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Shiny Gitarre
It’s official: Replicator is all about Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Ifihadahifi left Chicago after the show at the Bottle, since home wasn’t too far for them. We stayed with my friends Matt and Nat and their adorable Beagles. Being the perfect hosts, they provided us with cereal, delicious pound cake, fresh towels, coffee (for Chris and Todd), and anything else you could imagine. To say they are good hosts would be an understatement, they are fine people and assets to humanity for weary travellers such as ourselves.
With Ben staying with Amanda at Bear Claw’s place it was an excellent opportunity to sleep in. See here’s the thing, Ben from Replicator is a morning person, and early riser. I most definitely am not. CONFLICT! I can get up early, but I always prefer not to, and in “rock” mode it is exceptionally difficult. Granted, I do so without the stimulation of the drug known as caffeine, which makes me the major exception in the band, any which way you slice it though the sleep debt piles up, so sleeping in was absolutely heavenly!
As an aside, at one point on this tour after waking up pretty close to Ben time for the 4th or 5th time in a row, I completely chewed him out and probably mentioned something about committing murder if I didn’t get a good nights sleep for once.
hahaha.
What can I say, that’s how I roll?
Soon enough we left to pick up Ben and Amanda, catching the last 5 minutes of the excellent Alice Cooper fresh air interview on NPR, sadly our friend Bob is not able to come up to Milwaukee as he thought he might be since he’s really behind on studio work, however… with Amanda added to the crew the grand total of the Supernaut crew is 6 for a two hour drive. Therefore, we would have had to people share with Hifi anyway, the same Hifi who took off the night before, so perhaps it is for the best. Needless to say this is a WEE bit packed. I wisely took the helm and drove us to Milwaukee, heh heh. Sorry Chris, looks like you get the thumb.
Anyway, we were off to MKE WHERE, a labor day BBQ was being thrown in our honor.
YAY!
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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.
Day 14 we drove, we drove a lot… nothing especially notable happened. Originally we were going to play Pittsburgh, but that got all screwed up, so we didn’t. We drove, we ate, we slept. I will spare you the play by play.
Day 15: We are officially in Replicator/Ifihadahifi tour mode right now, or if you prefer the IfihadaReplitour as it has been dubbed. Yes indeed, we have hooked up with our good pals from Wisconsin the Hifi for the next 4 shows of our tour, good, good times. The venue, the Gypsy Hut in Cincinatti Ohio, was a very promising place indeed, we drove up only to be greeted and shown where to load in and all the other particulars you normally have to ask for. A good start! Television (the band) was playing on the jukebox. The place seemed to have an awesome new little nook and cranny around every corner. Professional stage with real pal? check! Outdoor patio?: check! With second level balcony? Check! Other then being a little labyrinthian it seemed downright badass.
Very nice because when we first arrived I only saw the front barroom and just assumed we’d be playing in the corner or something.
It was shaping up to be rather awesome.
And then the Hifi showed up…
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 »
Milwaukee’s basements have been glowing with a slightly goofier light the last few years. Yes, goofier than the typical Christmas lights and bare bulbs that usually adorn such places with names like “The Vault,” “The Breakfast Nook,” and one of Milwaukee’s newest basement venues, “Six Flags Great America.” The light is coming from the chests of the members of Terrior Bute, Brewtown synth-punk spazzes who tend to wear matching shirts with taplights attached to them as they bash their keytars during their shows. Also, they are totally super-young and teeny and adorable, and i say that as a straight male who dates people his own age. The Bute recently took their show out of the cellar and onto the road, playing a brisk two-week tour that sent them to New York, Baltimore, and various other destinations of an eastern persuasion. When they made it back to the home of the first place Brewers, they took some time to answer our five questions.
1. When historians listen to your most recent CD 1000 years from now, what will they say?
I liked it better when Cher did it.
2. If you could play a show with any band/musician living or dead, who would you pick and why?
OK, dream band: Jonathan Davis on vox, Fieldy on bass, Monkey on guit. and ?uestlove on drums.
3. What is the strangest band-related dream (one of) you have had?
OK, I had this dream (Henry). I was sitting at a huge banquette table out on a pier in the middle of the ocean. It was hot and sunny and I was just sitting at this huge table, and then beneath the sparkling blue waves I saw this massive swimming black translucent ghost. the ghost shot out of the water and put the sun in its mouth…which caused a solar eclipse…or what ever you would call the sun being blotted out by a ghost’s mouth…my friend JJ was there too and he turned to me after all this and said “what’s the real you Henry? How many of ‘you’ are there?” [NOTE: No, i’m not sure what this has to do with the band either.]
4. What do your fans look like?
Giant translucent swiming ghosts. [NOTE: Ah, now it makes sense.]
5. What bullshit do you run into at most every show that makes you think “man, this bullshit again?”
OK, so Ryan had this dream. We were all sitting in this giant baby basket and we all turned to each other and said “man, this bullshit again?”
Bonus question: If Hitler were cloned and birthed as a present-day infant, would it be possible to raise the clone as a productive member of society, or would it still only have one testicle and not eat meat? In other words: nature or nurture?
Jeff had a dream about this one… Jeff had a dream he was being chased by a big nazi man, only instead of having a regular head on his shoulders he had a a cooing baby there instead… and the baby had a man’s head…no, wait, never mind, it totally didn’t… pretty creepy…Jeff made a short story about it for a film class this semseter. You can read his blog about it at www.natureistherealbeast.net…???…
Their debut CD, Return to the Astro Castle, was released in August of last year on Milwaukee’s Vicious Pop Records. Groove to their single “I’m a Manican” and realize why girls my advanced age want to take them home and make them men. (Are they not men?)
In early 1989, PBS’ seminal program Austin City Limits was still largely the province of middle-of-the-road/fairly obscure country acts, and thus not usually within my sphere of interest. However, flipping by channel 12 one afternoon, I saw a commercial for that evening’s broadcast, featuring Timbuk3 and Eric Johnson. Now, Eric Johnson was on the charts with his tune “Cliffs of Dover,” which still holds up pretty well for being a G3-virtuoso-guitar-led instrumental. I dug that. So I set a tape to record it later that night.
I think I watched the Johnson segment maybe once. I got a lot more out of the other half of the episode. I was familiar enough with Timbuk3’s one and only hit single, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” (also known as “Mainstream America Will Never Understand Irony (At Least Not In Song Form)”) but I hadn’t heard anything further. But there they were, Pat MacDonald and Barbara K, opening the show with “Dance Fever.” Their rhythm tracks were on a big reel-to-reel that sat behind them, revolving impassively. Their songs were witty, incisive (in ways I couldn’t even understand yet) and catchy as hell. Naturally, I tracked down every damn record they ever did, and started listing Pat amongst my fave songwriters, if anyone asked (they rarely did).
Skip forward a number of years, to 2003 (or so, my memory for time is always kinda hazy). Our new utility infielder Sean was from the Madison area, and he told me that he knew Pat through friends of friends. Well, okay. Sean had no reason to lie to me (nor was he), but it didn’t really mean much beyond that. And it wouldn’t have if Pat hadn’t played in Neenah, where we all lived. But sure enough, he played, Sean introduced us, and suddenly I knew one of the best songwriters I’d ever heard. It was kind of weird. But Pat’s a nice guy, and as I came to see him more often (particularly after moving to Milwaukee), we got to know each other pretty well.
In 2005, Pat and his sister Christie decided to throw a free concert to raise some awareness and donations for the Sturgeon Bay Steel Bridge, which was consistently in danger of being torn down. Pat called in a couple of favors, and soon enough Jackson Browne was headlining a makeshift stage at a boat yard, in direct view of the bridge. The Steel Bridge SongFest was born. When 2006’s SBSF approached, Pat asked my band (IfIHadAHiFi) and our friends white, wrench, conservatory to play. Naturally, we said yes. w,w,c had never really been out of town, and it was destined to be a bonding experience for us all.
It wasn’t the best show we ever played, for a number of reasons. The soundman was not at all prepared to enforce set times, and because of that, the show started late and certain bands (well, just one band, really) played well over their set times. Everything got thrown off, and, well…we were a bit drunk. Forgive us. But sure enough, while I was sitting in with w,w,c on their song “Freshest Cat Possible,” I looked up into the crowd, and gazing back were Pat MacDonald and Jackson Browne. What more could we want?
Well, maybe more than the 15 minutes that were left for us to actually play. But we whipped through a ferocious 7-song set that saw the PA get shut off halfway through, the power cut on us a couple of songs later, and had Pat crowing “We really fucked this town up, didn’t we?” We sure did, and so w,w,c and we went off to find a place to get fucked up ourselves. We couldn’t wait to do it again the next year. But we had a few favors to ask. We wanted to not play with the timewasters from the previous year, we didn’t want the band in the other room that went ahead and forgot to stop playing when we started (nor had they even stopped playing well after we got kicked off stage…) and we wanted someone to enforce the set times. Pat’s response was to put w,w,c’s singer/keyboardist (and, full disclosure, my lovely roommate) Dixie Jacobs in charge of the whole shebang. She booked a full night of Milwaukee bands, which was listed in the offical writeup as “Milwaukee Invades the Bay.”
When we arrived at the main stage area this year, we were feeling confident and we had people to track down, so we spent a large amount of time in the “backstage” area. Where the rock stars were. And, more importantly, where the free vodka and Red Bulls were. We spent time drinking those, hanging around with some Madison friends who were there, and making fun of the two hipster douchebags in the aviator shades and bandanas placed just so. Also in attendance was Joe Kirschling, drummer for Quinn Scharber and the Quinn Scharbers, and an extremely skilled photographer. We’d asked him to bring his camera along in hopes we could get some good promo shots with our new new utility infielder. I walked around, surveying the musicians, and spotted Jackson. I turned to Joe and said “Okay, we’re going to go walk behind him. Be ready.” After a few false starts, sure enough…
There we are. Jackson Browne’s making a turtle face.
It’s the best picture in the history of mankind.
As for our show? It was a little more sparsely attended than last year, but lots of fun, run as tight as a ship, and loud enough to make the walls shake. In a perfect world there would be a picture of me meeting Jane Wiedlin, but by the time Pat introduced us it was 2.30am and I was stumbly drunk. Maybe next year she’ll come back and we can get a picture of us standing behind her while she’s not paying attention.
The thing that annoys me about comic books? They never show what the super-villains do in their off time. Sure, we get the occasional glimse of Peter Parker struggling with his love life, or Batman engaging in some corporate merger. But what about the bad guys? What are they doing with all that stolen filthy lucre? Surely they have hobbies.
Well, allow me to let you in on a secret. Lex Luthor, BraÃniac*, Mysterio and Ra’s Al Ghul commit their dirty deeds to pay for their band.
That band is called IfIHadAHiFi, and they will rock you with SCIENCE!
Sure, they pretend to be four clean-cut boys from Milwaukee, but that’s just them being smarter than you - they get you to let your guard down, then twist your brain until it bends to their booty-shaking will! Everything about the band is smart - the palindromes, the so-tight-you’d-swear-it-was-computerized rhythm section, the Albini-esque guitar chime, the synths that aren’t new wave so much as no wave…
But this is knowledge used for Sinister Ends! Heck, the chorus of “(The HiFi Vs.) Potential Energy”, the first song on 2004’s No More Music, clearly states their criminal intentions: “WE WANT TO STEAL YOUR POTENTIAL ENERGY!!!”** Your only defense is to pogo until you drop!
Nowhere is their mad science more obvious than the stage. You know shoegazers? IfIHadAHiFi are whatever the opposite of shoegazers are. You will witness acrobatic feats of pure rock at the Beat Kitchen on June 2, the likes of which may never be repeated.
It’s a shame that there’s probably some fire code that keeps them from having a Tesla coil on stage, as it would seem to be the most appropriate accessory: electric, noisy, chaotic and potentially dangerous. But really damn cool.
* When I was writing this, I hadn’t yet seen hotshotrobot’s post in loving memory of the BAND Brainiac, but now this reference seems even more appropriate.
** They really do sing in all caps, bold and with exclamation points, I swear. Hit their myspace page and see for yourself!
