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!

Replicator has a lot of friends in Milwaukee, more then I even realized, it was awesome to see them all in one place:

Conan Neutron: Tree Dweller

a high vantage point.

Lindsay, Conan and M’ris on her last night of Replicatour

Dj is rancho relaxo

Science! (the dog) wants my sausage.

good times man!

Josh and Keith

we ride with the Hobgoblin

Conan’s protection from the bloodsuckers. And yeah, that helmet has been floating around the van since we shot the Fashionably Latent video in March!

In any case, after eating what can only be termed as a heroic amount of brats, sausages, key lime pie, beer and other goodies, we decided it was time to head over to Point’s East Pub aaaaaaand… slip quietly into a coma.
hahahah.

Seriously after all that food I was threatening to run a couple laps around the block or something to wake me up, instead I bought some whiskey, and sour mix at the Pic and Save (as an after show libation and “break in case of bad show emergency box”) and started saying hi to all of the awesome folks that were coming over from the BBQ and that had come out for the show.

Erika StarBock and Neutron

Jamie and Erika

glowing drink!

the Kind of Jazz Music that Kills was up first… I guess they are a band comprised of people from other bands, and none of them are playing the instruments they “normally” play, which leads to some interesting results. It reminds me of the Residents doing that waaaaay back when. They were good and reminded me somewhat of the Ex from the Netherlands.

The Kind of Jazz Music that Kills

China Pig was up next, who I expected to sound quite a bit like Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, and they did! For the first 20 seconds or so, then they busted loose a batch of tough guy Fudge Tunnel sounding rock that I totally didn’t expect. There was definitely a few Beefheart-isms and solos and things, but otherwise solidly on the heavy side of mid-90s style noiserock.

Seeing short pants and sandals on a professional stage bummed me out a little bit though.

hey, then… whaddya know?
It was our turn to rokkit
setlist:

Frank Lloyd Wrong
Fashionably Latent
Warrior Needs Food, Badly
Delicious Fornicake
Baby, I Want To Terraform your Planet
Login With My Fist

Playing Frank Lloyd Wrong first was so fun the night before we decided to do it again, it went over equally well and was equally fun to play!
We ended up cutting out… Tiny Machines I think for the simple reason that it was SO GOD DAMNED HOT up there. we were all seriously dying, even those of us that don’t normally sweat bullets. We kicked ass though, and people were really into it… I ended up “crowd surfing” twice, which is usually the indicator of a damn fine time.

yay for our friends in Screaming Cyn Cyn and the Pons (who were mentioned earlier in this journal many times) for coming out from Madison, despite having to work and such the next day, you guys (and gal) are tops! The only thing that would be better is if they could have played.

I would give individual shout outs, but really all of our friends new and old being there were just an overwhelming pile of awesome and easilly made this one of the most fun shows of our tour thus far. Have we played with better sound? You Bet! Have we played with fewer technical difficulties? Probably? Was the mood any better for any other show? No way!

Milwaukee, we LOVE you guys!
srsly.

Here’s how we rocked:
Replicator:

Conan in the crowd.

Todd Praying to the gods of rock!

Ben and Todd

Chris is fierce!

Conan Neutron!

Conan serenading the Wizard

Rock bringing.

The Hifi were up next, their sound wasn’t the best of the tour, but there was plenty of “F-you” energy floating around that made for a damn exciting show. I really got into it for the first suite of songs, and even though Josh busted a string (meaning that they were using even MORE Replicator gear, and apparantly slowly turning into us). They sounded great.

Since I learned a set of hifi songs for a one off show last year, we had talked about playing some songs together on this tour, and what better time to do that then the last night of shows with them.
I stood in on the last part of the set playing Hifi vs. Potential Energy, Doubting Thomas Telescope, No More Music and Success! Success! Success! with them, and it was a chaotic maelstrom of fun times.

I think it sounded pretty good?
And it was a hell of a lot of fun, I tried to stay the hell out of the way if I wasn’t 100% on a part, and put my all into just adding to the show, doubling up vocals I have a hard time hearing in the audience when I see them, and playing my little derivations and extra touches that I came up with.

Broken strings cannot slow down the Wizard.

Dixie playing setcloser (and future radio hit in a better world) Success! with the Hifi and myself.

Ifihadahifi

Dj from Hifi

Yale from Hifi

Rev. Ever on bass

Conan Neutron with Ifihadahifi

as a special guest!

hifi lights

Dj and Neutron

At the very end of Success, at a complete noise freakout, I was just sitting there leaning against the amp doing pickup switching feedback when DJ grabbed my head and shoved his tongue down my throat.

hahahaah, that made for a memorable show to be sure.
but not as memorable as what came next.

The backstory on Point’s East Pub is that the last time Ifihadahifi was playing there DJ had two of his teeth broken while they were playing (a long story that certainly is told better elsewhere), they hadn’t played again there since then… well guess what?
An errant glass actually chipped DJ’s replacement tooth seriously.

What a freaking bummer!

Please send the esteemed Hifi member (and writer for this site) Mr. Hotshotrobot himself your best wishes on that.

Tower O’stuff

After the show we ended up back at the Church of Murray for some quality hang out time/drinking/fond farewells, etc. As we were leaving both Ifihadahifi and our associate Replicator M’ris in Milwaukee.

Hifi, we love and miss you guys, MKE, thank you for everything, M’ris thing you for everything!
a bittersweat(sic) departure to be sure.

But a hell of a good time!

-C.

bonus pics:

Cds of bands we played with on tour!

Only in Replicator can you find a Cybernetic Rambo spiderman riding a friendly dinosaur on the dashboard

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