Friends we have somehow managed to launch an online store to sell the recently released Broken Few 2009 Demo. We have a limited amount of these babys. Instead of only offering 2 tracks for free download, you can now order the entire 7 track EP for a meager £2!

Broken Few recently got back from a German Tour (details of which can be read at their website: http://www.brokenfew.co.uk) and happen to have some Tshirts left over. You can also purchase these bastions of print design in our new store.

The online shop can be accessed by clicking here, or by visiting http://www.tearitdowncollective.com/shop/

Since this month has been so busy in terms of music management, we have had to delay the August podcast. This will emerge at some point next week, have no fear. We are back. We are doing this again. I’m going to strap on my radio voice and record something now.

So head over to the Discog page, and sample 2 tracks from the Broken Few EP, and then, if you wish, pursue the entire 7 track EP in the online store. Thank you, shit heads.

After a long and indefinate hiatus, we have decided to go back on the air to bring you voices from a recent demonstration held by Tyneside Community Activists for Refugees and Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism – two very reputable organisations doing fantastic work. Please support them.

"On Saturday 20th June 2009 Tyneside Community Action for Refugees (TCAR) organised a Northern March Against Immigration Prisons. The march was planned to fall during Refugee Week to expose the reality of how refugees and other migrants are treated in British detention centres. However, due to the horrific attacks on peaceful hunger strikers in Yarlswood Detention Centre during the previous week, the march had a specific focus of solidarity with those detainees.

Around fifty anti-racist protesters assembled in front of Centre for Life in Newcastle, undeterred by the showers. The weather was not the main concern as the marchers learnt that a group of twenty fascists had attacked the preparations for the Speak Out Against Racism at Grey’s Monument, ripping down TCAR’s banner from the Monument, kicking over a stall and shoving an activist before heading off towards Central Station. The last TCAR march faced a fascist counter-protest and so stewards on this march were well organised in advance to respond to any fascist presence."

Read the entire article here

As mentioned, next month we will have special guests on the show. How very exciting.

Further, we announced that we would be releasing some audio in May, but the project unfortunately has hit a lot of stumbling points. We hope to still make this available at some point in the near future. To make up for these consistent let downs by us, we have decided to release two songs for download. They are by a fairly new band called Broken Few – featurng ex-members of The Mercury League and Uni Wrong and a current member of Former Cell Mates. If you click the discog link, you will have access to these files (which incidentally will soon be remastered!).

Okay. So the plan was to release our first digital record last Saturday. Production problems have lead to delays. These include the decision of the band to re-record the entire electric EP as an acoustic EP, and the fact that their lead vocalist has been struck down with a case of "swine flu" and has lost his voice entirely. Well, maybe it isn’t swine flu, but he aint feeling too good, thats for sure. Apparently he came out in rashers. Ahem.

When asked to comment on a new release date, the enigmatic lead singer said he believed the record would drop "when pigs fly." The record will actually be out for real by Saturday 9th May 2009. We promise this time.

I’d also like to take the opportunity to plug a show at Independant, Sunderland on 6th May. The lineup includes the Canadian "This is a Standoff" (including ex-Belvedere members), Beasts, Tripdash and many more. Some collective members will be playing their first gig at this show. Exciting. Arrive early to catch that.

You know, its probably just a co-incidence that 1,000,000 pigs are raised intensively at the epicentre of a global swine flu crisis. From the Guardian:

"Dr Michael Greger, director of Public Health and Animal Agriculture at the Humane Society of the United States, has pointed out, this is not the first time a triple hybrid human/bird/pig flu virus has been uncovered. The first was found in a North Carolina industrial pig farm in 1998, and within a year it had spread across the United States."

"Dr Greger has highlighted how some experts blamed the emergence of the original 1998 virus on intensive farming practices in the US, where pigs and poultry are raised in extremely cramped conditions, in adjacent sheds – and tended to by the same staff."

"According to these reports, in Veracruz – where the outbreak originated, a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carrol raises 950,000 hogs per year in intensive conditions."

Now, back to your regularly scheduled, human-caused global pandemic….
www.veganoutreach.org