News From The Front

Anime Boston was quite a wild happening. Who knew that 80% of all Anime con attendees cosplay on a competitive basis? Who knew that you could make a 14-foot sword out of duct tape? Or that teenage girls are allowed by their parents to dress like retrofuturistic Victorian space tramps in a public setting? Maybe for you all this is old hat, and it was only Frontalot who got his ignorance obliterated over the weekend.

So! Onwards to the AFI Dallas showings of Nerdcore Rising: The Movie, Thurs Apr 3 and Fri Apr 4. Not only that, but Front and band are doing a set at the festival’s party that Thursday night (it’s a “Premiere Pass Only” event – so sell your car or win the lottery or whatever and get yourself one).

And then? Front is not scheduled to be in Atlanta for the showings at that fine town’s film fest, but you are all encouraged to get encrunkled and throw popcorn at JBB who may feature in both the film and the film’s audience. That’s somewhere in the Apr 10-19 range.

Wait, and after that? Front definitely will be in Boston Apr 25-27, for two showings of NR:TM and yet another tie-in concert, plus ROFLcon is that weekend, so who knows how zany things are going to get. Okay, yes. Very zany. At the least.

There’s more on the schedule, which we’ll discuss later. Or you can check it out now.

Frontalot is still trying to catch up on sleep. Did you know they do not have sleep in Texas? They do have: drinking. Anyway, Front is back in Brooklyn for a moment, then off to Boston for the anime con, then back to Texas for AFI, then maybe off to Atlanta for another film fest, then back to Boston for the indie film fest, then probably hiding under the covers begging everyone to stop scheduling things that involve lengthy plane rides for a while.

News post anchor tag lackage!! Use teh googles to find some or all of these rad youngsters who Front caught at SxSW: Holy Fuck, Mae Shi, Thee Oh Sees, The Matches, Reggie Watts, The Spinto Band, and Hanson. Maybe you already heard of that last band. Front also caught sets by Del, Talib Kweli, and Perry Farrell. But he missed Terp 2 It and The Dodos. Darn it! Maybe he’ll have to go again sometime.

SxSW is suddenly full of sauntering musicians with aviator shades and guitar cases. Front is anon again, hooray! The second screening filled up too, but the Friday afternoon showing of Nerdcore Rising: The Movie is probably a safe bet for non-festival-badge-holding normal peoples. Front will be there to say hello to you after. Tonight? Front will be watching the heck out of a Del Tha Funkee Homosapien concert. And you, far-away reader? You will content yourself with the NR:TM crew’s awesome video blogs [1] [2] [3].

Okay, that was nuts. The premiere of the movie sold out, then the afterparty got totally packed. Front rocked out with utmost efficiency, enjoying the services of The Categorical Imperative and NR:TM costar The Sturgenius in a reuniontastic closing mini-set, after which Prince Paul’s DJ set was, let’s admit it, the real highlight of the evening. By the end of the night, the director was slow-dancing with Morgan Spurlock. The world has turned insane.

Front would like to extend a personal apology to the folks who tried and failed to attend the movie and/or the party last night. Nobody over here wants to throw the kinds of events where there are big lines out front and some people get in and others don’t. In fact, that’s a bunch of ass crap! But, as we’ve learned, that’s how these hipster music and film festivals work. There were so many festival passholders at the premiere that zero tickets went to “the public.” Same deal at the performance. Argh! From the whole team, we feel really lousy about that. We hope you are not so crestfallen that you refuse to try again. There are still showings on Tues night and Fri afternoon. (Fri is in the gigantic theater.) We wish we could offer promises of seats, but there’s kind of a lot of buzz going on. “Buzz?” Christ, we sound like a bunch of film world assholes, don’t we?

How’s this: if you’re near the front of the trying-to-buy-a-ticket line Tues night, but don’t get in, Frontalot or trusted surrogate will come by and give you an old (vintage new! not used) tour tee shirt. It might not fit, but it will make a nice memento. Hooray for consolation prizes.

In extended SxSW news: Front is exhausted. He has been doing press appearances nonstop. You should be able to see him on IFC tonight at 8:15 Eastern, G4TV constantly, Variety.com, Wired.com, Spike, and ten zillion other thingies and whatnots. If we could keep track of them all, we’d offer HREFs. Instead, it’s catch as catch can. The festival is big fun, despite hipsterism. So far, Front has seen Second Skin, which was fantastic, a Randomconcert, which was awesome, a Jonathan Coulton concert, which ruled, and Woodpecker, which was superb. There’s plenty more on his to-do list. And the music week hasn’t even officially started. Wish him luck!

Frontalot is getting more & more excited about this whole movie premiere nonsense. Most times of day he just sort of vibrates and wobbles. The film people have posted an awesome out-take, in which Tycho and Gabeexplain the lyric to the Penny Arcade Theme in excruciating detail. It is a tag-team deadpan masterpiece.

Good news and bad news about the movie premiere party in Austin! First, the bad: “free” means you need to have a SxSW pass or a ticket stub from the premiere. So do not miss the premiere! The good news: open bar. Yes, that is right. Open bar! And Prince Paul is confirmed. That is the best news, we think, the news that Prince Paul, legend of the hip-hopping, is going to be at our humble event, and is actually going to make the records go ‘round. How come you never hear, “there’s good news, and bad news, and BEST news!” Kind of ruins the cliche. But in a nice way.

Oh! And there are a few new live tracks posted on the musics page, all from a PAX'07 bootleg that recently surfaced. Enjoy!

If you were born this day in 1908, you’d be enjoying your twenty-fourth birthday. But you’d be a hundred! Isn’t that weird? No, not really. See you in Austin.

Cons and fests on the mind? PAX early registrations are on sale already. Be a slurper of early worms. It is economical for you.

The Nerdcore Rising: The Movie premiere is at 10:30 on Sunday, March 9th, at SxSW. There’s a late party afterwards (location TBA) where Front will perform a set. And we hear that Prince Paul is going to spin records for us too. Not joking. The next morning, Front’s on a panel about being a person in a documentary. Maybe after that, he can be on a talk show about about being on panels, then on a podcast about being on talk shows. (If you run a blog about being the subject of podcasts, call Front’s publicist.) Furthermore! Front & band will be around after the Tues night showing for a Q&A with the audience. And then there’s a matinee on Friday the 14th. So get yourself to Austin!

In other Front’s Band news, Gm7 just won a major award for all his namby pamby musical theater composing, and Blak Lotus is running his Jukebox Stories in Berkeley. Hooray for both of them!

Oh, hey. You. Yeah, you, NERD. You like Barry? You got a credit card?

Boston. Awesome name for a band! Strike that. Awesome name for a town near which Brad Sucks is performing tomorrow night! Frontalot will be there hiding behind debutante glasses. It looks like this. [uptade:] Grrrr, crapulent snow keeps Front in NYC tonight. We all wish Brad a broken leg etc.

At long last! The Nerdcore Rising documentary is set to premiere. And it’s at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Check out the fancy new version of the NR:TM site and get your ass to Austin for some red carpet action. Trust us, we’ll let you know the exact premiere time/date as soon as it’s scheduled. As well as the timing for Front’s SxSW performance. Oh, hells yeah.

How many Frontalot fans are positioned domestically and over eighteen? We don’t have a venn handy but we’ll guestimate: plenty of them. Therefore we encourage you en masse to do the civic duty type things tomorrow. What are those? No spoilers here, but it might involve touching screens, pressing buttons, pulling levers, or if you’re lucky, making marks on actual pieces of paper. Our boy Front backs Barry Hussein, but you can pickyour own contender. Choose wisely.