Leaving our tourmates the Hifi was rough, leaving all of our Wisconsin pals was rough, leaving our faithful mad servant M’ris was rough, getting up after a night of hard rockin’, drinkin’, and not nearly enough sleeping. VERY tough.

I didn’t expect the Twin Cities on a tuesday the day after a heavy drinking holiday to be that great, luckilly I wasn’t disappointed.

Replicator at Big V’s We took a detour into Green Bay Wisconsin (a pretty big detour actually), so that Ben could meet Amanda’s folks and she could see her grandfather, whose health is on the decline. It was out of the way, but it’s hard to deny a request like that. That pretty much dominated our day, but having good cooked food instead of road food hell was an absolute plus.

When we stopped for gas, I saw the following maxim scrawled in the men’s restroom at one of the gas stations. “Women are for babies, little boys are for pleasure” to be fair there was at least a half dozen answer back graffiti on there all promising to do greivous and detailed bodily harm upon the original inscriber, but still… way to bring the creep factor rural wisconsin, I can hear the banjos now.

That pretty much soaked up the day and we rolled up the venue Big V’s just about time for loadin. There was a moment of alarm when the “playing tonight” board, complete with order and times and such showed a totally different show. I had a serious sinking feeling before I confirmed that, yes… this had been for the show the night before. Whew!

The venue was littered with flyers from many wonderful and awesome bands that had played before, and we enheartened to see that our pals Jucifer were playing Big V’s later this month. Of course the real question is how tonight would be, I was keeping my expectations low.

We were still loading in and setting up when the first band, a newer group called ;Calutron Girl; played: They were a 2-piece band with guitar and drums that had a godheadSilo sort of sound, a little heavier on the 90s era AmRep side of things, still quite rocking! The vocals were distorted to shit, so I couldn’t tell what on earth they were singing about, but I enjoyed them and would see/play with them again. They had a lot of amps, but made use of them all.

Next thing you know it was time for us to setup and do our thing, as it turns out my pedal board power supply appears to have become a casualty of war from the Replicator/Ifihadahifi tour, since not a damn thing happens when I plug it in. After trying to determine if I could play a set running a minimal setup on 9 volt batteries for tuner and distortion (yes, yes I could), it turns out that the sound guy actually had a spare power supply that he leant me for the show. That was lucky.

Remember kids, MACHINES WILL ALWAYS LET YOU DOWN!!
also: Conan Neutron Can’t Win.

Anyway, after we get everything squared away, we play, the stage is kind of at an angle for whatever reason, which is weird enough, my mic cord isn’t long enough to truly “reach out and touch anybody” and all the folks watching, what few are there are all hanging back. Perfect opportunity to do what we do and play to a complete and total vaccuum.

Here’s what we played:

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

Ben Adrian, faking it til’ he makes it.

Neutron doing some hollering.

As much as the other bands seemed to enjoy everything, it really was like playing into a giant vampiric void. We threw everything we had at St. Paul, but it just wasn’t enough to fight the feeling of going through the motions and the overarching mood of futility.

I hate that feeling and we don’t get it a lot, but on this, quite possibly the least impressive show of the tour, barring Cincinatti. We all felt it.

We cut Assloads of Unrespect and Happy Loyalty Day! out of the set, even though we hadn’t played it in forever, because we just wanted to get out and get done. During Login With My Fist the mic cord was crazy short, so the best I could do was a running man a few feet away from the few folks watching, grasping at them desperately in a full on metaphor for the show itself really.

hahaha It was kind of a drag.

Not awful, but after such a stellar night the night before, and operating on very little sleep, a definite disappointment on many levels.

It’s too bad that none of the folks that are into us in the MLPS area came out, but then again it HAS been 5 years since we’ve been out there last… so there is that.

Mise En Place was not a drag though. They play a type of indie rock that would sound good on Matador, if Matador did indeed still release a lot of relevant indie rock albums with “loud guitars” which they really don’t seem to these days. RIYL: Chavez, Poster Children, etc.

Melodic, but musically complex, cerebral but still accessable. I like them and enjoyed their set, GGGB (Good guys, good band!).

The door didn’t even make enough money to pay the sound guy, so nothing from there, Merch we sold about $50 worth, all to the other bands, but they were excited. After the show we stayed with Michael from Mise en Place, who had a fantastic place, that was as zen centered and spartan as it was comfortable.

Day 20:

I had a dream that Steve Reich was chasing me around in a shopping mall with a keyboard on wheels, and I woke up to hear these repetitive figures that either sounded like the altar room in a video game, somebody really into ambient music jamming on the guitar or… well I don’t know! Turns out it’s a noise generator that Michael uses for meditative purposes as he is, among other things, who is a chef, made us all a delicious breakfast to set us on our way.

Thanks man!

While we were at the guitar center buying a new power supply for my pedal chain, we got word from DJ of Hifi that the 312unes money was being invoiced, which means that we will be seeing more money off of the Chicago show as we originally worked out.

This is a very good thing.

Soon enough we were on our way and heading towards big sky country.
We stopped at a Wendy’s full of surly ex-cons in rural Minnesota, a wee bit depressing, but the frosties were actually good. It’s kind of sad when you can actually hear the defeat in somebodies voice.

North Dakota was boring as shit, as boring as South Dakota was, but without the shameless hucksterism of the roadside attraction signs to keep you amused. It was really just kind of sad.

The best part of North Dakota was when I stopped us at a rest stop just 20 miles or so from the Montana border. After driving about 1/4 mile off the road through a cow catcher we ended up an insect infested nowheresville that consisted of an apparantly abandoned bulldozer and a few deer. Super surreal, and absolute zombie movie fodder. We left our deposits and made our quickly to Montana.

We crashed out at a Motel 6 in Mills City, Montana, where they provide free toilet-trees:

(heh, heh.. get it?)

Missoula was next up.

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