TALES FROM THE
CUTOUT BIN VIII
The Record Industry May Be in
Shambles But We Feel No Guilt.

TAMPA: A VERY VERY
CURTAILED HISTORY
And the Current State of Our
Metal Scene.

UNDERGROUND METAL
REISSUES VII
Some Germans, some Brazilians, some Christians, some weirdos walk into a bar...

UNDERGROUND METAL
REISSUES VI
Some Germans, some Brazilians, some Christians, some weirdos walk into a bar..

LOS VIOLADORES
A Retrospective Conversation
with Pil Trafa vocalist of the
Argentinean punk legends.

TALES FROM THE
CUTOUT BIN VII
Eight Old Ones Get Resurrected
From the Can.

UNDERGROUND
METAL REISSUES V
Naglfar, Gorguts, Dark Funeral,
Blessed Death, etc,

BULLDOZER
The Story of the Legendary
Italian Thrash Metal Band

TALES FROM THE
CUTOUT BIN VI
Eight New Heavyweight Cutout
Bin Dwellers.

UNDERGROUND
METAL REISSUES IV
Disincarnate, Paradox,
Quick Change, etc

TALES FROM THE
CUTOUT BIN V
A New Installment in Our
Nobel Prize Winning Series

KIN PING MEH
70's Kraut Prog That Makes
Good Use of Restrain and Puts
the Emphasis in Songrwriting

UNDERGROUND
METAL REISSUES 3
Metal Classics Get the Treatment

TALES FROM THE
CUTOUT BIN IV
Record Hunting in South
America for Spain's Post
Punk Classics

MORE FEATURES

Classified Transistor Transistor under ‘great music’. Learn your history and don’t forget to pick up a copy of their uber awesome 2005 release Erase All Name and Likeness. But first, check their brand new record Ruined Lives; it kicks and screams just where and when it should. After you are done with that hop onto their MySpace page, check their tour dates and go see them live. Then by them some food… This is the tour diary by Transistor Transistor’s bassist Garrison Nein.

This past weekend, my band Transistor Transistor played a series of shows to celebrate the release of our new full length record. It had been a long time coming. We started writing the first songs on the album back in 2005, and finally put the thing to bed in January of 2008. At its essence, Transistor Transistor is four men on a shoestring budget who could barely put our heads together to tie a pair of shoes. I'm not sure how we manage to make it from point A to point B, which we are required to do often.

The first stages are always the same. Despite his hard-on for Boston sports, one of our guitar players lives in Philadelphia. Every time we want to play a show, there is a cannonball run for him up to New Hampshire for a quick and dirty practice, followed by a few rounds of foosball and some chips and hummus. We practice in a basement at the bottom of a hill, and as such, the first time loading up our van after a long hiatus is always a refreshing experience. Anyone who has seen us knows that we make up for our lack of any kind of musicianship with a titanic wall of gear, and I can assure you that packing it up at the end of the day is no easy task.

As a band, we function on a tenuous agreement with our van. It - to an extent - works, and as an exchange, we grant it the precious mid-grade gas that it pines for. The vehicle holds little nostalgic value for me. Often times when we have to use it, we are all stressed to our own individual breaking points. Due to an ex-member's lovely habit, our center console reeks of cherry Skoal. It has for at least 5 years now and shows no sign of fading away. The van has carpeted floors that were installed by younger and more ignorant versions of ourselves who had no right installing carpet in anything, let alone something that would function as a makeshift bed/kitchen. It creaks, it moans. This weekend, two of us were convinced that while parked at a stoplight we had a motorcycle revving behind us. The van had just picked up a new rattle. It's a hairy situation when what is realistically your home is one step away from driving off the highway and exploding, Hans Moleman style.

This past Friday, we played in Manchester, New Hampshire, the first of three shows. All in all, it was a great time. Early summer in New Hampshire is always something to behold. The state stays sunny and cool until the humidity rolls in around July, and this Friday was no different. We left my house on the Seacoast late in the day with plenty of time to arrive. The load in situation was a breeze. Straight through the side door, and onto a stage that we weren't even using. A nice PA with plenty of power, a healthy bit of room to set up merch, and the Celtics game on the big TV behind the bar were just a few reasons that this show was setting up to be exactly what we needed it to be. Every band played to a receptive and excited audience. This was the first show that Converge had played in New Hampshire in 10 years, and the kids ate it up. I felt like I was 15 again. After the show, I spent some time with some of the guys in The Network watching two drunk guys fight in the parking lot. The Celtics won, too. Doesn't get any better than that.

Saturday was Connecticut. I'll say this about Connecticut - it takes a long time to drive through. I think I may have had good falafel there at some point. We played a basement show at a punk house where some dude got way too rowdy and was stepping on broken glass right in front of me with bare feet. He was neck deep in a drug trance, so everyone just backed off of him and let him dance to the reggae that he thought we were playing. I took my shirt off, played too fast, and almost threw up in their zine storage room. Not a bad time. Afterwards, we drove through the night to get to Brooklyn. We stayed with a great friend in the city, he and I talked about tabletop RPGs and our obsession with similar pursuits while my band looked on ashamedly.

Sunday we all woke up too early to find ourselves hungry and beaten from the previous night. The headbang headache is no myth, and I was caught in its grasp. Three hours of sleep, and a full day of carousing in Park Slope later, we were arriving at one of my favorite venues in the city - The Cake Shop. Vegan cake, drink tickets, a pretty sweet sound system, and typically a great crowd - the Cake Shop rarely lets us down. Everyone was excited to be playing, there was a decent sized crowd, and some truly excellent bands joining us. We played as well as I could have hoped - it was the set we had been waiting for all weekend. In 2005, we played probably over 150 shows, and because of that we used to be a precision instrument. Sunday felt just like that - taking clues from one another, and in the end bringing the set up to a snarling climax, and back down to a perfect close with a tight jam that we had never been introduced to before, it just worked.

Two of us had things to do Monday morning, so the only solution was to drive through the night to get back to New Hampshire. I elected myself to drive, which in retrospect probably wasn't the safest idea considering my lack of sleep, but things came to an uneventful conclusion. We made it back to New Hampshire as the sun was coming up, keeping ourselves awake by impersonating monster truck rally announcers and by claiming that the drummer of Dream Theater was opening a teen crisis hotline.

We head out again in a week or so, a two week mosey out to Dudefest in Indiana. It will be the first thing that we've done in over a year that actually resembles touring, and I'm anxious to see how well it goes. In the past year or so, all four of us have moved, one of us is now married, and another is in school full time. We all work like mad to ensure that we have enough money to do this and break even, and although I would like to avoid sappy bullshit, I couldn't have a better group of friends to be doing it with.

In conclusion, check out our MySpace page for tour dates, or get in contact with us through smoke signals to see when we will be in your area, because if you have made it this far we would certainly like to see you at one of our shows this summer. Also, if you're interested - we do have that new record. It's called Ruined Lives, and it should be in stores and sketchy Eastern European blogs right now. Up the punks.

-Garrison Nein, Transistor Transistor, June 2008

Official Site
MySpace
Level Plane Records Site