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The Winchell Riots

Last Updated: 12/29/2009

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Status: Single
City: Oxford / The Scottish Borders /
Country: UK
Signup Date: 5/25/2007

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Friday, November 06, 2009

Holywell Show

Dear Readers (& Writers)

So, a while back (we're talking three, four years) we got it into our heads that we wanted to play an acoustic show with Our Old Band at the Holywell Music Rooms in Oxford. We promised great things to many people, and promised it would happen to many people, some of whom aren't here any more. For those of you who don't know Oxford, it's the oldest music hall in the whole of Europe and inside, it looks like this:

Anyway, shit went down, people came and went, and we never did it. Well now we're going to do it, on December 11th 2009.

Tickets are a very reasonable £10 and for this money you get us, the delightful Richard Walters, who we have now played COUNTLESS shows with, and The Epstein, who I don't think we've ever played with, but have always admired greatly.

That's a killer line up, I hear you say.

We agree.

Advance tickets from WeGotTickets as usual

We will be playing as a three piece with two acoustics, a synth and a stripped down drumkit. I think this is the most excited I've ever been about a gig*.

I really hope to see you all there. We've invited actual adults to this one, who wouldn't normally come and see us play at full volume, so best behaviour please.

Vibe!
Phil x

*(Although last night, we playd a gig in North London and Nikki Grahame, yknow, from Big Brother 3 or whatever, was DJ'ing afterwards. It was a real blast, we dug her beats man, and I spilled a full pint of Guinness over the 4-way plug sockets during a particularly lively rendition of 'Red Square', boy it was electric ** groan ** Apparently, Nikki paid £500 a day to get a certificate from the Ministry of Sound in DJ'ing - (she played The Strokes and MGMT, to reflect her tastes) - but that's not what interested me, no, what really got me was when we were playing our new song which we'll call 'No Brighter' because that's one of the lyrics, I looked at her side of stage, and she looked at me, and I thought, Nikki, this is just WEIRD isn't it?)

Currently listening:
The Gemini Principle
By D - Bridge
Release date: 2008-07-07

12:44 PM

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Friday, October 16, 2009

Suggested Reading

We suggest!!

---------------------

'Beginners'
Raymond Carver

According to The Internet, Raymond Carver was a major player in reviving the American Short Story with his collection 'What We Talk About When We Talk About Love'. That short collection was, it recently came to light, heavily edited by his editor, Gordon Lish - edited so heavily that nearly 50% of the stories were cut, shortened and changed. Just this month, the late Carver's wife and muse Tess Gallagher saw to it that the collection of stories was published without Lish's amendments, not because they were rubbish, but because Carver wanted the stories to be published in their original format one day. I bought this last week and have been reading one story a day, it's classic American fiction, with all the typical uplifting themes of disappointment, broken dreams, violent unhappiness and alcoholism. Right up my street, then.

'L.A Confidential'
James Ellroy

The book of the film, or the film of the book? Wildly different from the Oscar-winning film adaptation, but no less utterly awesome, this is the 3rd book in a row of Ellroy's that I've read, and I love it. Super-complex plots centred around super-damaged, fucked-up-to-the-core cops in the 50's, this gives me nightmares and floods me with violence through the day, but it's awesome and totally worth the journey.

'Pharmakon'
Dirk Wittenborn

Starts out like a Dave Eggers/hip young American sort of novel and veers wildly halfway through into epic American saga about happiness, how we find it, and what we do to people around us. So funny and heartbreaking, this is going to be MASSIVE next year we suspect. I bought my Dad a copy for his birthday and he liked it too. Benchmark.

Currently listening:
Great Lengths
By Martyn
Release date: 2009-05-12

12:39 PM

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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Free CD's

Yo

So we've just finished handmaking the 1-track CD's we're giving away tomorrow night (October 8th) at the first of our Cellar gigs in Oxford. Each one has a unique cover photo that we took over the last year, and is individually stamped and hand numbered. Tucked inside is a tracing paper insert with the lyrics to the song on the CD. It looks a bit like this:

This one is my copy, yours will look different.

So this means you need to get there early tomorrow night, not least to watch Caretaker and Oxford boys Phantom Theory who we love. These shows are going to be fun - the reason we decided to do them was because the last time but one when we played the local festival The Punt, it was very very busy and we realised we hadn't really played that much in Oxford over the last two years, lest we annoyed people, so we decided to annoy people and play three shows over three months.

We are writing and recording, which is not The Usual Band code for "doing nothing" - new songs are:

These Fires That You Know
United States
I'm Better By The Sea
All The Sparks

On another note. This rain and Sudden Winter is grinding me down - as if we've skipped Summer and Autumn - if you feel the same, don't. It won't last and is a freak occurence. Currently listening to Fuck Buttons old record, ten years after everyone else seemingly, and reading James Ellroy's 'LA Confidential' although I have been banned from reading that before bed because last night I dreamed I had a nail gun fight with McNulty from The Wire, and then I had a second dream straight after that in which I chopped my fingers completely off while cooking and my whole family just laughed in my face.

See you tomorrow evening

Winchell xx

3:57 PM

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Monday, September 28, 2009

Advance Tickets For October Oxford Show

Hi all

Advance tickets for the first night of our Oxford Cellar Residency, on October 8th 2009 are now available online!!

Tickets are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/60787 priced £5.

Also playing will be post-hardcore legends Caretaker, who we have been playing with for years in various incarnations, and hotly tipped Oxford boys Phantom Theory, who we're playing with for the first time ever!

The first 25 people through the door will receive a free hand-stamped CD with unique polaroid photo, containing a new track from us. Each night will feature a different CD with a different track, so it's sort of like when you collected Panini Football stickers at school, except this time, I won't be stuck with NINE Ian Rush duplicates.

See you there people, this is going to be fun!

Phil
The Winchell Riots

11:03 AM

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Saturday, August 15, 2009

Oxford Cellar Residency

Hello everybody

We are pleased to announce after weeks of transatlantic phonecalls (what the fuck is SKYPE anway?), backroom meetings and the exchange of creased envelopes of used cash, we are taking over the Cellar on Oxford for a three night residency, one gig a month, beginning in October and running through to December. We’ve picked the bands for each date and will be spinning some tunes (it’ll mainly be Snow Patrol songs and stuff, you know us too well) on the night after our headline set, so it’s all in. The full lineups and dates are!

(Drumroll, please Shrek)

Thurs 8th October 2009 – The Winchell Riots + Caretaker + Phantom Theory

Saturday 7th November 2009 – The Winchell Riots + From Light to Sound + Hunters

Saturday 5th December 2009 – The Winchell Riots + The Half Rabbits + Sanguine Hum (ex-Joff Winks Band)

We were incredibly fortunate to get all these bands playing with us – they are without doubt a mix of the best local bands around at the moment, with a few out of town-ers in there who we totally love. October will be relentless pummelling from long time friends Caretaker and the awesome Phantom Theory, November will see post-rock brilliance (from) From Light to Sound backed by Cardiff’s very own Hunters (www.myspace.com/wearehunters) and the December show sees The Half Rabbits (you know them already) and Sanguine Hum, who used to be called The Joff Winks Band, who we overheard rehearsing a few months back; they blew our MINDS even through a soundproof door!

All the bands can be found at the following links

http://www.myspace.com/caretaker
http://www.myspace.com/phantomtheorymusic
http://www.myspace.com/fromlighttosound
http://www.myspace.com/wearehunters
http://www.myspace.com/thehalfrabbits
http://www.myspace.com/joffwinksband

Each night will see us (The Winchell Riots) play a headline set that will (hopefully) be different each night, with older songs and brand new songs thrown into the mix – whatever, we plan to mix this shit up ya’ll hear me? On top of this (the details are pretty sketchy at the moment) we’re planning to give away a 1-track CD each night featuring a new song from us in unique packaging, so you can collect all three. There will be something like 25 copies a night for the first people through the door. Ticket details will be announced shortly!

(We’ve also just finalised a very special acoustic Christmas show but we’ll hold off announcing the details of this for the time being because that’s a whole separate thing. Needless to say, we’ll be playing in and around Oxford an awful lot over the next few months, which we are super proud of!)

See you there.

The Winchell Riots

Currently listening:
The Best of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
By Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Release date: 1998-05-11

11:34 AM

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

Neil Armstrong

How did you know
Where to find me?
I put it down to this screwed up time of year
I rocketship up
Out of here
I rocketship up
I'm on a lunar year

Look at the light
Look at it glow
Look at the earth
So far below

So Mr Armstrong
Now do you believe?
That space travel
Will leave you your legacy
In schools and classrooms
They learn your name
Your own museum
Eternal fame

Look at the light
Look at it glow
Look at the earth
So far below

Currently listening:
No More Stories
By Mew
Release date: 2009-08-24

10:37 AM

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Thursday, July 16, 2009

An Update

Hi everybody

While I'm sat here in my flat waiting for the delivery of my new guitar (!!!) by courier from Wales (and, also, my passport, which I had to send to Scotland and am now terrified may NEVER RETURN which would leave me trapped in Oxford, left to be slowly eaten alive by the billions of backpack-wielding tourists that have suddenly appeared from nowhere, like cowboys in a Cormac McCarthy novel, seemingly intent on leaving nothing alive) I thought I would send an update.

"Hi Phil"

"Hey man, how's it going?"

"Good, how's the band?"

"Yeah, good thanks, uh yeah, been pretty quiet, uh, uh... good thanks"

Good thanks. We took a small break from playing shows, partly because all our gear was broken, stolen or reposessed, but mainly so me and Nathan could learn how to play together properly, which took ages actually. But then about a month ago, we found our way of working, and we're now pretty much overwhelmed with new songs which we are endeavouring to record in rough format so we can listen to them before recording them properly. One of them ('My Young Arms') sounds a bit like that Youthmovies EP 'Hurrah...' but maybe a bit less complicated and nowhere near as long, and one of them is a big pop song that our management listened to and said "THAT is what we have been talking about" to which we sneered but secretly loved them for. And one of them is on the myspace page, called 'Figure 8's' which I recorded alone, with Nathan and my girlfriend singing on at the end. It's one of my favourite things we've done.

Our big, loveable, too-much-red-wine-and-he'll-start-telling-me-he-loves-me drummer Shrek has a new drumkit which is the first time in all the time I've ever known him that he's bought a new kit *cue much joy*

This isn't the kit he bought but imagine if he had, that'd be COOL. The old one (that he got back when he was playing with The Levellers) was so battered that it was being held together with cans of Tango, so we broke it up and used it for wood.

"Scuse us mate, are you the drummer in the headlining band? Is it cool if I use your kit?" X 10,000 = Broken drumkit, broken drummer.

We bought a new Korg synth because we were briefly going to be the new Phoenix until we realised they were merely an OK BAND and not brilliant like we first thought. It's got this great Sigur Ros noise on it, I call it the Sigur Ros noise.

Nathan drove to T In The Park for ONE day just to see The Mars Volta with his fiance, and they "spent the day running around like children". I went to Glastonbury and spent the weekend stumbling round like a child feeling a bit disappointed at the line up (although I went to see fellow Oxford boys Stornoway THREE times over the weekend which was a real highlight each time - check this video out right here) but still just happy to be there hearing people shouting something about a massive Pop Star Being Dead.

And bringing us nicely to the present day, last night me and Rich went to see Nine Inch Nails at the O2 Arena. I got there early and felt so overwhelmed by the place I had to call my Dad to remind myself I was a real person and not just an O2 customer. He didn't sound very interested. I realised I was using an iPhone to call him. Stalemate. (Incidentally NIN were very, very good but I was still choking on the £4.30 I paid for a beer which is without a doubt the most expensive beer I've ever bought in any country in the world).

Fact: the first gig I ever went to was Michael Jackson at the Wembley Stadium, on the Dangerous Tour in 1991. I was 9 years old and when Michael TOOK OFF IN A SPACESHIP at the end, my world lit up.

..

Tonight (Thursday July 16th) me and Nathan have a show supporting Richard Walters at Baby Love on the Cowley Road in Oxford which I am mildly nervous about because I don't even know where my guitar is at the moment let alone what we're going to play and how. And then we are rehearsing as hard as we can for two shows that we have which arrrrreeeee...

Saturday 1st August 2009 - Jericho Tavern, Oxford

Tuesday 4th August 2009 - Dublin Castle, Camden (Club Fandango show)

The last time I played a show for Club Fandango (the night run by seminal indie label Fierce Panda) I was in a band called Fell City Girl, and we played possibly the worst show of our entire lives infront of NO people and label founder Simon Williams who emailed me the next day saying "Yeah, thanks for coming, you sounded a bit like Seafood, see ya".

Live the Dream.

And then things get exciting as we decamp for a week to Wales to record at the Manic Street Preachers' studio (Faster Studios) which I am wetting myself about. But I'll save that stuff for next time, when you can expect photos and diary updates via The Winchell Riots iPhone App.

Just kidding.

Phil. x

PS. I also got to meet my all time hero Roddy Woomble a few weeks back thanks to Jon who runs Videosyncratic, the (excellent) local video shop in Oxford. I was terribly drunk (on a Sunday, what a disgrace) but managed to remain (relatively coherent) while we talked about record stores we both knew in Glasgow (where my folks are from) and he told me stories about "Bob" their old bass player, as if I wouldn't have known who Bob was. Absolute highlight of the year for me.

Currently reading:
The Big Nowhere
By James Ellroy

7:32 AM

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Thursday, June 18, 2009