Last show

So we played our last show on the first. It was a show at the Quays, and we did a shoddy version of recording it, thus the band has come full circle!

Commotion - This was Gene's set, so you can still kind of hear the vocals.
Company -
Bean and Joe - Gene and I keep getting each other's songs in each other's heads. What jerks.
Some Blues Song - I have no idea what this song is called.
Chelsea Hotel - actually played in New York. Whoo!
Carpedium - And now you can't hear lyrics...
It's a Good Thing - If I'd put the mic in the right place, it might be a good thing.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Turn around one last time, bright eyes.
Karate - And finally, we are most certainly not Jackie Chang in that movie where he pretends to be Jackie Chan and teams up with a Bruce Lee look-alike.
thE32nd - (19), so we didn't quite hit 32.
Happiness - we were pretty happy to be playing this show.
TAoCP2 - This was the worst possible song on the tour to break a bass string. So of course, we did.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Woah, indeed.

Super Secret Practice Session

July 31, a day of rest and practice before our final show on August 1.

Here's some stuff we recorded while jamming:

Something in Between - Where do you get off calling Gene a crazy super-villain, huh?
Catch Me - Complete with Steve trying to frantically play along with his computerized synths.

More to come.

Philly "Jus Words"

We stopped in Philadelphia again on the way back to NYC and found ourselves another open mic.

We called them up, and they said they were happy to have our band play. When we got there, we discovered it was more of an open forum/poetry jam called "Jus Words." There was even a house band providing backing music for a few spoken word and sung pieces.

When we got there, the host was discussing race relations and the recent arrest of a Harvard professor with the the audience (a huge crowd by the way, over 100 people there).

Also, it turned out we were three of the maybe six white people in the room. We felt somewhat out of our element. Gene began panicking, insisting that we would not be welcome and that even if we were allowed to play we'd be booed off the stage.

The bartender assured us that they'd love us and that this open mic was all about doing your own thing and being accepted for that. In our case, our own thing is weird rock music, so we'd be accepted for that. (I later talked to a few other people there who expressed their happiness at seeing a rock band there. One said that he much preferred punk to the normal hip hop and R&B normally played at that event.) Others came over and told us that we were welcome to play rock and expressed great interest in hearing us play.

Still, Gene needed a drink to steel his nerves. Dave ordered the bartenders specialty. She told him it was called "a piece of ass." She then poured two shots of 151 rum, another shot of hard liquor (I forget what), and some sour mix into a glass and passed it to Gene.

We eventually hauled our equipment up to the stage (they had a band, but no guitar) and set up.

We then received the best intro we've ever gotten and went on to play:
TAoCP2 - It was quite well received.
We were only allotted two songs, so I passed the mic to a still-nervous Gene, who cracked this joke to loosen up the crowd. If you listen closely, you'll notice two people laughing. That would be Dave and myself. Awkward...
We then played:
thE32nd - Holy carp! This is the most enthusiastic crowd ever!

Two more days worth of bootlegs are forthcoming. I'll post them when I finish them.

Pittsburg: Phoning it in Since 1758

We played another open mic in Pittsburg, PA last night. It seems that this is a really bad city to play music in during the summer. The students are all gone, and as Gene (who used to go to school here) said, the market is flooded with venues.

So we played a whole bunch of songs to no one except the bartender, sound guy, and MC, and I put together the most half-assed bootlegs yet.

First, Gene

thE32nd - (17)
Company - Soothing you in improperly balanced stereo since 2009.
If I Gave You a Guitar - If we ever install a poll plugin to the blog, the first question will have to be "If I gave you a guitar, would you write me a song?" Followed, of course, by "Do you like me? Circle one: Yes/No"
Chelsea Hotel - Dave likes this song, but he missed it. Sucker!
I Likes - Me talk good!

Then, all of us

It's a Good Thing - Zombie Dog phoning it in, Whoo! Actually, we played alright, I'm just too lazy to make the bootlegs sound good.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - I have nothing to say about this that wouldn't be a potentially offensive joke about our ritard in the second verse.
TAoCP2 - Ok. I'm trimming something out of this beast.

Finally, all of us but with Gene singing

thE32nd (full band) (18)
Commotion - I wish I knew if having my own room in Hell was standard or if it's actually a perk...
Catch Me - Barring any unusual capitalization, I'm pretty sure I got the name right.
Something In Between - Gene's told me that name something like three times, but I keep calling it Supervillain. I'm "that guy" in the band.
Karate - For the last time, we're like Jackie Chan in that movie where he was his own twin and not the one where he teamed up with Jet Li in feudal China.


Share and enjoy

Pittsburg, for real this time.

We finally made it to Pittsburg on this tour. Last night we played an open mic at PD's Pub. The audience was pretty apathetic, but their equipment was very nice.

Theoretically, there was a live feed of the show somewhere, but I haven't been able to find an archive of it yet. Perhaps on their MySpace?

It's a Good Thing - Nothing really exceptional or funny here.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - This is the catchiest drum beat the computer has ever picked for this song.
TAoCP2 - No time for banter! Next song! Next song!
Happiness - This was the happiest those bar patrons have ever been.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Those woahs are painful, ain't they!

More Cleveland

We played the Kobalt in Cleveland again.

No time for banter!

It's a Good Thing
Total Eclipse of the Heart
TAoCP2
Silly Dreams
Black Girlfriend
Company
thE32n'd - (16) half way there!

Cleveland acoustic set

We played an open mic hosted by The Uncanny XeLa outside of Cleveland. Our band were about the only musicians who showed up, so we each did sets.

Dave - rawking the house since 1983!

Christmas Eve - A ghost story by Dave. How sweet!
Must've been the pills I took - Dave's favorite Hank Williams the Eighty-Seventh cover

Gene - Singer/songwritering your faces off!

Black Girlfriend - Gene busts out the Porno for Pyros. (Hi mom!) Complete with Xe La discussing how this open mic usually goes and hecklers demanding drums.
Summer, a Year Ago - A new Gene original.
Bearsaw - This is another Gene original that I don't know the name of. However, you can't really hear it over the discussions of the bear loose on campus and the movie Saw II (warning: spoilers!), so I decided Bearsaw is a good name. (Gene says it's "Catch Me", but I'm sticking with "Bearsaw").
Bermuda Highway - Seriously! This is like New Gene Song Extravaganza '09 around here... Oh wait... He tells me this is a My Morning Jacket song. Cancel the Extravaganza
Commotion - How can you not get up and dance to this upbeat number?
Company - I suppose we could call it Old Gene Song Extravaganza '09...
Summer, Before Last - Ok. That's probably not the name, but I'm too lazy to find Gene for the real name again.

Zombie Dog - These songs sound awful acoustic!

Acoustic Grindcore - well that ended predicably!
It's a Good Thing - Actually, that went pretty well.
TAoCP2 - Meh...
Happiness - Theoretically, this one should work pretty well acoustically, right?

Steve - Too nerdy to rock, huh? Well I'll show you!

Nerd Rock - Not really rock with just an acoustic, but whatever.
Teenage Girlfriend - A brand new one! Never before heard by anyone but me.

Pickup show in Toledo

We randomly played in a bar run by one of Gene's friends in Toledo. Some other acts were playing that evening, and we loaned them some equipment. In a fit of gratitude, they let us clear the bar out with our loud-ass music.

It was an interesting setup because the house PA wasn't your standard "two big speakers next to a stage" array. They had an assortment of different sizes of speakers throughout the bar to play the radio through, so depending on where you were, different parts of the music were FAR more pronounced than others and blah blah blah to the nerdy nerd nerd.

It's a Good Thing - The DR-1 was really close to the vocalist, so somehow the vocals actually come through ok.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - In case you can't tell, our rhythm section was a little stoned that night. We also played the song at 240 bpm, which was an adventure.
TAoCP2 - and then the wheels fell off...
Happiness - Why is the song getting slower as we go?!?
Summertime Roll - I give up! We're not even using the microphones anymore!
thE32nd - (15)
Company - I'm done! It's all you Gene. *leaves in a huff*
Bean and Joe - By popular demand. (Seriously, there were death threats if Gene didn't play this.)

Chicago... Let's call it a "cool down" show?

We played at the "Friends and Co." bar. Once again, we felt bad for crushing the hopes and dreams of a local musician.

The guy who organizes shows hooked us up with a guy named Ken who did acoustic covers of punk ballads. He was super excited to rock out with a serious band from New York. Then we let him know how "serious" this band really is. He seemed sad. :(

Either way, we played these songs:
(Note, the file transfer is going slowly, so not all of the songs may be available immediately)

Honest Man - Gene rocks the My Morning Jacket.
Company - I still want one of those books about parachutes.
Bean and Joe - As plagiarized by Paul Simon.
The Breathing - I can't remember who this is a cover of. So I'm gonna guess... Disturbed? That sounds like the name of a Disturbed song, right?
It's a Good Thing - Chicago's a good thing.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - I decided to try out adding curse word(s) to this song. I'm still unsure as to if it's awesome enough to be worth the cursing.
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - I was planning to make meaningful eye contact with one of the cuter girls in the bar on the word "baby" (You know, as a flirty stage presence thing.) But she took that exact moment to go to the bathroom.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - As requested by Tricia our sister.
Happiness - No time for banter, we're leaving in 5!
Carpedium - One day, we'll play this song well, and it will rock!
Karate - So many f bombs! Good thing it's a bar, and there's no kids around. (Also, we are definitely not like Jackie Chan in that one movie I hear he did early in his career which was actually an adult film and not a kung fu flick at all!)

Madison then... silence.

We're taking a few days off to visit family, so don't expect too many posts for a bit.

Yesterday, we played on the campus library mall at Madison. It was pretty rawkin!

It's a Good Thing - Despite being our sound check (again), we sounded pretty good on this one!
Happy Birthday - Technically, the copyright infringement entailed by playing this song is among the least illegal aspects of the show... Happy birthday, Nathan Hotdog!
Total Eclipse of the Heart - So. Damn. Epic!
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - People have told me that I don't sound particularly concerned as I sing "Look out! Giant booger, baby." I showed them last night. Listen to the concern in that last chorus! I am concerned, my friends. Concerned!
Happiness - We're gonna say that that's "concern" you hear in my voice and not "angst."
Fat - Ok. That is angst you hear there, but it's ironic angst.
thE32nd - (12)
Company - You can't hear it, but Dave and I danced around and looked really cool during this one.
It's a Good Thing (Reprise) - It's not just repeating a song from earlier if we call it a reprise.

We should be back to posting by Tuesday

Minneapolis

Yesterday's show was an open mic in Minneapolis, MN.

It was pretty fun. Then Dave and I drank a bunch and got in an argument. Good times!

It's a Good Thing - yup.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - indeed
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - fer sure
thE32nd - (11)
Company - yes
Chelsea Hotel - OK.

Happy Birthday to me!

It's my birthday, so here's some bootlegs from the show we did in Fargo yesterday. (4 people showed up; it was awesome!)

Carpedium - This is a way better choice for our sound check than our hit song!
Summertime Roll - We figured out how to get the delay pedal working again, so we can play this song again.
It's a Good Thing - And yet... we still haven't gotten our sound issues ironed out. Dammit!
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - Too little, too late, sound system.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Once upon a time I was falling in love; then I was only falling apart.
Happiness - Whoo! We kept the beat on the bridge!
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Sing-alongs work best when only 4 people show!
thE32nd - (10)
Company - My books mention parachutes. I don't know what Gene's problem is.

2-fer except not really.

It's been two shows since I last posted bootlegs, so theoretically, there should be two sets of bootlegs. Unfortunately, yesterday's show was at Project Noise in Bismark, ND (a very cool venue. Check it out), and somehow we are unable to record successfully there. The first time we played, the recordings didn't turn out. This time, we forgot to make the recordings in the first place...

Anyway, Missoula! We played a sweet show with a bunch of experimental and hardcore bands including Moms, Fag Rag, and Filth Mattress. (Kind of like Rush with two drummers and no Geddy vocals, weird deerhoof-esque experimentation and squealing, and melodic hardcore but with a punk drummer and vocalist respectively).

We played this stuff:

It's a Good Thing - I have nothing witty to say.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - We're starting to get solid enough with this material that I have not quippy witticisms for you.
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - "This song is about giant snot monsters attacking Russia. It's dedicated to the ladies!"
happiness - "This is our ballad, but we dedicated the last song to the ladies already... SO this one's for the dudes!"
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Drawing a blank on funny things to say again...
Karate - Once more, the movie where Jackie Chan was his own twin, not the one where he conducted a police investigation completely straight without doing anything funny at all.
thE32nd - (9)

What?!? We played a show in Montana?!?

That's right! Over the past two weeks, various members of the band have spent about 8 days in Montana; last night was the first time we played a show instead of just partying.

We hadn't practiced in about a week, yet last night was one of our tightest shows so far. If only the PA had been badass enough to handle all that rock... (You might hear a little distortion on the mp3s.)

It's a Good Thing - Considering this is one of our best songs, we probably shouldn't open with in since we've never got our sound issues ironed out yet. Oh well, I suppose that just makes really good recordings of it extra special.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - You can tell we played this one well because we didn't cut the intro from the bootleg.
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - Where's part one, you ask? Well, you see, part 1 isn't as good. It's part of a rock operetta entitled "A Brief History of Canada." Obviously, part one is a low part of the quintet used only to establish plot. (Also, Dave probably would have vetoed it as "too nerdy.")
Happiness - You may have noticed that I'm rambling a lot in the commentary today. I'm not going to tell you why. Suffice to say, listen to that distortion on the synths! Weird!
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Guess who's gotten most into the sing a long part of this song so far:
   A. Drunk hecklers in a bar
   B. Actual emo kids
   C. Dave's friends in New York
   D. My friends in Eau Claire
   E. all-ages art school crowd
     Yup. The answer was B (though the drunk hecklers were pretty enthusiastic)
thE32nd - (8)
Company - Some encouragement would do us all some good, but you're not getting it!
Karate - No, we're not like Jackie in that movie where he worked as a TV chef either.

Share and enjoy

Spokane

Right now Dave and I are in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada visiting our little sister; Gene is somewhere in rural Montana. Quick recaps of how we got here:

Friday, we played in Spokane, WA. At 8:00 we called a punk venue called the Cretin Hop. (Bootlegs below)
Friday night, instead of sleeping, we piled into the van to drive to Polebridge, MT for a July 4th party we'd heard rumors of.
Saturday, we partied in rural Montana with some friends from Missoula. Notable events there:
River surfing. Someone tied a surfboard to the bank of the river. We all took turns trying to surf on it. Dave, lacking clothing that would not get swept down the river opted to do so naked. We forgot to take pictures, but it looked like a much less majestic version of this:

Dave also tried to throw the van keys into the river. Fortunately, he missed by several inches, and we weren't stranded in Poleridge.
The drinking Frisbee game. It involved throwing Frisbees at empty beer bottles and drinking. Good times.
Music. A local band called "7 Smart Fellers" played pretty decent "jug band" country pretty much all day.

Today, we abandoned Gene with some Missoula friends so that Dave and I could come to Canada and visit some family. We'll get the tour back on track in about 4 days when we meet Gene in Missoula again.

Here's what we played in Spokane:
Total Eclipse of the Heart - We played "It's a Good Thing" first but forgot to record it. Is it ironic that our radio single is the song we have the fewest recordings of?
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - How does the octave jump sound? I think I'm keeping that!
Fat Kid Emo Pants - It was kind of a punky venue, so we got right to the punky music
Happiness - It was kind of a punky venue, so we... played our soothing love ballad?
Karate - We're like Jackie Chan in that movie where he was his own twin, NOT the one where he teams up with Chinese pop stars to fight vampires.
thE32nd - (7)

50%

Yesterday marked the exact halfway point in our 64 day tour. We've been out here barely over a month, though it kind of fells like it's been years.

Anyway, we played at a biker bar. Aside from a few "tips" (wink, wink; nudge, nudge!), the audience was pretty lukewarm. But the beer they paid us in was cold, so they had that going for them. Anyway, here are our bootlegs, completely free of audience interference!

Summertime Roll - This is the version we played first, while our rhythm section was still relatively sober.
It's a Good Thing - Don't bother listening, it took us until adventures to get our sound issues ironed out.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Seriously, you're just wasting your time clicking that link. Skip on to Adventures!
The Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - There ya' go!
Fat Kid Emo Pants - If I know one thing, it's that grizzled old bikers in Kaiser helmets love being called fat kids!
Happiness - We were going to do this one before Fat Kid, but the hot girls we wanted to dedicate it to had stepped out for a smoke.
"smoke" break
If I Gave You a Guitar - Some soothing Geneius music to ease us into our second set.
Bean and Joe - Dave demanded chelsea hotel. This was played instead?
thE32nd - (6)
Karate - We're not Jackie Chan from that movie where he teamed up with Sammo Hung and Biao Yuen either, just the one where he was his own twin.
I Am the Greatest - Ah, Boomerang looping pedal. How much ass can you kick?
Carpedium - I think you can consider this day seized.

Lessons learned - The computer is less prone to attempt to seize control of the band when we make it louder.
Old bikers really don't like being called fat kids.
Tire irons hurt.

I should really be more on the ball about this

So here are the bootlegs from two days ago in Seattle. Last night's show doesn't have any recordings because I forgot the DR1 at our hosts' house.

Chris' poem - A guy named Chris came up to me before the open mic to ask if I could play some sweet guitar riffs along with his poem. I said ok. What resulted is some of the finest white-boy AABBCCDDEE... poetry you've ever heard! (Ok, maybe not finest, but it's better than For My Dad)

Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - I should count my blessings that I didn't subtitle that song. Otherwise my wrists would already have fallen off from typing it.
Fat Kid Emo Pants - Sadly, all the kids (fat or otherwise) had left the open mic before we played this one.
It's a Good Thing - No Total Eclipse that night. They had a pretty staunch "no covers" policy.
I Am the Greatest - It just doesn't sound the same without the Boomerang. Wah de da, wah de da, WAAAAAAH!
Happiness - This song is quickly become the ballad I've played the most times.
Karate - Note: I am not like Jackie Chan in that movie where he had a robo-tuxedo; only in the one where he was his own twin.

Gene did a set on his own:
Company - I've got a set of those books where they mention love and parachutes. Let me tell you, that is a thrill ride!
thE32nd - (6)
Gene hasn't told me the name of this song yet - Apparently, the guy from Spirits of the Red City, whose songs all seem to be about alcoholism, broken relationships, and suicide thinks this song is pretty dark. Kudos, Gene! Kudos.

</radio silence>

Never fear, faithful readers! I still live. I just haven't been able to get enough internet time the last few days to post here.

As Dave mentioned in his post, we played a sweet show in Fargo. Here's some bootlegs:

Karate - You've gotta show an audience who's boss!
Summertime Roll - Wait... we started with this one. Maybe we didn't show anyone who's boss after all.
thE32nd - (5)
Happiness - We've gotten better at killing the computer when it gets unruly.
The Adventures of Cri... yadda yadda - So sick of typing that (and a fever. Sick of the fever too.)
Fat Kid Emo Pants - This song gets better every time we play it! (It was even better at the Bismark show! (which you will never hear (see later portions of this post))).
It's a Good Thing - The only one where we didn't have to kill the computer at all.
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Even country fans appreciate epicness when they see it.

Other amusing quotes of the evening.
Girl 1: Let's go in and see [blind] Joe play!
Girl 2: Even though he can't see us.

aww...

Part 2!

The next day, we played a totally sweet show in Bismark, ND. That was booked in a similar way in that the open mic we meant to play got canceled, but we jumped on the bill of an actual show later.

It was a really good show that, unfortunately, we didn't get a good recording of.
Company was the only song which remotely turned out. The rest were too distorted by the recording process. Sad day.

Too diseased to type

I'm sick, so no witty comments today

Total eclipse of the heart
It's a Good Thing
Adventures of Cristobal...
The 32nd
Chelsea Hotel No. 2

Better late than never.

Two days ago, we played at the Mousetrap in Eau Claire, WI. They let us do a half hour set because we brought drums. Buy those fellows a drink, my friends! Buy them a drink!

Karate - by Alan Eliazar, a friend of Gene's. It's got some pretty sweet lyrics about... well... karate.
Somewhere in Between - Gene's Supervillain song!
The 32nd - I think we get a prize once we've got 32 bootlegs of this. (4)...
Summertime Roll - By Gene's Addiction
It's a Good Thing - Computer! You betray us!
Total Eclipse of the Heart - Seriously, Computer. I will throw you out a window.
Adventures of Cristobal Pt. 2 - Hopefully, me getting pissed off and slamming my computer shut looked like "stage presence"...

We didn't play anything yesterday because we're lazy and went swimming in Menominee instead.