News From The Front

Big chance to see a little bit of Frontalot in Brooklyn this weekend:

The Blak Lotus Lifetime Supply Variety Show
Starring Nelson Lugo, the Charming Trickster, & MC Frontalot. Featuring a reading of the Cantina scenes in Star Wars.

8 PM Saturday August 12th, Impact Theater
190 Underhill Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11238
between Sterling Pl and St. John’s Pl
Subway stops: Grand Army Plaza (2 or 3 train) or 7th Ave. (Q train)

FREE! Food and Drink available for Purchase at the show. Front will do 15 minutes of rapping and will probably be playing Obi Wan in the Cantina scene. Stop by!

Also new: interview at The Game Rag.

You’re all busy getting packed for PAX, sure. But don’t forget to call your airline and move your ticket around so you can see the most densely populated nerdcore bill to date.

Live tracks that are for you! To hearing!

Front The Most from last weekend’s New York show [MP3, 5.4MB] and, from the same evening’s festivities, MC Frontalot’s band backing up Jess Klein for her closing number Soda Water, with Front’s unnecessary rap breakdown included [MP3, 8.7MB]. The recording mics are comingled with the crowd, and the party atmosphere is all up in your earholes when you listen. That is to say: people are talking and drinking all through. But it sounds kind of nice anyhow.

As ever, the whole 18-song set is available to members of the VSP.

Front sat in on the panel of Binary Radio at HOPE while they taped the new season’s opening show. You can hear him join the discussion of free mp3s, Lemon Party, and other internet treasures at binrev (click on show #157). Front gets onstage about fifty minutes in.

Them hax0r types know how to unscrew the faceplate off a party, solder in an EPROM with firmware geared more towards rocking out, boot it, and then be all like woo hoo. A goodly bunch of them came by Club Midway in NYC the night before last to school us on the finer points of getting down. We guess a certain Mr. Rambam couldn’t make it, since he’s probably in the village by now.

A nice recording of Sunday night’s show will be available soon to VSP type peoples. A doe-eyed young Superman currently gracing Imaxes inspires Front to revisit the second installment from his youth. It was not quite as rad as remembered (except for Zod, who is perfection). And now other films of the era are not quite as recalled. Perhaps someone’s been interfering with Front’s brain again.

Front wants to stop looking at YouTube because it is terrible. But people post such good things there! None so good as Screw-On Head, though.

Oh shit! Did Front miss comicon again?

Newsflash! Front’s going to be in New York City on the weekend of July 21st. He’ll be attending the HOPE convention and trying as hard as he can to impress the real hax0r types with his pathetic low-res nerdery.

Then Sunday night (7/23) Front does a live set at Club Midway in alphabet city, with the inimitable Jess Klein opening. The show is a mere seven dollars, starts at 9:30, and is open to those eighteen years of age (and older).

Front just saw Robot Chicken for the first time. It is like the perfect array of childhood nostalgia references for 30-year-olds, turned into dirty jokes via action figure stop-motion animation. Front is kind of irritated that he didn’t think of it first. I mean, he has all those action figures. They’re in mom’s basement it Berkeley. In boxes. Withsilica gel.

Tomorrow night A week from Thursday, you have to watch a major network to see Nerdcore Rising’s Pr0n S0ng beatsmith Doctor Popular busting out his primary talent (yo-yo mastery) on a show called Master of Champions. That is a dumb name for a show. But it is awesome that doc pop gets seen by sixty zillion people (estimated viewership).

Also regarding TV things: Front is the “celebrity” programmer for a blog called Make Me Watch TV this thursday. We’re all on the edge of our proverbial chairs.

If you no longer have a television (we hear this more and more often), you can use that crappity youtube thingto see all kinds of nerdcore stuff. Hooray!

Oh, and Front is more or less sure to be performing in or around New York on the 23rd of July. He’ll be at HOPEthat Friday night (7/21) and Saturday (7/22), regardless. He’s working also on a Boston show before PAX. Yes, yes, you will be able to buy 2006 Tour shirts there. Stop freaking out.

Number one most importantest thing! Front is seeking a new booking agent. He or she must work nationally, be comfortable with clients like Front (medium draw, devoted fans, no label in sight), and carry the hearty recommendation of an experienced touring band (you?). If any of the wonderful folks who read this news post have a solid lead, let Front know ASAP.

Strange happenings afoot at the Circle K! Not like George Carlin descending from the heavens or anything, and also they do not have Circle K’s around where Front lives, but still. Strange happenings.

A book about white people and hip-hop is expected from cub reporter Jason Tanz in February. Front to feature prominently? Then why is he so clearly an African American in this flash video of Gonna Be Your Man by a mysterious Canadian?

And other Enigmas haunt us. Why has Front waited so long to share these recordings from Creepy Crawl in Saint Louis last month? [ they are: Yellow Lasers, War songs medley, Floating Bridge ] And why does he require you to join the VSP before you can hear eight more tracks from that set? Why oh why oh why hasn’t Front told us about his favorite tracks from the mammoth 4-disc nerdcore compilation Rhyme Torrents? Perhaps he still struggles feverishly to compile said list. Know that Baddd’s blisteringly hottt NCHH remixery and Hawk’s indefensible rap-rockization of Mountain Kind are potential includees.

Whew! It is done. The van is parked. The trailer is unhitched. The lads are back in their homes, planning and plotting their frontless endeavors. Frontalot himself is back home in Boston in California, seeing the eye doctor and collecting Doggy Fresh from his west coast vacation paradise.

The tour, it was a success! Click the words in this sentence to find out what the internets think aboutthat. You know of more? Send links to Front. Everyone involved in the production wishes to thank heartily ye who are the fans of the nerdcore rapping. You have been generous in your purchase of show tickets, your applause, your dedication to driving long distances, your apportionment of precious calories toward booty-shaking, and your smiles after. Front feels like a real live rock star these days. It is great for the old ego. It makes him want to do this kind of thing all the goddamn time.

There is plenty much more recuperation to make with the happening of! And some grammar to brush up on. Front had better brush fast, since he scribbles furiously in service of a new album! But don’t hold breath, lest blueness ensue. It is due maybe in like January.

Due earlier: Penny Arcade Expo! And after that, if the forces of fronting get their acts together, a west coast and elsewheres tour! That will be pretty awesome, right? Right.

Keep tuned right here for some tracks from the Saint Louis show. Or join the VSP for the whole set.

Touring is hells of crazy. Front and associates meet all kinds of fascinating folks, find out that there is a crowd of hollering lyiric-knowers in every town in the nation, find out what swamps look like, drink too late in the French Quarter, perform Special Delivery twice in Texas, gamble on a riverboat in St. Louis, acquire tour-following Grateful Dork style devotees (okay, one), and proceed to rock the heck out of Lawrence tonight. The souls and skins of Frontalot’s entourage grow hardened with road-warrioresque badassedness. They know how much gas costs in Oklahoma. Don’t try anything funny.

Our man at nicreations.com provides these advertiserly videos, which are awesome: click for Lawrence [Googlevid, QT], Minneapolis [Googlevid, QT], Kalamazoo [Googlevid, QT]. Send them to your friends, for time grows ever slimmer. Front’s first ever tour makes its triumphant fare-the-well on the 31st.

Will there be another? We hope so! It is looking like that won’t happen until after PAX. Wipe that tear.

Things cannot happen to Front in the real world without the internet finding out about it. Therefore: Front on techbytes in Houston (mp3), toung-tied interview from Spartanburg, and more to come. Seen a snippet we missed? Mail it in.

It is Monday! The miles melt away as the Frontalotmobile speeds towards Baton Rouge for this evening’s proceedings.

Perhaps as you read this, it is no longer Monday. The touring and the news updating do not have maximum compatibility! It is because of business, tiredness, in-van napping opportunities, road longness/windiness, and bad internet at cheap hotels. But we won’t leave you like hanging hanging. We will make informatic type-type for you. We will do this right now.

Saturday! The Tallahassee show seemed empty in that big ol’ Beta Bar room, but actually there was a nicely sized crowd of devoted travelers who spent collectively about nine times as much on gas as on tickets. Luckily for Front, they spent a similar ratio on merch. You kids sure do like things that say MC Frontalot on them! We wish to encourage this proclivity with effusive thanks.

Before that, it was Friday. And Friday saw Front and company packing the house at The Drunken Unicorn in Atlanta. It was not easily discerned which was thickest: the smoky air, the noisy rhymes, or the impossible nerdishness of the attendees. Front was glad to discover such a solid accumulation of his peoples in Georgia. He will some day return. Maybe if you know the bookists at DragonCon, you can start hassling them to consider our friend the MC as an entertainment option for their little get-together.

West Columbia on Thursday night was a fine bit of fun. Someone has jacked the speed up on the Ms. Pac-Man machine at the New Brookland Tavern there. It is as if they wish to amplify the player’s nostalgia for 1982 by suggesting that his or her very reflexes are among that era’s bygone treasures.

Chapel Hill is but a fond memory. But so very fond! The devoted boogeyists take the new first prize in Frontal Concert Audience Dancing. Local 506’s friendly staff reports that no such dancing has occurred there in recent memory. They also report that we should stay late and “LISTEN TO SOME SEGER!!!” Emphasis not added.

Johnson City, Tennessee, last night: The Hideaway seems to be the late evening relaxation station for the region. The enthusiastic booty shaking of Front’s handful of devotees more than made up for the venue’s stickiness (a film of egg whites and corn syrup left by the opening band’s GWARish aspirations).

Tonight! Front camps in Asheville. Like some kind of goddamn hippie.

Canadians and non-Canadians with bionic ears might have heard Front on CBC radio recently. His interview with Keith Serry was part of a piece that you can hear by clicking here.

Check out some pics from Spartanburg! Click for them. Other content by Mr. Howland on that site is nsfw. Which means you want to see it.

Happy Day of Motherhood and Appreciation of Motherhood, all ye born of women. MC Frontalot is more in the MacDuff category, which makes him all the more thankful for his mom. He advises you to make your customary phone call or bouquet delivery. And tell mom that Front reminded you. Front needs some points with your mom.

Last night’s gig (stop #2 on the Nerdcore Rising 2006 tour) rocked Mount Pleasant! Or rocked it has hard as one can when taking the stage in a bar in a strip mall. Front wishes to thank the several devoted nerdcore aficionados who hollered loudly for multiple encores.

Tonight it is Chapel Hill! You coming?

Keep track of Front’s daily tour posts on the BBS, available to members of the vsp.