After watching countless hours (about a days woth) of Reading, Leeds, V Festival, Glastonbury etc on TV over the past two years in hope of a non-existent glimse of The Crimea, I figured the chance of catching them on last night’s 1 1/2 hour Bestival coverage on Channel 4 was slim to none. So no surprise then that, while I’m tucked away in bed, The Crimea make their major UK TV debut. I’d swear if… ang on… S4C = crappier than 4… = schedules running a week later…. =…. WOOHOOO! In that case, The Crimea, Major TV Debut, S4C’s Bestival Coverage, Tursday 6th October, 4.05am. That’s middle of the night 4.30. Told you their schedule was crap. Betetr than nothing though, and for anyone who did catch it last night, anyone have a video capture card? Cos my VCR runs off a mono sound TV and my video capture card webcam is at home.
Another thing I won’t be missing: WOXY.com online radio’s live(ish) Crimea session on Tuesday afternoon (4.00pm EDT, 8.00pm GMT). Owen seems to think it’s monday, WOXY’s website says otherwise.

Well, now the albums out on iTunes, some people have grabbed a copy and had a go at reviewing it. Top of the list is Stuart Denyer who’s posted an extremely detailed review on his Musicbox website and, other than the surprise of the early release he seems to quite like it.
The September 1st issue of American Way magazine also had a rather shorter review in their Lifestyle Trends section. Check it out via their website or by clicking more.
Cornerstone Media are most likely behind a press release causing the following three sites to have very similar news stories on the band’s album release and tour, but they’re different enough to all get a mention. RiftRock mentions the LWOA EP with a link to a WRG stream and some US tour dates, NowOnTour miss out the dates but have more links to the WRG stream and some info on Davey, while Static Multimedia leave out the stream but have loads of dates and mention the Billy Corgan tour. Hit more to read them all.
And here’s a little pic I found on Flickr from their Bestival appearance.
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The Crimea’s official website has been updated with a new english version of the original site. It’s got a new blue look, a link to their MySpace page, a link to Davey’s blog, pics from their UK summer tour, all the latest news from the band and even better, the two incomplete videos have been fixed so you can watch them play the whole of “Heads I Win, Tails You Loose” and “Down On The Farm”. Check it out at www.thecrimea.net. EDIT: well, it was a second ago. Here’s what it did look like, but seems it’s back to just the US page for now.

Tip of the day: keep checking the gigs page (or the official site) for the latest gig based news. But here’s a round up;
The Bloomfield Avenue Cafe gig tomorrow has changed venue to The Stone Pony in Asbury Park.
Two new US gigs have been added, the Bowery Ballroom on September 30th and TT The Bear’s on October 3rd. They’re supporting them funny Electric Six boys at the first, gay bar gay bar etc.
One special guest at the October 13th Peel Day gig at The Enterprise in Camden, London is rumored to be Charlotte Hatherly. I’d bet on a couple more Ash members and a famous Stereophonic too. But I’m sure you’re all much more interested in meeting Davey & co. It’s a great place for it.

The Crimea - live mayhem and recorded magnificence
More gig news from the Warner Brothers list. Hit more.
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Aharr me harties.. no, pirate day was yesterday. Eh well. I’ve got to do the following as more than one of you has become a little confused.
TRAGEDY ROCKS (in CD form) HAS NOT BEEN RELEASED. UK RELEASE DATE = October 18th. US RELEASE DATE = Early 2006.

Explanation: an eleven track, home recorded, home produced album by The Crimea called Tragedy Rocks was self released on the Klutz Inc/Animal Noise label on March 8th 2004 in CD format, featuring 11 tracks and a redish cover (tracklisting/cover shots here). It was only ever available either straight from the band, or from Townsend-Records.co.uk, but sold out towards the start of this year. You’ll only be able to get your hands on one via second hand stores online, or eBay (the last of which went for just over ?20).
In February this year, The Crimea re-recorded Tragedy Rocks with new band members, and was produced by Chris Shaw and Dennis Herring (tracklisting/cover shots here). The full 14 tracks from the album were released to online download stores last week. In CD format, the album will be available through Warner Brothers Records in the US with all 14 tracks and a silverish cover, and through Warner Brothers/Double Dragon Records in the UK with a reduced 11 tracks and a blueish cover. Neither of these CDs have yet been released, regardless of what online stores such as Amazon may say. This is partly due to a constantly slipping release date, and partly due to these stores having album info produced by monkeys. This will also cause album listings with wrong tracklistings, such as the UK version being listed with the US tracklisting, or the US version with the 2004 version tracklisting, etc. Basically, if you order the Warners released album from a UK store, it will arrive shortly after October 18th (unless the release is moved back again). If you order the Warners released album from a US store then it should arrive sometime early next year.
Hopefully that clears things up a bit. Appologies for the confusion, any complaints and I believe Warner Brothers have their own website…

I wanted to post this with loads of other stuff but it’s taking too long, and this is kinda urgent. The gig at The Downtown in Farmingdale tomorrow evening has been CANCELLED. Sorry for the late notice, I only found out yesterday via the venues website. Though it should be noted no one else has mentioned anything, so if you were going then maybe just check with the venue before deciding not to. Hopefully no one’s actually told the band yet, and they’ll turn up and play an acoustic out of their van anyways. Likely.

And readers of yesterdays select reading will know that after some 1337 h4@x0rz usually comes teh pwnage.

Recent tracks playlist curtosey Last.fm. And Vu, I can’t thankyou enough. Review, info, etc coming soon.

The Project Winterhaven album givaway ended last night, and after countless entries (though I counted seven) you were all still in with an almost 50/50 chance of winning. Correct entries, which would be all of you, were stuck into a fancy wooden box thing, given the cocktail experience, and three picked out. The lucky winners have been notified by email (I shan’t name them, you can leave squeels of glee in the comments if you wish) and I’ll get the CDs to you ASAP. As for the rest of you, there’ll be another, even better competition along very shortly, and no doubt you’ll have just as much chance winning that one as this, so think twice before not entering. For the record, all entrants emails have been deleted, data protection stylee.

For those of you who’ve been here a while, you’ll also have been following the ever changing release date for The Crimea’s new album. From an early 2005 release to an early 2006 release, it wasn’t looking good. Apparently the UK version should be out next month but for the three extra tracks on the US version you were looking at a longer wait. Not anymore. Tragedy Rocks V.2 US has just been released to iTunes and Yahoo! Music’s download engines. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Yes, US fans can now get their hands on the full album for only $9.27 (?5). The rest of the world, on the other hand, may have to wait a while longer. iTune’s is refusing to even list the album to anyone outside the US, and even though Yahoo! Music Engine users can not only view the album details but also listen to 30 second clips of each track, unfortunately it seems that’s all, as I’m getting some weird “error code: 8″ after entering credit card details and it’s refusing to charge me and give me the damn songs. Eh well. Someone may want to inform Warners and any other record label that this shall only go to further the trade in illigal MP3s due to eager rest-of-world fans wanting to hear the thing. Realy, it’s not hard to hit record in a WAV recording program and convert the outcome to fully unliecensed MP3s. So if anyone in the US would care to oblige, the address is christopher@inaudible.co.uk.
UPDATE: Seems loads of online music download stores have the album up, and have done since the 13th, but still no luck for us non-US citizens. Your best bet is to find a technically savy American for a copy, or wait until the CD release. But if you do have the pleasure of living in States, try Wal-Mart’s online store. No crazy program to download, and you can listen to clips straight from the site (and that goes for everyone, 14 x 30 second clips = 7 minutes of Crimea goodness even if we can’t get the whole thing). Also of note is the fact that every site seems to have preview clips from different parts of the songs. Now, I’m not suggesting anyone do this, but if you’re lucky you could just go round the different sites collecting clips, stick em together in a sound editing program and come up with a pretty much complete song/s. They may be of dubious, alternating quality and frankly sound like something pulled out a dustbin, but this desperate lowly english boy does not care one bit. Anyone up for it?
And if you’ve read the latest mail out (if you’ve not got it, sign up to the new mailing list on the official site), you’ll have noticed the list of UK tour dates grow even larger. The gigs page has never been so crammed with Crimea gig goodness. Included is a very special gig in the Enterprise, Camden (home to The Crimea’s very first three gigs) on October 13th to celebrate John Peel day. I’ve gotta go now and hit things, see if i can’t h4×0rz me a copy of the album. In the meantime, read this. highly amusing.

The Crimea on tour - UK dates
The band use their new Warner Bros. mailing list (sign up via official site) to get some tour info out.
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Continuing their quest to play your home town while you’re not there; The Crimea have released their October UK tour dates on their official website. Included is my home town, York, while I’m at uni in Aber, Mr Jon’s home town London while he’s at uni in Bristol, no doubt the Puncture Bunny’ll be out of Leicester on Nov. 14th… Meh, at least Lucifer should get a look in. If you do know anyone in town for any of these dates, leave a comment. No one else does anymore…
Also, please leave a comment if you know a better title than Tragedy Rocks (US) (UK) for what’s turning out to be a very different release from the one the yanks are getting. See that on the right? It ain’t Davey standing on a log in the middle of New Orleans a big pond, oh no, it’s some new album artwork. Check the band’s official photo blog for the bigger picture. Oh, and this: Charismatic gap-toothed Davey is, once more, charismatic gap-toothed Davey!! Obviously Andy S. just noticed this too.
Random piece of vaguely inresting music for the day: something I found via The Love Bus’s (see: J. Parker) website. A clip of Fly by Lecia. I’ve chopped off the first half cos, frankly, it drags on a bit. But the second half rocks. Check out her official site for the full video for the song, and clips of god knows what else. Which reminds me, only two days left to enter the Project Winterhaven competition. And trust me when I say all entrants currently stand a very large possibility of winning stuff.
And while we’re at the useless link stage, if you’ve got access to the Discovery Channel then please watch American Chopper in about 25 minutes. Really, that plug was just an excuse for me to do this: Oohhhohohhhh, YES! …. Never mind…

Hot, hot off the press: new tour dates. They’re off around the NY area of the USA touring with Austrailia’s Youth Group. That’s a band, not some scout thing.
Also hot, but not in a good way: The UK release of Tragedy Rocks - someone’s just let me know the tracklisting. White Russian Galaxy, Lottery Winners On Acid, Opposite Ends, Baby Boom, Girl Just Died, Losing My Hair, Bad Vibrations, The Miserabilist Tango, Gazillions Of Miniature Violins, Someone’s Crying. Which would be almost as good as the US release, with the exception of Here Comes The Suffering (Ching) being left off. But the good thing is the release date has been moved forward a day to October 17th *woohoo* (actually I just messed up the original date, like it’s ever gonna get moved forward officialy). Note to self: must learn difference between forwards and backwards.

Don’t have much for you today, just a single Tragedy Rocks review. At least it’s a good one. Click more or visit the New Beats site to see what they say.
Speaking of which, CD Universe have the album listed for what we in the UK like to call a fiver. ‘Course here, we pay that for penny sweets. And is about how much you’d bet on that release date being right.
Just noticed the band’s a featured artist over at Curt Mangan.com, keep refreshing til you see the boys in blue.
O’er in the Big Easy the gap’s blocked and the waters receding, so here’s to the House That Used To Be A Ship. Oh how they wish they were. That’s for all of you who weren’t around when Murry The Hump were. No I’m not taking the piss, just taking advantage. I still assume the lack of recent hits is to the greatness of the official site.
BESTIVAL! Tomorrow, Crimea, JD stage, 9.30, no water, etc…
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