Monday, April 02, 2007
Mor Def
It was the first day of The Mediocre Tour and we were chilling out in the lobby of a hospital somewhere in Oregon. Within a few hours of landing in Portland, Router's ear infection had gotten so bad that she need ed to have it checked out. After a few hours of waiting around, Router came back out and told us what was happening.
"I have a bad ear infection." She said, "The doctor says I could have gone permanently deaf in one ear."
"Well, I'm glad that didn't happen," I replied "because then you'd have terrible deaf perception."
"That would be terrible." She complained, apparently oblivious to the grade a pun I had just laid down, "I wouldn't be able to make music anymore."
"Sure you could, just change your name to Mor Def."
Again she didn't crack a smile... I probably was just talking into her bad ear.
Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour
Friday, March 30, 2007
Mediocre Tour video clips
Here are a few video clips hellavant (hella relevant) to the musical tour I just did with MC Router and Beefy.
Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour
Monday, March 19, 2007
tour wallets
In my previous blog I mentioned that I spent an entire evening (on the edge of the tour) making merch to sell at the shows. I decided to make more wallets out blue jeans to sell because that seems to be what people digging right now.So I made 8 wallets, each one slightly different, and lined them with old neck ties or upholstery fabric. I have to say they look cool, and people are buying them. One guy bought one at our first show in Seattle, then came up to me at our Portland show and pulled it out and paid for a comic book of mine... Selling shit is okay, but seeing people actually use (listen to, read, etc) something that you have made by hand is always a great feeling.
So we finally found out who we are playing with in Chico. The show will be with this local smooth talking rapper named, and I shit you not, Doctor Proper!
Or Doc Prop for short apparently.
Since our SF show was cancelled, we have been told that lots of Bay Area folks will travel to Chico. I hope so, I'd love to see lots of familiar faces.
It's always nice to see lots of friend requests on myspace, especially non-spam ones. Well today I opened up my Drown Radio account and had 18 legit requests... 13 of them were from Portland! I guess that means that I'm not the only person that liked our show. I didn't mention this before, one thing I really liked was that I was starting from zero. Most of the folks at the show knew Beefy and Router, but I only knew one or two people before the show. The crowd is always friendlier if they've heard your stuff before, but by the end of the show I felt like they enjoyed my shit just as much as the rest of the eemcees. We got our band pictures from Ryan in Seattle today and they look fantastic.
Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour, crafts
Saturday, March 17, 2007
The Mediocre Tour part I
Today is the third day of the Mediocre Tour, but the story of the Mediocre Tour goes back two months ago. Beefy and I were playing a game of chess at a coffee shop in Portland... Yeah, I live in San Francisco and Beefy lives Pasco, WA, but we were playing a chess in Portland... Fuck you, what of it? So, I was humiliatingly Beefy with my superior moves when the idea of calling up our friend MC Router and doing a tour in Mid-March.
Shortly after that conversation I slipped into a bit of a depression (unrelated to beating Beefy at chess, or the tour). It got real hard for me to do much of anything for a while, especially making music or promoting the tour as well as I could. As a result most of our lofty goals of producing Mediocre Tour EPs, shirts, buttons, and "beefyness-dot-condoms" fell through. I did send out press kits and spam some internets though. Actually, we didn't end up make any merch for the tour, but the night before I left I hovered over Shannon's sewing machine and made 8 denim wallets to sell at shows along with my comics and yo-yos.
When I arrived at the airport on Thursday morning I realized I left my laptop's power chord at home... Yeah I forgot my power chord for the computer that I would need for the tour, fuck you, what of it?
But then things got good. Being 3 hours early, and internetless, I pulled out my pencil and paper and went to work. I created 3 new pages for my next comic, they are about the infamous flatjack incident from the last time I was in Seattle. These 3 pages are fucking beautiful, they are funny and have some crazy perspective. For the first time in months I was really excited to work on something again.
So I arrive in Portland happy as hell, and meet up with Jones and Beefy and Router. Router had an ear infection... Fuck you what of it? So the first stop of The Mediocre West Coast Tour 2007? The Vancouver County Emergency Room. Turns out she had a real nasty ear infection and shit, they gave her vicodin and some other stuff. It all turned out okay, but delayed us 3 hours. For some reason, this whole part of the tour reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine. Beefy's car doesn't have to be push started or anything, however there is a button under the passenger side floorboard that kills the car. I'm not exaggerating, for some reason there is a button near the left foot that if accidentally bumped will turn off all the power and lock the steering wheel.
When we made it to Seattle things didn't get much better. We apparently have trouble with directions. In particular, we couldn't find one key street, and we nearly had several accidents trying to find it. Beefy ran a red light, and did some other really crazy shit, while we tried to find the street. It was like Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over until he gets it right. Every time we drove down those dark streets we managed to avoid fewer and fewer potholes and hazards. We made it to the show, but missed the first few acts. Yeah it was the first show of our tour and showed up late like rock stars, fuck you, what of it?
The space was beautiful, but not very full. 30 paid attendees I think. After our first song we had an iPod failure that took about 3 minutes to fix. Other than that, our first show went really well. I hadn't ever seen MC Router perform before, so that was cool. She can work a crowd really well, moving around the stage and connecting with audience. Other than all of the problems we had getting there, the show itself was fucking sweet. So no worries.
The next morning we met up with a cameraman at Gasworks Park in Seattle and did a Mediocre Tour photo shot for the Nerdcore for Life documentary. I'm really excited to see these shots. Yeah, I wanna see pics of myself. Fuck you... What of it?
So you'd think that with all of our Seattle troubles, we would be extra cautious with our directions to the Portland show. Nope. Again we got to town later than expected, and got fucking lost trying to find Hawthorne Bridge. So again we arrived to the show late (like the rockstars that we totally are). This show was a house show, about 3 blocks from Hawthorne Fish House. The houses occupants do a podcast called The Mediocre Show (sound familiar?).
There were only two bands for the evening, us and Hott Pink. Our set went fucking sweet. In spite of some feedback issues on the first few songs, our set was fun. All of us feel it was the best hip hop show we'd ever done. In my opinion, it was one of my top 5 shows I'd ever done with any band. Someday I should tell you guys about the bands that I was in 10 years ago.
I can't really hear everyone else's songs, but all of Beefy and Router's tracks sounded very hot. Of my songs, Happy Valium Meal really got the crowd jumping the most. That was surprising, given the songs preachy-straight-edge-bullshit-message. After our set, we each got crazy applause. We didn't sell much merch at this show, but we got paid enough to feel Beefy's tank twice.
So, it looks like we will make it to Seattle with time to spare, however it's raining and I'm really edgy riding in these type of conditions. Fuck you, what of it? I don't wanna be a prick, but Beefy doesn't drive any different in the rain. Despite the fact that everybody else on the road seems to.
Shortly after that conversation I slipped into a bit of a depression (unrelated to beating Beefy at chess, or the tour). It got real hard for me to do much of anything for a while, especially making music or promoting the tour as well as I could. As a result most of our lofty goals of producing Mediocre Tour EPs, shirts, buttons, and "beefyness-dot-condoms" fell through. I did send out press kits and spam some internets though. Actually, we didn't end up make any merch for the tour, but the night before I left I hovered over Shannon's sewing machine and made 8 denim wallets to sell at shows along with my comics and yo-yos.
When I arrived at the airport on Thursday morning I realized I left my laptop's power chord at home... Yeah I forgot my power chord for the computer that I would need for the tour, fuck you, what of it?
But then things got good. Being 3 hours early, and internetless, I pulled out my pencil and paper and went to work. I created 3 new pages for my next comic, they are about the infamous flatjack incident from the last time I was in Seattle. These 3 pages are fucking beautiful, they are funny and have some crazy perspective. For the first time in months I was really excited to work on something again.
So I arrive in Portland happy as hell, and meet up with Jones and Beefy and Router. Router had an ear infection... Fuck you what of it? So the first stop of The Mediocre West Coast Tour 2007? The Vancouver County Emergency Room. Turns out she had a real nasty ear infection and shit, they gave her vicodin and some other stuff. It all turned out okay, but delayed us 3 hours. For some reason, this whole part of the tour reminded me of Little Miss Sunshine. Beefy's car doesn't have to be push started or anything, however there is a button under the passenger side floorboard that kills the car. I'm not exaggerating, for some reason there is a button near the left foot that if accidentally bumped will turn off all the power and lock the steering wheel.
When we made it to Seattle things didn't get much better. We apparently have trouble with directions. In particular, we couldn't find one key street, and we nearly had several accidents trying to find it. Beefy ran a red light, and did some other really crazy shit, while we tried to find the street. It was like Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray keeps living the same day over and over until he gets it right. Every time we drove down those dark streets we managed to avoid fewer and fewer potholes and hazards. We made it to the show, but missed the first few acts. Yeah it was the first show of our tour and showed up late like rock stars, fuck you, what of it?
The space was beautiful, but not very full. 30 paid attendees I think. After our first song we had an iPod failure that took about 3 minutes to fix. Other than that, our first show went really well. I hadn't ever seen MC Router perform before, so that was cool. She can work a crowd really well, moving around the stage and connecting with audience. Other than all of the problems we had getting there, the show itself was fucking sweet. So no worries.
The next morning we met up with a cameraman at Gasworks Park in Seattle and did a Mediocre Tour photo shot for the Nerdcore for Life documentary. I'm really excited to see these shots. Yeah, I wanna see pics of myself. Fuck you... What of it?
So you'd think that with all of our Seattle troubles, we would be extra cautious with our directions to the Portland show. Nope. Again we got to town later than expected, and got fucking lost trying to find Hawthorne Bridge. So again we arrived to the show late (like the rockstars that we totally are). This show was a house show, about 3 blocks from Hawthorne Fish House. The houses occupants do a podcast called The Mediocre Show (sound familiar?).
There were only two bands for the evening, us and Hott Pink. Our set went fucking sweet. In spite of some feedback issues on the first few songs, our set was fun. All of us feel it was the best hip hop show we'd ever done. In my opinion, it was one of my top 5 shows I'd ever done with any band. Someday I should tell you guys about the bands that I was in 10 years ago.
I can't really hear everyone else's songs, but all of Beefy and Router's tracks sounded very hot. Of my songs, Happy Valium Meal really got the crowd jumping the most. That was surprising, given the songs preachy-straight-edge-bullshit-message. After our set, we each got crazy applause. We didn't sell much merch at this show, but we got paid enough to feel Beefy's tank twice.
So, it looks like we will make it to Seattle with time to spare, however it's raining and I'm really edgy riding in these type of conditions. Fuck you, what of it? I don't wanna be a prick, but Beefy doesn't drive any different in the rain. Despite the fact that everybody else on the road seems to.
Labels: beefy mc router doctor popular doc pop drown radio the mediocre tour
