GTG RECORDS

Hey. Tommy here. I’m sitting in a little cafe in Brooklyn, NY outside my cousin Ian’s apartment building. I was keeping a decent current journal but I had no way of posting it on the internet for awhile. So, I’m going to post my first two entries right now. They’re about driving to Baltimore and our experiences there. I should find some time tomorrow to write about New Jersey and New York. I will say right now that this tour has been fucking awesome so far. We’re all in good spirits, and we can’t wait to see how the rest of it pans out. We have to take off for Boston ASAP. So without further ado, here’s the first entry….

3/6/2009 3:30 PM

The “Thunder Child Tour” has begun. What is the Thunder Child? The Thunder Child is the 1997 Dodge Caravan that thundered across Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland in the night of March 5, 2009 to carry The Plurals with loyal confidant James Spreitzer to the safe haven of Robbie and Paul McCord in Baltimore, Maryland. Thunder Child came to a well deserved rest outside of the McCord complex at about 8:30 this morning. James, the true champ that he is, piloted Thunder Child for 8 of the 10 hours of the drive. Ohio and Pennsylvania take forever to drive through, and at night it’s completely monotonous, but I’m very glad we drove through the night. It makes it feel like it’s already been days since we’ve been home. It’s beautiful in Baltimore… I slept from 8:30 to 2:00 and I’m now enjoying some coffee in my brother’s apartment while listening to the new U2 album for the first time. My love for U2 is something that I often struggle with… I adore the U2 of the 90s (“Achtung Baby,” “Zooropa,” and especially “Pop”) which doesn’t seem to usually be the case with most people I meet, and the first two U2 albums of this decade have been pretty disappointing. I’m really digging this new one though, it’s definitely more in line with the weird, experimental U2 that I fell in love with, with only one U2-by-numbers song (which is what the last album was 100% composed of) and that song redeems itself to a large degree by having the awesome title “I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight.” As always, there’s chimy Edge-y guitars and lots of “whoa oh” vocals, but this time they’re not trying too hard to sound like U2, which makes them sound more like U2 to me. I really wish they’d put out another song with Edge on monotonous vocals backed up by vintage synth and Bono’s falsetto shrieks (“Numb”), but I suppose I should be happy that there’s at least one of those songs out there.

So yeah… music. Past readers and friends of mine will remember that I have a really hard time sleeping while in a moving car, and last night was no exception. Even though I barely got six hours of sleep the night before and got up at 8 AM yesterday and had a full day of school, work, and running around prepping for tour, I was generally alert and awake for the majority of the drive last night, which, aside from a couple dozing-off-for-a-few-minutes bouts here and there put me awake for 24 hours by the time we got to Baltimore. Hattie, Nich, and James each got some sleep on the drive, so they went walking around Baltimore when we got to my brothers’ apartment, but I hit the couch promptly. I still remember last night’s playlist though, due to my intense focus on music as my only means of entertainement for 10 hours. Something like this: “Let it Be” by The Replacements, “Rated R” by Queens of the Stone Age, “Come on Pilgrim,” by The Pixies, “Thirteen Songs” by Fugazi, a Frank Zappa album of James’, a Rocket From the Crypt album of James’, a couple random songs – “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster” by Geto Boys and “Smile” by Lily Allen, “Good News for People Who Love Bad News” by Modest Mouse, random song “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy” by Rod Stewart, “The Bends” by Radiohead, “Fever to Tell” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Angel Dust” by Faith No More, and “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel. Not a bad run.

I just got a call from my brother Robbie. He just got out of work, so he’ll be home in a little while. I’m psyched to see my brothers. We’re actually getting to spend today, tonight, and tomorrow in Baltimore as opposed to the last few times we’ve been here when we’ve just been around for a night, so that’s cool. I’m excited about our show tonight… yeah! Updates forthcoming.

3/7/2009 4:00 PM

Listening to Sugar in my brother’s apartment. We’re taking a quick round of showers before beginning our trip to New Jersey. The show last night was awesome. We played at Metro Gallery, which is an art gallery, bar, and live music venue, so the vibe was really cool and the staff was real easygoing. We played with two Baltimore bands, American Riot and The Rivals. American Riot did a 25 minute set of distorted pop/ rock a la early Replacements and Bay City Rollers (whom they covered). The Rivals closed out the show with a great set of anthemic alternative rock (the good kind). We played their first show ever with them in Baltimore last year and they sounded awesome last night. Super cool guys too, I’m hoping to make it a tradition to play with them in Baltimore. I think our set was really good. I usually know if the set was good if I can barely stand at the end of it. We played a set comprised mostly of songs from the “Whatevers Forever” album and three new songs (“Gaia,” “Queensy,” and “The Sun”). There was a great turnout at the show and everyone seemed really receptive to our music. Basically, about the best you could ask for on the first night of a tour in a town where we’re relatively unknown. We made vague plans with the manager to come back in late June, so… looks like Baltimore and The Plurals will continue to be friends. Yay.

After the show we hung out in the Forest Hill neighborhood of Baltimore where my brothers live. It’s basically the “college town” part of Baltimore, and walking around at 1:30 AM there is akin to doing the same in East Lansing except there’s a bar on every block for several blocks. Nich, James, and I walked around and made a game out of saying stereotypical “bro” things as we walked by groups of bros getting out of the bar – a couple lines I delivered were “Bro, I don’t mean to get fresh but that shit was just fuckin’ ‘tarded” and “Bro, I know you thought that bitch was tight but she was a fuckin skank.” Then things gradually got more absurd, leading me to saying when we walked by some wasted guys hanging outside an apartment: “I mean, what do you do when you’re asked to assist a suicide?” Our enemy is the status quo, our only friend is chaos.

We wanted to get a couple beers before we called it a night, but the bars were expensive and all of the liquor stores close at 9 for some reason, so we were resigned to concluding the night dry. As we were walking back to my brothers’ apartment after our bro-baiting adventure there was a big truck blocking a side street and the 50ish guy driving it was talking to a woman and not paying attention to anything around. We noticed a pack of Miller Lite in the bed of his truck and as we walked around the truck Nich reached right into the bed and pulled out three beers as we kept walking. Laughing all the way back to the apartment, we retired by enjoying our sweet Miller Lite and watching “Billy Madison” on the On Demand.

We spent today hanging out in the Fells’ Point neighborhood of Baltimore where there were a lot of record stores and hipster stuff of the like. My brothers treated us to a nice greasy breakfast at a diner called Jimmy’s (excellent home fries, might I add). We stopped at the nationally reknowned record shop Sound Garden (great name) and Hattie and Nich picked up some records. My brothers are awesome… they treated us to a great time out here, and it’s awesome that it’s just the beginning of tour. Of course, we’re probably experiencing the nicest weather of the trip, but… yeah, tour! Jersey’s coming up in a few hours… we’ve never had a bad time there. Looks like my shower turn is here. Thunder Child, go!

God, I Love NASA. Does anybody else like NASA like I do? I know some people who are mad about NASA and they say things like, “Why don’t we just spend the money on the things we need to do here on earth, like feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless?”. Well, I’d like to see full people and sheltered people do anything as awesome as what NASA can do.

on March 7, 2009 at 3:49:57, NASA launched the Kepler Mission, A totally awesome thing that only totally awesome people like.

I dig space, man. I dig space hard.

ALSO, up on our blog at THE EUREKA FLAG, We Have a Excellent Cover Version of an excellent song by SparkleHorse, off of their first album, “vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot”. I didn’t even google how to write out the album name; I like the album so much, I just know how to write it.

That album qualifies as an extreme influence on my childhood (even though as you’ll read in our blog, I hated it first) and it made me wonder about all y’alls childhood influences. So, reply to this blog with some of your favorite old records, and if you want you could record a cover like we did (well, I did).

LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

I hope to see a Plurals tour diary soon.

TimmyGTG

Thanks to everyone who come out last night. It was probably the best time we’ve ever had playing a show at Mac’s Bar. Take that as you will. Lots of familiar faces, old faces, new faces, small faces… yeah. Special thanks to Mike and D from fucking Almost Argyle who drove up from Elgin, IL to catch the show. Coolest guys ever – http://www.myspace.com/almostargyle. My parents and Nich’s parents made it out too, which is a bit of a rare occurence. I’m always glad to see them… I hope they enjoy themselves. I understand watching your son flail onstage and scream “crumble at the feet of the starving elite” might be a bit uncomfortable, but… it’s not like I wasn’t doing something similar and lamer 9 years ago.

Sorry I didn’t make it to the after-party at the Owl House… I ended up, uh… unable to drive, at my house.
We’re about to go on tour, and, boy, I’m feeling good about it.

tommyplural

We (A Paschal Circus) Have Got An Idea That Might Be Fun For All Of Us To Do.

But First, every good blog post deserves an excellent picture, so here is “Anton and Spider”, two men you don’t fuck with:

Anyways.

We just wrote a song for a compilation record “The Cedar Rock Basement Program”. We had to tab out every single chord for the song so that other people all around michigan could learn how to play it in order to contribute to the track.
It gave us an idea; We’d like to learn some GTG songs, in some sort of a song swap! Pretty much we will all tab out our songs, post the tabs here, and then listen to what other people make of them!

Because this is our idea, we’ll start it off. We Expect High Turnout! This is great “Blog” content!

Our Song Contribution is “It Was Barren And Then It Died”. The tabs and song audio are posted over on our blog, The Eureka Flag. We’d love to hear what you guys can do with it! Maybe It’s Too Hard For You Suckas!
LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS

I am sitting here at school next to a giant display of a family sitting around a television. The display looks like a window looking to a house, or so I think, the display is painted like bricks. Anyways, the entire family have televisions for heads. It’s pretty rad actually. I’ve been hiding out on the 3rd floor lately between classes. There is this girl that I’ve become sort of friends with that is really kind of getting on my nerves. She knows I hang on the second floor between classes, so she comes to talk to me. So I’ve decided to start hanging out on the 3rd floor. It’s not that I don’t like the girl. She is a nice girl. Its just she talks a lot, and when I say a lot I mean just simply saying a lot is an understatement. I have her in my painting class and she talks my head off there. I know this is really mean, but when its between classes on Mondays and Wednesdays I really like to put on my headphones and just listen to some music. There are a handful of places I can actually dissect and listen to albums so I can truly form an opinion. And between classes are one of those times. So this girl has life full of drama, and I do truly feel bad for her, but honestly the friendship was formed by me simply asking a yes or no question and suddenly she felt compelled to tell me her life story. Am I an asshole? Probably. I barely tell her anything about me so why would she be compelled to me everything? I don’t understand girls. She keeps telling me too that she has to meet my girlfriend so she can “approve” of her. What the hell? Approve? I’ve known her less than 5 months. She was suppose to be my future roommate along with this other girl, but I decided that before I got to know her. Once I decided to live with her, since she seemed nice, I decided I should probably get to know her. Anyways, I dodged her today by hiding on the 3rd floor, she found me, talked my ear off. I started to act like I was paying bills online and she left. Awesome huh? 

So tomorrow is the last day before I go all organic for lent. I have been forcing myself to eat bad lately. I had Burger King the other day, yesterday I ate a 5 dollar pizza, I have been drinking a lot of pop too. Tommy, Hattie and Loren are going vegan, I think along with some BMP guys. I would like to do that but I enjoy meat too much to give it up. So I decided to go organic. I made a few rules with it. Everytime I am around those that go Vegan I will eat Vegan along with them. Anytime I go to eat somewhere and they have a vegan selection I will choose from that. Other than that, it has to be simply organic. I am decided whether to drink organic milk or soy milk. I am really starving now too, at school they have these chicken flourentines that are amazing. So I have to get my fill of those today, I’ll probably have my last vanilla latte from there too. 

I was thinking the other day while going to work, I was comparing different musicians to members of the GTG. When thinking of Loren, I thought of Pat Smear right away. I could see the Plurals make it big and Loren would just show up and play with them every once in a while. Same thing with The Break-Ups, I couldn’t imagine touring without Loren for some reason. Weird? I don’t know. Tommy, as far as musically would be a cross between Dave Grohl and Jack White. Because like those two, Tommy seems to find himself everywhere. I thought of the Jack White scenario simply because he is involved heavily in two bands, The Plurals and The Break-Ups just as Jack is involved in The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. But its the same thing with Hattie, I would call Hattie our Dave Grohl too. She is everywhere. I don’t know. Someone should reply to this and give me their opinion. Yeah, do that.  Who would you compare each member of the GTG too? Now.

Hey! It’s me, Jeremy Quentin (Head and Toe).
After months of rest and relaxation I have decided to take on the country with a new record entitled, “Read me May,” and SIX MONTHS OF TOURING! The album is in the process of recording in Brooklyn, NY with Canada‘s lead singer and acclaimed songwriter, Joe Scott. After the late spring release of the album, I’ll be taking on a two month tour of the East Coast, on my bicycle. After which, I’ll be returning to the home of my early years in the Great Lake State for a month of touring and festival going, followed by 3 more months of shows in the Midwest, the South, and East Coast.

Check out my new site  @ myspace.com/quentinsong.

Upcoming gigs:
Feb. 25- Luna Cafe…. Cambridge, MA…. w/ John Davey
Feb. 26- Squawk Coffee House…. Cambridge, MA…. w/ John Davey
Feb. 27- House Show….. Cambridge, MA (private)…. w/ John Davey
April 10- GoodBye Blue Monday…. Brooklyn, NY…. w/ Juviley
April 11- The Fire…. Philadelphia, PA…. Early Acoustic Show

My class got cancelled today so I’m spending valuable afternoon time (eye roll) hanging out at work and using the computer to try to book the last couple days of The Plurals tour. I can’t wait to go on tour again. The last couple tours The Plurals did were with other bands (Cartridge Family in the summer and Cheap Girls in the fall) so we’re anxious to get on the road for a solo tour again. Touring with other bands is a lot of fun, particularly in the downtime before and after shows, but it’s a lot harder to make an impression on people when you’re part of a “package” and neither band ends up moving as much merch as they would solo. This tour should be good though. The last few times we’ve gone out for a week+ we’ve done half of it on the east coast and half of it in the midwest, but this time we’re focusing entirely on the east coast. We’ll be making our first appearances in New York City and New England and there’s people in all of the towns that want us to come play. We are, of course, most excited about returning to Trenton, NJ. Our band-brothers The Rape Babies broke up in the fall and 3/4 of them have reformed as Too Much Too Fast Too Soon and I’m so excited to hear the new band and get to see all of our friends. This will be the first time we’ve played out there with the new record out as well, which is exciting to deliver new material to people that want it!

New material… man, we’ve got it in spades. We recorded a show in December that we’re set to put out really soon. We played a lot of old stuff and some unreleased stuff, and the recording (by our old friend and confidant Tony Rodebaugh) sounds awesome. We’re not making a big deal out of this recording, it’s just a fun little document of us playing a strange set for a group of people, and pretty much it’s just going to be one more thing that we’ll have to sell at shows. I know there are a few nostalgic Plurals fans out there that are still into Shark Sandwich and Stickball, so at the very least they should enjoy some new versions of those “classics.”

We’re finishing Whatevers Forever leftovers with Eric Merckling, and we’ll put those out probably in the summer. We have so much material that we’re considering recording some more stuff for these projected EPs, if nothing else than to keep some material fresh. We’re a prolific songwriting band, and since we took our time trying to make Whatevers Forever as good as we could (which I think we did) we racked up almost a whole album’s worth of new songs in the time it took us to put the record out. In Ryan Horky’s year-end 2008 “best of” list (at www.myspace.com/unclesamsrecordemporium) he said about us “Like Husker Du, by the time they drop a new record, they’re already playing the new stuff live and I’m more excited to hear the NEXT record than what I have in my hand”. This is, in some ways, true about how the band feels. There are some nights where we want to just play all of the new stuff, screw the record, and sometimes we do play sets that are 80% unreleased material, which is fun but at the same time we don’t want to neglect the record that we’re really proud of. (As I’m typing this, I realize I haven’t talked about the latest idea with Nich yet, so, Nich, if you read this before I talk to you about it, uh… sorry? Oh yeah, and you owe me $40 for electric/ water, but I was thinking we could just take it out of my share of the heat bill… ttyl brah!). At our last recording session Eric suggested we do two EPs, and spin them as Whatevers Forever companion pieces, be it with an alternate version of an album song or similar artwork or something, and put some of these new songs on them as well. I’ve wanted to record at Broadside Productions in Kalamazoo for a long time now, and if we went in there with some of these new songs that we have tight as a live band, I think we could get some really cool recordings. Then, if we want to do more “produced” versions of these songs we could re-record them with Eric for the next album. I did set a Black Flag circa 1984 goal in my head to try to put 4 things out in 12 months. I think we might.

Uh… a guy named Kevin gave a little review of Whatevers Forever on his blog… Check it out here… it’s about halfway down the page. Thanks Kevin! There should be a couple more of these bloggy/ziney reviews of the record soon.

Cheap Girls are recording some of their record in the GTG House studio. It’s cool having those guys around. They’re doing a lot of cool things these days and I’m happy to be a part of it.

The Break-Ups have a show at State Grounds in Hastings tomorrow (Feb 20) that should be a good time. State Grounds is one of my favorite places to play, and I’ve played it with The Break-Ups probably a dozen times, The Plurals 3 or 4 times, and one of my rare-as-hell solo acoustic sets was there too. I love Bob, the owner. It’s a good place. The show is free, and all ages are welcome. Our good friend, sometimes roommate, and maybe GTG member (I always forget to ask her, although I’ve meant to many times) Jessi Spreitzer opens the show. 

Damn, no replies on my latest round of booking requests yet. Can anyone get The Plurals some shows in up state New York on March 12 and/ or 13?

tommyplural

HELLO IT IS TIME FOR US TO HELP.

How are you all doing?

We (A Paschal Circus) are on this label
too as you may know, and while we
aren’t playing with The Jason Alarm or
Devo, The Plurals or Squarepusher or any
of the other fine Good Time Gang bands,(or
anyone else for that matter, we haven’t
been doing too much booking (although we
have been doing a lot of “booking”, as our
members are studiously schooling
themselves at the area’s finest colleges))
We do just want to make our presence
felt in some small way.

SO we thought it would be appropriate
to share with you our grief and sorrow
over the passing of one of the nation’s
greatest natural treasures; namely, this
woman’s fingernails.

REINFORCED WITH ADAMANTIUM? YOUR DOING IT WRONG.
Unfortunately for this Guinness book of
World Champion, her nails were lost in
a tragically suspenseful (nailbiting?) car
accident, leaving the world without a
perfectly reasonable substitute for
Wolverine.

“Lee Redmond from Salt Lake City, Utah, had not cut her nails since 1979.

Their combined length was more than 28ft (8.5m), with the longest nail – on her right thumb – measuring 2ft 11in (89cm), Guinness said.”(BBC)

Everyday, there is some that makes you
laugh, makes you cry, or gives you
that little twinkle in your eye—and all
of these things are dutifully reported
on THEGTG. Or at least they should be.

LOVE A PASCHAL CIRCUS
OUR MYSPACE FOR WHERE OUR SONGS ARE

Also We Have Our Own Blog Now!
CHECK IT OUT!

I am sitting here in my apartment in good ol’ Grand Rapids, MI. Coffee is brewing, my socks are off, just got done listening to some Cheap Girls. I’ve gained a little case of the sniffles, which sucks, but its ok. This weekend is the only weekend this month I don’t have a show, which is cool. I like having months packed full of shows, its been a long time since that has happened.

In between school and work this week, I’ve had little time to sit and relax. I started getting a cold around Tuesday, so gaining that on top of numerous projects and tests, well it left me a little unmotivated. I didn’t get to have my weekly Abbey Divine jam either, so that just made the week more weird. Having Zach Burger come over to my apartment to jam is a weekly thing that I look forward to every week. Even if it is just us playing random Beatle covers and drinking beer.

A lot of shows coming up. Today The Plurals play in Grand Ledge with Jason Alarm and The Smashing Blumpkins. So if you are in GR, check that out.

Tomorrow, Feb 14 The Plurals are playing in Grand Rapids at Mixtape cafe with a bunch of other bands. Shows at 6, so be sure if you are in that area come check it out. And I believe later that night there is a Cheap Girls show at Mulligans. I think that’s 21+. But the Plurals show is all ages, so be sure to check that one out.

Next week Friday, the Break-Ups have a show at State Grounds Coffeehouse in Hastings, MI. New songs, same rock and roll, same cup of coffee. Shows at 8, our beloved Jessi Spreitzer is playing also. We love her.

I don’t know what I really wanted to write on here. I just realized no one had posted today, so I wanted to make sure that there was a daily post. So I just promoted shows.