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.

It was tough leaving Austin, as Paul’s house was both comfortable and pretty rad. However, Tennessee awaited! So leave we did.We got up entirely too early, and get on the road… I drive for 6 hours straight through the rest of Texas. While listening to the Cyn Cyn cd, we erupt into spontaneous cheers when we finally get to Arkansas. I actually liked Austin a lot, but there sure is a lot of Texas out there, it’s nice to finally be in a different state.

At Printer’s Alley, Todd and Chris, pseudo artsy shot.

One of the interesting things about tour is the journey there, meaning all of the places you see along the way, you see some really amazing things such as this:

Classy Taqueria sign in Rural Arkansas at a very crappy gas station.

We stopped for gas at a gas station that had pretty miuch the slowest gas pump i’ve ever heard. I guess they had a problem with the pumps and it was in the process of being fixed, all I know is that we went to do a different gas station so we could keep going. In any case, Arkansas was next, and we stopped for lunc in a town called Hope.

Hope is a small-ish rural style town, and the birthplace and childhood home of President Bill Clinton. In our search for some place to have lunch at we stumbled upon the Big Dog’s childhood home:

Conan at the first white house of Bill Clinton

Chris at the Big Dog’s place

Hilariously enough there’s a check cashing place across the street, predatory lendors taking advantage of some of that great welfare reform I suppose.We got some bananas at the grocery store next door, the checker seemed to think I was somebody famous. As in famous beyond: “Isn’t that the dude from the internet with that band that has all the songs about the scifi stuff” It’s probably the blue hair, hat and the inside sunglasses. “I’m sure i’ll figure it out when you leave”, she said. hahahah, prooooobably not.

Anyway, it’s very easy to see where a kid from a place like Hope would want to make something of himself and, well.. become leader of the free world..

the comedic stylings of Chris Bolig at a rural Arkansas gas station.

It may seem like there are a lot of driving pictures in this tour diary, but trust me, it’s a big part of touring.

While passing throughWest Memphis, i’m reminded of the plight of the West Memphis Three which, if you aren’t familiar with you need to click the link earlier in this sentence to see one of the most egregious travesties of justice I can think of in recent memory. It’s horrible, totally horrible.

We get to Memphis and hang out at the cafe attatched to the bar we are playing… Printer’s Alley.

There’s a creepy statue at the venue, but some pretty good pizza, and the dude working there, Bobby, is a really nice guy.

Ben is just pleased to no end to be able to smoke in the cafe. For some reason, we start talking about sociopaths and Buffalo Bill especially, that one of the keys to dehumanization is to refer to people as it “It puts the lotion on it’s skin, or it gets the hose again”, therefore we all start referring to each other as “It.” “It moves it’s cymbal bag or it gets it’s whore throat cut.”

hahahah, maybe we’re just goofy from tour, but it kind of cracks us up.

The venue part opens up and we start setting everything up. It’s a nice place, it definitely is kind of an alley, as in… long, but the setup isn’t so bad, and the PA, while not totally beastly seems ok too.

The Family Ghost, our friends from the online world, play first. And although Jacques from the band was very self depreciating, I liked it. I was reminded mostly of the New Zealand band H.D.U. with their stuff, also: Joy Division, Mogwai and Sonic Youth. Good stuff, and apparantly ridiculously atypical for Memphis. It’s a Garage rock and hip/hop world apparantly music wise, which makes it tough for them to make the kind of music they do. That’s a hard road to travel, but we’re very glad to know them, and thankful to them for setting up the show.

As with Austin something of a smaller crowd, but the people that were there were really into it.

“We’re Replicator, we’re from Oakland, CA, and this song is about being broke, which we know very well, as we’re on tour!”

setlist:

Payment Www.yzzz.rd
Delicious Fornicake
Happy Loyalty Day!
Alert Status: 0
Fashionably Latent
King Shit of Fuck Mountain
Login With my Fist

Everything sounds pretty damn good, pretty… pretty… pretty good. and we play pretty well. I threw in a couple of Elvis “uh huhs” in random places during Login. Something that i’m sure many bands have done before while in town, but probably not so much on a song of man vs. technology. We have fun! $155 together $35 off of the door, and $120 in merch, thanks to the lovely folks in the Family Ghost and the rest of the crowd, thanks guys, that’ll get us to Indiana.

We stayed over at Robert from the Family Ghost’s place, whose living room pretty much looks like the most relaxed music store you’ll ever see (there’s a lot of rad equipment).

Now it’s off to Bloomington! (after a quick stop at Sun Studios first)

-C.

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