealing. the concept of caring about what faces look like is plain rude. - Davey MacManus.
Taken from his MySpace blog. And I’ve only ever met two people who could’ve written that paragraph. Never though Davey Crockett would be one of them. Meh… Happy thoughts… Can you say Britpop? BBC 4 can, all bloody evening, tomorrow from 8.30pm. Go buy a freeview box already.

I’ve had this laying around for a while and I’d have stuck it up here ages ago if it weren’t for the powers that be. No worries, The Vanden Plas’ remix of Baby Boom is finally here. Originally available on the limited edition Back Seat Driver EP, the man behind The Vanden Plas, Richard Reynolds, kindly provided me with a copy of the remix and is allowing me to stick it up on Inaudible.co.uk. The song gained plays from Eddie Temple-Morris and Nick Luscombe on XFM while title track from the EP, Santa Margherita, was titled Essential New Tune by Pete Tong in 2003. Check out www.thevandenplas.com for more info on TVP, and also Richard’s homepage at www.goodatmagic.com for some Vanden Plas mechandise and rather spiffy looking t-shirts. In other TVP related news, the man found his stolen car and records in a neighbour’s garage. Not that any of you took any notice of my previous post on said theft, I’m sure. Just don’t lend shit to your neighbours, eh.

At the beginning of the year I made a joke. “Should be out sometime this year”. Little did I know how wrong I would be. Tragedy Rocks has now been pushed back to an early 2006 release, and again I’m gonna say “At least it should be out sometime before the end of 2006″. Meh…
Moving on, The Crimea have had many amusing situations befall them. Every track on their first release being played during a single John Peel show, Owen posing in Woman mag, LWOA used on a BBC documentry about, believe it or not, Lottery winners gone wrong. But this tops them all: The Crimea’s song Someone’s Crying from their new album Tragedy Rocks features on the soundtrack to the first tour DVD from the Suicide Girls. I bullshit you not, people. Here’s the tracklisting for the full DVD but trust me, if you don’t know who the Suicide Girls are then you might not wanna go finding out, at least not while your parents are still in the room. Of coure I shall be needing a copy of this DVD purely for research and archive purposes. Mail me for the address if you have a spare.
Back from the twilight zone, Wes from Doris Henson has allowed me to use his backstage pics of The Crimea on this site, so check em all out here if you haven’t already. And thanks Wes for letting me use em. If any of you lot have pics of the band you want to see on this site, send em in.
I’ve also added lyrics from the two acoustic demos Davey had on the band’s MySpace site last week. Check em out on the unreleased demos lyrics page; they differ very slightly from Davey’s own versions.

Like dying. It don’t happen much but when it does, fuck me. Such is The Crimea’s way with updates. Opposite Ends, White Russian Galaxy, Loosing My Hair and Weird, all recorded live at The Pageant, St Louis on July 7th during their tour with Billy Corgan, and now all available for free on Myspace.com/thecrimea with the promise of more to come. The beautiful Regina Spektor provides new intro vocals to Opposite Ends, but other than that there’s not too much new stuff so far. If you’re impressed by the tunes then check out the live gig recording on TuneTribe.com for what I think is a much better performance of the same songs. And it’s only a fiver; bargain.

At long, long last, TheCrimea.net has had a much needed make-over. The band’s official website is now truely worthy of the name and also your presence. With the opening of this newly designed site, Inaudible.co.uk claims back it’s title of true Crimea fansite and wishes you all a much happier and grammatically correct time over at the official one, while this here site fades into ever more self obsessed obscurity. That said, TheCrimea.net looks pretty good so far. Streaming tracks of five new album tracks, four Crimea videos (though as of writing, two only load half way), lyrics to the new album with notes and meanings by Davey, and a design that looks strangely familiar. It can only be a good thing. They has a (un-modded, spam infested) forum an’ everything! But if you do stick around, comps and soft core news ahoy. Weyhey.

The Crimea - More News (hot off the press AND funny)
FWIW, the gig at the Gallery is tonight. Owen likes to mail these things out in the middle of the night :oP
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Check it. No really, FUCKING CHECK IIITTTTTT. Now get over there, the lot of ya. But err.. come back every now n then ;o) I’ll be back tomorrow with ever more interesting news. Believe it.

Embarrassing? Check. Incriminating? Check. Andy with a stupid hat on? Well, not this time… On stage, off stage, back stage, upstaged; The Crimea feature in a myriad of photos taken by Doris Henson’s drummer Wes during the Billy Corgan tour. Check em all out at dorrishenson.com.
Tragedy Rocks has a release date. Again. The latest guess comes in from MusicTAP who mention it’ll be getting a limited release on September 13th. I’d give you a link but all existence of the info has seemingly disappeared from their site. Which probably says quite alot about the reliability of said date.
There’s a small review of the band in PlaybackSTL’s review of the Billy Corgan show at St. Louis, and a much larger mention in NightTimes.com’s review of the same show, who say “They?re a Goth?s dream”. Which is much better than the Eminem comparison. Hit more to read them.
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The Crimea: We’re back (and there’s shows…)
New gigs and new music. All the latest from the most recent mail-out, just hit more to read it.
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Thanks to Elodie and Nim for providing the pics for these, and I do believe it’s the first time I’ve ever bothered making any :oO So without further ado, for the image on teh left click either 800*600 or 1024*768, and for the one on the right either 800*600 or 1024*768 and just right click the resulting image and choose “set as wallpaper/background” or something similar. And sorry bout the lines on the second one, but this ain’t no professional gaff you know. You want thecrimea.net for that.

“I recorded two songs live, they are a snapshot of a moment in time, both songs are subject to great change. and are in no way complete, lyrically or musically, however they represent an interesting moment in one persons history, without further ado, here is a transcript of the lyrics to said live recording available on our myspace site for the next week” - Davey MacManus.
For the tracks and lyrics via Davey’s latest blog entry, check www.myspace.com/thecrimea.
PS. any advice other than a simple wav recording, hit comment. And Denyer, thanks in advance.