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.

I dreamed that there was a gigantic alien spaceship destroying the planet, giant destructive beams levelling cities, forests, townships, mini-malls, everything. Whenever another city would explode in shattering glass and fire, I would stir a little bit, until finally I woke up and realized that there was a garbage truck right next to my head and that dudes were emptying cans into it. Tour had invaded even the deepest part of my distopian dreams. This wasn’t half as good as looking around bleary eyed from the bench seat of the Supernaut to see a well dressed man in a suit and tie with a briefcase giving me a horrified and disgusted look at the realization that the van near his place had held a sleeping rock and roll type person with colored hair. Ahh yes, good times.

This, folks… is the rock and roll lifestyle.

We were ready to leave DC almost immediately. I really didn’t want to miss seeing ANYTHING in DC for the second time in a row, but it was starting to look like that was going to be the case. We had to get the new t-shirt design out to Chris from hifi so that we can have a new set of tshirts in time for the leg of the tour with them. Soooo… again it looked like I was going to be in our nations capital and not able to actually see anything. Total drag, but that’s the thing with tour. A lot of people, non band people anyway, always say: “oh cool! you’re going on a vacation/roadtrip”, yes, but the thing is on vacations and roadtrips you generally get to see the city instead of the venue, where ever you are staying and where you eat. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great, but it’s not a vacation, not at all.

Anyway, we did at least get to drive by the Washington Monument, Capital building, and the Asshole in Chief’s pad , which is more then I had seen before… so there you go.

We drove for awhile through Maryland, and up the Jersey turnpike, which… incidentally is very recognizable from the Sopranos, then into New York City. One of the best and at the same time overrated cities in the world.

check out below the fold for an explanation of that statement.

New York City is obviously a gigantic center of culture and entertainment full of amazing and awesome and wondrous things. It’s also a fun place to visit and full of a lot of great folks. It also has the biggest ego of any city ever. There is the real world and then there’s the NY way of doing things, New York thinks that it’s way of doing things is the best since, well it’s New York! And by it’s very nature it’s far, far better then anything else could ever hope to be.

(To be fair in a lot of ways Los Angeles has this same attitude, which is far less deserved, but i’m getting off track here)

Let’s take the subject of rock and roll shows for instance, since this is, at the core of things, a journal of the times and experiences of touring in a rock and roll band.

In any other city the booking process for an independent band is the same, the band, a friend of the band, another band that is a friend, or a booking agent will contact a club or promoter with a certain date in mind for a show. The venue or promoter will either get back to the person in question and answer whether it is possible or not, or, in many cases ignore the request completely, because a 5 second response is beyond their mental and/or emotional capacity.

(And before you got sending hate e-mail or comments, realize that i’ve been on both sides of that thing.)

When a date is set, what happens next is that the bill is solidified, for a touring band such as ourselves that is not well known, that means getting some “local support” a friends band or act that will bring people out to pay a cover charge, get some drinks and preferably buy some merchendise. Sometimes through happenstance, not knowing anybody locally, or wanting to ensure an excellent bill, the promoter or venue will do this themselves, but it’s a pretty tried and true practice.

EXCEPT in New York.

You see in New York it’s different, because in New York, the New York way is BETTER!

That is sarcasm by the way.

You see in NY, the standard is that there are time slots and what venues do is stick a bunch of unrelated bands together to get as divergent of a group of artists as possible togethe, none of which have a damn thing to do with anything. Somehow this is just an accepted practice unless you are in a band that everybody knows about.

Also since you can’t swing a cat without hitting somebody in a band, and owning a vehicle in NYC is pretty much a liability, it’s generally common practice for things to be backlined as well. A backline being amps, and basic drums that all the bands use. Makes for quick setup and teardown for bands, and a real assembly line feel.

In any case, our old pal Schaffer the Darklord set the show up. Which is awesome as we have a mutual appreciation society thing going on, where he is into our stuff and we are really into his. It’s always a pleasure to see him, and a greater pleasure to play with such a talented young gentlemen. I tell you this Darklord guy is really going places.

We have the first two slots at Arlene’s Grocery, which for a monday night isn’t bad at all from what we hear… of course since the first slot is 7 and somebody (Whose initials are C.N.) forgot to alert at least half of the people Replicator knows in New York about the time. Well, that is less good.

Also less good is the fact that my amp was freaking out, combine that with bad news from home and you have a real bummer. Compounded by the sandal wearing “PRO GEAR, PRO ATTITUDE” sound guy, who came in with a chip on his shoulder and aggressively suggested that we need to turn down so he can “sculpt the sound.”

That’s a direct quote by the way, he needed to “sculpt the sound.”

I should have known there would be a problem when he said that, apparantly his sculpting did not include my particular contributions because after running through a sound check of King Shit of Fuck Mountain, it truly did sound like I wasn’t even in the mix. This is after he insisted we turn Todd’s amp down to the point where it sounded like a toy, and he couldn’t get feedback at all.

Never trust a man with sandals on to run a stage.

Some people came out, not a lot, the other 2/3 of Ben’s old band from Indianapolis Soh.cah.toa among them. Which is awesome as both Matt Southworth and Matt Chandler have now relocated to NYC and it’s great to see them again, as they are nice fellows.

Anyway, despite all the setbacks, we do not mess about when it comes time to play, and we put on the best show we possibly could with the situation available to us.

Here’s what we played:
setlist:

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Delicious Fornicake
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The Tiny Machines are (still) out for Revenge
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Chris bringing yon rock.

Conan has ghost sweat.

Todd has ghosties.

Conan is ferocious!

and terrorizes STD on a stool.

Chris turns into the human torch

and then a blur!

Ben gets in STD’s space.

Of the many things i’m proud of with this band is that we never half ass a show, no matter if we are operating on almost no sleep, no food, it’s a hostile situation, whatever. We played the best we could, even with the crap sound, which… by the way, I swear that the sound guy kept messing with just to irritate me. Despite it all we still played pretty well though and as per normal, i’m proud of my brothers in the Replicator family.
Of course after we played, STD, was up next, which was very exciting as he is…. as they say… awesome!

SCHAFFER THE DARKLORD!

I’d post Schaffer’s setlist, but my memory ain’t THAT good. He did play the Rappist, which he also made an excellent video for check it out.

(hey, STD, you’re welcome for the plug!)

Also Cat People, and the Nerdy Girl song, and the STD populist fave Attack of the Clonefucker, no Night of the Living Christ, or My Dinner with Jello, but a lot of fine new tunes that I dug greatly. Can’t wait for the new STD stuff.

Who brings smiles all around.

Ben and Matt watch STD.

Conan and Chris are cat people (meow, meow)

Conan Neutron and STD

We made $50 off of merch, no door take, as the show was free.

After the show sadly, none of our pals could put us up for the night for various reasons, so after spending entirely too much time trying to desperately leave the island nation of New York, and somehow always ending up on another toll road charging us even more money. Imagine a running dollar total in the bottom right corner if it was a documentary or tv show. Now imagine a wrong answer buzzer noise everytime we ran into another toll road going the WRONG direction. Then imagine the dollar total going down, that was our night.

Heh, At this point we were pretty much delirious from lack of rest and frustration, so we got pretty goofy. And the bumpy roads made us all seem like a jar full of nasty bees.

We decided that since we couldn’t stay in the Big Apple, we’d head up into Connecticut, and so we did… which is a story that shall be continued along with the tour… in the next installment
-C.

Also, Matt Chandler took some great pictures, thanks Matt!

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