It's over

Well the shop is officially over now, we met the landlords this morning and handed back the keys.

Rikki is still selling cool shit online here - www.knowyourproduct.net

Rikki Says...

Thankyou all for your kind comments and to all of you who supported us over the last 2 years.As Andrew said,i will be continuing KYP in much the same way as i was before we opened the shop.So will be putting together a printed catalogue & updating the website when i've sorted the stock out.So also expect to see me popping up at gigs with a stall and hassling you to part with ya hard earned cash !!!!
Any gift vouchers will of course be honoured,so get in touch.Anyone wanting tickets for The Adicts or SLF get in touch via the website or the various contacts i have put up in the shop window.
In the 2+ years of the shop we had some truly great moments.As well as the social aspect & seeing faces both old and new.We had visits from many local bands & became an outlet for local releases (If you had any cds in the shop get in touch for them to be returned please) Other visitors included UK Subs,The Grit,Vince Ray,Kevin Beattie,Members of Extreme Noise Terror,The Adicts,Dutch,German,French,Polish and American punks,several film crews,including me getting on sky sports news talking about the Town ! We helped various college projects,took on 2 trainees via the YMCA,got burgled twice,Andrew even arranged a couple of instore gigs and probably loads more i can't remember now.So in all a bloody good time was had.Over and out - Cheers Rikki

Sorry we couldn't tell anyone till now, but these photos sum up the situation...

Tell us what you really think!

We are running an eleven question survey to find out how we can improve things down here at Know Your Product.

Please take a moment (and it really will only take a moment) to fill in our online survey here -
http://knowyourproduct.net/survey It doesn't matter if you've bought something from us or not!

Andrew writes again!

Andrew has just published a wee story zine about a recent 'adventure' of his. You can grab a copy for 50p in the shop, or on Andrew's site here - http://corndog.co.uk/zine-distro/product_info.php/products_id/323

Rancid B Sides and C Sides

We've just gotten the new RANCID album in stock, full details (and I mean really full!) are here -
http://knowyourproduct.net/punk-shop/product_info.php/products_id/929

Rikki F**ks off!

Well possibly a slightly misleading title, but Rikki is off on tour at the moment with Red Flag 77, here's the dates -

Tuesday 29th April 2008
HOLLAND – Cafe "De Vinger" The Hague,
With Gewapend Beton and The Jesters

Wednesday 30th April 2008
HOLLAND – Cafe "Little Devil" Tilburg
With Disturbance

Thursday 1st May 2008
HOLLAND - Cafe "Zinniz" Oud-Beljerland

Friday 2nd May 2008
GERMANY – Hamburg, Lobusch with Disturbance

Saturday 3rd May 2008
GERMANY – Erfurt – AJZ
With The Smelly Caps and Sick of Society

Sunday 4th May 2008
GERMANY – Berlin, Wild at Heart

Friday 16th May 2008
FRANCE – Lille - Le visiteur / Resto soleil

Saturday 17th May 2008
FRANCE – Normandy


Sunday 18th May 2008
FRANCE – Lorient

Grab 'em if you get the chance, more info on their site here - http://redflag77.co.uk/gigs.html

Elevating our celebrity status!

Proof, as if further proof was needed that anything can happen at KYP and usually does! Here's the view Rikki and I had from the till for about half an hour this morning. What's it all about you may ask,,, well you'll just have to wait and see!

The best album of 2008 lands at KYP!

Well in my humble opinion anyway! 'Gods of the Earth' by THE SWORD will rock your socks so hard you'll think you've been stood in concrete for a week!

For my full gushing review go here - http://knowyourproduct.net/punk-shop/product_info.php/products_id/904

KYP on Google Earth!

In a pretty bizzare twist of events you can now find Know Your Product on Google Earth! Just search for 'know your product ipswich'

We're having a big clearout

And it's nowt to do with the Lentil Chilli I had last night! As we've now been open for nearly two years we've grabbed some of the stock that's been sat on the shelves for a while and put it on ebay with very low starting prices and no reserves! These CDs are listed at less than we paid for them in most cases! They are all brand new (bar Supergrass) and are bands we fookin' love, but have sat on the shelves in the shop for too long, which means you get to grab a bargain!

http://search.ebay.co.uk/_W0QQsassZknowyourproductltd

Here's a selection of what's available...
Meathook Seed -B.I.B.L.E cd Napalm Death Carcass
The CUFFS - Bottoms up cd Hardcore Skinhead Punk Oi!
ARISE & RUIN -Final Dawn cd Hardcore Death Metal punk
Nights Like These - Sunlight at cd Metal Hardcore Punk
Count the Stars -Never taken alive cd Hardcore Punk Emo
The Boys - Sick On You PUNK clash buzzcocks harry may
Angelic Upstarts - The EMI Punk Years PUNK oi uk subs
Chelsea - Live And Well PUNK OI
Angelic Upstarts - Rarities PUNK OI buzzcocks clash
Angelic Upstarts - The BBC Punk Sessions OI BUZZCOCKS
Stephen Brodsky's Octave Museum HYDRA HEAD Cave In
Steve Miller Band - Book of Dreams
The Stranglers - Friday The Thirteenth LIVE ALBUM
Supergrass - In It For The Money (CD 1997)
Isis - Oceanic | Pelican Cave In Hydra Head Godflesh
The Replacements - Don't You Know Who I Think I Was ...
Red Sparowes- Every Red Heart Shines Toward The Red Sun
These Arms are Snakes - Easter

We've also dropped the price of our Jim'll Fix It medals to just £3.99!
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180225801992

Another one bites the dust!

About a year ago Rikki and I were at his house having a curry/ directors meeting/ wine appreciation night and I noticed that when changing CDs Rikki was leaving the tray on the CD player open.
"Oooh, you don't wanna do that"
I slurred, and told the sorry tale of when I destroyed a previous bosses CD player by accidently snapping the tray off when reaching for something. Rikki took heed and closed the CD player to avoid a similar incident. When I spoke to the Rikki the next day it transpired that he had only followed my advice for a short while, and a few minutes after I had left his house he had been reaching for something and snapped the CD tray clean off his nice CD player!

This tale makes the fact he did the same thing to the shop CD player a few days ago even funnier! If my calculations are correct (and including computers used to play CDs) that makes this new casualty the fifth CD we’ve gone through in the last two years! Fortunately I found a couple of CD players under a bench at the Steamboat Tavern here in Ipswich, and the wonderful landlady Val said I was welcome to them. So our new CD player is a five draw behemoth, in fact it’s so big Rikki would probably break his leg instead of snapping off the tray!

New opening hours

As of right now here are our new opening hours;

Monday - 11.00am till 5.30pm
Tuesday - 11.00am till 5.30pm
Wednesday - executive rest day (CLOSED)
Thursday - 11.00am till 5.30pm
Friday - 11.00am till 5.30pm
Saturday - 10.30am till 5.30pm
Sunday - Closed
Bank Holidays - Closed
Christmas - yeah right!

New interior shot

Right, I've now taken a new panorama of the renovated shop. Click the image to see a bigger version.

We're not quite done yet as that table with the Camo material will be replaced pretty soon.

No Use For A Name on tour!

NO USE FOR A NAME's Feel Good Tour of the Year!
New studio album "The Feel Good Record of the Year" out March, 28th 2008
04/03/08 Birmingham, United Kingdom – Academy 2
04/04/08 Bristol, United Kingdom – Academy 2
04/05/08 Liverpool, United Kingdom – Academy 2
04/06/08 London, United Kingdom – Islington Academy
04/07/08 Oxford, United Kingdom – The Zodiac

should be open tomorrow!

Wa-hoo, SO nearly there! This post is just an excuse to post this photo that I like!

Nearly there!

We didn't manage to get open yesterday as we decided to give the front of the shop a lick of paint to really smarten it up. Well Rikki did most of the work really, I did a lot of standing around sucking in through my teeth and trying to look thoughtful, in reality I probably looked like a blow up tramp with a puncture.

We should be back open today, please come in and buy something instead of sticking your head through the door to ask if we're closing down! Loads of people have had a look around at all the new fittings and asked us if we're closing down, now I know we're generous folk but we wouldn't be fitting out the place for the next tennants would we?!?!?!

If you go down to KYP today, you're sure of a big surprise!

The counter where you knew it and loved it, in fact with no CDs on the shelves behind it's kinda camoflauged against the wall behind!

Lookie, the counter has gone! And good Jeebus were we hiding a ton of stuff behind it!

It was a bit like an archelogical dig, we uncovered the old zine rack! Remember that? We stopped using it because when someone picked up a zine it dumped every single other zine over the CD racks!


Bye bye stinking horrid old pissy shite carpet! In the background is the very useful and helpful Rupert, from Staunch just down the road.

Arg, the entire contents of the shop are now in the back room!

Rupert doing the hoovering, he said, "you'd better not be taking my photo!," then posed nicely for the camera!

What a happy shop keeper


Me doing some work, a rare sight I know.

Converge on tour

Steeped in raw emotion, pure adrenaline and brute force No Heroes - the follow up to 2004's You Fail Me - was produced by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou and brilliantly combines the textural sonics of You Fail Me with the brutal assault of Jane Doe;

Praising the esteemed foursome, hard rock bible Kerrang! wrote, “There is no other band quite like Converge. Their music is possessed of a clawing desperation, a sense that any moment it can overwhelm the musicians and erupt into all-consuming chaos”

And Big Cheese championed the group’s “almost mesmeric power and raw, unbridled oh-my-god-this-is-amazing-ness they imbue in pretty much everyone watching them”.

Here are Converge's upcoming tour dates with Integrity and Coliseum:

13-Jul London Underworld UK

14-Jul Nottingham Rock City UK

15-Jul Glasgow Ivory Blacks UK

16-Jul Southampton The Brook UK

17-Jul Sheffield Corporation UK

18-Jul London Underworld UK

Wa-hoo Crime in Stereo hit the UK!

Positive Nuisance in association with Big Cheese magazine Presents

CRIME IN STEREO with guests The Don Ramos Players

fri 16 may LEEDS JOSEPHS WELL
sat 17 may NOTTINGHAM ROCK CITY
sun 18 may GLASGOW IVORY BLACKS
mon 19 may NEWCASTLE TRILLIANS
tue 20 may EXETER CAVERN CLUB
weds 21 may KINGSTON THE PEEL
thu 22 may SHEFFIELD CORPORATION
fri 23 may LONDON GARAGE (UPSTAIRS)
sat 24 may NEWPORT LE PUB

I'm gonna be a the Garage show without a doubt, that room is tiny and PERFECT for seeing Crime in Stereo!

Fat Tours!

We've just had a bunch of tour dates for Fat Wreck Chords bands sent in, and we thought you might like to see what's coming to a town near Ipswich!

Dropkick Murphys, Mad Caddies & The Briggs
06/02/08 Norwich UEA
16/02/08 Brixton Academy

No Use For A Name
03/04/08 Carling Academy, Islington

Well that's about it for now! Let's hope we get a decent largish venue in Ipswich some day so these bands can come HERE

Legless at Christmas!

The front of our shop has finally been repaired. All the plaster was collapsing onto the pavement, and whilst decay is undeniably \m/ PUNK ROCK \m/ it was looking pretty shabby!

It turned out we knew the chap who fixed it, as his kids have been in Ipswich bands Whisky Chaser and The Wankers! They requested some accompaniment while they were working, so Rikki braved the winter chill and blasted out some Ramones through the open door!

One problem though, the wee ska man that a mystery person sprayed on our wall now has no legs!

Christmas Opening Hours

Over the festivities we need some extra time to ourselves for mince pie eating and carol baiting, here's our Christmas Opening Hours;

Tuesday 18th to Saturday 22nd
10.30am to 5.30pm (normal opening times)

Christmas Eve
10.30am to 3pm

Friday 28th & Saturday 29th
10.30am to 5pm

Then it's back to usual from Wednesday 2nd January.

We are here, honest!

If you've wandered past the shop or gawked at the cams in the last few days you'll have noticed that the shop is empty! Not to worry, we haven't been burgled again! We crammed the entire contents of the shop into my car and took the lot to the SpeedFreaks Ball in Hemsby for the weekend! We'll have the shop back in order before you know it!

They want our priests!

Rikki has told me he's been getting a lot of phone calls from people offering to look after our Polish priests. Now, I know I don't spend as much time in the shop as I used to but I wasn't aware we had any Polish Priests, unless they were in that part of the basement we couldn't see and didn't know existed till recently? Although maybe these are phone calls from jobbing hitmen trying to get a bit of work by getting into the old religious intolerance game and look after our priests in a more mafioso sense of the phrase 'look after'?

The actual reason is far more mundane. It turns out some magazine somewhere ran an article about some Priests that are coming to the UK on tour and need places to stay. I don't know if it's a sign that Polish Priests are particularly hardcore party animals on tour like The Who or Guns and Roses, but nobody appears all that keen to put them up for the night as they trek around the country. So in a apparently desperate bid to find floors for these party animals to kip on they published the Know Your Product phone number and pointed anyone wanting to indulge in Clergical Hospitality to give us a call. Well it would have been nice if they had asked!

The new boy!

We'd like to introduce John, who comes to know your product as a gift from the dole office! He's a very nice man who is very helpful indeed. Welcome John!

Beat Motel Issue 7 is OUT NOW

Well not 'out' as in out of the closet, but well, ya know what we mean! Beat Motel is a zine published by Know Your Product co-owner Andrew Culture (me!) and here's what I have to say about the new issue;

Have you missed us? Have you been sat on the crapper counting the tiles around the bath in leui of something entertaining to read? WE'RE BACK! Issue 7 is filled with more smart stuff than we've managed to jam into any other copy. Despite swearing we'd never do it again we've gone and used a full EIGHTY PAGES again! Here's what's in them; More bad advice Opinionated columns that may get me strung up Facts of Life F451 interview Indonesian bands Bomb the Sun interview More drunken tales courtesy of the users of PunkNews.co.uk Chapter 6 of my 'memoirs' (chapter 4 nearly got me sued) Shocking truth about Nestlé Clouds interview Copper Pilot interview Attack Vipers! interview House Party tales Circle Takes Square interview POWER tour diary Zine Contacts Tons of dodgy filler and letters page, DVD, CD and Book reviews So we reckon you should buy a copy right now, we've printed more than we did with issue 6 and they disappeared pretty fast so don't hang around! In fact you should probably buy two copies, stop being so tight!

Click here to buy Beat Motel Issue 7...

Short Term Diary and Aflightoremember instore gig

Well actually the gig ended up being kinda out of store and wandering down the street as well as instore! Much fun was had and many customers were very confused!

This case is closed

We've just had notification from the police to say that they have closed the case on our burglaries with it remaining unsolved.

So that's it, they got away with it.

We are not amused.

Urban Archeology!

Recently we had trouble with our waterworks, they dug up our back passage and fixes our pipes. (fnar fnar) BUT it turns out we have cellar! The floor in the back part of the shop is concrete so we figure the cellar must be under the hollow floor in the front part of the shop, now all we had to find a trapdoor. There has always been a very wet spongy bit of floorboard round the toilet that we've been doing our best to ignore, but it has been getting worse and worse so Rikki had a butchers, as you can see elsewhere in this blog.

Well, I'll let this poorly written and badly constructed blog die now, and you can have a look at the photo we just took by shoving a camera down the hole!

We're folklore!!!

A mate of ours was checking out the Wiki over at www.punktastic.com and found this -
http://ptwiki.benben27.centelia.net/index.php/Jacket_thief

The picture associated with this post has nowt to do with it, I just thought it was cool!

Subterrainian Expansion?

After discovering a flood under our shop we also discovered that we have a basement! Apparently there is a trapdoor somewhere in the shop, so Rikki has been doing his best Tony Robinson/ Scooby Doo impression trying to find it!

A rather grim discovery was made when Rikki was forraging around the crapper giving it it's annual clean, a great big hole in the floor! So if you want to use our crapper now you really are taking your life in your hands!

Didn't we have a lovely time, the day we went to Ippo!

I decided I had better make this post in case anyone walks past the shop and sees it is totally empty, no we haven't been burgled again...

Yesterday we packed up KYP and took it just down the road to the Annual Trade Union Workers day at Alexandra Park here in Ipswich. After much confusion trying to constuct the cheapest gazeebo money can buy and a rediculous amount of pitch shifting (no not the musical kind) we were ready to rock! We had a great view of the stage and were amused greatly by the occasional call of 'can we have our ball back' from the footy tournement happening behind us! Cheers to everyone that came and said hello, cheers to Mitch and Molly for be a bloody fantastic help, and most of all thanks to the weather gods who held the rain off until the exact moment we had to pack it all up!
Now all that remains is for me to practically rebuild the shop when we reopen on Tuesday! Rikki will be sunning himself somewhere down south, so you've all got to put up with my pretty face for a week!

Know Your Product THE VIDEO!

Tis true! I just found it on YouTube, and it's damned cool!

We've found a way to clean the bog!

A Song For The Def

As all most people round here are chatting about burglarys and the like it's refreshing when someone like Kizzy comes into the shop to entertain us with a tune or two!

And the 'def' in the subject is the old school use of the word, as in COOL

Cucking Funts!!!

Just one week after the last burglary we are GUTTED to report that we've been burgled again. This time they took the replacement computer that had only been in the shop for three days, even although it was bolted to the counter with a security device. They also took a fair bit of stock and needless to say caused plenty of damage. So appauled were the local BBC by this they interviewed me on air about it!

Rikki and I are both pretty fed up at the moment so I don't feel inspired to write a great long blog, so I'll leave you with a few images from our security cameras. The main camera was destroyed by the thieves.