GTG RECORDS

Hey everyone,
I just threw my version of The Break-ups’ smash hit, “The Bodyguard,” up on myspace. Hopefully it does as well in Europe as the original version did.

Myspace.com/quentinsong

-J. Quentin

Moving in to the GTG house was the greatest thing I ever dun.  These nice folks brushed me off, hosed me down, and taught me how to play an instrument!  They even let me join one of their music-playin’ bands!

I am the current drummer for the previously 3-peice band, Really Cinematic.  The new line-up features Plurals/Break Ups drummer Hattie Danby in her first band playing a git-ar!  Boy-howdy she’s writing some great stuff!  Jo Taylor sings words and plays this other guitar, and Loren Pudvay plays one of those four string guitars that’s like bump bump bump.  Our first show was at the GTG house a couple of weekends ago.  We played at a really fun show with the Plurals in Chicago on Sunday,  and we played at Mac’s bar last night.

Anyone who says the Lansing music scene is full of elitists should hear the story of the poor little boy who wandered into the GTG house and became a drummer.  Sadly, I will be leaving these hallowed halls this summer, but I will always consider myself a part of Good Time Gang.

Love,

Jimmy Cinematic

Dear Ladies and Babies:

We don’t want to turn this blog into our myspace account, because on our myspace account we endlessly spam people who don’t care with no positive result whatsoever.

But, We Feel We Would Be Remiss In Our Duties To You, DeaReader, if we did not mention that we are playing a show with our boyzzzz in Cavalcade (GTGish) in Kalamazoo tomorrow night (4/3/9) at the Corner Bar. If you, our friends, live in Kalamazoo, come to this show and we will spit in your face. If you don’t live in the area, please tell your friends to come to this show and mention the blog and we will offer them the same amenities, amen.

Also, in case you guys are working on “It Was Barren And Then It Died” for the song swap (or you otherwise foolishly appreciate our band), We Have Provided A Video Presentation For Your Educational Viewing:

We posted the exact same thing over at THE EUREKA FLAG so there just wouldn’t be any point in going there.
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

Hey everyone,

I thought I’d just check in and let everyone know what’s up. It’s 3:30 A.M. and a cloudy night, here in the greater islands of Boston, MA. The fog hung so heavy today,  I could barely see my neighbor’s yard, thus I decided a bicycle ride around my island and the neighboring sanitation plant was not the best idea. Instead, I got back to work on this summer’s bicycle tour. The dates are really starting to come together. Check out Myspace.com/quentinsong for the tentative schedule. I’m also in the works of launching the official J. Quentin website which will feature the upcoming release, “Read me May,” for free download.

Don’t forget that I will be in Michigan in a couple of weeks.

April 16th- Scene Metrospace (East Lansing, MI)
April 17th- Albion Coffee House (Albion, MI)
April 18th- Short’s Brewery (Bellaire, MI)

I hope everyone is well back home. I miss you all dearly.
-J. Quentin

Oh yeah,,,, Jeremy Cassar is getting married. Awesome.
I’m covering a GTG song, for the song swap.

Alright, since suggesting the thing is never enough for you people, we here at A.P.C.H.Q. have decided to allow you to have the cake AND eat it before diving into the water yourself,  to mix a metaphor.

SO, we give you our version of “I Figured” off of The Plurals debut, Professor Nanners. Still our favorite record of last year, and the year before that. Maybe even the year before that.

What else do we have to do in order to get this ball rollin’, because we are ready to do what it takes. We will roll up our sleeves and donate our Casios, Epiphones, Rogues and Peaveys for this project.

Well, maybe not the Peaveys.
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

P.S. ALSO NEW THINGS ON OUR BLOG THE EUREKA FLAG.

So there’s a nice little goofy piece of Plurals press floating around in this month’s The Lookout, the LCC newspaper. Our old friend Autumn took some nice pictures of us and there’s some totally pointless blurbs of Nich and I saying dumb stuff. I thought it was great, a total fluff piece but positive and, hopefully, a little entertaining. The whole issue can be read online here (The Plurals are on page 16): http://www.lcc.edu/lookout/archive/2008-2009/issue12.aspx (the individual links on the page seem to be kind of whacky right now, but I’m sure they’ll get sorted out soon enough).

 Anyway, on page 9 of this same issue there is an article that I think stands in complete contrast to ours. A Lansing band called The Darts is releasing an album called “Wake Up, Be Jealous” (which in the article they say is a reference to how they’re better than the rest of the bands in Lansing and the other bands don’t even know it) and then presumably breaking up, and they used this article in the Lookout to call out the Lansing scene on perceived negative aspects held by the band. I sort of know these guys, I’ve been to a couple of their shows, they’ve been to a couple of ours, but I haven’t gotten to know them real well or anything but my initial impression of them was that they seemed fine to me. Chuck was playing their new record in Mac’s the last time I was there and I thought it sounded pretty damn good. In this article they call the Lansing music scene “cliquey” and  full of 90’s alternative rock throwback bands, and that they fit in with the better, “more welcoming” Detroit scene. My impression of the Detroit scene is that it’s oversaturated with elitest bands in tight pants desperately trying to ape the sound of 60s/ 70s garage rock. I’ve certainly met some cool bands from Detroit (The High Strung being the first to come to mind), but those bands themselves say that Detroit isn’t even a good city for them to play. When we’ve played in Detroit, the local bands have just wanted to play first so they can go home and they want to keep as much of the door money for themselves as they can. I don’t want to generalize a scene that I’m not a part of, but my experience with the Detroit scene is that if there is a community of any sort, it’s hard to find and outsider bands aren’t welcome. I won’t write the scene off though… if someone wants to prove me wrong, please do so… I’d rather have friends than enemies.

 The Plurals seem to get lumped into “90s alt rock” categories, which was never our intention… although I love Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Veruca Salt etc etc I never thought we sounded particularly like them – people that pull out Pixies and Fugazi comparisons are a lot closer I think, and even then I still think a lot of sound is being overlooked. Whatever. I have no idea what we sound like. Are The Darts directing these statements at us? I don’t know. I certainly think ourselves and Cheap Girls are the easiest targets for this statement. I’m not going to assume The Darts are calling us a shitty band in this article, but after reading this article I wondered if we were even talking about the same Lansing. I think, maybe they’re just trying to generate a little controversy and get things moving in the scene – something that I myself haven’t avoided in the past (see the “Situations at Hand” blog at the GTG myspace) – but I’m really not inclined to believe  it in this case, if nothing else than because they seem so greatly uninformed in their statements. In the four-ish years I’ve been in this scene, I’ve met the largest quantity of people who actually give a shit about music and building a scene than I have anywhere else. The Plurals go on tour, and this feeling is only reinforced. I have no intention on leaving the Lansing scene because, by and large, it’s the best scene I’ve encountered. There’s no one “sound” and I totally love that. You’ve got bands like Fun Ender and Sexual Pantalones on one end, Cheap Girls doing their thing on the other, The Cartridge Family way out there doing their thing, indescribable bands like Cavalcade somewhere in there, and then straight up damn good bands like Flatfoot, The Hat Madder, and Narc Out the Reds. I haven’t even gotten into the younger, punkier bands on the rise like Jason Alarm and Danger Society or the darker alt rock bands like Feel Good Violence and Mr. Denton on Doomsday. By no means is this a list of all the bands in Lansing that I think are good… I’ve left out dozens, these were just the ones that popped in my head first as I was checking out their upcoming shows earlier today. I’ve never felt that any of these bands were terribly cliquey… most of them have been more interested in music than who’s cooler than who. The cliquiest parts of Lansing to me are the folk and metal scenes, and even there I’ve met plenty of people that serve as counterexamples.
Cale just posted a long blog at the Bermuda Mohawk myspace that addresses a lot of these same ideas, but it’s important enough for me to reiterate that none of us have ever wanted to exclude people. BMP and GTG put out some compilations and put on shows and we always try to include everyone we can – we obviously can’t just tell everyone to submit a track or jump on the bill, but I don’t feel like we’ve intentionally snubbed anyone. Exclusive scenes suck. The inclusiveness of the Lansing scene is what makes it so amazing. If anyone ever feels that GTG or BMP is elitist, just fucking talk to us. Odds are it’s just a misunderstanding that led to any of these negative perceptions of us. Honestly, in all of my travels and music scene playing I’ve done in the past 9 years, the GTG and BMP people are the absolute last people that I think would intentionally exclude people. It just really bums me out that The Darts see things so differently. I suppose we won’t have to worry about what they think pretty soon though, because, according to the article, they’re going to quit unless if they’re offered a shit ton of money, and I don’t think any band in the state of Michigan is getting a shit ton of money any time soon. Maybe we should just play music then, huh?

tommyplural

3/16/2009 2:00 PM

Bah! Back in East Lansing at Owen Hall. I’m supposed to be working but after making sure it wasn’t 100% necessary for me to paint anything I put my “street” clothes back on and read “Get in the Van” in the cafeteria. I had what felt like the worst headache of my life as I rode my bike into East Lansing today. I wanted to just keel over and lay in the grass and vomit. Everyone on campus would just walk by… that guy’s in pain but it doesn’t concern my superficial quest for self-satisfaction so I’ll ignore him. I hate college. I’m glad I work in the building I work at though… Owen Hall is a grad student hall and is comprised mostly of international students and other people who don’t give a fuck about the pathetic college lifestyle. I talk to some of these people and a lot of them are actually concerned with gaining knowledge and helping people instead of the petty moneymongering bullshit that my undergraduate student peers obsess over in between getting wasted and empty sex.

Wow, I’ve been reading way too much Rollins. Sorry. The days immediately following tour are always really lame, and this tour was such an amazing time. This day-to-day existence is so hollow and lifeless, and I would give so much to just get back in the van and play a show every night. The last show of the tour in Jamestown was really weird. The folk duo, Nate and Kate, that opened the show played probably a little longer than they should have, and then bailed immediately because they had another show down the street. They were good though, and seemed like really nice people, so I wasn’t upset at them or anything. The place was pretty small, so we didn’t load-in until right before we played, so we were already struggling to keep people in the room as we had to set bring everything and set up. We were coming along though, until Hattie realized that her kick drum pedal was still in Syracuse. Of course, this happens at the only show that we’re not playing with another full band, so we can’t just borrow one. Hattie asked the guys working the counter if they could help us out, and they called a friend who said he’d bring a kick drum pedal by in 15 minutes. Cool. We didn’t want to wait around and lose more of the crowd though, so we started playing songs that would have been tailored for an acoustic set, but we were still full band electric. It was pretty cool. We played “Shy” and “All That You’ll Be” from “Whatevers Forever” as well as the song “Exercise in Humility” that we’re currently recording for the next whatever we do. People seemed to be enjoying it, and then halfway through “All That You’ll Be” one of the guys working the counter brought in a kick drum pedal. Hattie put the pedal in place, and we kicked into “Sing Along.” It felt so great to be back in that zone. Comfort in the sound. We played a few more and really started cooking, and I wasn’t really paying attention to the room as I was just getting into the set. I finally looked up and there was one person in the room. There was another room where the coffee bar and some tables were, and I knew people were in there, but it was a strange jolt. For some reason, I just got more pumped and we launched into some new songs, and the one guy in the room left. I started laughing as we played, and we went into “Medic.”  Nich and I just started running around the empty room as we played the song, jumping off of furniture and having a blast. Of course, while I say the room was empty, James was in there filming the set, which should make some entertaining viewing. We just kept playing, and finally one of the guys working came into the room and sat down. I thought he was going to tell us to quit because everyone hated us, but instead he told us that people had been buying CDs and shirts as they left. Haha!!! The other guy working came in and we asked them what they wanted to hear, and we played a few more songs just for those guys. We closed the show, and the tour with the 45 second whirlwind of “Gaia.” Both of the guys working bought some CDs and shirts as well, and we chilled with them for awhile. It would have been cool to hang out with them some more and check out some bars, but we were kind of anxious to get back home. Jeremy told us to play in Jamestown because the people there were really cool. He was right. What a strange show. One of the guys working told us to stop at Waffle House in Painesville, OH, and since it just isn’t tour without a trip to Waffle House, we planned on it.

The drive home was, well, a drive home. I drank way too much coffee throughout the day, so I felt like I was going to throw up. I got a ginger ale to settle my stomach when we stopped to get gas, and lamented that no one makes a ginger ale like Vernor’s, which you just can’t find most places outside of Michigan. We stopped at the Waffle House and I got some hash browns with onions, peppers, tomatoes, and mushrooms, or peppered, diced, capped, and somethinged if you know your Waffle House lingo. They had a sign in their window that said “Go Cavs” which from the parking lot looked a lot like “Go Gays,” which would have made them the coolest town ever. Either they’re just very supportive of the LGBT community, or every Friday night the town crams onto the high school football field to cheer on the Painseville Gays. Alas, twas not to be.

On the drive home we listened to “Legend” by Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Fever to Tell” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (again), a David Cross stand up album, random songs selected by James (including “Six Pack” by Black Flag and tour theme song “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis”) and finally, a repeat of the first half of “Bleed American” by Jimmy Eat World. At 5 AM in a service plaza in Ohio, Nich prank called a hotel, saying that he needed one room for a 15 piece hispanic folk band, it had to be one room, and money was not an issue. Nothing like staying up all night and then fucking with other people that have also had to stay up all night. We got into Michigan, and I was doing my wierd half-sleep thing that I do in cars after being up all day, yearning for my bed, and James put on “Champagne Supernova.” For reasons impossible to explain, that song had been part of tour-long joke between Nich, James, and I. It was a super cheesy moment as I smiled in the back seat, reminiscing over our east coast adventures to that overblown psychedelic anthem of my youth. We got home around 8 AM, loaded in, and passed out.

It’s nice being back in Lansing. I like the way things move around here. I’m looking forward to seeing my friends. Cheap Girls was on tour the whole time we were, so I’m curious to talk to those guys and see how their tour went. It’s exciting to be part of this music scene right now… there’s a lot of great bands and a lot of cool people. Anyone who says the Lansing music scene is dead, or “needs help” (as I’ve seen in the Mac’s bathroom) is simply not trying and not looking.

Thank you Robbie, Paul, and friends in Baltimore, The Rivals, American Riot, Too Much Too Fast Too Soon, DEMO, Niki, Ian, Jeremy, Lee, Kinetic Stereokids, Portocal, Ryan and everyone at Cornell, Matt and the Syracuse crew, the guys in Jamestown, and everyone else (sorry I can’t think of everyone off the top of my head) that made this tour the best one yet. We’ll do it again. Soon. Forever.

tommyplural

3/14/2009 7:45 PM

Sitting in Labyrinth Press Company, a cool little cafe in Jamestown, NY. We’re playing in a couple hours. So, where I last left off we were getting to Cambridge, MA to play a show. Our old friend Jeremy (former GTG House roommate and member of Head and Toe) had set up the show as he lives in Boston these days. The show was at a place called Cafe Luna and it was with the Flint, MI band Kinetic Stereokids. A funny thing about this tour is that on almost every day of the tour we hung out with people from Michigan, the main exception being in New Jersey. That might be a testament to how shitty the economy is that people from Michigan are everywhere, or maybe we just played in a lot of cool places. The Break-Ups had played a show with KSK last summer, so I was vaguely familiar with them. Cafe Luna pretty much just does acoustic shows, but on this Tuesday night they made an exception for these two touring bands from Michigan. We met this guy Lee who worked there and ran the shows and he was super cool. He fed us and gave us beer and collected donations all night. KSK played first, in the crammed area by the window at the front of the cafe. They sounded really good in the room and structured their set nicely so it began quiet and lulling before building to louder and noisier sounds. They’re touring down to South by Southwest, whereas we’re doing our own east coast tour, so we were heading in opposite directions, but it was really cool that we got to hook up with them for a cool, weird little show. We shared a lot of gear with them due to space and time constraints. We did a set that cut some of the heavier moments but we pulled out a new arrangement of the “Whatevers Forever” song “All That You’ll Be” that we’re pretty psyched about. I love that song, but it’s really hard to pull off live, but I think this new arrangement is working. People seemed really receptive to the music and we sold some stuff. We split the donations with KSK and both bands walked out doing surpisingly well for a free show on a Tuesday night in Boston with no local support. We went down the street to a bar and Jeremy bought a few rounds of High Lifes for us. KSK was hanging out as well with some of their Michign friends in Boston, as well as Jeremy’s friend Rachel (also from Michigan originally). About 12 people from Michigan, meeting up in Cambridge for a drink. We filled Jeremy in on the GTG happenings, and he was pretty psyched about Too Much Too Fast Too Soon joining up as he went with us on a previous tour where we played with The Rape Babies. Back at Cafe Luna, Lee made a plan to have an after party where we would play again, but the idea fell from our minds as we remained in the bar longer and longer. It was great getting to hang out with Jeremy. We settled back into our goofy dynamic of the year that we all lived together, and he treated us to a good time in his current ‘hood. We eventually headed back to Jeremy’s house in Winthrop, on an island north of Boston, after a long ordeal where we were trying to find Rachel’s friend, followed by another ordeal where the exit we needed for Winthrop was closed. I was pretty drunk, so it was all just a confusing haze. I drink a whole lot more on tour than I do at home. I think when I get home I’m going to call off drinking for awhile. I don’t really like drinking. It’s okay sometimes, and on tour it’s a great social lubricant/ time killer, but as I sit here at the end of the tour I’m ready to live sober for awhile. Somehow I got more beer back at Jeremy’s house and passed out with Hattie on an air mattress that slowly deflated through the night putting me in weird contorted positons – I woke up with no feeling in my right arm.

We woke up around noon on Wednesday, March 11. Jeremy was headed back into Cambridge to meet up with Matt from Frontier Ruckus, who was in town for unrelated reasons, making him yet another Michigan guy who was just sort of around. We were down by the Harvard campus, hanging out in a bookstore, where I picked up a copy of “Get in the Van” by Henry Rollins for some tour reading (I put it on my debit card, not totally sure how much money was in there, and when I checked my balance later I had $2 left after the book purchase… success!!). Hattie and I went to go put more change in the meter but got lost on the way, and at one point I got so mad I threw my new book at a tree. I wanted to get in the van, but by god it was nowhere to be found!! We eventually found it at the same time Nich did, with no ticket, and then Jeremy and Matt showed up, shortly followed by James. We headed into Boston proper, got some food from a Vietnamese sandwich shop, dropped Matt off, then made it back to Winthrop. It was our only off day of the tour, and we got to absorb the Boston area. Nich wrote about his feelings for Boston already. It was cool enough but… when we were leaving Brooklyn, the singer of the band Top Ten Lovers (great band, by the way) told us to be weary of “The Boston Stare” which the bassist dutifully demonstrated. It was amusing, but… we certainly got it. Henry Rollins raves about Boston crowds in “Get in the Van,” so we’ll just have to try again and hopefully find “our” people. Our show was good, the people were cool, but.. .yeah. Whatever. The most exciting moment of the day, for me, was when I got online at Jeremy’s house (right around the time I wrote my previous blog) desperately searching for a show for Friday night as we still didn’t have anything booked, and then I got one in Syracuse! Yes! I love it when things work out at the last minute like that. We got drunk and watched a Sarah Silverman thing on TV.

We got up on Thursday, March 12, dropped Jeremy off at Berklee (where he was about to meet Paul Simon… wonder how that went…) and then met up with James’ cousin Alex at an awesome bar/ restaurant called The Other Side. This seemed like “our” kind of place. Alex was cool, and he was the four thousandth person from Michigan we hung out with. Feeling frisky, James, Nich, and I split a pitcher of PBR (this is at 12:30 or something) causing me to get pretty buzzed as I hadn’t eathen anything. If a day is divided into how many times you get drunk and sober up, this was a three part day. I ordered a vegan BLT, which was absolutely amazing. Alex went his way, and we headed towards Danbury, Connecticut for our next show. On the way from Boston to Danbury we listened to “Water and Solutions” by Far, “Downward is Heavenward” by Hum, and “Here Comes the Zoo” by Local H. This was a show that Portocal, whom we played with in Ewing several days previously, had set up and put us on. I knew nothing about the show, and when I know nothing about a show I prepare myself for it to be terrible – no crowd, the venue hates us, that sort of thing. We got to the venue, Billy Baloney’s as it was awesomely called, about three hours before load-in, so we took to the street of Danbury to kill some time. Danbury, CT is apparently the most ethnically diverse town in Connecticut or something, as many of the establishments had signs entirely in Spanish or Porteugese with little or no English. One of the guys at the show later told me that when Brazil won a soccer game (or “football” for you smarty pants out there) the whole town was one big party. Danbury also is known as “Hat City” for the sheer volume of hats the town once produced, which makes it Hat City Danbury… strangely similar to Hattie Danby. (cricket sound). Hattie and I hung out in a Mexican deli, while Nich and James went to the happy hour at a bar down the street. Hattie and I made our way down there, and thus I got buzzed for the second time. After more than an hour in this bar (which was playing all of “What’s the Story Morning Glory” by Oasis for some reason) we went back out to load in, promptly running in to the singer of Portocal. We met up with those guys and loaded in. At first I was thinking my “worst show ever” preperations were right – there was no local, just us and Portocal, and there was a story going around among the staff about how few people came to the previous nights show that they charged the bands for playing. I found out that two of the guys from Portocal were from Connecticut, and soon enough the place filled up with their friends and family. They were playing first though, so only a handful stuck around to watch us, but I was happy to play for anyone. I think our set was really good actually, even if onlya dozen or so people saw it. We played our new song “Bean” again and I thought it rocked. We sold some stuff, so it was well worth our time. We were soon poised with the problem that we had nowhere to stay. No one at the show seemed interested in taking us in, which is fine, not everyone is cool with turning their house over to strangers, but we still needed somewhere to go. We thought about buying some whiskey and passing out in the van, but liquor stores close at 9 everywhere but Michigan for some reason, so we aimlessly started driving towards Syracuse. At about 10:30, I remembered that our friend Ryan, whom Nich and I went to high school with, was going to college at Cornell in Ithaca, NY. I asked Nich if Ryan was on spring break. He called Ryan, Ryan said if we wanted to come up he could put us up. We pulled off at an exit in Fishkill, NY (for some reason “kill” was in the name of lots of places and rivers in this area of New York) stole some wireless internet from the Holiday Inn, got directions, and started getting the hell towards Ithaca. On the way from Danbury to Ithaca we listened to “(In) Organics” by Calliope, “War of the Worlds” by Jeff Wayne (the origin of the “Thunder Child” term – check it out!), “The Argument” by Fugazi,” and “Bleed American” by Jimmy Eat World.

We have to load in. I’m going to do that.
We didn’t have to load in. I’m back.

We ended up getting to Ithaca around 2:30 AM, and after an ordeal of dealing with a closed street on the Cornell campus, we got to the Watermark Co-Op and met up with Ryan. It was great to see Ryan. Since he lives in upstate New York most of the time we only see him occasionally, so it was awesome that we showed up, rather on-the-fly in Ithaca. Ryan also did a bang-up job finding us somewhere to crash at the last minute. We had a whole rec room with three couches, one of which folded out, to ourselves. We met some of his friends who lived at the Co-Op, and drank for a few hours before going to bed.

We woke up at 1:00 or something, and Ryan showed up after his class got out. He used his meal plan to get us some sushi and hummus. Awesome. Our show in Syracuse was a house show and started at 6, so we rolled out of Ithaca around 4:30. The people in Ithaca were awesome. We did a little networking and made plans to come back and play a show. Yes! On the drive from Ithaca to Syracuse we listened to “Braille” by Calliope and “Tiny Music From the Vatican Gift Shop” by Stone Temple Pilots. We pulled up to the house in Syracuse, dubbed “Castle Rockmoore” for its venue purposes, and met Matt, Mike, Chris (aka Adrian Aardvark), and Pinkie. The Syracuse crew was awesome, a bunch of really great, friendly people, who share a true love of music. The show was in a really cool space in the attic of the house. We played first, doing an abbreviated set of “Medic,” “Gaia,” “Sleepy Girl,” “Plastic,” “FTS,” and “Plurality.” People were really into it. Matt of the house, who was the one that put us on the show, did a set as Marco Polio, where he was joined by a girl Meredith on drums. Adrian Aarvark played, and then the girl Meredit (AKA “Mouse”) did a set with Matt on drums. It was a really cool scene. Two more bands played, but I don’t really remember them and they didn’t seem too interested in mingling, so… I’ll stop talking about them. Meredith and Mike started cooking some food, and Nich, Pinkie, and I went to pick up a 30 pack of PBR. The night was an awesome haze. When we got back Meredith had some vegan curry ready and Mike was baking a spinach pizza. At some point the organ in the house got pushed into the bathroom. They had a snake named Tess that came out of her little box in the cage whenever we played music and she moved around. She was surprisingly long; I looked at her for a long time and she kept sticking out her tongue at me. We fell asleep at some point.

We woke up today, after noon as usual, got our stuff around and said our goodbyes. What a great group of people. We’ll definitely be back. It was the best “booked a day and a half before” tour date ever (well, we’ve done some sweet day-of and day-before gigs in New Jersey, but.. y’know). We went to an amazing vegan restaurant that I really wish I could remember the name of. Then it was on to Jamestown, where I write. On the drive from Syracuse to Jamestown we listened to “Throwing Copper” by Live, “Arthur” by The Kinks, some Promo-EP-Thing by Shudder To Think that Nich got at Replay a few years ago, some mix James’ mom made for him (that had Steppenwolf and Edgar Winter on it), a couple Billy Idol songs, and a few songs from “Hard, Fast Ramones” by The Ramones. The first band, a folk duo called Nate and Kate is about to start. People seem really cool in Jamestown. I’m going to go watch. I guess… final blong tomorrow!

tommyplural

This is Nich, writing from Syracuse. We’re heading back west by this point, after we leave here it’s off to Jamestown. Happy to be sleeping in my own bed in 24hr, but it’s always bittersweet, especially when tour has been this fucking sweet.

Syracuse is great. Last night we played a game called “secret knucks” where we all wrote on the hand of the person next of us. James got the legendary “POOPZONE”. Some other guy got “FUCK YOUR FACE” written on, oddly enough, his face. I like New York. NYC, Syracuse, hopefully Jamestown. The driving is wearisome, though.

Boston was really kewl architecturally.. but as I’ve been saying to my road compatriots, me and the town had a bit of a Shinning thing going on (no, I don’t mean the title of that one movie, I don’t want to get sued.) We seemed to have been hanging out in a bizarre mix of touristy Boston and business district Boston, and I’m really grateful for how well Jer-Bear Quentin Rizik put us up, but the town reminded me of a giant mall… saturated in advertising, assholes, and xenophobia who loved to stare at the kid with long hair. I will gladly give the town another chance and hopefully play in more of the hip/punk/DIY thing, or where-evers. It is a lot to soak in and maybe my walnut brain was overwhelmed. Whatever!

I mainly had my commentary on Boston I wanted to get out there. Otherwise, you can get your tasty-three-piece-known-as-the-Plurals-tour-news from Tommy. I’ll say his blog should be mostly accurate. I plan on getting together a photo-accompaniment to this tour, so keep yer eyes open for pictures of things from faraway lands. So much thanks to everyone who’s put us up so far, and played with us, and watched us. It’s been gnarly. Last night was the greatest unexpected detour to the campus of Cornell… thanks to Ryan Jackson for that.

LATERS! VIVA MI!
-nichyplural

3/11/2009 1:30 PM

All right. I’m sitting in the living room of Jeremy Rizik’s house in Winthrop, MA just outside of Boston. Jeremy’s roommates are playing an organ in the kitchen while cooking. I’m going to do my best to keep this chronological. I’m probably going to get interrupted and I’ll be forced to stop writing for awhile. Lots of stuff happened.

We got rolling out of Baltimore right around 5 PM. It was fairly uneventful leaving the city. I don’t recall all of the playlist, but I know we started out listening to “Cheap Trick” by Cheap Trick and spent most of the drive listening to Motown singles. The show was at a place called The All Call Inn in Ewing, NJ which is just west of Trenton. We were originally going to do the show at The Mill Hill Basement in Trenton, which is one of our absolute favorite venues to play, but it got double booked so we did the show at All Call. We pulled up and it was just a straight looking neighborhood bar in, well, a neighborhood. I would’ve been pretty nervous about this being our show if the guy at the door wasn’t wearing a Pats!e t-shirt (our friend Dale’s old band from Trenton). We were the first band at the show, but it was really nice out so we hung out in a parking lot across the street where our van was parked and waited for people to show. The first people to show up of our friends were the band DEMO, which is our old friend Dale and his drummer Greg. Although I only see him a couple times a year, I really do consider Dale to be one of my best friends so it was really good seeing him. Not much later, I was standing in the parking lot when I hear a car pull in and a distinct Jersey voice yell “fuckin’ hippies!” which could only mean that Taff, the former singer of The Rape Babies and the current singer of Too Much Too Fast Too Soon, had arrived. The rest of the band was there too, which is comprised of Dim and Goggles (also ex-Rape Babies) on guitar and drums and a fellow named Jack on bass. Too Much Too Fast Too Soon was only playing their fourth show, but a band consisting largely of members of The Rape Babies was surely going to be awesome. The show finally got started with a band from Cincinnati called Portocal, and we all finally started hanging out in the bar where we discovered our undoing: $1 PBRs. These $1 PBRs were on draft, kinda stale tasting, but it was a room full of rough rock and roll bands and touring veterans, so it’s safe to say we partook liberally. Some familiar faces were scattered around the room, Portocal was rocking, the PBR was flowing. Soon enough, DEMO was set up, with a third member now on backing vocals, samples, and a floor tom, in addition to weird projected images. They were bone crushingly loud, with a great vibe from the heavy psychedelic music and the trippy images. They still busted out an old classic of Dale’s called “Real Man” that I’ve seen him play with every band he’s been in while I’ve known him. More people were trickling in and DEMO played an awesome set. What? The PBR haze was getting thick at this point. It’s time for us to play? Oh man!!

(We’re going to go into Boston for some breakfast. More updates forthcoming).

3/11/2009 7:30 PM

So, where I left off, we were about to play our set. It was exciting to play in New Jersey for the first time with the “Whatevers Forever” album out. Admittedly, we drank more than normal before we played – it was difficult as we were in a room full of friends, in town for the first time in a year, Nich had just turned 21, and… PBRs were only a dollar. We took the stage, and from the first chord of our opening “Sing Along” the room was singing and rocking out. We did a set similar to the night before, with a couple less album songs and our new-ish song “New Age” making an appearance. The set was a haze, and we were certainly looser than any other night of tour thus far, but the room was with us every step of the way, and it felt good. Halfway through our set I noticed Mark Vella, the former bassist of The Rape Babies, rocking out on the floor. I wasn’t sure if he was gonna be around so I was really happy to see him. After us Too Much Too Fast Too Soon took the stage, which Dale and our friends Greg and Chris prefaced by saying that it was The Rape Babies, but even better. They may be right. I loved The Rape Babies so much, their 2008 “The Killer EP” was one of the best things I heard in all of last year (with the song “Burnt Side of the Spoon” being one of my favorite songs ever), but Too Much Too Fast Too Soon retains what I loved about The Rape Babies but with more rock and roll and a little less punk – but still hard and fast. Taff is a great front man and Jack is a killer bassist, but the combination of Dim and Goggles is such an awesome core of a band that I’m pretty sure I would love anything they did together. Too Much Too Fast Too Soon is awesome. After Too Much Too Fast Too Soon played a band called The Loose Roosters played, but I missed most of their set because we ended up haning out in the parking lot across the street, initially just to cool off and catch some air but soon all of our friends ended up over there as well. What I did catch of The Loose Roosters was really good though (I definitely have an affinity for two piece bands) and I hope I get to catch them again. We ended up back at the Pats!e House, where Dale, Goggles, and Greg from DEMO all live, a house which has served as our Jersey home since the first time we played out there a couple years ago. We stayed up super late partying, listening to music, and watching some short films that Goggles and Dale had made. I ended up passing out in Dale’s bed, with Dale, but we were both so exhausted that neither of us gave a shit. I woke up in the morning to a weird screaming sound, but Dale assured me it was “just the lizard.”

We woke up at some point on Sunday March 8, and for a while we just hung out in the living room of the Pats!e House. Someone put on the pilot episode of “Twin Peaks” and we sat there, some of us hungover and all of us tired, watching “Twin Peaks” before eventually deciding we couldn’t take it any more and needed coffee and food. Hattie was feeling a lot worse than all of us, so Nich, James, Dim and I went to a diner over the Pennsylvania state line and got some food. I’ve been trying to be vegan for Lent, along with Hattie, Loren, Ryan Horky, and Dan “Funeral” Finks so I ordered an egg beater omellete and no butter on my toast. It was still an amazing meal. It was great getting to just relax and hang out with Dim. The night looked to be pretty eventful, with a recording session and a show on the plate. At some point the night before, Goggles and Dave, the guy who books Mill Hill Basement, had a conversation and it was decided that The Plurals and Too Much Too Fast Too Soon would do an encore show at Mill Hill on Sunday night. I was pumped because I love the Mill Hill and I would’ve been bummed to be in Trenton and not get to play there. Before this last-minute show, though, we went to Too Much Too Fast Too Soon’s rehearsal space at a converted garage called Microjazz in downtown Trenton. It was a sweet space, and I was able to use some mic stands and cords along with some stuff I brought from Michigan to record Too Much Too Fast Too Soon. We recorded four songs for a potential Too Much Too Fast Too Soon/ The Plurals split record, and at the conclusion of the session I asked them if they’d be interested in joining the GTG roster. They said they’d be honored. We said we’d be honored to have them. So, everyone welcome Too Much Too Fast Too Soon into the family. They’ll be putting out their first record, on GTG, in the spring or summer. Fuck yeah.

We made our way to the Mill Hill and Too Much Too Fast Too Soon was set up and playing by 11, but apparently people at the bar were mad at us for being a little late and there were some petty bar politics going on which kind of put a damper on the night. However, the show was awesome. There was a lot of people there for a last minute show, and I feel we played a much better set than the night before (probably because of the lack of dollar PBRs). We debuted a new song called “Bean,” brought out the old/ new song and one of my personal favorites “Plastic,” and closed our set with an extended jam on “Raspberry Alarm Clock” which we haven’t played in any capacity for some time. This version included me playing the guitar with drum sticks and screaming until I could barely stand. I’ll be interested in reviewing the tape of that one. There were also people there that hadn’t caught us the night before but wanted to, so it ended up being a really good move on our part. Too Much Too Fast Too Soon played a killer set, and the night was closed out by Weiner and the Beans, the new band from ex-Rape Baby Mark Vella. We were completely out of the bar by 1 AM, but still some people were mad for some reason (I didn’t even try to understand) – I personally thought that being in and out in 3 hours is pretty damn good, and if they were so concerned about having things start earlier they could have had Weiner and the Beans play as they were there before us. Whatever, I’m really grateful to Dave for letting us play as we had a great night (Dave is also the first guy that ever booked us in Trenton, so I definitely owe him much of our happiness). We went back to Pats!e House and didn’t all fall asleep until it was daylight.

I didn’t wake up until 2 in the afternoon on Monday March 9, so an afternoon diner trip was definitely in the cards. We went to to Pat’s Diner in Trenton with Dale and Goggles (more egg beaters) before making our way up to Brooklyn. This was the first time any of us had been to New York in any capacity, so we were a bit tense, but we put on some of New York’s finest for the drive with “Marquee Moon” by Television and some Wu Tang Clan. As we got into New York, with James doing a fine and admirable job of driving into one of the biggest cities in the world, we decided to absorb some local color so we turned on the radio with the first thing we hear being a talk radio thing about “what it means to be a New Yorker” and the next thing being some crazy fucking free jazz. Yes!

We wound our way through Brooklyn, passing a bunch of Hasidic Jews in the streets, eventually finding our venue for the night, a bar called The Alligator. Brooklyn looked pretty much as I imagined it would, with a bar every few yards and almost everyone in sight carrying a guitar case. We were able to park a little ways down the block, definitely manageable for loading purposes, so… so far so good. The street we parked on, the same street the venue was on, dead-ended at the river and we could see Manhattan from across the river, which was pretty cool. We walked up to the venue to check it out and a girl outside having a cigarette flagged us down and introduced herself as Niki. I had been e-mailing Niki for months about this show, so it was nice to finally meet her. Turns out she was in a band called The Sea The Sea a few years back, and I definitely have one of their CDs, so that was cool to find out. Niki is really awesome, and she gave us a great show in New York, which is… well, it’s pretty damn cool. Thanks Niki! Our buddy Jeremy Cassar, a Michigan transplant in Brooklyn, showed up for the show, as well as my cousin Ian and his friend Justin, so there were a few familiar faces around. It was great show… by any standards, not just the fact that it was a Monday night. Nate and Danny from Used Kids (ex-Modern Machines) were in attendance as well, so it was cool to see some guys whose band I’ve followed for several years in attendance and rocking out. I broke a string halfway through the set, and accidently got unplugged at another point, but by and large it was a great set, largely an abridged version of the set we played in Baltimore but with “Plastic” making another appearance. We wound our way back through Brooklyn after saying our goodbyes, and crashed on the futons at my cousin Ian’s apartment. Once again, we found a parking spot with relative ease. We stayed up for awhile with Ian, woke up and pissed off one of his roommates, and then went to bed with the plan to get up early, get coffee with Ian before he went to work and go check out New York City for a few hours.

Of course, we woke up at 1 in the afternoon (not really sure what happened to Ian…) and had to get our shit together, get directions to our next show, and be out of the city by 2-ish. So, I suppose I have been in New York City now, but I only saw the skyline aside from Brooklyn. We’ll be back though, and I’m sure I’ll get my chance to be a tourist. We made it out of the city pretty painlessly, so… New York wasn’t nearly as intimidating as we were built up to think it was. Of course, we really only were in Brooklyn but… I’ve had a worse time in traffic in Grand Rapids or Detroit, and it certainly wasn’t as bad as driving in Chicago. The Plurals win!

On our drive from Brooklyn to Cambridge, Massachusetts, we listened to “Star Time” by James Brown, the song “Killing an Arab” by The Cure in honor to Nick’s tour reading of “The Stranger” by Albert Camus, “Chronicle” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Live Through This” by Hole, “The Killer EP,” by The Rape Babies, and “Warehouse” by Husker Du.

(I’m getting kind of sick of writing… I’m gonna call it for now. Safe and sound in Winthrop, MA).

tommyplural