THE WINTER OLYMPICS

Hands up who likes indie rock. And drinks. Mostly drinks

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:11:52 +0100

Hands up who likes indie rock. And drinks. Mostly drinks

Cool shirt, hot freaks.

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:06:25 +0100

Cool shirt, hot freaks.

Amazing scenes from EUROHEEDFEST III

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 20:02:25 +0100

Amazing scenes from EUROHEEDFEST III

I PREFER AN EARLY SHOW

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 10:45:44 +0100

The Winter Olympics’ will be putting the ‘Barf’ in Barfly next Friday the 12th of April with an in-hard-and-home-early 7.30PM show in Camden.

We will be supporting the critically acclaimed and aptly named (I like tapes, Marty likes Echo and the Bunnymen) Echotape on the night, hence the not-particularly-punk-rock eight quid to get in. If it helps (and we hope it does) T.W.O. will be reintroducing their patented Pintback scheme for the evening. SImply hand a printout of this email to Marty or me (make it Marty, yeah?) on the 12th and we’ll buy you a drink. At legendary-London-music-venue prices that’s a saving of about a fiver off your ticket fee. (One pint per punter, terms and conditions apply).

To summarise then:
Friday night straight-from-work drinks > legendary venue > The Winter Olympics > two other great musical bands > we buy you a pint > massive indie disco > home in time for ‘Chatty Man’ > see you there.

Click here to buy tickets now

Hey, while we’re all here, I should say an enormous THANK YOU to the (very) brave ravers that made it down to last week’s hardcore supershow in Brixton with German punks Scheisse Minnelli. Honestly, I was as surprised as you at how it turned out. Before the gig I did an internet search for ‘hardcore’ to see what we were letting ourselves in for and, frankly, I was relieved (make your own jokes up at the back) to find out that it was actually just people SHOUTING ABOUT THINGS. A very good time was had by all.

So good in fact, that we started making plans for our 4th Great Indoors festival at The Windmill. The Great Indoors: Fore we’re calling it.

This was supposed to be a fallow year; we were going to let the barbecue recover, let Roof Dog graze uninterrupted for a while and wait for an overcrowded festival market to miss us, before we booked The Rolling Stones next year for cheap… We just weren’t going to do it. That was the plan.

But it was a f*cking stupid one. Instead, we’ve decided to book the best time in Britain: a bill full of international super-talents, a retina-ravaging rave arena, a belly-busting free feed-up and probably bloody Razmo, all for the price of a London pint. Saturday August 17th is the date. Please don’t be on holiday. Full details will follow.

And that’s about that for this week.

Except that, having had the chance to check the stats, I couldn’t help but notice that in our last email, which announced a chart hit. an expensive video, a festival show and a fashion range (honestly, sometimes I feel like the ginger Jay-Z) the thing people clicked on most was the link labelled ‘a picture of my ass’.

Be careful what you wish for my internet friends, and see you next Friday, yes?

Click here to buy Barfly tickets now

Lots of love

Andrew Winter Olympics x

BAD THURSDAY

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:29:50 +0000

The Winter Olympics’ ‘gruelling’ Profit and Loss promotional tour is entering its eleventh great year, and yet, unbelievably, the band still haven’t sold out of copies. Hell, we haven’t sold out AT ALL. With this in mind, we are thrilled to announce that next Thursday, BAD THURSDAY, (the day before Good Friday – which is a bank holiday - if you’re lucky you might not have to go to work) there will be a night of no-sell-out punk rock mayhem (and a Church of Merch Last Supper sale) at The Brixton Windmill. Headlining are the amazing (and amazingly named) German skate-punks Scheisse Minnelli, alongside Menshevik (ex – Capdown!) Dumbfoundus and us.

Click here to buy tickets now

Those of you who have already got Profit and Loss will, no doubt, have learnt all the words to Regional Showcase (it’s side one, track one) and know what happens next… “Ten long years and nobody noticed / One last shot at a festival slot”.

What I’m trying to say is that, this June, in a wonderfully pathos-filled, life-imitates-art sort of booking, your Winter Olympics are opening for Jake Bugg and Devlin on a beach in Newquay as part of Beach Break Live Festival. You should come.

Click here to read all about it

Before we break out the buckets and spades (powered by Dell)we should say a massive thank you to everyone who downloaded our recent single Heavy Metal Ending. Thanks to your kind clicking and a bit of a categorisation cock-up at iTunes the HME remix EP (featuring Corporation Scavenger’s ‘We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Beat’ and ‘Dub Metal Ending’ reworkings) freakishly landed in the UK jazz charts at number 98. A proper chart hit! Just five places beneath Incognito and one above Tesco-Value crooner Michael (no, not Bublé) Bubble. Nice!

Thinking about Heavy Metal Ending, have you watched its, frankly spectacular (and not even nearly paid for) video yet? Actually, don’t answer that, I checked. At present 4,403 fewer of you have viewed HME (it’s Citizen Kane on a plane) than the one with the rude nurses in it. This should probably be a lesson to us all.

Click here to watch the HME video

Seen the video? Got the record? And the remixes? Thank you, thank you and thank you again. Don’t suppose we can interest you in some merchandise while you’ve got your credit card out?

To ‘celebrate’ the chart success of Heavy Metal Ending, our great new mates at Toto Merch have released EIGHT exclusive new TWO / HME shirt designs. They come in all sorts of sizes and colours. Some of them feature pithy Winter O’s lyrics…

while others are just a picture of my ass. I wonder which will do best…

click here to visit the shop

Anyway, sorry for the sales pitches everyone (what was that about never selling out?) and thanks as always for your time. Suffice to say that it would be great to see some of you next week, we’ll buy you a pint.

Lots of love

Andrew Winter Olympics x

Click here to buy tickets NOW!

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:29:03 +0000

Click here to buy tickets NOW!

On a Plane

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:24:43 +0000

At the tail end of 2012 The Winter Olympics released their debut album Profit and Loss through Exeter punk label Freakscene Records. The record: a decidedly DIY attempt to create a classic pop album, didn’t trouble the charts, but made the band a lot of new friends. Rock Sound thought it was “packed with delicious, throbbing, dance punk anthems,” Music Week called it “genuinely exciting… superbly crafted energetic guitar/synth post punk.” French style-bible Les Inrocks claimed the band’s songs, “erode the ayatollahs of smallpox indie rock”. People are more poetic in France.

Not everyone was quite so on board of course. Not that it matters; with the money they saved from their subscription to The Guardian (“Profit and Loss is too clever for normal people”) the band bought themselves some ridiculous new wheels, and proudly show them off in the genuinely world-class video for new single Heavy Metal Ending. Click here to watch it.

The video for HME was directed by Tim Hope, whose astonishing duck-revenge-fantasy (you must have seen it) for the Bingo Players’ Get Up’ is currently number one on the UK charts (and sitting at something like three million Youtube views).

The full-length version of the single (along with brand new Paul of Sound remixes) is out on iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, Spotify and the rest on Monday 18 February. The radio-friendly single edit is available now (if you want it) for free from
http://www.thewinterolympicsband.com/heavymetalending.mp3 go ahead and share it (and the video) with anyone you like.

We’d love to tell you that Heavy Metal Ending and its ‘all the bands you like are sh*t…’ refrain is a two-fingered riposte to the band’s critics, but really, it’s an unrequited love song dating back to Winter Olympics’ front man Andrew Wagstaff’s own time as a rock critic. It’s a recording of a row between drunk music journalists, a failed attempt to graduate from being ‘plus one’ on someone’s guest list to plus one in their life.

Next Show (single launch)

The Winter Olympics launch Heavy Metal Ending on Wednesday 20 February at The Bull and Gate in Kentish Town with special guests Damn Vandals and The Heavy Hearted. Tickets are on sale now for just four quid! http://www.wegottickets.com/event/205832

Let us know you’re coming and to can be plus ones on our guest list. (We promise that this time we won’t try and get off with you.)

Here are some links:

Video link
http://youtu.be/6UKP5dsQJJA

Video embed code (cut and paste wherever you go)

Thanks for your time everyone

The Winter Olympics x

Tickets are available from HERE for just four pounds

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 19:54:17 +0000

Tickets are available from HERE for just four pounds

Does our new single look big in this?

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:21:06 +0000

Does our new single look big in this?

THE VERDICT IS IN

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:21:47 +0000

Profit and Loss is available now

All About Evil

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 23:32:24 +0000

All About Evil

Earlybird tickets strictly for the wicked

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:23:00 +0000

Earlybird tickets strictly for the wicked

This is (1) FREE! (2) next Friday the 16th of November and (3)...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:55:00 +0000

This is (1) FREE! (2) next Friday the 16th of November and (3) Marty’s amazing SURPRISE birthday party. See you there?

Ten years my friends. Ten years. This November it will have been...

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:18:35 +0100

Ten years my friends. Ten years. This November it will have been a whole decade since The Winter Olympics made their international live debut at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury and Islington. I don’t think many of you were there there, though some of your parents might have been.

According to my journal (what? We all kept journals in 2002, it was well emo, and no one had invented MySpace or Facebook yet - we promoted the show by fax) it was a wet Wednesday night and there was a tube strike on that meant most of our ‘fans’ turned up after we’d played. (Probably my fault, I advertised the actual time we were due on stage, not the industry-standard completely-fictional time at least ninety minutes before you go on - beginner’s error.)

The gig itself, like the Underground when it does actually work, was a sweaty, bumpy, stop-start affair. We played seven songs:

(one) Office Rock (two) Is It Leaves? (three) Stairway to Helen’s (four) Fall Down, Sometimes (five) L A Microwave (six) The Trouble With Lovers (seven) Windows 95.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, this is the bit where I announce that ‘to celebrate a decade of decadence we’ll be reprising that set for our birthday shows in Camden and Dalston this November’. Well, no, I’m afraid we won’t be.

You know us, we love to play up to the ‘I Prefer the Early Stuff’ guy in all of us, but have you ever heard Stairway to Helen’s? It’s terrible. Do you know how L A Microwave goes? No, nor does anyone here. Like you, I’m intrigued what 2002 me thought The Trouble With Lovers was, but I doubt I’d want to pay for the privilege.

Instead, then, we’ll be playing the hits (phew!) and buying anyone who does remember any of those old songs a glass of champagne to say thank you (and to please keep quite about them). The two dates will also see the introduction of our new loyalty card scheme and the first merch stand appearance of our gorgeous vinyl records.

At the Camden date we will be supporting our great friends, the pretty-much-perfect Priscillas and Images from Los Angeles. Don’t strictly know who will be joining us in Dalston yet, but the fish-fry barbecue they have there is bloody spectacular. See you there, then.

Thanks as always for your amazing support over the last couple of weeks (and the other nine years eleven months). Christ. Here’s to the next decade.

La la love you

Andrew WO x

PROFIT AND LOSS IS OUT NOW!

Mon, 01 Oct 2012 06:12:00 +0100

I never thought I’d live to type this, but The Winter Olympics’ debut album Profit And Loss is out now on Freakscene Records (FREAK 021). You can download it now at iTunes, Amazon and eMusic (later today). The album is also available on CD (with 12 page colour booklet), heavyweight vinyl (with free download card) and slick-looking Oyster card (with wallet) from our brand new Merch Megastore or Facebook shop.

CLICK HERE TO BUY PROFIT AND LOSS TODAY

Recorded in bedrooms and beneath pubs by Paul Hollingsworth (Roots Manuva, Ride), mastered by Doug Shearer (Venom, Electric Wizard, The Fall and Jamelia) and featuring additional mixes by Donald Clark (Guns ‘n’ f*cking Roses, Florence and the effing Machine) Profit and Loss is a homespun love letter to the classic albums of the eighties and nineties - stuffed full of singles, ten songs long and easily fitting on one side of a C90. It is ten years of blood, sweat and tears, crammed into forty minutes of music and a twelve-page booklet. The album comes with fabulous full-colour artwork by top illustrator (and SW skate legend) Mark Smith and designs by Andrea Rostron and Tim West.

LAUNCH PARTY

We will be celebrating the launch of Profit and Loss (and trying really hard to sell you a copy) at our COMPLETELY FREE show at The Camden Monarch this Thursday 4 October. The band will be playing Profit and Loss in full, and will be onstage at 9.30pm. Support comes from the incendiary North London MC B.B. Manik.

FEELING EUROPEAN

Our friends overseas wanting to try the album before-they-buy should tune into the ARA City Radio breakfast show in Luxembourg this Monday or RADIO_FM in Slovakia on Tuesday afternoon where Profit And Loss will be getting an airing and recently kidnapped Winter Olympics’ singer Wagstaff (me!) will be trying his damndest to field a few questions.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us keep this show on the road for the last ten years. It’s been an eventful decade, and it’s going to be an even more eventful week. Thank you all for your support, we honestly couldn’t do this without you.

Love

The Winter Olympics x

FREE WAGSTAFF

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 07:11:14 +0100

Bad news everybody. Winter Olympics frontman Andrew Wagstaff has been kidnapped* by a sinister super-fan.

On the morning that the band’s new single Fags and Girls is released, just one week away from the launch of long-awaited LP Profit and Loss, the singer was snatched from his north London paper round and is now believed to be be held hostage somewhere scary in High Barnet. His (surprisingly hot) captor has posted this deeply distressing footage online.

Please help us meet this sicko’s disgusting demands by donating to the FREE WAGSTAFF ransom fund or alternatively by pre-ordering Profit and Loss from our amazing new shop. Your support is appreciated at this difficult time.

The Fags And Girls single is available to download now from iTunes, Amazon, eMusic and everywhere else that good music downloads can be bought.

Cheers

The Winter Olympics

*not actually kidnapped

Spandex world. Please call.

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:45:54 +0100

Spandex world. Please call.

Album launch party at The Camden Monarch on Thursday the 4th of...

Thu, 06 Sep 2012 18:07:00 +0100

Album launch party at The Camden Monarch on Thursday the 4th of October. And people, it’s FREE ENTRY!

You see two shops, I see the best Reading Festival bill in...

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:08:29 +0100

You see two shops, I see the best Reading Festival bill in years.

Here is the cover of our patiently-awaited new album Profit and...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:09:33 +0100

Here is the cover of our patiently-awaited new album Profit and Loss. It’s coming out on 1 October 2012 through Freakscene Records on vinyl, CD and download. You should buy it for the amazing art by Mark Smith alone.