Montana is big and wide, it’s why it’s called Big Sky Country. It’s also home to Wantage USA one hell of a rock label that puts out some amazing stuff (think: Fucking Champs, The Whip, Big Business, Federation-X), etc. Although we had only been to Missoula once, almost 5 years ago, we had a great time and were excited to return there.

Kum and Go!
a real chain of convienence stores/gas stations

After spending the better part of the day travelling through Montana, which again is very pretty, but also FREAKING HUGE, we finally roll into Missoula, where we stop by a local coffee shop for liquid libations for the caff-heads in the band, and delicious crepes for all. The numbers taken for orders were actually different countries, which led to endless jokes about Italy sitting with the German delegation, and France being lowest on the totem pole for food imports.

We also briefly stopped by the local army surplus store, looking at the paintball guns and butterfly knives, good times!

Missoula is a cool little town, I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes it different, but it is unique. It has a combination of college town, plus working class mentality and…Montana. It somehow seems to work in a way that it never has for me in say, Olympia. Everybody is very friendly and helpful and cool and the vibe is just pretty cool. I’m sure it has it’s dark side like everywhere else, but it just seems like a nice place to me.

I was concerned since it was so soon after TOTAL FEST the yearly festival put on by Josh and others, that brings up pretty much every awesome underground band you can think of to Missoula for some good, good freaking times. It also came together super last minute, in fact… if I remember right I got final confirmation in Austin!

We find the venue, the Parlor Pool lounge, which is located right next to the Badlander, the sort of default music venue in Missoula that took over from Jay’s Upstairs.
Much like Olympia, almost all of Missoula’s music culture takes place on one block!

Incidentally that’s where we saw this:

Brocore!
whaaaaa?

We check the place, and although it has a rec room sort of vibe, it seems like it could be alright. I take the opportunity to remove all the busted things from my pedal board and rebuild it from the *ahem* floor up, with the new parts we got in Minnesota. That got done, and soon enough the man himself, Mr. Josh Vanek came in. Sure enough he came in with delicious lentil soup for as well. HELL YES!
Needless to say that was consumed very quickly and thankfully.

here are some exciting pictures of Replicator eating:

Ben and Todd eating

Chris eating

chris and todd

Todd eating

Conan eating

People started to trickle on, the two new recruits (I think?) from the other band Hermans, play a few tunes together as a 3 piece, which is good indie rock kind of stuff, one of the songs has a “bah bah boo bah” part that reminds me almost exactly of an injokey kind of thing that one of Todd’s foreign coworkers does, that we yell back at each other all the time. (this truly can’t be explained right, sorry)

Then it’s time to do our thing.

Hi we’re Replicator from Oakland, California, we’re going to play some songs here and hopefully not interrupt your game of pool too much.

Fashionably Latent
King Shit of Fuck Mountain
Payment Www.yzzz.rd
Delicious Fornicake
Login With My Fist

This one was a tough show, I was determined to give the fiercest performance that I could, but being stuck in an area where I could see people, but not get near them was making me crazy. Even the mic cable only went about 20′, which really reinforced the idea that we should just travel with our own long XLR for my particular brand of antics. We did what we could with what we had, I think Ben may have broken his mic stand… I stood on some of the comfortable chairs and couches and at the end of login with my fist, instead of running around with the mic, I did two complete circuits of the room using the Indiana megaphone we picked up in Boston.
No luck though, a very tepid response depite our best effort.
A few people came up afterwards and told me how much they liked it, and how it was cool that “you didn’t know what to expect next.” I bit my tongue and said thank you, instead of saying something cynical.

The Hermans played next, a set of drunken good times rock and roll in the vein of Dinosaur Jr. and the Who and things of that nature. They made me smile, although they were met to just as much indifference as we were really. A few folks into it, but mostly people more interested in playing pool.

Music as a distraction rather then an end of itself. It’s too bad really.

Luckilly Josh is awesome, and once again provided us with a place for us to hang our weary heads, do a little laundry and polish off a bit of that “break in case of emergency” whiskey that I picked up for us in Milwaukee. That went well with the pita I got from the Pita Pit!

We left Missoula with enough clean clothes to get us home, copies of the new Narrows and Pople cds, and a box of Wantage Ombnibus comps with a note asking us to pay Josh when and if we can for our side of ‘em. What a class act that Vanek!

Buy stuff from his awesome label whenever you can.

And we were now… heading back home… heading back… to the WEST COAST!
this is exciting stuff!

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