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.

Do you recognise this blurry green face?

Sad but true, at midnight on Easter Sunday someone broke into Know Your Product. The cameras triggered but as we had turned off the lights in an attempt to reduce our carbon footprint they just captured black images.

I'm working on them trying to see if I can gleam something. Here are the best ones, if you know your way round photoshop please see if you can do any better!

Needless to say, if you know anything please call the police on 01473 613500 or contact them using the other details on this page - http://www.suffolk.police.uk/Useful+Information/Contact+Us/default.htm

Our computer was stolen and all data was well backed up.

Incidently the flat above is available for a remarkably reasonable rent if you're interested!

It's not that we're lazy...

But to try and *cough* serve you better we'll be shut on Mondays from now on. Ya see me and Rikki are trying to avoid executive burnout!

In the Navy!

Further proving my theory that our shop is in some sort of freaky (but entertaining) vortex I received a personal invitation from the Royal Navy this morning. They have sent me a fancy invite to go and attend a presentation titled 'The Royal Navy Today' at nearby úber posh navy place 'The Royal Hospital School'. I must admit I'm a little tempted by the fact there's free drinks afterwards, although the subsequent question and answer session with Commander Richard Buckland could get a little messy!

But jeez, what's next? A personal invitation from Bernard Manning addressed to Rikki the vegetarian to go and inspect the slaughter houses?

The weirdness continues, and I'll continue to tell you about it!

Nitty Gritty

After playing what can only be described as an apocalyptic show at the steamboat The Grit popped in to have a snout around the shop, they even spent some money! All in all the visit was a success, they even left their drummer in our shitter!

You've seen them naked, now you can have a bit of the action!

Yup, if you've seen this Guildford band down at the Steamboat in Ipswich then the chances are you've seen them in the buff, come to think of it you've probably seen that wherever in the country you've seen them!

Well we've finally got their album and EP in stock!
Click here to buy 'Exercise Your Demons'...

Click here to buy 'Panda-Monium'...

All change!

Just when you think it's all settled down we've decided to move everything around! Here's Rikki's lass Julie helping us with the mess! I'll say no more about the change around now, you'll have to come in and have a look for yourself!

Never a dull moment!

Wow, just a few weeks after the attempted break in we got an even stranger report. It turns out that some tipsy lass managed to clamber over our back wall. Being a bit altered I guess her cat like reflexes weren't on top form, she broke her angle when she landed!

Laying by our back door screaming with agony she was stuck. So she called the police to come and rescue her! Annoyingly the police kicked in our gate to get to her! I bet they had some interesting questions when they got to her though!

So who wasn't paying attention at the back?

We didn't say anything at the time as we weren't sure if we were allowed, but someone tried to break into Know Your Product! After the jacket boy incident we decided to get our security checked out, we were told that our shop is a veritable fortress, turns out it really is! A month or so ago we got a call from our lovely landlords saying there had been an attempted break in. Someone with a crow bar spent a good long time trying to lever open the back door, and more importantly failing to open the back door. The door is now a bit battered but is still absolutely rock bleedin' solid! They had a pop at the window too, but with Rikki's mad chippy skills it's now all back to looking lovely.

Theives everywhere take note, our shop is a fortress and even if you did get in what do you think you're going to nick? We leave no money in the shop (have a look through the window any night and you'll see the till is empty) and you'd have a hard time fencing anything we sell! Not to mention the security cameras, they'll take a lovely photo of your face once a second for the entire time you are in our shop!

Arg, they're here!

Our long and fruitless search for manequins has come to an end. Someone very kindly brought us in these scary bastard things! They are not (as they may appear) blow up dolls, but lets just say I don't look forward to late nights alone in the shop with them! They look like baddies from Dr.Who!

Something worth shouting about!

We've just got some copies of the album we named our shop after in stock, KNOW YOUR PRODUCT by The Saints. That's worth blogging about ain't it?

http://knowyourproduct.net/punk-shop/product_info.php/products_id/792

Now where's my coffee...

We got interviewed!

Tis true! Check it out!

http://www.trakmarx.com/2006_05/24_know-your-product.htm

The curious incident of Andrew and the belts

Well Christmas is now all well and truely over and done with, our headaches have subsided and stomachs are nearly back to normal! We've just got tons of new smart stuff in stock, especially tons of belts. We've got studded belts, printed studded belts, chequer belts, piano key belts, and far too many skate belts. This is what happens when Andrew is left unattended in the shop and suppliers whisper sweet nothings in his ears, we end up with 100 belts! So if you want a skate belt we're flogging them off for just £3 each!