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.

There are no two ways about it, by the time we had reached Boston we were pretty spent, emotionally, mentally and physically exhausted with a series of shows that, while featuring good performances and some great people, were definitely less then stellar. Morale was low and our cash flow situation even lower.

Luckily, our time in Boston was JUST what we needed, a chance to recharge the mental and emotional batteries with a day off in a kick ass city, and a well and truly wicked awesome show!

And indeed, Replicator had a wicked awesome time.

Conan telling it like it is at the show…

Replicator posing all crazy go nuts like.

But first we stayed at this place:

Our crappy hotel, which Todd dubbed “the Moneyshot motor lodge”

As you may recall from our last installment, we had decided to drive out of NYC and get a motel room to get some much deserved rest. Strangely enough the freeway, while having lots of beautiful trees and signs for food every mile or so, didn’t seem to want to list any actual motels. Therefore it took forever for us to find our $50 refuge for the night.

We joked that it was a total hooker and John motel as we walked down the cigarette stinking hallway, and sure enough, with perfect comedy timing, a lady of the evening did walk out of a room telling a rotund gentlemen “happy birthday” as she left. Wow!

The room stank of cigarettes and desperation, there were no lampshades on the lights and there were whole sections of the motel we just weren’t going to touch… period.

The capper? Ben turned on the tv to see the weather and maybe some late night news, and there’s people straight up having sex. No pay per view, no additional options, just people straight up going at it. M’ris joked that it was actually a live feed from one of the other rooms. Any which way you slice it it was pretty damn hiliarious. And why do they always keep their shoes and socks on?
We got a good 8 hours sleep or so at our roach motel and got on the road as quick as we could to shake out the stench and get to Boston.

Here’s where we stopped for breakfast:

the Shoreline Diner… a vegetarian enclave!

Enclave, even.

an enclosed territory that is culturally distinct from the foreign territory that surrounds it

Yeah, makes sense.

Conan holding the menu at the Shoreline Diner

Look at all that happy food, just waiting to get eaten!

I love the coffee cup reading a book, and the hambuger pumping iron.
strangely they actually charge extra for Maple syrup, weird.

In any case we were soon enough back on the road to Boston:

Next stop: Prince!

Ahh Boston…

beautiful Boston!

a beautiful city that somehow manages to almost instantly put is all in a better mood. The weather isn’t preposterously hot like it’s been everywhere in the country, and we have some time to just relax. Therefore we head down to Mass Ave, to Daddy’s Junky Music… a local chain of music stores. By the way they have a giant Elvis head in there:

Conan Neutron and the gigantic head of Elvis at Daddy’s in Boston.

Poppy the door girl was super nice and gave us directions to a whole lot of awesome stuff in the area, which we most definitely took advantage of. We later checked out Newburys Comics, which is both a local landmark and generally fantastic. Toys, dvds, cds, geegaws, trinkets, you name it, they have it.

Also we saw this van outside:

Neutron communications! Check it out, what’s wrong with this companies logo… give up?

There’s no nucleus! Dude, how are you going to be Neutron Communcations with no nucleus. You know, nucleus… protons… neutrons, things of that nature. Still, it was badass and made for a grea tpicture.

Our time in Boston was mostly spent kicking back a lot and resetting ourselves. We also watched the Ralph Macchio Crossroads, which.. while really being kind of a cheesy movie, has a hliarious/awesome AXEWAR at the end between Ralph Macchio and the Devil’s guitar player Steve Vai. Hilarious stuff.

Of the many woes that we had in the past few days, one of them is that apparantly 1 1/2 of my power tubes had gone out, so after buying some from Daddy’s Ben got to work and fixed it on up.

Proud parent Dr. Ben.

We stayed both nights with Matt and Kristina from Ho-Ag’s place

We had dinner with Ho-Ag, they made us pasta!

Tyler and Ben at the Ho-Ag dinner.

Soon enough we headed out to the venue O’Briens in Allston, which is convienently located a few blocks from Matt’s place and has only recently opened back up after some serious remodelling.

Paper Thin Stages played before us, who were seriously atmospheric and had the Explosions in the Sky/Mogwai thing going on. Also, I have to hand it to them, for as much stuff as they had equipment wise, they broke down super quick!

Hi, we’re Replicator from Oakland, California, and this song is about travelling through time to stay ahead of the fashion curve.
setlist:

Fashionably Latent
Assloads of Unrespect
Warrior Needs Food, Badly
Delicious Fornicake
The Tiny Machines are (still) Out For Revenge
Login With My Fist

The show itself was pretty much fantastic, because of the strange shape of the stage, Chris couldn’t hear the amps clearly and was less then pleased with his performance. But overall, with all aspects involved, I’d say it was pretty damn good. Here are some pictures:

Replicator rocking it out, conan’s face is apparantly melting.

Ben and Conan

Todd’s guitar.

Chris drumming.

Ben

Conan’s “tigerbeat” shot

Ben is a giant.

Conan in his rock stance

Ben side view

Conan singing, note Eximous Deb rocking out.

Chris with Todd’s mustang in the foreground.

Conans preposterous guitar heroics

Chris, the human torch on drums

It was fantastic to finally meet Christine from THIS VERY SITE! My long time friend from the internets, who actually used to live in the bay area. And Deb from Eximous, a longtime noiserock list regular, came out, who is totally rad. Ben’s old bandmate Nathan from many years ago in Sunflower Conspiracy came out with his lovely wife, haven’t seen him in 5 years! A lot of M’ris’s friends, and, most surprisingly to me, my friend Liz, that I had no idea even lived in Boston and stumbled upon the show from the flyers(!). She hadn’t seen us play in about 6 or 7 years now, and holds the distinction of being one of the people with the hand screenprinted Replicator “chipmunk” shirts. Totally insane!

There was a pretty damn good crowd that came out, and people were into it, and again… a few people checked us out on the internets, and decided to check it out and loved it. NICE!

Maybe we should say: “Hi we’re Replicator, we’re from the internet”?

Ho-Ag rocked it with a set of entirely new songs that were quite good:

Ho-Ag

Ho-Ag!

Ho-Ag!!

Tyler from Ho-Ag

We did about $90 in merch, and $150 from the door. Wow, did we ever need that, let me tell you. I cannot say enough about how Ho-Ag basically saved the east coast leg of this tour. Aside from being a hell of a band, they are great, great people.

Not bad at all for our first ever show in Boston.

Afterwards we took Liz home (who strangely lives right next to Matt!), saw her rodent menagerie, and observed (from the roof) two VERY drunken neighbors yelling through a “school spirit” style megaphone. Funny stuff, and a hilarious capper for the night.

Now since we’ve gone as east as we are going to go, we start to head back… stay tuned.

Bonus picture:

M’ris at a New Jersey rest stop.

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