Ok, the tour is over and I’m tired.� I have finished updating the blog and will add more pictures and a synopsis of the tour soon.� I have learned quite alot and it was a good experience overall.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Yes, tour over. We woke up at 7am in WV and drove to Bowling Green KY around 2pm.

TOUR OVER

… tired.

I’ll put up all the stats and a synopsis soon.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

We grabbed some bagels on the way out of Philly and arrived in Baltimore around 3pm. I found a coffee shop with wifi and updated the blog.

Around 7:30, we went to The Metro Gallery and setup our gear. They had a projector so I hooked up the laptop as well for visuals during both our sets. There weren’t going to be many people since the headlining act, notendo, had to cancel due to an equipment failure (he lost his gameboy songs somehow) and there was another, bigger show in town.

We played with local visual artist, Mark Brown, who played a live set with really awesome frame-screwed visuals. Something around grabbing specific motion in a group of movie frames and playing say, 20 frames at once so the motion kind of builds on top of itself. It looked almost like cell shaded animation all animated at once with in a buffer.

A group of people came a bit later on and we had a good set for them. We were told, in reference to Brandon’s Daft Punk cover and my dancing, that the only thing Daft Punk had on us was a 1000+ people show. I sold out all my cd’s and we got paid pretty well despite the lack of people.

Since we did not end up meeting anyone to stay with, we were looking at a night in the van. The next day was an off day and the Fredericksburg show seemed iffy. The show promoters did not seem to care too much (bad sign). We did not really want to pay for a day or two of hotel rooms just to play one more show that did not seem like it would be too good. In the end, we decided to cancel the Fredricksburg show and drive home right away.

We drove most of the night on through West Virginia, ate at a Waffle House, and slept in the van around 4am at a snowy mountain pass.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

… slept in and drove out of Brooklyn across the Verrazanno-Narrows Bridge.

This is the second time I have played at The Fire, a bar + stage. The first was in the May 2005 7inchwave tour. This was an all ages show and started early, around 5pm and there was a show scheduled afterwards, around 8:30.

There 6 bands, including us:

• Cheap Dinosaurs: awesome gameboy + live synth tracks
• Animal Style: a gameboy maestro + live guitar and custom gameboy foot pedals
• Vytear: super sampling glitchcore
• Seanicus: bleepy laptop beats
• No Carrier: a visual guy who did not end up coming

Our sets went great and we got some good comments.

There was good promotion and fliers around town which brought a good amount of people on a Thursday. We almost didn’t get any money since the venue did not feel like there was enough people.

Later on, we grabbed some Philly “Cheese-Fakes” (veggie) with my friends Evan and Kaia. We stayed with the brother of one of Brandon’s friends.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Ok, originally there was a show in New Brunswick NJ but it fell through so we ended up with another day off … which we did nothing but watch tv. Seriously, here we are in Brooklyn with all of the crazy things to do in NYC and we did nothing. THAT is being on tour, we were just tired and did not feel like doing anything. Later in the evening, we grabbed some food (me=hamburger) and dropped by a shoegaze show in Williamsburg at the Glasspint? Gallery. I caught Austin band Ringo Death Starr who put on a solid My Bloody Valetine-esque performance. They happen to be friends with my buds Russ and Grusha in She, Sir.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

We did nothing all day … watched some Japanese samurai flicks on the Kung Fu HD channel. I caught up on some notes.

We hit the venue, The Cakeshop, around 6pm on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and grabbed some pizza (big spinach + feta slices). I also met up with a former classmate, Peter, who now works at the UN. The Cakeshop is good venue with a coffee shop upstairs and a bar+stage in the basement. Brandon soon discovered they had Black and Tans that consisted of Guiness and cider.

We played with a dj group called Neon Coyote who does great rereremixes. Out sets went well and we rocked out those present. There was a little confusion over what a “direct box” is, but we straightened that out with Brandon’s mixer. There was dancing when Neon Coyote hit it.

The door guy came down during Neon Coyote’s set to say that we did not make more then the bar’s target door sales, so we would not get any money. I know we were close and, after his announcement, about 10 more people came in which would probably have sent us over. Naturally, we got no money. I still have yet to make any money in New York city whereas we do great at house shows in the middle of no where. I guess it’s because house shows are glad to have us and New York venues think we should be grateful they have us. That’s how it goes.

Blahblah, it was still a good experience and I think we sold a cd or 2.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

After $20+ in tolls, we arrived in Brooklyn early and had a chance to relax at Jenn and Yawen’s house in Bedsty. They are members of Brandon’s record label, Mushpot.

We played at Solas, a bar on the Lower East side of Manhattan and the show was put together by an electronic music club, Splice. There was a deal with the bar that if it made over a certain amount of bar sales, it would give the rest to us. It didn’t, so we did not get any money this night. 🙁

Vusac and Blipvert were the other acts. Vusac is a drum and bass beat maker and Blipvert ground out his glitchy digigrindcore. I had some problems with the speaker setup and my sound was missing one of the channels which messed me up a bit. We had it working fine for Brandon. Our sets when well overall and there were some people having a good time.

There is a CMJ blog right up about the show. Read it here at cmj.com.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

We woke up late in the van at the rest stop, about 3pm, and drove to Albany.

The venue, Valentines, had 2 shows booked simultaneously: ours downstairs and a big ska show upstairs. The door guys kept sending people upstairs, including my relatives who came to see me. I had to go and grab them from the crowd before we started playing downstairs.

We played with Beware! The Other Head of Science and Zahnarzt. I was feeling a bit sick and left with my relatives after we played first, but Brandon stuck around. Beware is a power group with drums, synths, and guitars. Zahnarzt rocked it with electro beats, glam, and a ipod backing track. Brandon said they were awesome.

Our sets went well and there were lots of people who were into it. I ended up dancing with a bunch of people. Since there was a show upstairs, we could hear the other band through the ceiling and the sound guy kept turning me down. That was not cool, but I think the show was a success overall.

We sold some cds but the door money deal was kind of shady. There was a $5 cover yet we only mabey 1/6th of what I would estimate as the total amount.

We stayed with my Aunt Pat in Schenectady with food, showers, and real beds!

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Before we left Detroit, I went to a clinic and found out I had a sinus infection. I got a prescription and picked up some medication.

Then … navigation error. We had the gps navigator set to AVOID toll roads … which meant it routed us around both Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. I didn’t notice this until 3 hours later past Cleveland … when we should have been almost there if we went to Canada via Detroit. I had read the navigators ETA as “7pm” when it actually read “7:00am”. I don’t know why we did not question the route around Lake Erie until it was far too late.

Needless to say we were now hopelessly late. Our arrival time, after allowing toll roads, was now 11:30pm. Brandon called the venue and the guy said it would be alright, shows were late on Friday’s anyway: “whenever you get here will be fine”. We were searched at the Canadian border which added another 20 minutes.

We made it right to the venue, Sneaky Dee’s, at 11:30 and played around midnight. There was a sampling/electronic guy who must have been playing for at least and hour, hour and a half but I don’t remember his name. Our sets went well and a few people there seemed to be into it. However, the guy we called did not tell the door guys were still coming so they assumed the show was off and did not charge any cover .. so we did not make any money. We did not find a place to stay, so we drove back to the US and slept in the van at a NY Thruway service plaza around 4am.

EDIT: Disclaimer, Laromlab’s music is all stolen. Read here.

Ok, this wasn’t in Detroit technically, but Southfield, MI. The show was moved since Scrummage University was moving to a new location. We now found ourselves at Guy‘s house, Porphyria, which is a sort of community house for “those who know” and is full of books and crazy videos (erotic vampire flicks for instance). Lot’s of people came by and Guy and friends were cooking catfish … so we even got free catfish pasta. I took the opportunity to make some cds as well.

We played with an awesome band called The Apes. I don’t think they were so thrilled to play a house show, but they rocked it hard regardless. We had a great show and people loved it. We sold some cds too and made some money.

After the shoe, Guy’s house cleaner Jenny took some pictures with all my stuff … but that is another story.

We stayed at the house that night … I was still sicky sicky and had a hard timegetting to sleep.