Double flash Conan at the Empty Bottle in Chicago

Replicator played Chicago at the Empty Bottle and it was actually, for the first time for Replicator in Chicago, a pretty darn good show. Well attended by many internet styled personalities as well.

There was also this sign there:

100,000 Leagues Under my Nutsack

WOW! That cracked me up enough to be the pull title for this post. but first we left Detroit:

Ben and Lucy the dog, who lives at Rev. Scott’s place from the Amino Acids.

For some reason Ben started singing the William Tell Overture and made as if he was riding her.
She is such a sweet dog she totally let him do it. Adorable!

We bid Scott’s place and Detroit farewell, and started on our way to Chicago with the hifi in tow. On the drive we threw a banana peel at them in an act of escalating band prankery, Yale from Hifi swore revenge.


Astoundingly there really hasn’t been a lot of pictures of Chris sleeping, I remember on prior tours there would usually be about a picture of day of Chris asleep, with his hat over his head. Trust me it’s still happening, it’s just photographed less… although in this picture at least he looks like he’s spotting the suburban homeboy look.

We stopped in rural michigan for some eats at Bob’s Big Boy, I really didn’t know that there were any of those left, but we took advantage of it by stopping by for a big ol’ repast that, while good, sat in my stomach like cement:

hilarious sign down the road from the Big Boy in rural Michigan, accidental likeness to cock and balls? or purposeful artistic expression.
Anyway, we had a nice brunch with the hifi boys, and then spent entirely too long in a CVS stocking up on somewhat healthy snacks before getting back on the road. 10 cliff bars for $10 is nothing to sneeze at even if you are not on tour!

Michigan, home of the really effing big tire!

We arrived in Chicago just about in time for sound check at the Empty Bottle, which put the kibosh on hanging out with my friend Kairsten before the show, but on the other hand SOUND CHECK. You know, like a real band and everything. I do the Chicago shuffle trying to find non permitted parking for the Supernaut while hifi is tuning up. I managed to finally find a space too damn far away, and came back to Chris telling me we had forgotten his hardware bag. ARGH!

Soon enough though it’s time for Replicator to run through our soundcheck. After we get everything dialed in with the awesome (and totally non-douchey) sound guy Sean we try to run through Epoch in the hopes of playing it in Milwaukee the next night for the hifi dudes. See they’ve been asking about it, and while technically we brushed up on it before we left for tour, we haven’t been playing it, so we’re a little unsure. We check with it, and it’s not BAD, but it’s definitely not good. Which basically means… not so much! It’s too bad since at one time it was our most popular song and the one that always brought the house down. I still love it a lot, despite it being kind of long, but alas, alack not right now. Sorry Hifi guys. Replicator plays first on this bill, so I call all of my friends that I can think of that are coming to the show, to let them know we’re going on pretty quick. Amazingly enough everybody actually gets there right in time before we start. A good sign to be sure.

setlist:

Frank Lloyd Wrong
Fashionably Latent
Delicious Fornicake
Enigma Machine
The Tiny Machines are (still Out for Revenge)
Alert Status: 0
Login With My Fist

We play a little longer set that we have been since we’ve got the time, we decide to toss in Enigma Machine for the first time since the tour started (we were going to play it in Indy, but pulled it at the last second), out kickoff song “Frank Lloyd Wrong” is actually an old one, which always sounds like a theme song to me, off of the lost spilt between us and Lower Forty-Eight called DDBBLLVVZZNN. It never came out, so the recordings are on our site to download. In any case, although it’s a fun song, we don’t play it live, because it is a little high concept.

See in the recording Ben is playing keyboard, Chris is playing drums and i’m playing guitar and a really aggresive un-Ben like fuzz bass part. The whole point behind which was to play a song using instrumentation we wouldn’t normally use. Since the keyboard replaces the bass in our live mix, it would be very difficult to play it straight, so the concept is this: I play the first 95% of the song on the laptop sampler, during which we stand stock still and stare at the audience (easier said then done), and then after the big bad drum fill, we come crashing down on a ton of bricks for the big heroic denoument which is about a million times louder.

To this day this generated one of the best heckles I can remember which is: “Play one the band knows.”
Love it.

Any which you slice it, it gets a good reaction, although to be fair we’d almost forgotten that song existed, so we figure we’d kick that sucker off.

The rest of the set goes pretty damn smooth as well, the sound is just fantastic, and it feels good to actually be able to hear everything clearly and distinctly.

Back to back in Chicago during Delicious Fornicake

Ben Closeup

Neutron, close up.

Ben cigarette

Todd thrangs!

Ben ghost trails!

Rock it!

Ben keyboard

Neutron thrang!

Neutron is exhausted.

Ben’s action shot

Hifi are up next, and they have what is probably the best sound of any show i’ve ever heard them play. Again, thanks to Sean for that, who does not in fact wear sandals or have a 2X4 on his shoulder. I can’t remember their exact set, but I do remember hearing Hifi vs. Potential Energy and Success! Success! Success! among others. Performance wise it was good, Yale Delay spent the last portion of No More Music literally whipping his guitar with a belt (giving props to Wesley Willis, RIP), shoving the guitar THROUGH his pants. good times were had… oh yes, oh yes!

Ifihadahifi

DJ from Hifi

Rev. Ever and Dr. Awkward

Dj calling out shots.

the Fucking Wizard with his rock stare

Yale with light trails

Michael playing the keyboard

At a hifi show sometimes a guitar will end up through pants

I spent the majority of time between Hifi and Bear Claw hanging out and catching up with my pal Kairsten who lives in Chicago now. Strangely she used to live a few blocks away from me for a long time and we knew a ton of the same people, yet we never knew each other in Oakland and met at the first Yearlykos in Las Vegas. totally random! Anyway, before you know it the low end Chitown wonders Bearclaw are up and playing:

Bear Claw straight out of Chicago. there were a lot of pictures, but none of them really turned out all that well, which is too bad as the lighting underneath the clear drums makes for a cool kind of look. Bear Claw’s record is coming out on Sickroom, which totally makes sense for their kind of sound… sort of a less metal Enemymine kind of deal. Two basses and drums, lots of hollering and a hell of a lot of awesome aggro radness.

I dug ‘em. And I would also recommend them as a colon cleanser. heigh ho!!

There is an Empty Bottle kitty cat, he took a shine to our merch area. Which, for some reason is located by the door in another room far away from the bands, which is kind of a drag.

Todd played some pinball

Playboy pinball!

We met a lot of rad people and had a good reaction. Take from the door was a pretty disappointing $50, with another $40 from merch. (note: 312unes promoted the show though, and is kicking more scratch our way for Hifi and us, just not at the night.)

Ben’s girlfriend Amanda is in town and joining the tour, so we split off and let them stay at Bear Claw’s place, while we stay with my pals Nat and Matt on the northside off of Belmont.

But first! Food must be procured, and since M’ris’s friends were going to some all night diner anyway, we decide “hey, let’s go do that!”. So we do, we drive… and drive… and drive… and drive some more. All the while Todd telling a hilarious Turkey Dog story that, with any luck will eventually end up on the internets. Eventually we get to the damn place a Golden Nugget, apparantly in a very yuppie part of town, and have some passable late night food. Sitting next to us are a group of empty headed Buffy types, whose asinine and obnoxious conversations pretty much gives us no end of amusement at all. Definitely some folks that could use some real problems. We crashed over at Matt and Nat’s place, who have two adorable Beagles:

Lola.

And… Poor Watts had to slow for the cone zone. Nat is a great friend and a great person, and their house is as cute and adorable as it is super awesome for a weary touring band. I fell asleep with the quickness in preparation for a day of mayhem and amazingness in Milwaukee, our last day with Ifihadahifi.

Bonus: remaining tour dates (as of this writing!):
Thursday September 6th, Missoula, Montana
Friday September 7th, Seattle Washington
Saturday September 8th, Portland, Oregon

10 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website