That’ll have them shaking in Congress. 

Now, listen to the Scorpions while the internet still lets you.

Hi there, hope you had a peaceful and happy Christmas.

I don’t care what you say. New Year is amazing: Bad ideas, good intentions, broken promises and boring, boring ‘best-of’ lists. In short, it’s our time. Which is why, this December the 31st we’ll be celebrating with our last show of the year/first show of 2012 at the brilliant Brixton Windmill. It would be excellent if you joined us.

Tickets are available here for six quid (plus a pound BF). I’d definitely recommend buying now, as they’re likely to be more on the door, and as soon as people realise that seven quid is the deal of the century for an all-night New Year’s mega-rave in London, they’ll all go, and then what will you have left? Jam night with Jools, that’s what. 

Avoid Hootenanny hell and buy your tickets here

Tell us that you’re coming on the Facebook event page

Now, far be it from us to cobble together a list of things that you sort of remember and pass it off as a good time but ‘tis the season to be dishing out ‘best of 2011 gongs’ so here’s our 2p worth. No, I know you couldn’t wait. 

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR (In no particular order of excellence)

Boston Spaceships - Let it Beard, The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck, Mastodon - The Hunter, Thurston Moore - Demolished Thoughts, Art Brut - Brilliant! Tragic!, Tim Hecker - Ravedeath 1972, Katy B - On a Mission, The Computers - This is the Computers, The Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Part 2, Wild Flag - Wild Flag, The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient, The Antlers - Burst Apart, Thee Oh Sees - Castlemania, Led Zeppelin - Four Symbols, Van Halen - Van Halen…

FILM OF THE YEAR

Thor - Emminently enjoyable, better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be fantasy romp with my Natalie Portman in it. Equal parts Lord of the Rings and Crocodile Dundee. Amazing.

WORST FILM OF THE YEAR

Your Highness - Utterly unlikeable much-worse-than-you-could-even-imagine fantasy romp with my Natalie Portman in It. Equal parts CGI suckfest and depressing gay-panic ‘gags’. Outrageous. And not in the way it thinks it is. 

GIG OF THE YEAR

SILFEST - AUGUST 2011 - getting healed in a field at the home of the International Pesticide Application Research Centre; the only rock festival in the country that has its own nuclear reactor. In the middle of a throng of impossibly attractive young scientists taking off their glasses and letting down their collective hair, The Winter Olympics did a little research of their own. Chiefly trying to determine which is louder: the people on the left, or the people on the right? (Our findings will be published later this year). A properly brilliant time and also home to the Accidentally doomed chat up line of the year:

AWO: Thanks for having us. I’d love a tour of your reactor.

Impossibly hot young scientist: I’ll bet you would granddad

WORST GIG OF THE YEAR

GINGLIK - JANUARY 2011 - Bands! if you are going to fall out, fist fight and lose a band member, make sure you do it at a charity show in a dis-used toilet on a freezing Tuesday night. If you can augment the evening with more dry ice than Robert Smith’s fridge-freezer and a string of strong jazz-funk supports, so much the more miserable.

FAN OF THE YEAR

We are, it goes without saying, eternally thankful for everyone’s support every day. Doing this would be rubbish without you lot. I think we all know, though, that some fans are even better than others. Man of the year? The first time fan who collared me at the Church of Merch, explained how much he liked the show, asked what our name was and wondered if we had any records out.

“Sure,” I replied, “this is our new single”.

“Oh no, I don’t want that.”

“Why not?” I frowned

“I prefer the early stuff.”

+100 indie points

WORST FAN OF THE YEAR

A big sort-of thank you to the man in Birmingham who chanted “JESUS JESUS JESUS JESUS JESUS” through our set, before drawing amazing portraits of us and biting Simon on the hand at the end. Passion people, it’s all about passion.

THINGS TO DO IN 2012

1) CRUSH The Brixton Windmill New Year’s Eve/Day all night killer party. Buy your tickets here

2) UNLEASH the patiently-awaited and honestly astonishing album PROFIT AND LOSS.

3) Release own fragrance. No, not like that.

4) ‘Inspired by The Winter Olympics’ fashion range. Pehaps.

5) MASSIVE WORLD TOUR - booking now (please get in touch) 

6) SCANDALOUS tell-all autobiography - working titles: All Downhill From Here, Every Luger Wins, Now is the Winter of our Disco Tents…

7) Protracted legal battle with the International Olympics Committee over the use of our name. Nine long years and now you notice?!?!

8) Kidnap/kill Wenlock/Mandeville

9) Hotly-anticipated appearance on forthcoming Channel 5 reality show “The Plane” alongside a disgraced politician that nobody knew, a blonde girl from Hollyoaks and Duncan from Blue (I’m not making this one up by the way - look)

10) Get excited!

Thanks again for all your amazing support and for sticking with us in 2011. Why not join us again for the new OLYMPIC year? This one’s going to be great, I promise.

A big, big love

Andrew Winter Olympics x

More trouble in the Eurozone this morning. Here’s a short film outlining the crisis:

The Feeling European video was written, directed and drawn by the amazing Chris Huneysett (who made the out-of-this-world short for They Launched a Probe too).

If anyone has got any Euros left at the end of this week, why not buy the record? 

Get Feeling European from iTunes: Click here

Score it from eMusic: Click here

Or find it at Amazon: Click here

Hey everyone, this time next week (it’s Saturday afternoon) The Winter Olympics will be putting the sex in Essex Road as part of Oxjam’s Islington Takeover. We will be playing in The Wenlock and Essex which, thankfully, is a pub and not the two mascots from the 2012 Olympics. No one wants to see them get hurt.

We’re on at the excellently just-after-final-score time of 1730 and should be off in time to make last orders in the Flashback Records bargain. Best ever Saturday afternoon? Just possibly, and it’s sort of my birthday too - so absolutely no excuses, make like Liam Fox and bring your flatmate.

Click here to support the cause and buy a six-pounds early bird ticket  

Click here for the Oxjam Islington Facebook page

Hate live music but want to give to charity anyway? Click here to donate to Oxfam

Is the HEATWAVE over yet? Good, then let’s all put our shirts back on and go and play some shows.

That’s right, this Rocktober your sun-kissed Winter Olympics are pushing for an audacious THREE shows in THREE different counties. Three counties shows then. Here are the details.

FRIDAY 7 OCTOBER - FOLKESTONE BAR BELOW @ THE VIEW w/ The Priscillas

People of Kent! The Winter Olympics will be the folk putting the stoned in Folkestone when we support the pristine Priscillas at Bar Below this Friday night. If you’ve never seen them, The Priscillas are a guaranteed-great-time kick ass rock and roll band. All sixties garage punk greatness, seventies glam-o-rama riffing and really, really excellent hair. They are, at once, much cooler and much hotter than us. We’re impossibly excited that they’ve invited us to the seaside.

Tickets are a recession-ridiculing three quid on the door. You should totally come. This one is definitely going to be fun.

Click here for a Facebook event page with all the details you’ll need

SATURDAY 21 OCTOBER - OXJAM ISLINGTON TAKEOVER w/ Tony Christie

People of London! The Winter Olympics will be jamming against famine (I know, I know, it felt bad when I typed it) at the Oxfam Islington Takeover on Saturday 22 October.

Oxjam is Oxfam’s month-long music festival. It runs all through October with hundreds of events around the UK, all organised by volunteers who know and love their local music scene, all raising money to save lives around the world.

 The Islington takeover takes place across seven venues on Upper Street and promises over seventy AMAZING acts including us and disgraced British sprint champion swinging Sheffield singing sensation Tony Christie all for one six pound wristband. (Nine pounds on the day).

Click here to support the cause and buy a six-pounds early bird ticket  

Click here for the Oxjam Islington Facebook page

Hate live music but want to give to charity anyway? Click here to donate to Oxfam

ps. I’m going to be having my birthday party at Oxjam Islington, so do remember that charity begins at home and bring some cake or something…

NOVEMBER 4 - BIRMINGHAM THE OLD WHARF w/ Bombers

People of The West Midlands! The Winter Olympics will be putting the ham in Birmingham when we make an enormously emotional rock return to the home of metal for the first time THIS CENTURY. Blood, sweat, tears and a late-night trip to Mr Egg (you f*cking what, Mr Egg has shut? where am I going to ‘Eat Like a King for £1.50’ now?) are all on the cards as we drop in on our great motor city mates Bombers at their 88MPH club night.

88mph was, of course, the speed Michael J Fox had to drive to go back in time in Back to the Future. You guys can experience pretty much the same thing by paying £3 and watching a grown man bawl his way through ‘I Miss the Nineties’ in the place he used to call home. This, I suspect, is going to be one to tell the grandkids about (provided that you don’t do anything daft when you travel back to the past and your grand kids still happen).

See you there then.

Lots of love

Andrew Winter Olympics x