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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
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