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.

Ahh Texas, there sure is a lot of it. After waking up at an econolodge in Fort Stockton where I have now fully completed the look:

We drive across central texas listening to Ennio Morricone. There really isn’t a whole lot to see, sagebrush and plains. Then more sagebrush, then more plains… you get the idea.

“Hey a blue sign! a new color to look it.”

We stop at a little cafe in a smaller city off of the I-10, which has something called “swiss style pork chops” and we have hamburgers and such.

Ben endorses coffee:

After a serious amount of driving we finally enter the Austin city limits, which is about one of the most wondeful things we’ve seen in a long, long time… there’s something about seeing the civilization of a large sized city after seeing nothing but wide open spaces that is very comforting. Especially for city slickers like us.

We check out the venue, Plush Lounge, it’s on the strip of venues that is pretty much the epicenter of livemusic and SXSW, the strip that has caused Austin to, rather brazenly I feel, call themselves the live music capital of the world. It normally has dance stuff happening, but has shows on monday. It’s interesting because most places in Austin are actually CLOSED on monday, so that should actually work in our favor.

We go hunt down our long time friend from the internets Roy, who does the excellent zine Dead Angel , he and Rifka take us out for some excellent Texas BBQ. Which I have to say, that beef was really, really damn good. We then head over to the venue and get ready to do our thing. Tonight should be fun, because if nothing else we are playing with Todd’s old bandmate Paul from Greenlight the Bombers who were an excellent Oakland band that we were good friends with and toured with a bit. We haven’t seen him since he moved to Austin.

Turns out it’s NOT just two bands, there’s an acoustic dude also. Who plays first.

It’s sparesely attended, unfortunately., but hell it’s a monday night… what the heck?
We’ll Go Machete plays and rock it out, RIYL: well…Greenlight the Bombers, Drive Like Jehu and Noiserock style stuff in general.

We’ll go machete.

Paul from We’ll Go Machete

By the time we are getting ready to play it’s probably about midnight or so, but instead of being disenheartened, we’re prepared to rock it as hard and viciously as we can. Never less then everything!

Setlist:

Fashionably Latent
Assloads of Unrespect
Delicious Fornicake
The Tiny Machines are (Still) Out for Revenge
Baby, I Want to Terraform Your Planet
Login With My Fist

It’s actually the first set since the tour started that we don’t end up cutting anything from. I’m pleased as punch that we finally get to play the post Machines song, Baby, I Want to Terraform Your Planet, which i’ve been wanting to debut for a long, long time. It sounds pretty good overall. We’re little balls of energy and put our all into it, and it pays off (as per normal), by the people that are being there being into it.

Kat and Diana

Paul and the Todd.

Paul and Chris’s new wrestling tag team.

Seeing a show it’s a free show, we get no money from door admission, but on the plus side everybody who was there pretty much bought something and was totally stoked about the idea of show tomorrow too. We ended up making $101 in merch though. Pretty good…PRETTY… PREEETTTY GOOD!

AXEWAR!!!

we celebrate a night of rocking out hard… again… by… how else?

Guitar Hero!

we play that game for entirely too long, seriously…

Paul rocking the behind the head action.

In any case, we had a pretty damn good show for a monday, it’s looking like we’re staying in Austin another day, due to the weather in Oklahoma (and how much of it is underwater), so we’re going to try and hang out and play another show. We’ll see how that works out!!

here are some bonus misc pictures, mostly from yesterday:

Chris on a bench in New Mexico

huh huh… flaming balls!

Cosmic treasures

Supernaut mascot Skexie and some NM rocks.

pseudo arty Todd shot.

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