GTG RECORDS

Download the annual free seasonal compilation right here. 13 brand new unreleased tracks from GTG and BMP friends, including The Plurals, Josh David & the Dream Jeans, The Hat Madder, The Guest Stars, middleman and more! A limited run of physical copies will be floating around over the next month or so. Get ’em!

So there’s two more days of 2010, but that doesn’t mean we’re done releasing new music from the GTG and friends! This Friday, December 31st, 2010 will see the release of the 5th annual Bermuda Snowhawk holiday compilation from BMP & GTG. Yeah, we know, Christmas is over, but how about next year you write and record a bunch of original songs in two weeks and see how fucking close you can get it to come out before Christmas. Plus, it’s a “holiday” compilation, and, seems to me the holiday season is still going on. Shit! I mean, uh, tis the season. Um… anyway, this year’s comp features new seasonal-themed music from The Plurals, The Guest Stars, The Hat Madder, Josh David and the Dream Jeans, middleman, Sleeping Timmy, Foxy-Z, and the return of previous Snowhawk-exclusive artists like Neon Tuesday, Cabin Fever, and Iron Christmas among new contributors like Prank Sand Fearnest and The Need You Nows. Does this sound like this compilation was made by a bunch of GTG / Bermuda Mohawk Productions friends that think their off-the-cuff musial excursions are more entertaining than they probably are? Well, I’m not denying. But it’s not like we’re going to sell these things, so.. yeah! Hard copies will be available at “Glum’s New Year’s Eve Party” in Lansing featuring performances from Cavalcade, Genocya, and The Plurals, and I’m assuming Cale will be putting the bad boy up for download over at http://www.bermudamohawkproductions.com . Sorry if I just put you on the spot Cale. AHHHHHH!!

larulpymmot

So I went to the GTG myspace page today to update the catalog listing to reflect the glut (probably not the best word to use, but I like it anyway) of great new releases that have just come out and discovered, that, wow, myspace totally sucks now. I have no idea what they’re trying to do with that website, but all of the previous html coding and formatting I had done were now totally gone and all of the text was in a random jumble. So, I have officially killed the GTG myspace as of today, and have set up a companion site to this page here with a listing of the GTG catalog. There will be a link on the right column next to the GTG and Big Gig logos and links. So, there it is. Check it out! We’re hoping to post some free download links to some of the out-of-print back catalog entries over there (the ones we’re not embarassed of!), so keep an out for that.

I also wanted to just say a quick thanks to everyone who came out to the release shows this weekend. It was definitely a pretty big undertaking to try and coordinate three different releases on the same weekend (something that we’re going to do our best to avoid in the future!) and it was extremley satisfying, gratifying, and humbling for it all to go so well. So, thank you!

tommyplural

Click on that big orange “Big Gig” button to the right to download the new EP from The Plurals, “Austin Gump.” This EP features 5 new recordings, with the first three recorded and mixed by Isaac Vander Schuur of The Hat Madder, and the last two recorded and mixed by longtime Plurals friend / associate / “don’t call me a producer” / producer Eric “CrookedSound” Merckling. Most of this was recorded this fall, with the exception of “Exercise in Humility” (The Plurals’ token acoustic song that people may or may not have heard at various house shows or the odd appearance on college radio) which was recorded sometime last year. We think it’s a cool package, and it has a nice preview of the next Plurals album (much of which was recorded earlier this week!) in the closing “Squagel (untutored post-folk version),” which will re-appear in its in-your-face full band glory on the forthcoming spring 2011 (we’re thinking) Plurals full-length album. You can download the album right now (in a limited time promo reduced price of $3) with downloads available in crappy compressed mp3s and full-blown CD audio quality. Thanks Scott! More on Scott in a second. But, please, come on out to the official release party at Mac’s Bar on Saturday (December 4) night (The Plurals / Oh My God / Life Size Ghost) as we will have a very limited run of cassette copies of the new EP, along with a tasty GTG surprise.

You’re probably wondering what this whole “Big Gig Productions” thing is. Well, Big Gig is run by Scott Bozack, a native of Lansing (90s Lansing music fans may recall him as the drummer of the excellent Orange) who now runs a production company and digital distributor thing in Conneticut AKA Big Gig. Scott is a longtime friend and associate (and the gentleman who turned the knobs on many of their excellent recordings) of Isaac and Chris from The Hat Madder and Narc Out the Reds, respectively, and when they came into the GTG orbit Scott naturally was sucked in as well. He and I met up over the summer and launched the plan to create a Big Gig / GTG music store which will offer high quality downloads of the GTG catalog in addition to some of his own projects. As of right now the GTG releases on the site are the aforementioned “Austin Gump” EP and the Hat Madder and Narc Out the Reds releases, but in the next few weeks we’ll have the whole current catalog posted, as well as some of those neat releases that are out-of-print, like The Break-Ups records. Very cool stuff!

Don’t forget that GTGs 041 and 042 come out tomorrow night (December 3) at the KISS / Devo Tribute and Release Show. Be there!

Finally, GTG039 “Trieste” by Stargrazer has already earned a positive review here calliing it a “compelling narrative that left me feeling electric.” Thanks to Oh Drat for that review!

tommyplural

Happy Thanksgiving my fellow Americans. The rest of you – well, hey, it’s never a bad thing to be thankful.

Okay, so I started writing this tour journal in August right when we finished the tour. I jotted down quick notes, trying to keep all of the key facts in order. In mid-September I actually started writing it in more of a narrative form. I worked on it probably 5 or 6 different times between then and now, and finally got it all finished. I wanted to include some pictures with it, but Josh David still hasn’t found a way (re: tried) to get some of them online, and, uh, I’ve been in front of computers a lot lately and didn’t feel like getting the rest. I probably will add some pictures in the next couple days. All right, so here’s a nice long Plurals tour journal to distract people when they’re at work/ avoiding their families this weekend. Enjoy!

“I May Not Be A Smart Man, But I Know What a Teenage Dream is Baby! Yeah! : A Summer Tour 2010 Journal” By TommyPlural

As I start to write this, and it will no doubt take me many attempts as I’ve been meaning to write this for several weeks now, it is a comfortable late summer day. I sit on the porch of the GTG House, celebrity cat Chauncey on my lap, drinking a High Life that somebody left in the downstairs fridge after our Neon 9/11 party, and I try to write. To kind of tie things together, I got home about an hour ago from my Anthropology capstone course (i.e. the class that I have to pass in order to get a B.A. in Anthropology), where today’s topic was how important it is to write, even when you don’t want to; writing just for the sake of writing helps hone skills and ideas. As I was sitting in the class, my mind kept returning to this tour journal that I wrote an outline for but never actually wrote. I’m of the mind that if I didn’t write it while it was going on it’s not really a “journal”… but the shows that The Plurals played on our late summer tour were pretty great, and I feel like I owe it to myself to write about it. So, here goes. I hope you’re happy, proponent-of-writing-for-the-sake-of-writing college curriculum.

The curtain opens on August 8, 2010. While not part of the tour proper, we did play our first show since the 2010 edition of GTG Fest, and, in my mind, the two shows we did prior to tour were warm-up dates that allowed us to stretch our legs a little bit, and were close enough in proximity to the tour that my mind just kind of includes them. Our show on August 8th was perhaps the most unique show I’ve ever played, as we were performing for a group of deaf kids (ranging from the ages of 8-14 or so) at a camp for kids with disabilities outside of Lapeer, MI. Erstwhile GTG House roommate/ ex-Really Cinematic drummer/ owner of Ori/ general friend of ours/ certified sign language guy James Spreitzer was working at the camp and asked us to come play because the previous band booked had fallen through (oh, how I wish I knew what they were called so I could type it here) because there wasn’t enough money or “exposure” involved. I thought getting the chance to perform music for deaf children was a cool enough experience in and of itself, and current GTG House roommate/ Frank and Earnest singer-guitarist/ ex-Lansing mayoral candidate/ general rabble rouser and friends of ours Ben Hassenger agreed and decided to tag along with us to the show. We had to bring our own PA system, so we loaded up the gear in Hattie’s parents’ van, Ben in tow, and made our way towards Lapeer, MI. We got almost all the way there before we realized we had almost no gas, to the point of briefly stalling out in the middle of an intersection while trying to drive towards a gas station. Crisis averted, we continued. We then drove around winding dirt roads trying to find the place, before Hattie just decided to call the camp director we had been talking to, as Mapquest had led us astray. Finally rolling up to the camp, I was glad to see that the camp itself was very nice and didn’t seem to be struggling with budget cuts or anything of the sort. All of the people working at the camp were friendly, so we started loading the gear into the rec hall that we would be performing at, before promptly discovering that we had left the PA head (the thing that powers the speakers and that you run the microphones through and which without renders microphones and speakers essentially useless) back at our house. Before I could torch the van in frustration, someone working at the camp thought that they might have something we could use, and soon enough, a couple of A/V looking guys (not to stereotype, but…) unlocked a closet and rolled out a mixer and some power supply stuff (and speakers, which meant that we didn’t actually have to bring our own PA… oh well…) that was actually nicer than the stuff we would have brought, and we were once again ready to roll.

The question I’m sure people are asking is, how did we play music for deaf kids? Well, we didn’t do anything different besides play our instruments one at a time at the beginning of our set as the camp workers signed to the kids what we were doing. All of the kids held balloons, which helped them feel the vibrations of the music, and by playing the instruments one at a time the kids were able to get a better feel for which instrument made what particular vibration, and then we crashed together into our song “Crush” and got the set going. After “Crush” we played “Sheep Dive” and the kids got up to run around and dance. I recall that I was nursing a shitty mid-summer cold, so it was nice to play a set and not have to worry too much about singing well, as the audience couldn’t hear me! The whole thing was a really cool experience, and after we ran through what would be a normal set time, they wanted us to play more, so we did. Then we tried to stop, but they wanted us to keep playing, so we did… eventually, after exhausting most of our rehearsed reportoire, we closed out the show with the Ramones classic “Blitzkgrieg Bop.” James made a valiant attempt to sign the lyrics to our songs, and the only edit we made was changing Nich’s refrain of “he don’t wanna hurt nobody he just wants to fuckin party” in “FTS” to “he don’t wanna hurt nobody he just wants to eat and party.” Wow, now everyone can enjoy our music!

After the unique experience of the show on the 8th, August 10th brought us to the (perhaps too) familiar venue of Mac’s Bar in Lansing. It was an early all ages show, booked for the tour that Grabass Charlestons and Future Virgins were on. I was looking forward to getting a chance to play for Grabass Charlestons, as I knew they were veterans of the DIY touring circuit, and, well, it never hurts to have someone like that on your side. Unfortunately, as circumstance would have it, Grabass Charlestons and Future Virgins got a flat tire on their way to Lansing, so The Plurals ended up playing first and the touring bands showed up midway through our set and had to load in and all that stuff, so… maybe next time. Grabass Charlestons played a good set, but I was particularly into Future Virgins, whom I’d never heard of prior to this show. They played a great mix of a lot of the sub-genres across the punk spectrum, but kept strong pop hooks up front. Plus, I’m always a fan of the multiple lead singers approach. The night was closed out by the modern rock band Young Dan Tucker, a band from Milwaukee that has a confusing foothold in the Lansing music scene. Essentially, these guys sound a lot like Nickelback and Buckcherry, but somehow write even more lowbrow lyrics with even more generic riffs. The stuff they said onstage was pretty funny, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t realize that the crowd was largely laughing at them. These guys play in Lansing pretty often, and although I’m glad that Lansing music fans seem to be more into the spectacle of a band that is the epitome of douchey modern rock than the music itself (re: it’s terrible), I still find it kind of depressing that a band like that can headline shows in Lansing.

Minor disappointments about the show aside, the show was a good time all in all. Our set went fairly well (our Bermuda Snowhawk ‘09 holiday song “Conifer Oberst” made its proper live debut) so I was feeling pretty good about the tour that was to start that weekend. One thing that made the show more enjoyable for me was that my brother Robbie was in attendance. Robbie lives in Philadelphia (as a grad student at Penn), but was around for a few weeks of the summer, so he took the opportunity to take in a Plurals show at Mac’s – I’m not sure when he last had that opportunity. At the conclusion of the show, Robbie made his way back to our parents’ house in Ionia, where I met up with him and my mother and father in the morning, and we went to the upper peninsula for a few days. I hadn’t been on a vacation with my family in several years, and there was just enough of an opening in our schedules to make it happen this summer. It was a fairly laid back affair, and Robbie and I were glad to be well-fed for a few days.

I got back into Ionia around 1:00 PM on Friday, August 13th, and after a quick stop in Portland, as it was Hattie’s 25th birthday, we made our way to Lansing to start the first leg of our tour, a 3 day midwest jaunt with Josh David and the Dream Jeans. JDDJ, as the hip kids call them, had recently re-tooled the band as founding drummer Matt Norton had parted ways with the band after GTG Fest 2010. In Norton’s place came Christian Urrabazo, drummer of The Guest Stars and the latest tenant of the GTG House (as of this writing). These three out of state shows were Christian’s first shows with the band, and he came along just in time to get wrangled into providing his van for the tour. With the addition of Christian in the band, the rest of JDDJ – Josh David, Michael Boyes, and The Plurals’ own Nich Richard – was getting re-energized. GTG Records had recorded most of the material for a full-length with Norton on drums, but with things changing, the album had been scrapped and the plan is now to record a proper album this fall / winter, with Christian on drums. For these tour dates we put together the best four songs from the Norton sessions as a demo/ EP titled “Knight Riding a Motorcycle,” which features a sweet drawing that Hattie made of, yes, a knight riding a motorcycle.

When I was getting ready to leave Lansing on the 10th, Christian was about to take his van in for a tune-up, so I came back to Lansing on the 13th with no real worries. As it turned out, during the course of this tune-up, the brakes on Christian’s van got a little messed up, so if you were to, say, slam on the brakes while going 70 miles per hour, the van would fishtail much like if you slammed on the brakes while driving on a very icy road. But we weren’t to really find this out until we were on the road. When I got back to Lansing Christian said his brakes were acting weird, but still worked, we just had to take it easy and try to not hit the brakes too much. With no alternative vehicle and needing to leave pretty quickly, The Plurals and JDDJ hopped in the van and got on our way.

I was riding shotgun for the first drive of the tour, and found out along I-94 near Kalamazoo just how “weird” the brakes in the van were. I started getting really nervous and stressed out about the brakes, so in northern Indiana we pulled off the highway, stole some wireless internet from a hotel, and got new directions to the venue for the show that avoided the interstate. I’m going to try to not talk about the condition of the brakes after this, but I will state that after this first leg of driving, I spent the rest of the tour in the backseat where the bass drum blocked my view of the road. I didn’t want to get anyone else worked up, but I was mildly terrified the entire time we were driving on the interstate after this point. Aside from a little more than half of the first leg of driving, Christian drove his van the entire tour, as he had the best handle on how to drive it. It was definitely a hell of a way to join a band and play his first shows.

Hattie took over driving from Christian after we got our interstate-free directions, and with Hattie behind the wheel we got to see what Gary, Indiana looks like up close (terrible!) as well as go through a ridiculous rain storm (sometimes the rain seemed to come straight up!), setting our already delayed arrival time back even further. We did eventually make it to the venue, and after I got a strong whiskey and coke I was calmed down and ready to play the show. The show was at a bar called Gasthaus in Elgin, Illinois. The Plurals had played at this bar twice before, once on tour with The Rape Babies in 2007, which was an amazing show, and once with The Cartridge Family in 2008, which was a pretty lame show. At that time we had friends in the area, but those friends have since moved away from Elgin, so this show was kind of a shot in the dark, checking in on a venue that had the potential to be cool, and, truth be told, this show was a Plan B show that I booked in case if our Plan A show fell through, which it did. The bar was under new ownership and significantly remodeled, so much to the point that it seemed like a completely different place than the one we had played years before.

Confession time: JDDJ were not actually on this show. We planned to split the set with them, and we had a little routine figured out to hopefully entertain the crowd. After a pretty good grungy band opened (as is the case with every other band that played this show, I have, alas, forgotten their name) we set up, and The Plurals opened the show with “Party It Up Part 3.” Instead of ending this song in the abrupt fashion that we normally do, we riffed on a thrashy jam at the end of the song, during which Christian ran behind the drum set, stole Hattie’s sticks and pushed her out of the way, Michael tackled me and took the bass away before shoving me out of a door onto the street, and Josh presumably came running from somewhere and grabbed the mic (I was outside by that point so I’m not entirely sure what he did). As I stood on the sidewalk talking to the other bands that were hanging out, the bouncer came running out, asking me what the hell just happened. When I replied “they stole our set from us! Can you believe it?” he just got frustrated and walked away. Unfortunately, this was about the only reaction we got out of anybody, as nobody seemed to care about the show, and nobody even seemed to really be in charge of the show. Beggars can’t be choosers, and I was just happy to have a show at all, but if this was a decent example of what the Gasthaus on a Friday night is like, which, from what I gathered, it was, I would advise other bands to just skip it. Oh well, we tried. After JDDJ played four songs, Hattie and I came back in, heckled them, and took our instruments back. We played maybe 5 more songs, but the thin crowd seemed confused and not very interested in what we were doing. This was definitely one of those “pick your battles” moments, and I opted to just let this one go. We hung out in the van, watched the band that had set up the show (a punk/ thrash band from Milwaukee that was good and seemed to be really nice, sorry I don’t remember who they were!), got our $10 payout from the door, and then left the Gasthaus with no intention of ever going back.

Christian proposed that he would buy a hotel room if everyone else covered the gas for the rest of the tour, which we agreed to, so we found a cheapish hotel outside Elgin. Hattie, Christian, and Nich went in through the front doors, while Michael, Josh, and I tried to be stealthy in the parking lot to meet them at a side door so the hotel wouldn’t charge us for extra people. Of course, while we were outside, the dude working the front desk was also out there smoking a cigarette, so our covert attempts were probably immediately discovered, but, hey, he never said anything. The six of us piled in the hotel room, got drunk, and watched VH1 until 4 AM – introducing two of the theme songs for the whole tour, Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” and “California Gurls” ( of which I was disappointed to learn that the radio edit did NOT feature Snoop Dogg).

The drive from Elgin to Wisconsin Rapids was a nice drive, free of the stresses of the previous night’s drive. It was a nice summer day, driving through the midwest, listening to some tunes (the only specific artist I remember listening to on this drive being Honah Lee, our musical brothers from New Jersey that The Plurals would soon be seeing for our east coast leg). I remember pulling off for gas, and then just hanging out in the parking lot drinking beer in the van for a minute before continuing the drive. Hey, when in Wisconsin…

We got to our venue around 3:00 in the afternoon on August 14, 2010, for the 8th edition of Wisconsin Rapids’ annual Park Rock music festival. The venue was, indeed, a park called Robinson Park, and the festival is organized every year by our buddies The Ska`tTsmen, whom we initially met in 2008 on the summer Plurals/ Cartridge Family tour. It turned out the schedule had been juggled a bit and The Ska`tTsmen were playing right as we got there, so I’m glad we got there when we did as they’re a cool bunch of guys who play a nice mish-mash of various waves of ska and put on a really fun live show.

Park Rock as a whole is a pretty laid back affair, and I got a chance to mingle with some of the people that we had met on previous trips to the area. I was happy that the rain from the previous night was not present at all in Wisconsin on this beautiful summer afternoon and we were able to just relax and watch the other bands. At some point I began to wonder where Michael, Nich, and Christian were, only to find them walking across the park with a freshly bought gallon of whiskey. Sometimes it’s good to have some sort of warning. As it turned out, nobody got wasted or anything, but we all ended up acting pretty goofy. JDDJ played a few hours before The Plurals, and it was, at that point, the best performance I had seen the band play. Christian fell in line perfectly with the songs and gave them some more muscle, as well as playing nicely off of Michael and Nich so as not to distract from their instrumental parts. Josh, as usual, was a raving madman, quickly shirtless, running and rolling around the whole venue and getting in people’s faces as he sang. People seemed to really enjoy JDDJ’s set, which I had hoped they would as this was, indeed, a “Cartridge Family town.” After JDDJ a great powerpop band from Chicago called the Fizzy Pops played, as well as a jerky post-punk band in matching ninja-like garb from Minneapolis called International Espionage. After these great performances, and a healthy serving of whiskey, I decided that I would perform The Plurals set in cut-off shorts, a too-small black tank top (belonging to Hattie) and cat makeup. Being in a similar state of mind, and not wanting to pass up the opportunity for something stupid, Nich also dressed this way, which meant that Hattie pretty much had to. We were closing out the festival, so we went for it and played a set pulling from our last few EPs and some new stuff.

The festival over, we made a stop at Wisconsin fast-food staple Taco John’s (it’s kind of like Taco Bell but different!) before arriving at the new New Arkham AKA the house that Ekim, Ska`tTsmen member, Park Rock organizer, and cool guy lives at. I was introduced to a game called Irish Poker of which I mostly remember that I had to “ride the bus” and guess the relative position of cards while wearing a construction helmet for some reason, getting increasingly belligerent with every missed guess. I was fortunate enough to have a moment of clarity after my bus ride, where I could choose to continue down this path and get blackout drunk, or sip some water and quietly slip off to bed without a hangover in the morning. I can happily say that I chose the second option, and passed out in a nice little room that Ekim had set aside for us. I slept soundly, unlike Michael, who repeatedly throughout the night struck Josh to get him to stop snoring.

The Park Rock crew made up a big breakfast for us, which was awesome, and after my one shower of the midwest leg of the tour – where the shower head totally midly electrocuted me, I meant to say something to someone at the house about that but forgot until just now – we made our way back down to Illinois to play at CJ’s Lounge in Rockford, IL. This was another one of the venues we had made a contact with on our 2008 Plurals/ Cartridge Family tour, and we were excited to come back as we had played some good shows there. We quickly found out that Rockford is totally dead on Sundays (guess Cheap Trick must have practiced on that day) and, indeed, CJ’s is not usually open. Jason, the promoter, had arranged for the bar to open up just for our show, and local musician Jesus Correa played the show with us. After a minor delay in starting the show due to everyone in the bar watching the celebrity roast of David Hasselhoff, JDDJ opened up the show with a set that was comparable to the previous night’s performance, and apparently in the days after the show Jason had heard from other people in town that a crazy shirtless guy with a microphone was screaming in the street outside of CJ’s on Sunday night. Jesus Correa played a sweet set that had us quoting him for days afterwards, and then it was time for The Plurals once again. There wasn’t a large crowd in CJ’s on this admittedly off night, but the crowd of 20 or so that were there were all paying attention and appreciative. Our friends from the band Quit Your Band/ ex-Almost Argyle, who were the people that we used to know in Elgin, came out to the show, which was great as always and put me in a good mood to play. It ended up being a very “Replacements-y” set consisting of sloppy half-covers of classic rock songs in between our own songs, Nich’s microphone stand refusing to stay in place, and me totally falling on my ass while jumping around during the beginning of “Sheep Dive” (aside from the wicked job it did to my tuning the fall was free of casualties). With the vibe feeling great I was getting really pumped up and crazy, and when Josh asked me to plug the JDDJ EP during the set, I turned it into a “Wedding Singer”-esque meltdown complete with an “I have the microphone and you don’t” rant. What I and everyone else in the bar had felt was an over-the-top performance was lost on the completely wasted Josh David (who had been getting shots from the flirty bartender since we walked in the door), who thought he had offended me and spent the rest of the night feeling bad about it. All in all, it was a pretty memorable show and Jason did a great job pulling off a show for us on a night where we shouldn’t have had much of a show at all.

Christian had slept in the van during The Plurals set, and after we made our goodbyes at CJ’s we set off on our drive through the night from Rockford back home to Lansing. I spent the drive very uncomfortably drifting in and out of consciousness, and Christian chugged Red Bull and started to lose his grip on reality. Christian somehow pulled off the whole drive, and we rolled into the driveway of the GTG House somewhere around 8 in the morning. To cap off the tour, after turning off the van, Christian stumbled out of the van in a daze and vomited up the large quantity of Red Bull he had consumed on the drive home.

Not much happened over the next two days. I know I went to see Narc Out the Reds on the 16th. Good band. We did, however, discover that Hattie had left her purse (with phone and such) in Rockford, in the green room at CJ’s Lounge. We got a hold of Jason the promoter (after a fruitless call to the bar where the stern lady that answered the phone wouldn’t even listen to Hattie because they’re “never open on Sundays.” Ha!) and gave him Tim and Jen Hoh’s address in Ewing, NJ, where we would be staying a few nights on our east coast jaunt. We just had to hope it caught up to us! We hit the road again on Wednesday August 18th, with Nich and I going to a wine tasting at 10:30 in the morning in southeast Michigan. Since we had a whole day before our next show on the east coast we decided to hang out in Cleveland, complete with a stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After listening to the greatest monotonous mumbling DJ on a college radio station ever, we exited the interstate in downtown Cleveland right on the Lake Erie waterfront, ready to get schooled in rock and roll. Touring bands get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for free, so we took advantage of that, and I’ll be honest in stating that I don’t think I would spend the 25 dollars or whatever it is to get into the Rock Hall. Being someone who has had a passion for music history since grade school, there really wasn’t much that I could learn from the two paragraph plaques on the various exhibits. True, it is cool to see Freddie Mercury’s stage clothes and whatever, but the most interesting thing to me was the re-creation of the original Sun Studios where rock and roll got its first great shot in the arm. It’s about the size of my kitchen. The featured exhibit was Bruce Springsteen, which was particularly cool as our show the following night was actually in the Boss’ hometown of Asbury Park, NJ.

Somehow we managed to resist the temptation for the Love Me Chicken Tenders in the Rock Hall food court and got a late lunch at the Great Lakes Brewing Company in downtown Cleveland. We chatted with some dudes from Pittsburgh that were in town to see Slayer, had a few top notch beers, a vegan burger (in my case) and then resumed our trek to the east coast.

I took over driving somewhere around the north east part of Ohio, thinking that I-80 at night would be a smooth drive and we’d get to the Levittown, PA residence of Mr. Joseph “Dim” Wolstenholme and Ms. Jessi “Dimmer” Spreitzer at a reasonable hour. Probably because I was thinking this, we got caught in something like 4 long-ass traffic jams in the middle of the night, adding hours to our drive. I kept my sanity by listening to a Replacements cassette that Mark Laschinski had given Nich awhile ago. Thanks Mark! The ‘Mats cassette gave way to some top 40 radio and we got our Katy Perry grooves on, as well as the summer jam from Nickelback “This Afternoon” that Nich and I sang along to with wild abandon, particularly the lyric about “doing this til 6 in the morning,” as that was when we actually finally fucking got to Levittown. I had passed out in the back seat somewhere along the way (er, after passing along the driving duties), and it was a shitty drive, but I was so happy to see Dim and Jessi (who had been texting and calling us for hours about our progress). I can’t get enough of our east coast comrades, and The Plurals and Dim have had a loving relationship through multiple incarnations of The Rape Babies, Too Much Too Fast Too Soon, and now Honah Lee. Dim made his entrance on crutches, as he had just a couple days earlier torn his ACL while jumping around at a Honah Lee show. Sucks about the ACL, but… fuck yeah for energy. Incidentally, this was not the first time I had seen Dim play a show on crutches, and, as it stands, he owns his own pair of crutches. We talked for awhile, but eventually the drive took its toll and we crashed on the floor. The last thing I heard before falling asleep was Nich half singing and half shouting, “bikinis on top.”

After a lazy afternoon of diner food, doughtnuts care of Dim’s mom, and reading random passages of Gene Simmons’ autobiography, Anthony “Goggles” Catanese showed up to pick up Dim and we made our way to Tim Hoh’s house to start our east coast adventures with Honah Lee. Dim and Goggles were both in The Rape Babies and Too Much Too Fast Too Soon together, but all along Goggles was also in the band Philo with Tim. Philo essentially turned into Honah Lee somewhere around the end of 2008, eschewing Phio’s midtempo “rock” for the more energetic punk-infused Honah Lee sound with the addition of Jim Graz on bass, and the eventual arrival of Dim on lead guitar in fall of 2009 solidified the lineup into a band that I totally love. The Plurals and Philo played together once a few years ago, and we met Tim as early as our first show that we played in Trenton, but we didn’t really become friends with Tim until this past spring when Honah Lee came out to the midwest and did some shows with The Plurals. We didn’t meet Jim at all until earlier in 2010, but we became fast friends over the course of our spring adventures with the Honah Lee boys, so it was a warm reunion of old friends at Tim’s house. Tim’s wife Jen (just married in June!), who we had met for about a total of 15 minutes before, was accompanying us as well and it was definitely a plus to have her around for this series of adventures.

After the standard routine of taking as long as possible to load up and get on the way that Honah Lee consistently lives by, we headed north to Asbury Park, NJ to play at Asbury Lanes. I’ve been hearing about Asbury Lanes for years so it was exciting to finally not only see this place but also get to play at it. The stage is set up in the middle of four bowling lanes, and bowling still goes on around the stage in the other lanes. The decor is a great mix of garish bowling alley aesthetics with punk rock designs, and the snack bar was stocked with tater tots, grilled cheese and all sorts of great terrible food. Hattie and I walked the boardwalk as Asbury Lanes is two blocks away from the Atlantic Ocean, and I also peered into the doorway of the Stone Pony, which is also right by Asbury Lanes. The show got started and the first two bands played. At this point I don’t really remember much of anything about these bands, but I remember that everyone I talked to was really nice. I was playing my guitar through Tim’s amp for these shows, and I had the space of setting up and getting sound levels to quickly get accustomed to the sound. I got it sounding pretty good, but the monitors were blasting and I think the speaker was blown, so all I could hear while we played was my voice distorted as fuck getting thrown back at me. No matter, we were psyched to play, and the stage was about twice as large as what I’m used to, so I jumped around like a jackass while Dim shouted lyrics back at me. After we played Honah Lee took the stage, complete with Dim rocking the lead guitar on crutches, and I was so happy that we were there. I never get sick of seeing Honah Lee play, and when they’re on, they’re really on, and when they’re not on, they’re still one of the most entertaining bands to see. On this night they were definitely on, and they had the crowd dancing and cheering almost the whole time. At this show we met their friend Lori (as well as her husband Brian and their son whom I do not remember the name of), a cool lady that Tim has known since he was a kid (and the person who got him into the Replacements!) who would be accompanying us for the next two shows.

After what felt like hours waiting for Honah Lee to load out, we made our way back downstate to Tim’s house for a night that I don’t remember. Yep, seriously, I have no recollection the night, aside from Tim dancing around the kitchen, and hearing the song “Shots” by LMFAO (in addition to (thank you!) the Snoop Dogg version of “Califronia Gurls”) for the first time, which would soon become another tour theme song.

After an uneventful afternoon of waking up, showering, hanging out, etc etc at Tim and Jen’s house the rest of the gang showed up, including Lori, who would be driving Honah Lee’s drunk asses to the next couple shows, and Jen’s brother Josh, who was also driving along for the next two shows. After the mandatory series of party store for beer/ gas station for gas/ another party store for cigarettes/ another gas station for people to go to the bathroom stops, we made the 3 hour drive to Kingston, NY for our next show. The drive was pretty uneventful; I spent part of the drive messing with Tim via text message, but otherwise little happened. We got to Kingston, checked out the venue, a cool little bar named Snapper Magee’s, then went around the corner to a pizza place. After the pizza we hung out at Snapper’s for a couple hours, partaking in the nice beer selection, and if I remember properly I didn’t pay for a single drink, as it was a bar that actually takes decent care of its bands. This was one of those bars with no sound guy so we had to run our own levels from the stage, which I honestly prefer in a lot of ways – it’s even better when we’re playing shows with Honah Lee as Jim is attracted to sound levels like a magnet, and he actually has a decent idea of how our songs go. The other band of the night, Bulldozer, showed up at some point and were not particularly friendly. A few of Honah Lee’s area followers, including a really cool girl named Bree that we would be crashing with later, showed up, so the room was decently full before we went on around 11 PM.

I thought we played a good set on this night, no particular songs jump out at me but I remember it being pretty solid. This was the show where I attempted my “joke” where I solely used words and phrases that people in the midwest use that people on the east coast don’t understand (something to the effect of “I called in after going to Meijer and getting too much pop”) which got the dead silent, awkward reaction that I was hoping for. The drummer of Bulldozer deemed it necessary to set up his drums on the floor in front of the stage while we were playing, which is pretty cool I guess. I didn’t really notice this in the moment of playing, but after other people pointed it out to me I realized it was pretty douchey. Oh well. I probably didn’t really notice much of anything happening out in the crowd, as the stage was kind of small (all in all the stage set up was pretty much the opposite of the night before) and during the course of jumping around Nich’s bass head fucking slammed into the back of my head and I wasn’t thinking or feeling a whole lot of anything.

After our set Bulldozer played, and their whole shtick was being antagonistic while simultaneously being self deprecating (i.e. “we’re the worst band you’ll ever see” immediately followed by fast songs where they act like cocky hot shit). At some point the drummer started ragging on us from being from Lansing, and after I grabbed a pick that I had dropped on the floor during our set the singer started picking on me for not having enough money for more picks, money that I would have if I “hadn’t paid for all those lessons.” Nich and I discussed this later, and we weren’t really sure what they were getting at – something to the effect of that we were good musicians, but they were still vaguely giving us shit? Hard to say. I realized then and now that their whole thing was to be antagonistic, something that we weren’t afraid to throw back at them. I told them that “shitty punk bands were a dime a dozen” (and, for that matter, bands named “Bulldozer”) to which they just laughed and looked at the floor, and Goggles started talking shit to the drummer from the floor as well. They were all smiles as they played, but they left immediately after their set was done. Poseurs!

Honah Lee closed out the show (as they would for all four nights of this east coast stand) and once again they were on the top of their game. Tim hadn’t been feeling well, though, and at this show he started to lose his voice a bit, but the set wasn’t hurt for it. Once again we hung out at the bar for a really long time after the sets were over, at one point Nich and Goggles ran off on their own adventure that involved an altercation with an old man outside of a Rite Aid and messing with a passed out dudebro that was halfway suspended from an open door of a parked car. I also remember we were wrestling on the sidewalk outside of the club and the bouncer was getting a little nervous since we were all hyped up and bordering on losing control (an effect that seems to happen whenever The Plurals and Honah Lee are together – just ask Timmy Rodriguez). Eventually we made it back to Bree’s place, and this was the night where I actually called it an early (re: 4:00 AM) night, so I consequently missed out on the party game of “putting shit on Nich while he sleeps,” which was extremely well documented by Jen Hoh’s camera.

We were a rough crew when we woke up on the morning of the 21st of August. I woke up with my head throbbing, the back of my head still aching from where Nich’s bass had connected with it the night before, my thoughts a complete fog and a vague, constant feeling of nausea. I began to get paranoid that I had a concussion, although a few hours later I realized I was just hungover (clearly). Honah Lee insisted on going to a brewery in downtown Kingston, and with nowhere else to go, I sat on a bench inside the brewery bar, feeling like shit, drinking water and reading the free newspapers. Normally I’m uncomfortable if I feel like I’m loitering, but this was one instant where I didn’t care at all. It was during the middle of this hungover haze that the idea occured, somehow, that we should start doing intentionally bad “Austin Powers” impressions. I don’t think I need to go into any more detail than that to give anyone an idea of how grating this was. Needless to say, we loved it and wouldn’t stop doing it, all members of The Plurals and Honah Lee included, but mostly Nich, Goggles, and myself.

We headed back south, ending up in northern New Jersey in the town of Warren, where we were scheduled to play at an American Legion Hall that night. In the history of The Plurals and before, I have played plenty of hall shows, but it had been awhile since the last time we had played one, so playing a hall show kind of felt like being a teenager again. The difference, though, was that, for whatever reason, drinking was allowed at this show and the patrons were largely in their mid-20s or older. It was a cool scene, with a cool promoter and every band that played was good and, at the very least, interesting. I should really try to find the info of the show, but I remember the first band sounded a lot like Far, the second band was called Black Birds (whom we had a nice rapport with and are planning on doing more things together in the future), the third band had a guy named Bill in it that was an original member of Thursday, and then The Plurals and Honah Lee. I thought we were in great form this night, rocking out and jumping around, feeling more at home in this DIY environment, and dropping terrible, god awful lines from “Austin Powers” in between songs (example: “You can buy our new record for [pause, raise pinkie to mouth] ONE MILLION DOLLARS!”). Honah Lee took the stage after us, and this was the infamous show where Tim decided to pull a stage move where he emptied a flask (of Southern Comfort, blech) into his mouth during a song, but the flask contained more than twice the amount of liquor he thought it did. This was also the first show where I fronted Honah Lee for their song “Sobered, So Bored” as Tim didn’t think he could sing it where his voice was at. I took the stage, shirtless with “HONOH LEIGH” written on my chest in sharpie, and did my best Steven Tyler microphone stand dance. The set ended with brilliant chaos as they closed with their “Godzilla” sampling rap-rock anthem “Ballad of the Cobras” (in tribute to their Californian friends Mystic Knights of the Cobra) which is way better than it sounds on paper. As per usual, we were at the hall for way too long, but it was fine at this show, as there was an unexplained lawnmower outside of the venue, of which Honah Lee’s friend Mark made great sport of popping wheelies and taking people on reckless rides through the lawn and street. We drove back down to Tim and Jen’s house, and had a great time that I can’t really recall. I think this was the night that The Plurals climbed a big tree in the backyard whilst everyone partied away.

Sunday August 22nd was “Sunday Funday.” I woke up in the early afternoon to Tim Hoh making a round of mimosas (champagne and orange juice) for everyone at the house, which included The Plurals, Tim, Jen, Jim, Michelle (Jim’s girlfriend and a great photographer), Goggles, Josh and additional friends that had been around but I haven’t written about Lauren and Mark (and possibly CJ too, I forget when CJ was actually around, but he took some great pictures of the day and night). The show was at our old stomping grounds of the Mill Hill Basement, very nearby, so we partied the whole day away. Some other friends showed up (including Joe Ewaskiewicz who is notable to us in that we have a video of him biting the skin off another guy’s arm at a party a few years ago) and we alternated from hanging out in the house to hanging out in the yard to hanging out in the shed out back where Tim had a stash of old mixtapes. At one point Goggles decided to lock all of us inside the shed after he and Nich fought with brooms for awhile, but we got out of it somehow. Goggles probably just got bored. I do distinctly recall standing in the yard, getting pretty wasted, with Goggles and Nich, with all of us reaching the same epiphany: we should combine bad Austin Powers impressions with bad Forrest Gump impressions to create the ultimate bad impression of “Austin Gump” (or “Forrest Powers”). Example: “I may not be a smart man, but I know what HORNY IS, BABY, YEAH!!” Oh my god we were just too fucking funny that we couldn’t handle it, and the day just degenerated into incomprehensible inside jokes, rolling around on the ground, chasing each other around the yard, and drinking and drinking. At some point Tim decided it would be a great idea if everyone drew “tattoos” all over him with markers, which gave us a welcome area to focus our energy on, and CJ has some great pictures of Tim’s “tattoos.” Incidentally, Tim’s photo on the Honah Lee website is of him crowd surfing at the show that night, during “Ballad of the Cobras” with visible “sleeves” all over his arms.

Somehow we made it to the Mill Hill, loaded in our gear, and then went upstairs, because Goggles and Amanda Menosky live up above the Mill Hill now! The shenanigans continued, and our old friend Greg Kline showed up to partake in the madness with us. We found a megaphone somewhere and were using that pretty liberally. Goggles made me a strong drink mixing sweet tea flavored vodka with something else, and it was horrible. After awhile we made our way back into the venue proper, and it was packed! Some old friends of ours, including Elissa from Karma Bat, Trenton legend Hippie Steve, and longtime Mill Hill bartender/ promoter Dave Locane were around, as well as our extended entourage that we had acquired through the four shows (with Lori and Brian making their return as well), so it was just one big party. Opening up the show was a band called Bravo Utah, who were playing their first show, and they did a solid cover of “Bastards of Young,” tying in with the Replacements-esque adventures of the tour. We took the “stage” after Bravo Utah, giddy, full of energy, with no inhibitions, and playing pretty tight with the two weeks of shows behind us, delivering what I feel was one of our all time greatest sets. During the extended bridge of our new tune “Happy Songs” Nich stripped down to just a pair of spandex shorts that he had found somewhere, and crawled all over the bar with the megaphone (also found, uh, somewhere) while Hattie and I just riffed on a feedback-laden groove. To pay tribute to our second hometown of Trenton and our great friends that had shown us such a good time on the east coast (and have many, many times) we played a song that Philo used to do called “The Basement,” written about the very Mill Hill Basement we were in. The set was a blur, I was covered in sweat, and the feeling was elation.

Honah Lee closed out the night, and certainly out “Replacements”ed us, as Tim (covered in fake tattoos) and Goggles (who, for reasons that are a complete mystery to me, was wearing a dress and garish lipstick that covered half of his face) were nearly falling over before the set even started. At one point Tim just handed his guitar to Nich, mid-song, who played along for the rest of the song while Tim wandered around the crowd just singing. Jim, soberest of the bunch, tried to end the set a few times, but that wasn’t happening. I once again handled lead vocal duties on “Sobered, So Bored,” with most of the room singing with me, which was definitely a great moment. They closed their rough but amazing set once again with “Ballad of the Cobras,” and it’s great that there was no one else on the bill, because no one else could have improved upon that show.

It was the fastest load out of all the shows, and my last sighting of Goggles was of him running around the street in his Batman underwear, covered in makeup, doing god knows what. Our old friend Dale showed up towards the end of the show, as he had been working, and we made plans to catch some lunch with him the next day before we had to head back to Michigan. We got back to Tim and Jen’s, saying that we were going to party til dawn, but one by one everyone else dropped out pretty quickly, until just Tim and I remained. Out of principle, we stayed up til dawn, not really partying so much as calmly (albeit drunkenly) waiting for the dawn light to creep into the window.

After a few hours of sleep, we made our way back into Trenton around 1:00 or 2:00 on August 23rd, where we met up at the Sunrise (I think?) Diner in downtown Trenton with Dale, Greg, and Johnathan “RoebusOne” Watson, a Jersey rapper who has since made his way out to Lansing on his own tour. Dale and Greg were pretty much the first two guys that we counted as friends in Trenton, and I’m glad that, years later, we still find time to hang out. Unfortunately, we couldn’t hang out for very long (no illegal trips to William Penn’s property or spontaneous splurges at the Princeton Record Exchange this time) so after a meal and a few cups of coffee we made our way back to Tim and Jen’s to say our final goodbyes. As we got near, the road was closed, and we had to find a back way to the house. We found out that a tree had fallen on to a school bus full of deaf children, taking out power lines to the whole neighborhood. Everyone was fine, but it kind of brought the whole thing full circle as we had kicked off the string of shows with a performance at a camp for deaf children. Or maybe I’m just always looking for literary moments in real life. There was, however, another, more concrete full circle moment, because Hattie’s purse finally arrived (remember that?), care of the great Jason of Rockford, IL’s Raging Pervy Gear Promotions, on what was our last day at Tim and Jen’s. Whew!

We bade farewell to Tim, Jen, and Jim, knowing full well that it wouldn’t be long before we saw at least the boys again. And, since I started writing this (mid-September; it is now almost Thanksgiving… guess I’ve been pretty busy this fall…) Honah Lee has been back to the midwest, and we’ve chalked up a whole new set of adventures with them. I can’t wait to keep it going.

We drove the rest of the day and all of the night, armed with a few of Tim’s mixtapes that he could stand to part with. We’ve done the drive across Pennsylvania and Oho so many times that it just kind of drifts by me now. We did discover a great new exit, titled “Jersey Shore” despite being firmly landlocked in the middle of Pennsylvania, that had an awesome shady gas station full of clearly used road maps, odd knick-knacks, herbal medicines, and pretty much anything you could want to distract you from a monotonous drive. We all split a weird ginger root ginseng drink acquired at this strange place called Jersey Shore. I hallucinated the whole way home. I wish.

The GTG House driveway came into my sight at about 6:30 AM on August 24, 2010. Coming home from tour is always bittersweet. One thing that I really took from this tour was the power of shitty music to become amazing when associated with certain events. No, I’m not referring to Honah Lee’s music (and certainly not Bulldozer either), but that of Katy Perry. When I’m driving around Lansing, coming home from class or whatever, and “Teenage Dream” comes on, I turn it up and smile, thinking about driving from Asbury Park to Trenton, knowing that an after party of absurdity is ahead, and thankful for all of these amazing people, both those I have known for years and people I had just met, that I can call my friends that live 12 hours away, or, thinking about six of us crammed into a hotel room, having a great night after a shitty show on a shitty night in Illinois, balking at the oddity that is pop music and music video in 2010, and thankful for all of these people that I see every day and have the privilege to make music with and watch them grow. Let’s get back in the van, or car, or whatever. Either way, I’m going, Katy Perry be damned, because life is like a box of GROOVY, YEAH!!

tommyplural

Our old friend Peter Richards AKA Stargrazer has released what currently stands as the most unique addition to the GTG catalog. An all-instrumental EP that serves as a sound interpretation of the 1960 trip to the bottom of the ocean by two men aboard the titular submarine “Trieste,” this is a moody and atmospheric piece that is best appreciated in a dimly lit room on a cool fall evening – AKA tonight! Download the EP here and pay what you want. An eventual physical release is forthcoming, likely to coincide with Peter’s years in the making In the Orchard of Osiris project. Bottom line: stay tuned to this dude, because he’s making some cool stuff, including a CrookedSound produced debut full-length Stargrazer record in 2011.

Hey! So GTG still has a blog! 2010 has been a hell of a year, what with these records having been released:

The Hat Madder – Rogue Notes and Phones (a hell of a ride of a record from one of the greatest bands in Michigan. It’s a personal point of pride for me as it marks the beginning of Isaac Vander Schuur working with the GTG).
Small Houses – Our Dusking Sound (GTG mainstay Jeremy Quentin’s most ambitious and fully-realized record to date. Of course, in typical Jeremy fashion he’s already out there performing another set of even better tunes, leading me, to once again, say that the best is yet to come).
Narc Out the Reds – Are on the Run (It’s an honor to host the debut of a great band. This is a wicked EP and we’re aching for new stuff, especially since every live show they do is more intense and memorable than the one before).
The Plurals / Honah Lee – Lick-It-EP Split (Another honor in that we got to introduce the midwest to the greatness of Trenton, NJ’s Honah Lee, an awesome band full of good friends. This record also has the best Plurals recordings to date).
Fade to Black – Black Is Back (Newly reunited early 90s alt-rockers drop their 3rd album with some GTG support. These guys are just getting on a roll and their next record will definitely be something cool).
The Guest Stars – The High Life (We just handled the first pressing of this to get it out on time for their release show, but this band is all dudes from Lansing that we’ve known for awhile and their new stuff promises to be really cool – particularly as they’re set to record with the Hat Madder’s Isaac Vander Schuur for their next set!).
MK Ultra Culkin – Homeland Insecurity (A bit of a labor of love as I wanted to record this band for a long time, one of my favorite groups of people that I’ve gotten to know in the last few years. This EP was and is a lot of fun and I always look forward to more projects with these fine freaky folk).
Frank and Earnest – Old Francis (Another record that I had the pleasure to record/ “produce”/ whatever, and is to date probably my favorite record that I’ve had a hand in. Seriously, I love all of the guys in this band and this record fucking rules).

Which brings us up to speed on GTGs 031-38! A hell of a year! And it’s not quite over as we have 5 more records slated for release before the end of 2010.

Stargrazer – Trieste (GTG039). This isn’t the long-awaited debut of our favorite baritone crooner impressionist, but it’s a pretty cool stopgap release. Peter Richards (the man behind Stargrazer) has put together an abstract interpretation of the January 23, 1960 visit to the ocean floor by the submarine Trieste. Instrumental, ambient, and fascinating in terms of subject matter, this is probably the most unique addition to the GTG catalog. Slated for an online release on November 20th, check it out here. Also check out In the Orchard of Osiris, a forthcoming compilation due on Peter’s own It Takes A Village To Make Records imprint.

Fade to Black – Live (GTG040). Capping off a very productive year for the reunited quintet, Fade to Black are releasing a live album compiled from shows in 2010, which is due up on their website soon.

And, returning to the physical release format comes the “big two” that have been occupying a lot of GTG time the last few months:
No More Tomorrow Baby! A Tribute to Kiss (GTG041). This compilation features all new, all exclusive covers of songs by the fire breathing, guitar exploding, space traveling (or whatever) legendary Rock and Roll quartet Kiss. GTG co-mastermind/ head Break-Up/ art student Timmy Rodriguez has been gathering tracks for this since the middle of 2009, and the end result features The Hat Madder, The Break-Ups, The Cartridge Family, Narc Out the Reds, Cavalcade, Frank and Earnst, MK Ultra Culkin, The Guest Stars, Crooked Sound, Stargrazer, Gates of Steel, Lightning Bugs, Middleman and more in a wild trip through the Kiss song book. The compilation as a whole is a great listen, with really cool versions of Kiss songs that should appeal to even those who wouldn’t count themselves as members of the Kiss Army (myself included!). It’s always a treat to host anything by great bands like Cavalcade, Crooked Sound, and pretty much everyone included, but of special note is the first new Break-Ups recording since 2009’s summer split with Head and Toe, and a great posthumous appearance by Gates of Steel, who broke up before their mostly complete debut album for GTG could be released. Maybe these comps will generate some interest and we’ll get that thing out! Wait, did I say “these comps”? Well, read on…
Explosions: Lansing Salutes Devo (GTG042). In early 2009 Rich Tupica started gathering tracks for an all Lansing tribute to conceptual artists and creators of some of the most original pop music, Devo. Several false starts later, the final version is being released through GTG and Tupica’s own The Wind Records. The result is a fantastic record showcasing great talent from Lansing, including many of the same artists as the Kiss comp (The Hat Madder, Narc Out the Reds, the Cartridge Family, Gates of Steel, Cavalcade, Frank and Earnest, MK Ultra Culkin), GTG-ers The Plurals and Drinking Mercury, longtime friends Calliope and Johnny Unicorn, and excellent groups that we’ve known of for awhile but haven’t had the chance to work with until now like Lord Vapid, BerT, Dr. Device, Public Pubes and more. It’s a great representation of the variety of talent lurking throughout our fair capital city, and all contributions have a unique perspective. Personally, I always love to work with Johnny Unicorn (his 2010 album Sweet Edith Manton should be mandatory for anyone interested in music, period), it’s great to get a new Drinking Mercury track out into the world, the first since 2007 (and I do seriously promise that the forever in the making full-length album by Drinking Mercury is coming soon), and it’s a true honor to release the first new music in six years from one of my favorite bands of all time with Calliope’s take on “Through Being Cool.”

So what are we doing to commemorate these long in the making labors of love? Why, a ridiculous release show! On December 3rd, 2010 at Oade’s Hidden Camel we will be hosting a Devo/ Kiss Tribute Night with live performances of music by both bands, with complementary copies of the tribute albums available with the $5 cover charge. Performing the music of Devo is “Re-Evolution”, consisting of Isaac Vander Schuur (The Hat Madder), Christian Urrabazzo (The Guest Stars), Nick Merz (MK Ultra Culkin), Ben Hassenger (Frank and Earnest) and myself (er… do I really have to go into this?). The band taking a stab at the Kiss catalog is “The Struttin’ Deuces,” comprised of Chris Baratono (Narc Out the Reds), Timmy Rodriguez (The Break-Ups/ Drinking Mercury), Ryan Horky (Frank and Earnest/ tCF), and Brad Van Staveran (Cavalcade/ Genocya). Both bands will perform in full costume, and we’ve been working on this for months. It’ll be a night to remember, we promise.

Finally, The Plurals will be releasing one more EP (GTG043) on December 4th at Mac’s Bar. This EP of all new recordings will be available in a limited cassette run and as a digital download. More information on that one will be coming soon!

Well, this post ended up being pretty long. I still have a Plurals tour journal thing from our summer 2010 tours to post as well, so, fans of long writings of mine (eye roll) stay tuned!

tommyplural

I suppose this isn’t a tour “journal” per se as I’ve written the whole thing after the fact. But I took notes while on tour and have been writing them into this thing on and off for the past couple weeks. Hope it’s not too long. Who am I kidding, everyone is always looking for a distraction at a computer these days. Hope this thing distracts you for awhile.
(Also up at http://www.myspace.com/thepluralsrock).

So it came to pass on March 3rd, 2010 that The Plurals would play our
first show in nearly four months. Four months is by far the longest
The Plurals haven’t played a show since… well, since we formed. I
think we played our first show about three months after we started.
Something like that. Our last show was on November 15, 2009 at The
Orphanage in Chicago. After that, Hattie went to Texas to do some
family things, find some work, have a life experience, etc, while Nich
and I focused on our other projects, namely Josh David and the Dream
Jeans and Drinking Mercury. Truth be told, a good chunk of the time
that Hattie was actually gone we were working on the Bermuda Snowhawk
2009 compilation, forming one-off bands, recording a bunch of
nonsense, and in general just goofing around in the studio (and the
results were actually pretty good… some of the stuff on that comp is
among my favorite recordings I’ve been a part of). We wrote and
recorded a Plurals song called “Conifer Oberst” for this comp, where I
played drums, rhythm electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and lead
vocals, Nich played bass and lead guitar, and Hattie literally phoned
in some backing vocals. So The Plurals weren’t really on “hiatus” or
anything during this time, but it sure felt like a longtime had passed
without The Plurals as an active thing. So much of my life is wrapped
up in The Plurals, for better or worse, and Plurals activity just
couldn’t come fast enough for me. We formed a one-off “supergroup” for
Josh David’s birthday party called Gary Sez Go, with myself, Nich,
Frankie, Timmy, and John Bruce and we played “The Sun” by The Plurals,
but there’s just nothing like actually playing with The Plurals.

Before Hattie left in November, we recorded demos for 22 new songs, so
that we could pick things right up when Hattie got back. The
challenge, to me, was to actually play older songs and not just work
on the new stuff, but we balanced things pretty well between new and
old, eventually settling on a good pool of stuff to play for our first
shows, including all of the songs from “The Broadside Sessions” EP, a
handful of tracks from the “Whatevers Forever” album, three songs that
we’re planning on recording this week for a new split/ EP, and four or
five other new songs. As always, I felt/ feel that the new songs are,
to quote one Beck Hansen, “where it’s at,” but since it had been so
long, at least in my mind, since The Plurals had played, I wasn’t sure
how the new stuff would go over.

So March 3rd rolled around, and we were playing at Basement 414 in
Lansing. We didn’t promote the show beyond a little word of mouth and
some texts/ phone calls in the hours before the show, because we’re
difficult and stubborn and stuff and didn’t want to make a big deal
out of our first show “back,” and to use it as an opportunity to warm
up for the tour. We played with Commodore Cosmos, This is My Suitcase,
and The Round, all of whom were in fine form and made up a pretty
diverse bill. I re-strung my guitar at the show, hoping to avoid the
inevitable string breaking that seems to come on tour no matter how
hard I try, which was a spectacular failure in the end. We took the
“stage” in front of a nice crowd of 25 or so friends, other bands’
members, and random folks that wandered in. Our friend Tim Hill filmed
the show, which thankfully went well, otherwise a crappy set would be
up on youtube for the world to see, for all time (or until I convinced
him to take it down). Check it out here.

From the very beginning, it felt great to be playing this music in
front of people again. What didn’t feel great was my throat and lungs.
For some reason, right when we started it felt like my throat was
closing up and I was having trouble catching my breath. I never was
“sick” per se, but something was definitely wrong. It didn’t matter
though, aside from a few shortened screams and wails, I pushed on and
just let my adrenaline carry me through the set. We debuted a new song
called “Crush,” as well as some new arrangements of some songs that
we’ve been toying with for a little while. All of the new songs were
greeted warmly, with “Crush” – one of the newer songs I wasn’t sure
was ready to be played live – in particular getting a good response.
Energy was up. I was ready for more.

Thursday March 4th we got ready for the week ahead of touring. I sat
in Fleetwood Diner with Josh David and drank Louisiana Hot Sauce
straight to try and get my throat to open up. We played a show in
Grand Rapids at Mulligan’s Pub to kick off the tour proper. The show
was setup by our friends Cookie (formerly Lightning Bugs), who played
a great set, at least what I caught of it. We didn’t get to the show
until after 11 because Nich had a previously scheduled performance
with the LCC Jazz Ensemble, so we completely missed the band that
played first, and I’m not even sure who they were. The show was great.
I sucked down water and was able to get through the set without my
throat hurting. A few friends from Lansing came out to send us off,
which was totally great, and helped make the night that much better.
Strangely, I broke a string at this show. My freshly re-strung guitar
was not holding up as I wanted it to. I was perplexed, but shrugged it
off and finished the set with Nich’s guitar. Timmy was there with his
roommates, and it was great to actually see Timmy in Grand Rapids
where he seems to live, despite everyone thinking he lives in Lansing.
Timmy was coming along as our roadie/ tagalong/ driver/ stowaway/
friend/ whatever, so he witnessed his first of many Plurals shows to
come. Shortly before 2 AM, I downed a few cups of beer, breaking my
pre-tour “detox,” and presumably priming myself for a week of liberal
alcohol intake. After briefly stopping by Timmy’s house, we were on
the road again. There’s nothing quite like taking off for the east
coast in the middle of the night to play some shows. Hattie took the
first leg of driving, that wonderful stretch of southern Michigan and
northern Ohio.

Previous readers of my tour journals will be surprised to learn that I
slept for a good chunk of this drive. In the past it’s been nearly
impossible for me to fall asleep in a moving vehicle, not matter how
tired I am. In the past year or so, I slowly have been able to sleep
more and more… so maybe all of the automotive insomnia was just some
sort of quirk of late-adolescence? Any psychology majors want to weigh
in on this one? Maybe it was the fact that we had a nice spacious van
for this tour as opposed to our previous mini-vans and Ford Taurus.
This van, named Beatrice, was acquired in Texas on Hattie’s
sabbatical, and it’s a real trooper. The gas mileage was actually
pretty decent for a vehicle that multiple people could live in. So,
somewhere on the Ohio Turnpike east of Toledo (I’m not sure if I even
made it to the “Highway 420 Stony Creek” exit) I curled up on the
floor of Beatrice, not to wake until the state of New York.

Apparently Timmy briefly took us on a detour, but I slept through
that. I dimly remember Timmy and Nich stopping at a martial arts
supply store in northwest Pennsylvania, but I didn’t get up until
somewhere in northwest New York. I grabbed some coffee at a rest area,
that, despite, as Nich put it, smelled like it was “filtered through a
sofa cushion,” was pretty good, at least for less than a dollar. I
took over driving somewhere in there, and eventually we rolled into
the hilly terrain of Ithaca, New York. Our first show out of state was
at Watermargin Co-Op just off the campus of Cornell University on
Friday March 5th. This super cool girl named Paige set up the show,
and mine and Nich’s high school friend Ryan was there hanging out. We
bummed around the co-op for awhile, grabbed something to eat with
Ryan, and then set up for the show. We were playing with a guy named
Sam, who performed as Awesome Awesome (I know there was more to the
name, but I never actually clearly heard it and just nodded my head as
if I understood when it was told to me). It was a pretty wild party,
and I had a healthy dose of champagne, which only made PBR taste
worse. The vocals were being run through a bass amp, which didn’t
exactly provide a strong mix, but people were dancing and having fun,
so it didn’t matter much. What did matter was that I rather quickly
broke my high e string. My freshly re-strung guitar was REALLY not
working out as I wanted it to. Whatever, I can play a lot of songs
without that string, so we just kept going. A song or two later, I
broke my D string. I really need that string, so Hattie and Nich
vamped on the song for a minute while I switched to Nich’s guitar….
which was horribly out of tune. Not wanting to ruin momentum, we
carried on, but I was getting pretty pissed about how shitty I was
sounding. The crowd was still jumping around and dancing, not seeming
to notice my aural vomit that I was producing, but I was getting in a
pretty bad mood. As if by divine intervention, the fire alarm went off
(as it always seems to at co-op parties) and I had an opportunity to
re-string and tune up. We kicked off our “second set” with “Blitzkrieg
Bop” to get energy back up, and the show went on without incident, and
ended up being a lot of fun. We dug out a few of our old covers aside
from the aforementioned Ramones, including “Debaser” by The Pixies,”
“Merchandise,” by Fugazi, and, as an encore request from Paige, The
Smashing Pumpkins’ “I Am One.” We briefly started to play “What’s
Going On” by Husker Du (a request from Ryan) but that was right when
the fire alarm went off.

I wandered around the co-op for the rest of the night, eventually
settling in this girl Gav’s room for a blurry few hours or rambling
about music (at one point insisting on making everyone listen to
Cavalcade and Fugazi) before stumbling down the stairs and crashing on
a couch. I put my earplugs back in to block out Timmy’s snoring. I
woke up in the afternoon of Saturday March 6th, and we walked around
Ithaca, and I bought two new packs of strings. I was beginning to
suspect that my strings I had put on a few days earlier were not in
the best of shape, and since I didn’t actually buy them (they were
given to me by my cousin a few days earlier) I couldn’t be sure that
they hadn’t been lying in a basement for ten years or something (the
packaging actually was slightly outdated). Or maybe it was just a
shitty pack. Either way, I wanted to make sure I had more. Hattie and
I picked up some groceries and cooked some breakfast/ lunch/ dinner
(i.e. “brunner”) back at the co-op while Nich, Timmy, and Ryan browsed
at some of the local shops. We eventually packed up the van, and with
Paige and Ryan in two, drove the 35 minutes to our next show in
Cortland, NY.

We had played in Cortland the previous summer, and were booked to once
again play at the bar Lucky’s. Lucky’s unfortunately closed, so our
buddy Brendan took it on himself to host the show in his apartment in
downtown Cortland. His band The Loiterers opened up the show, a great
mix of punk and rock and roll with some killer vocal harmonies, and
then we played. I only broke one string at this show, but since it was
another one from the “cursed pack” I was pretty sure the strings were
junk. I was getting pretty used to playing the songs on Nich’s guitar.
We played a good “touring” set, with a higher percentage of songs from
“Whatevers Forever” than at other shows (since we knew the Cortland
folks might want to hear the stuff on the CDs they bought last summer)
with “Debaser” once again part of the set, and a full rendition of
“What’s Going On.” We got an encore call for “Sleepy Girl,” which was
nice. My throat didn’t bother me at all during the set, which was
cool. The night went on with various offshoots of Cortland local bands
re-forming and plowing through lots of Nirvana covers. Everyone there
was really cool, and I hope we get to make Cortland a regular stop. We
went back to Ithaca to crash at Watermargin, and I once again blurrily
rambled about music in Gav’s room until the point of passing out.

Waking up on Sunday March 7th, my throat felt 100%, and it was a
beautiful day. We said goodbye to tall of the fine folks at
Watermargin, then took off for the bright lights of New York City,
where we had a show at Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn. After a brief detour
to northern New Jersey we got to the show, where my dear friend Evie
was waiting for us. Evie and I had been friends throughout high school
and college, but she is now going to Columbia University for a
psychology masters program, so it was wonderful to see her. On the
show front, Dave from the band Genuine Imitations was holding things
together, and we totally owe him for the show not being a bust. He
played a solo set along with a fellow from a band called Turbosleaze,
and he collected donations for us and basically made sure the show ran
smoothly. Three cheers for Dave! A band called Advaita Vera played as
well, delivering a dreamy set of Lush-y atmospheric noisepop, and then
we played. The whole room seemed to be with us every step of the way,
which felt great. I feel like we started to hit our stride with this
show. I once again broke a string, and I decried NAY to this pack of
strings, giving my guitar a fresh set of new strings at the first
opportunity. All in all though, it was a very strong set, and I was
most definitely satisfied with the show. The show was concluded by a
sweet Brooklyn band called TCB (for “taking car of business”) who
played a great set of shuffly, bluesy, garage punk stuff – as Nich put
it, they were like a Frank and Earnest that only did Paul songs. We
went up to Evie’s place in Manhattan (via, a, uh, detour, through the
Bronx) and crashed out, five people in what is essentially a dorm room
(and I think my dorm at MSU was bigger).

Monday March 8th was a beautiful day, and we went all around Manhattan
with Evie. Timmy got some great pictures, including The Plurals in
front of Tom’s Restaurant (of Seinfeld fame), The Plurals with Elmo,
and The Plurals in a bull’s ass. He’ll have to post those. We got a
nice crash course in Manhattan, seeing the Statue of Liberty from
Staten Island, the WTC ground zero site, Times Square, the 30 Rock
building, Rockefeller Plaza, Central Park (including Strawberry
Fields), and the fine NYC subway system. Thanks Evie! At night,
Hattie, Nich, and I wandered around Manhattan first in search of a bar
(briefly stumbling upon a legit redneck bar with Kid Rock blasting
before finding the much more chill bar Jake’s Dilemma), and then for
hanging on the corner of 52nd and Broadway a la “Olympia” by Rancid.
This resulted in us walking 80 blocks in the middle of the night,
ending up at Times Square once again at 2 AM. It felt like daytime
with all the lights and people all around. We took the subway back. My
legs still kind of hurt from that walk.

After getting around on the morning of March 9th, we got to take in
the experience of drinking coffee at a sidewalk cafe in Manhattan. It
was a fantasy come to life. Some guy was screaming in his cell phone
“That’s what I fucking told you! Don’t tell me what I didn’t say!” and
other such things that one hears when they only catch half of an
argument. Nich’s face visibly fell when he realized he couldn’t smoke,
even in the sidewalk seating, in New York City. After this morning
coffee intake, we met up with Evie very briefly to say thank you and
goodbye, and then made our way out of New York. We drove the length of
New Jersey, somehow got off of our directions, drove through some sort
of cultural wasteland north of Philadelphia (pure suburbia with lots
of traffic and people wandering out into the street as if they didn’t
expect any cars to be around), and eventually got to my brother
Robbie’s apartment in west Philadelphia. Up until last summer, both of
my brothers lived in Baltimore, and a hallmark of every Plurals tour
that went out east was quality time hanging out with my brothers, so
Philadelphia is the new “McCord brother tour hotspot.” My brother Paul
is back in East Lansing, but he was coincidentally visiting Robbie at
the same time we were there, so the six of us went out to a bar by
Robbie’s place. I quit drinking for a little while prior to tour and
started drinking again at the first show, only to discover that my
taste buds had gotten pretentious and that I was mostly into IPA’s and
hoppy beers and junk as opposed to my usually PBR/ High Life palette.
This bar catered to my pretensions nicely, and I was feeling good. On
my return from the bathroom, the waitress asked me if I knew about
“the show going on at The Farm.” Robbie was annoyed that although he
comes to that bar often, no waitress has ever asked him if he knew
about any shows going on. When I told my friend Loren about this later
on, Loren pointed out that maybe Robbie doesn’t have the appearance of
someone who would enjoy a crust punk show, and I do. Which isn’t an
insult to Robbie in any way. We found “The Farm,” a dank basement a
few blocks away, and it was crusty as can be. Gotta love the
unmistakable waft of a basement full of dreadlocks. We saw some band
play… decent crusty punk metal stuff, and I was glad to be in the
“underground,” but it wasn’t my scene. I probably had the tightest
jeans of anyone there, and was surely the only one sporting a Jimmy
Eat World T-Shirt, although Paul was wearing a yellow rugby sweater or
something, so he took the cake for sticking out the most, but everyone
at the show was pretty cool and seemed nice enough. After the band
played Robbie, Paul, Timmy, and I stepped out to another nearby bar,
while Hattie and Nich hung around The Farm for awhile, and Nich drank
moonshine. A nice moment of “destiny” or some cosmic mumbo jumbo was
that the second I stepped into the basement of The Farm, I got a text
confirming a last minute show for the following night. Love, lift us
up where we belong. I got good and silly at the bar with my brothers
and my Timmy, and eventually Hattie and Nich showed up and we all
stumbled back to Robbie’s place.

I had the best cup of coffee of tour the following morning, March
10th, at The Philly Diner, which sounds like the name of the place you
would make up if you lied to your friends about going to Philadelphia,
but it’s true. We wandered around west Philly for a little bit, and
then hung out back at Robbie’s place, watching episodes of “Freaks and
Geeks” and enjoying some downtime, which had been strangely absent for
much of the tour. It turned out that the last minute show we had
gotten for the night was at a house called The Breakfast and Dessert
House, and it was about 5 blocks away from Robbie’s place. Around 6 PM
we headed over to the house, immediately meeting the band Lighthearted
from central Philadelphia. We got our stuff inside (we were playing
first) and after a little while the band The Mad Splatter showed up.
We met these guys through our friends in Too Much Too Fast Too Soon,
and The Mad Splatter was our hookup for the show that night, so it was
cool to see them. They’re a great poppy punk band, no frills
Ramonesy-Misfitsy power chord anthems with lots of harmonies and
B-Movie-esque lyrics, and they do it very well. We started off the
show, and it was a total rush, trying to cram as much as we could into
twenty minutes, with hardly any breaks in between songs. I Broke No
Strings. It might have been my favorite set of the tour, but that’s
hard to really determine. Mad Splatter played next, followed by Glocco
Morro, Lighthearted, and Ceasefire, who were my other favorite band of
the night with their tight set of catchy hardcore punk. It was a cool
house, with a bright, colorful exterior, and a lot of cool people
hanging out. We rolled back to Robbie’s place, with visions of New
Jersey dancing in our head.

We got to Trenton, NJ in the middle of the afternoon of March 11th,
and met up with a bunch of our friends at the Pats!e house, our
longtime base of operations whenever we’re in Trenton. It’s getting to
the point where I’m not sure how many times we’ve played in Trenton.
Quite a few. More than most cities. Our good friend Dale J Gordon was
having a cookout and party for us, followed by a house show where we
would play alongside famed rapper and the original 40 oz. pimp,
Certified Platinum. Also playing at the house show was
singer-songwriter Andriana Santiago, as well as “preview” sets from
Dale and kick-ass metal-punks Local Demise, who would both be playing
with us the following night. Some familiar faces were around –
including ex Rape Babies/ TMTFTS dudes and current Honah Lee members
Dim and Goggles, two of my very best friends, and their girlfriends,
Michigan emigrants Jessi Spreitzer and Amanda Menosky – as well as
this digital guitar thing that was completely spellbinding and
addictive. Once you started playing it, you didn’t want to stop, and
whenever someone else was playing it, you wanted to take it from them
and start playing. We need to get a hold of one, but I’m afraid it
would tear us all apart. Anyway, Certified Platinum kicked off the
show, rocking the mic like he was headlining Madison Square Garden and
not some dirty living room in Trenton, NJ (side note: the Pats!e House
folks cleaned up quite nicely for the party and the living room was
the neatest I’d ever seen it – I am honored that they think so highly
of The Plurals to do this for us). The cops showed up after CP’s set,
but we still went on. We did an off-the-cuff set of old songs and
unrehearsed covers (including two Nirvana songs in “Tourettes” and
“Aneurysm”) and new songs (debuting the song “Happy Songs,” watch out)
and a few songs we’d been playing, as well as an unrehearsed
collaboration where Goggles played drums on “Medic” while Hattie sang.
Pretty fun stuff. Dim said it was worthy of The Replacements, which,
if true, is awesome. If not… well, whatever. Local Demise played
next, and the cups showed up again, so then the show went the “toned
down” route with Andriana Santiago. Just before she played, Goggles
and Nich ended up agreeing to back her up, so they did a set, playing
the songs for the first time ever as they performed them, and it
sounded fucking great. Like… it should have been recorded. Only in
New Jersey! The cops showed up again at some point, and eventually a
noise ticket was issued, and the party dispersed. I passed out on the
couch, thinking that I really wanted my blankets, but that I didn’t
want to go out to the van and get them. Turns out that they were
already inside, in Goggles and Amanda’s room, but I didn’t find that
out to the morning.

We woke up… at some point on March 12th, I with a massive hankering
for my “hungove a the Pats!e House hangover cure” of a tuna salad
sandwich at the 7-11 a few blocks away. Nich, Timmy, Certified
Platinum and I walked down there, and CP got his breakfast of 7-11
knock off Funions that he washed down with vodka. I was with him for
the entire day and the dude did not eat a single other thing. Now, I
enjoy Trenton, NJ very much as it is full of a lot of people that I’ve
shared many good times with and it’s home to some of my favorite bands
and some of the most creative people I know, but it’s a terrible
fucking place to be on a cold, rainy day with nothing to do and
nowhere to go. We sat around the Pats!e House, which was dark and lit
with dim red light bulbs from the house show setup of the night
before, while it rained all day and everyone that lived there slept
all day. Certified Platinum kept the day entertaining, showing us his
new “Alcohol Poison World Tour” album and ripping into his frequent
freestyle verses. After this dreary, monotonous day, we eventually
headed to Mill Hill Basement, one of my favorite places to play, for
our show. Paul from The Mad Splatter showed up, which was totally cool
to see someone we had been hanging with earlier on the tour. Local
band Pistol Monk opened the show with some L7ish alt-metal stuff,
followed by Local Demise who positively pummeled, sending the crowd in
to a frenzy – at one point a guy just jumped in the air and punched
out a ceiling tile for no good reason, but the show was such a rocking
mess no one seemed to notice or care. We played next, and shortly
before we played Taff, ex-singer of The Rape Babies and Too Much Too
Fast Too Soon showed up, and my heart was warmed. I love that guy. The
Rape Babies were one of my favorite bands of all time, and I’m so glad
we got to share the stage with them so many times and become such good
friends with them. RIP Mark. Our set was a rush, lots of new songs,
people singing along to old songs, and a great energy. DEMO, Dale’s
project, closed out the show, and it was one of the most primal and
intense shows I’ve ever seen. The way the crowd was dancing around
felt like I was at a caveman party to celebrate the cultivation of
fire or something. Certified Platinum took to the mic for Dale’s
dirtbag anthem “Real Man” (from his excellent 2009 album “Digital
Wiccan”) hyping it up like only CP can. We rolled back to the Pats!e
House, Taff and Paul now a part of our posse, made some spaghetti, and
settled in. I decided I couldn’t risk another night of no sleep and
crashed in the van. Nich passed out behind a couch next to a bag of
garbage.

We got up early (re: noon) on March 13th, said our goodbyes to Dale,
Local Demise, and Certified Platinum, and met up at a diner in
Levittown, PA with Dim and Jessi. After whatever meal that was, we
started heading to our buddy Tim Hoh (from the band Honah Lee)’s house
in West Trenton, but the rain from the day before had kept coming and
entire sections of highway were blocked off and streets were flooding.
We eventually made it there, but the grim weather did little to sway
the last-day-of-tour blues. Timmy took a nap, Nich took a shower, Dim
and Tim had to go pick up Goggles… lots of waiting. Eventually the
rest of the Honah Lee boys showed up, and we caravaned, in the gusty
winds and cold rain (which was leaking through holes in the van’s
roof) to our show in Philadelphia that night. The show was at a bar
called Coyle’s Rox Box, and it was on those bars that I fucking hate
where the bar is in a separate room from where the bands play, and
they keep music so loud that it’s hard to tell if a band is playing at
all. No matter, it was the last show of tour, and we were playing with
our good friends in Honah Lee, so we were gonna rock! And rock we did,
playing our best set of the tour, and getting to watch Honah Lee kick
some ass as well. Dim only joined up with the band in the last few
months, and his amazing blues-punk guitar is a welcome addition to the
band, who have perfected a blend of
Replacements-meets-Weezer-..meets-Foo Fighters of boozy punk-ish
rock-ish pop. We’re putting out a split EP with them on April 10th,
and then they’ll be doing some shows in Michigan at the beginning of
May. Stoked! Paul from Mad Splatter once again showed up to catch our
set, and my brother Robbie made his return to the annals of the tour
as well, so it was a really nice way to end the tour. But… we had to
end the tour. Timmy had napped at Tim Hoh’s house (where we were
strongly being encouraged to come back to and party the night away,
which sounded oh so good, but we had to be back in Michigan the next
day… damn…) so he took us on our way. Not before I stopped at a
nearby 7-11 and grabbed another tuna salad sandwich. Fuck. I hung out
in the passenger seat until we hit I-80, and then it was all over for
me. I woke up on US-23 just south of I-96 the following afternoon.
Strange.

After a mind-numbing, bizarre, “home from tour” Sunday, it was back to
the grind. But there was much good to come! On Wednesday March 17 (St.
Patty’s day, balrgh!!) we recorded the music for our half of the Honah
Lee split at Eric Merckling’s CrookedSound studio in Lansing, putting
down some fresh-from-the-road new tunes. It’s wild to go from being
almost inactive as a band to touring and recording new stuff in a time
period of two weeks. And if that weren’t what happened, I would
probably weigh 500 pounds and be washing my dishes in a bathtub.
Sunday March 21st we played our “proper” first show back in Lansing at
Mac’s Bar with Flatfoot, La Mano, and Infernal Names, and it was a
great time. Tim Hill also filmed that set.

It’s so good to be back!

Cool people that turned up on this tour:
The Loiterers
Genuine Imitations
Advaita Vera
TCB
The Mad Splatter
The Breakfast and Dessert House
Ceasefire
Glocca Morra
Lighthearted
Dale J Gordon
Local Demise
Certified Platinum
Andriana Santiago
Pistol Monk
DEMO
Honah Lee
As well as Robbie and Paul McCord, Paige Feldman-Ortiz and all of Watermargin Co-Op, Sam Awesome Awesome, Ryan Jackson, Evelyn Sinclair, Melissa and Don Pedro, that waitress, those crustpunks, Trenton, Dave and Samara and The Mill Hill Basement, and Lansing, Michigan, a great place to call home.
tommyplural

As we are almost two full months into 2010, I was sitting back thinking of the year. How much the GTG has grown, bands that have come and gone. I have certain points that seem to document the music of that time. GTG Fest obviously being one of them, this year especially with the GTG Compilation. I always like to listen to the GTG Situations at Hand Vol. 1 because it brings me back to late 2007. The Knights Without were starting to get on a roll, The Plurals and The Break-Ups both were going through drastic musical transformations, Head and Toe was still around in one of its many arrangements. It was around that time that I was introduced to the BMP guys.

It seems that every year the GTG is growing. It’s exciting to be a part of it. I feel I’ve been there since the early days and its awesome to see where it was at. 2009 was a great year for GTG. GTG Fest was a great success this year. There were many great shows. I feel that last year was documented well. So I decided to post some of my favorite pictures of the year.

Good times.

As Hattie alluded to in her post below, there’s some good stuff going on among the GTG crew right now. Just this last weekend we had a GTG domination at Mac’s Bar with the Hat Madder‘s release show for their stellar new EP “Rogue Notes and Phones, featuring Narc Out the Reds and Drinking Mercury. All bands played well (I somehow ended up crowd surfing during the Hat Madder’s blissfully heavy-spaced out closing jam, and Narc Out the Reds debuted an epic, goosebump-inducing new song) but from a personal standpoint, the Drinking Mercury set was a triumph. Search around on the internet long enough and you’ll find any number of blogs and pre-blog website musings and confessionals from myself, struggling with whatever it is that is Drinking Mercury. We’ve been a band since 2000 (ten years ago this summer, although that’s including the “Kevin and I jamming for 15 minutes and then running around town being junior high hoodlums” era – we have been playing shows since the summer of 2001 though) put out an EP in 2004 that we weren’t happy with, spent two years recording another EP that we are happy with but that doesn’t really represent us, spent two to four years after that basically pretending to be a band, and all the while everyone involved formed and played with other bands. For some reason we all keep coming back to the project (even pulling in former #1 fan Timmy “Corncob” Rodriguez as a fulltime member along the way) despite a near decade of defeat (which of course is just one way of looking at it – there’s no way that the project that preceded and began everything that is our GTG community could be considered a “defeat” to me). But at Mac’s Bar on Saturday I think we finally were able to execute what this band has sounded like in our heads this entire time. Having the crowd (most of whom had no idea who we were, or thought that it was some sort of new Plurals/ Break-Ups/ Dream Jeans/ GTG whatever offshoot) with us every step of the way and peer-mentors whose opinions I value very much like Chris, Isaac, and Peter, of NOTR, the Hat Madder and Stargrazer respectively, praising our work affirmed what felt like a good set to the band. Ten years in, and it feels like we’ve finally played our first show! Of course, there’s plenty of evidence to contradict that, and Michael and I actually dug out a video of an October 2004 Drinking Mercury/ Plurals show last night, which was quite entertaining. For evidence of the show that we’re raving about, our friend Tim Hill was kind enough to post video of almost our entire set, which can be viewed here:

Speaking of Tim Hill, he also posted a video of the complete Break-Ups show at Small Planet from January 23rd. Check that out here:

And, while I was digging through these videos I came across another video Tim shot at Mac’s Bar in October when Calliope, extended GTG-family and a favorite band of many in the GTG, played a glam set, with Hattie in tow on vocals and guitar. This video has T. Rex’s “20th Century Boy” followed by their criminally unreleased pop gem “Holiday” (although this version is tamer than the one I’m used to… where’s that album Andy? You told me it would be out like three years ago!?!??) and a snippet of “Vactation” by the Go Go’s… and it sounds like Jason tosses in some of Linsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road” at the very end.

Thanks for all the videos Tim!

Tonight, Feb 8, we’ve got myself (TommyPlural) doing a solo/ duo set with Middleman (Michael) to open up an all ages show at Mac’s featuring our brothers in Frank and Earnest, To Fear the Wolf, and Dave Hause from the Loved Ones. That’s at 6 PM.
I’ve got another solo set up in Bay City on Thursday Feb 11, Jason Alarm is playing at Mac’s on Friday Feb 12 while MK Ultra Culkin is playing at The 734 in Ypsilanti the same night, and Saturday Feb 13 brings Josh David and the Dream Jeans‘ double header all ages Mac’s Bar show followed by a late 18+ show at Oade’s Hidden Camel (which is with good friends Cavalcade and Playback, as well as that danged Drinking Mercury). Yes!

tommygtg