Thanks to all of you who came out and kept the scene alive at The WINDMILL on Friday. It was an amazing night of great friends, hot rocking, warm Grolsch and late night shopping. Let’s do it again really soon, yes?

We received some complaints from our Canadian cousins this week, upset that the latest Winter Olympics’ flyer was ‘backing the wrong team’. Not wanting to start a hockey fight I have amended the offending jerseys.

Remember though guys, it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. And where you should be at is The Windmill in Brixton this Friday night: four brilliant bands, stupidly drunk DJs, the church of merch, a ruddy great dog on the roof. Come on over, we’ll buy you a drink!

Thanks everyone for coming out on Tuesday night and helping us put the ‘Kill’, ‘Burn’ and ‘Good’ in ‘Kilburn Good Ship’. It was an amazing night, and most of that is down to you lot.

I hope you liked the new light show, I know you loved the 2010 Church of Merch and I wonder what you’re doing next Friday night (March the 5th). Why’s that? Well your Winter Olympics are returning to their spiritual home: Backstreets at the Windmill in Brixton (putting the ‘Wind’ up the Windmill anyone?) for another great night of late night shopping proper party rocking. Also on the bill are hotly-tipped flamencobilly psyche-rockers The Bridport Dagger, southern-rawk gentlemen Motel Tijuana and garage punks the Jukebox Leans. It’s embarrassingly cheap in and we’ll buy you a pint if you turn up…

You can get advance tickets for £4 from not-at-all-evil ticket dealers wegottickets by clicking here.

In a further attempt to convince you to come we made a flyer. Realising it appeared to be advertising a fairly specialist Backstreets night, we hastily made another. Both are attached here, take your pick which one you prefer:

or perhaps:

Hope to see you there friends

Andrew WO x

The Winter Olympics: March the 5th

THE WINDMILL, 22 Blenheim Gardens,

Brixton, SW2 5BZ

Tel: 020 8671 0700

How to get there…..

The nearest tube is Brixton on the Victoria line, turn left out of the station, then:

Walking
It’s about 7 minutes walk from the tube, walk up Brixton Hill (the one with the Fridge at the bottom of it) and turn right into Blenheim Gardens (there’s a Co-op Funeral Services and a traffic light at the end of the street).

Buses from Brixton
If you don’t fancy the excercise theres lots of buses that run up the hill (mostly from the bus stop outside Woolworths and KFC after you come out of the tube station.

Blenheim Gardens is the 3rd stop from Brixton and the following buses will transport you in approx 2-3 mins: 45, 59, 109, 118, 159, 250 and 333.

Buses from Croydon
The 109 and 250 stop at the bottom of Blenheim Gardens, just past the George IV pub and directly outside the NISA minimart. 

Driving
Enter your departure postcode into Multimap

For Further Information
JourneyPlanner

The 2010 Church of Merch opens its doors tonight at The Good Ship in Kilburn. Our online shop will follow shortly. Rumours of us setting up a dedicated customer care centre to handle all your merch-purchasing phone calls are unsubstantiated at present.

Next Tuesday night at The Good Ship in Kilburn we’ll be playing our first show of the year, and our classic single The Winter Olympics II (featuring ‘Attention All Departments’ and ‘They Launched a Probe’) in its eight-minute entirety. If that’s not enough for your four quid, and that’s probably debatable, we will be unveiling our astonishing light show and the HOT NEW SPRING/SUMMER COLLECTION over at The Church of Merch (where we have loads of great new TWO gift ideas for him, her, home and garden). Bring your receipt from downloading The Winter Olympics II to claim a discount on merch.

On top of all that there will be great music (you must check out our superb mates Deer Park) good friends and cold drinks. Come. On. Down.

TUESDAY 23 FEBRUARY

THE WINTER OLYMPICS - PLAY THE WINTER OLYMPICS II (PLUS EARLY SINGLES)

AT THE GOOD SHIP, 289 KILBURN HIGH ROAD, LONDON NW6 7JR

Supporting DEER PARK and introducing WHITE TRASH PARTY.

Entry: FOUR POUNDS ON THE DOOR (doors at 1930 – TWO onstage at 2100)

The Good Ship is at the top end of Kilburn, located at 289 Kilburn High Road, NW6 7JR, neatly sandwiched in between the Tricycle Theatre and The Luminaire.

It’s well served by public transport.

By Train and Tube: Brondesbury - North London Silverlink (1 minute) Kilburn - Jubilee Line (3 mins) Kilburn High Road - British Rail (9 mins) Kilburn Park - Bakerloo Line (11 mins)

By Bus: 16, 31, 32, 98, 189, 206, 316, 328, 332 plus night buses N16, N28, N31, N98. All these stop within an 8 minute walk of the venue, most of them right outside.

By Bike: Ask nicely and The Good Ship will lock your bike up in the back room

By Car: Don’t suppose you want to give us a lift back with all our gear? No? Don’t worry about it, I’ll phone Addison Lee.

THANK YOU FRIENDS

I’m afraid last week we didn’t make it, we tried hard but we didn’t quite make it. In spite of all your brilliant efforts (and the efforts of a few confused consumers accidentally downloading what they thought was Bryan Adams bawling away at the Vancouver 2010 opening ceremony) your Winter Olympics fell just short of a place in the UK charts.

I tell you what, though, it was bloody close, and we’d like to thank the hundreds (amazing!) of you who shelled out on our shit for keeping the scene (and our dream) alive. I hope you’re enjoying the new record as much as we are.

You know, it was actually so close that I stayed in on Sunday afternoon, listening to the charts and waiting for a call from Bruno Brookes. At quarter to seven the phone rang… and for just one second… it couldn’t be? Could it? No, of course not, it was Adam from the Windmill. He was doing a pub quiz and wanted to know how old Barry White was when he died. Now, as I’m sure you’re aware, cheating in pub quizzes is not very punk rock. Do Fugazi text their mates to find out what the capital of Myanmar is? (It’s Naypyidaw). No they do not. I guessed at 56. I think he was 57. Close, but no cigar. The story of our week.

We might not have been able to stake our own place in the fantastic forty, but we can share with you this astonishing audio from September 23 1990. Was there ever a more Winter Olympics string of singles? A combination of those three songs is pretty much all we’ve been after since 2002. Enjoy.

Thank you again for all your support. We hope to repay you next Tuesday the 23rd at the Good Ship in Kilburn. See you there, yes?

ANDREA’S WINTER OLYMPICS #1 by Andrea Rostron

The new Winter Olympics’ single ‘THE WINTER OLYMPICS II’ is now just 3,953 downloads behind pop muppets ‘John’ and ‘Edward’. We were 3,952 behind but seem to have slipped back a place. Presumably someone returned a download… bloody idiots.

Buy more copies by clicking here

So, at last count, your Winter Olympics were just 3,956 downloads behind Jedward in the race for the coveted UK number two spot. Get double-clicking will you?

Click one of these links to get behind your team:

UK:
iTunes
eMusic
Amazon MP3 store

Rest of the World:
iTunes - US, GER, FRA, JAPAN
(other countries please search for “Winter Olympics” within your local iTunes store)
Amazon - US, GER, FRA.
eMusic - World

eMusic is amazing. All the music you could ever want (and tons you never knew you wanted, but absolutely do) at your fingertips for, like, cheap (not quite as cheap as it used to be, but still pretty cheap).

Just when you thought that eMusic couldn’t get much better, they go and add THE WINTER OLYMPICS II (featuring Attention All Departments and They Launched a Probe) to their catalogue. Why not go and download it, then say nice things about us online? Cheers!

Click here to download The Winter Olympics II at eMusic

Get excited! The Winter Olympics II has landed at iTunes worldwide. Fire up your machines and start downloading to your iPhones, iPods, iPads and iTapes today:

Click here to buy the new single at iTunes UK.

You can also find us at:

iTunes EU

iTunes Canada

iTunes Australia/N.Z.

iTunes U.S.

iTunes Japan

iTunes Mexico

Just search for ‘Winter Olympics II’ in your local iTunes store.

If you can think of any iTunes we might have missed (surely we haven’t, right?) let us know, and we’ll do our best to add the songs… Enjoy!

Great news for Nokia phone-wielding music fans, you can now get The Winter Olympics’ new single The Winter Olympics II over at the Nokia music store. Whatever next? Downloading songs straight into your ears? Sending us £1.50 and inviting us round to just shout at you? Something like that I’d have thought.

Click here to download The Winter Olympics II at the Nokia shop

Remember, the last major innovation Nokia came up with was ‘Snake II’, and how good was that?

If you could stop playing the game and start downloading the single that would be appreciated…

Cheers

We are pleased to announce that The Winter Olympics II is now streaming over at lala.com. Why not go and have a listen? (Note, this is not as good as BUYING THE BLOODY RECORD).

Click here to stream The Winter Olympics II at lala.com

above: Run DMC’s Daryl signs up for the services of the wrong LaLa. The online registration form was “tricky” apparently.

The Winter Olympics’ new record The Winter Olympics II is steadily sneaking its way into shops around the globe. First to go live with the songs is Amazon, who are expecting queues around the block at midnight tonight…

Click here to get The Winter Olympics II from Amazon (UK)

Click here for Amazon in the United States

Click here to get The Winter Olympics II from Amazon in Germany

Click here to find us at Amazon in France

Winningly, in France we’re billed as Indé & Alternatif - everything sounds cooler in French, mais non?

Don’t worry if you don’t live in any of these places. We’re adding more territories and shops all the time, and will be up on iTunes in Canada, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Mexico and more very shortly.

above: The Amazon store is hard to reach by road