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Hi everybody, i’m Conan Neutron, I play in the band Replicator from Oakland, CA. There are many tour diaries, but this one is mine. Thanks to the SSC gang for asking us to do it here.
Ahh Texas, there sure is a lot of it. After waking up at an econolodge in Fort Stockton where I have now fully completed the look:
We drive across central texas listening to Ennio Morricone. There really isn’t a whole lot to see, sagebrush and plains. Then more sagebrush, then more plains… you get the idea.
“Hey a blue sign! a new color to look it.”
We stop at a little cafe in a smaller city off of the I-10, which has something called “swiss style pork chops” and we have hamburgers and such.
Ben endorses coffee:
After a serious amount of driving we finally enter the Austin city limits, which is about one of the most wondeful things we’ve seen in a long, long time… there’s something about seeing the civilization of a large sized city after seeing nothing but wide open spaces that is very comforting. Especially for city slickers like us.
Hi everybody, i’m Conan Neutron, I play in the band Replicator from Oakland, CA. There are many tour diaries, but this one is mine. Thanks to the SSC gang for asking us to do it here.
Touring involves driving.
A lot of driving…
A whole LOT of driving..
in fact I would say the ratio of driving to your destination vs. actual time playing music would be somewhere along the lines of 10:1. Many times there are times that you’d rather hear anything other then music. This is where modern technology kicks in. In our van, the Supernaut, we can not only listen to mp3 cds, but we have an FM modulator that lets us listen to ipods and SIRIUS among other things.This is a far cry from the last time we came out on tour this far, and didn’t even have a radio.
Todd also managed to get a copy of the audiobook of the brilliant, fascinating, almost maniacal and hilarious Robert Evans autobiography “the kid stays in the picture”. I can’t begin to truly do it justice, but imagine if you will the ultimate hollywood big shot type that has a story about everything, from getting Henry Kissenger to the opening of the Godfather, to which starlet he was having sex with, to which time he “put everything on the line” because he had a hunch that a movie would be a hit. Is it entertaining? You bet!
It turns out that our new friends Screaming Cyn Cyn and the Pons are playing a show in Phoenix as well, at Modified Arts. An old haunt of ours that’s an all ages venue downtown, since another friend of ours is also playing and it’s early show designed to be done in time so people can go to ours (and the Minibosses), then it’s a no brainer for us to check it out, really.
It’s 109 degrees in Phoenix, and boy howdy, can you ever feel it.
It’s Hell’s furnace kind of weather, and you have to do what you can to keep cool.
Let’s you and i hop in the wayback machine and set the dial for a landmark date in our past, shall we? Dateline: loooooong ago in July, 2007. George W. Bush’s reign of terror continued unabated over America. The Milwaukee Brewers had just entered the All-Star break as one of the best teams in baseball, their eventual collapse still a glimmer on the horizon, damn them. Transformers taught us all to sneer at Michael Bay once again, for the first time. And i was in the throes of a 33rd birthday celebration of the damned (ok, no, not really…but dang, doesn’t that sound foreboding and eerie? Then again, we did decide to do birthday karaoke on the same night that a bunch of people decided to do “in memory of our barfly friend who died of cancer not long ago” karaoke, so that was at least eerie). In the middle of these celebratory exuberances, fellow Superstarcastic contributor, bandmate, and all-around pal JoshD bestowed upon me the most righteous of birthday presents–his old turntable (along with a bitchin’ vinyl copy of Queensryche’s landmark concept album Operation: Mindcrime, but that’s not relevant at this juncture).
See, until July 2007, i had been without a turntable for, let’s see…going on nearly 10 years. To most of you download-happy mp3 freaks out in internets-land, this may not mean that much, but to me, it meant a solid 10 years of not bothering to build my vinyl collection and seriously falling behind most of my Brewtown peers. Vinyl’s still a hot commodity, folks, and it’s not going anywhere–in fact, i’m of the opinion that filesharing will help stir a huge collector’s resurgence in the popularity of the format, but that’s a subject for another rant down the road. In true comedic fashion, however, i actually did occasionally add to my collection, picking up the odd Tesla and Def Leppard records here, Cheap Trick’s Dream Police there (and promptly losing it, apparently), and perhaps most hilariously, Shellac’s 1000 Hurts back in 2000, which, ya know–it’s Shellac. Shellac albums have so much ridiculously fantastic packaging and art that they demand to be purchased on vinyl the way those three analog nerds intended (and besides, 1000 Hurts–as well as this year’s Excellent Italian Greyhound–include an unlabeled CD copy of the album, rendering the digital version available in the store patently worthless). But until that fateful day way back in the summer of ‘07, that wax slab of Shout at the Devil i found in 2002 just sat, collecting dust.
But now! I has a turntable, and noooo, you not be stealin’ my turntable, and so, i have begun to rediscover a few things about my modest little record collection. Firstly–it sorta fuckin’ rules (the copy of Mechanical Resonance should be evidence enough). Secondly–there is a lot of quality stuff in that collection that i plumb forgot about, and the next best thing to discovering music you’ve never heard before is rediscovering music you forgot you loved. And thus, my gain is your tedium. Join me now, as i spend the next god knows how many weeks sifting through my record collection and bringing you…Great Reclamations in Vinyl. Read more »
We’re on the road to Phoenix, passing Joshua Tree as I type this. There is a definite pastoral beauty to the desert… all I can really say though is that i’m very glad we have air conditioning, as the local temperature is: 102 degrees fahrenheit, and it wasn’t much cooler when we got up this morning either. ugh.
But anyway, you aren’t reading this to hear about the weather.
So, the thing about playing in a band is that sometimes you play a show that really can only be classified as a clusterfuck. For reasons that vary, you end up in a situation where… say there are 6 bands on a bill for instance, two shows put together, but then it just ends up working pretty well anyway… that was last night.
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Replicator tour diary 2007.
Hi everybody, i’m Conan Neutron, I play in the band Replicator from Oakland, CA. This is our tour diary, thanks to the SSC for asking us to do it here.
We’ve been around making crazy artynoisyrock music since late 99’-early 2000. Chances are you haven’t heard of us (although Joie did see us play in Denver, Colorado with two other paying customers at 6:30 at night in 2002, and we’ve played with the super excellent Ifihadahifi many, many times, of which Dj is a member). Patton Oswalt kinda likes us, Warren Ellis wrote some nice stuff about us once, and we were once featured on an Awesome TV show with Les Savy Fav.
We’ve played with bands you probably know, Trans Am, Melt Banana, Big Business, Blood Brothers, Oxes, Rye Coalition, BABYLAND, Hella, Akimbo.. etc. Etc.
But when it comes down to it, we’re just another band out there. We do this because it’s an honest expression of what we are trying to achieve creatively and… when it all comes together it gives us a lot of enjoyment, sometimes other people enjoy it too, that rules. We like to think we put our all into this thing and never give anything less then 100%. The idea is we try to return the asskicking that music has given us, plain and simple, we want to add to the greater whole and give something back. Also we want to be given bowls of only red M&MS and have nobody look us in the eye at the venue. Read more »
Indie-pop darlings Rogue Wave have the release of their third album, Asleep at Heaven’s Gate, set for September 18th. This track, “Lake Michigan,” arrives in advance of it; have a listen, and consider it something of a teaser.
It took me a few plays to get into it. The song kind of reminds me of some of the more recent Snow Patrol stuff, or even of Keane — it’s got that kind of dreamy, crystalline sound to it. After three or four listens, I decided that I like it, but I’m curious to see if the new record has a few more uptempo tunes mixed in, the way their last two did. One track is nice, but it might be asking a lot of me to stay awake for a whole album of it.
“Lake Michigan” — Rogue Wave
