News From The Front

Front and his band (including new drummer The Sturgenius) are almost ready to hit the road! They are in Blak Lotus & Gm7’s old Brooklyn basement, rocking it out at Set List Boot Camp. DJ CPU Mark II has his samples loaded. The van is gassed up. The tour is about to begin.

You know about the tour, right? Have we been lax in our public relations chores?

If you have the means, join a “street team” in one of the tour’s destination towns. Click here for posters and flyers. Call your nearest alternative newsweekly and college radio station and request info about MCF coming to town (this makes them feel like they should know about it and/or exhibit this knowledge publicly… pretty sneaky, right?). Talk the show up at your local library, gaming shop, and optician’s waiting room.

Front would like to thank everyone who has made the tour possible. But if he did it on the front page of his site it would injure his bandwidth quota. He does owe a shout to Bortwein for doing design on the 1st round ofposters. And he offers thanks in advance to his Houston and Fort Worth fans four drowning out whatever boos may come from the back of the bar when he does Special Delivery.

Cheers all! Dispatches to appear from the road as time permits.

Front is doing a public meet & greet at Forbidden Planet comics in NYC (Broadway & 13th). Everyone who shows up can put one word on a list and then on the bus ride home he will write a rap that has all the words in it. Later, he will make a recording of it. Also, the person who puts in the best word (judge of best word: Front, duh) gets a signed Penny Arcade Expo 2005 DVD. There will be shirts and CDs too.

AND MC HAWKING WILL BE THE SPECIAL SURPRISE GUEST! DON’T TELL ANYBODY.

Monday May 1st
8-9PM
MC Frontalot chats you up and signs things
Forbidden Planet
840 Broadway (at 13th)
New York, NY

Tell a friend! There’s going to be a UK TV crew there and if it looks like Front has no fans it will be kind of pathetic. Though reasonably accurate.

Minneapolis and Kalamazoo added to the tour at the end of May! See the page that is the tour page for details. These dates complete the first leg of the Nerdcore Rising Tour 2006. Leg #2 is expected to commence somewhere in the western states at the top end of July.

Speaking of things that are called Nerdcore Rising, a documentary sharing that title with Front’s tour and CD is forthcoming from Vaguely Qualified Productions of New York. The meat of the thing will be a chronicle of Front’s first-ever tour (the one in May that we keep talking about). The preview trailer is available as quicktime here.

FRONT STILL NEEDS: Street team volunteers for Spartanburg, Johnson City, West Columbia, Atlanta, Tallahassee, New Orleans, Houston, Minneapolis, Kalamazoo. Write in now. Those who’ve already volunteered, keep an eye on your mailbox. Posters & flyers will be posted this week.

Front’s crack team of dev masterminds is hard at work on the new site. Is you excitey? Front is too. To include: a public BBS; the Open Source Beats Program; massively expanded VSP privileges; relatively obfuscation-free image galleries; no more goddamn cut-n-pasting into the news archive (this last feature to primarily benefit Front). New site to debut in early May. Are you ready for the Web 2.1 goodness?

Do the depressing monkey dance! Buy Jeff’s book! Watch the black holes make love (MPG, SFW).Buy a new girlfriend. The old one is not happy with your weekend plans. Which is ok, you probably didn’t want to have children anyway.

Front wishes to thank the crowd that sold out Edinburgh Castle in SF weds night and packed the room past capacity. There’s nothing like the gleeful violation of fire codes to really bring the funk home.

Front wishes also to thank Yook for guesting on vox, Black Lotus for happening to be in town for the show, The Categorical Imperative for rocking on a school night, Vic 20 [get his new album!!] for filling in while Gm7 is stuck on the east coast, The Scarlet Witch for bringing some much-needed diva power to the set, and Doc Popfor setting the whole thing up.

Front escapes now to South America to avoid filing his taxes on time. He returns moments before the launch of THE NERDCORE RISING TOUR 2006, the first leg of which is already detailed on The Tour Page (clicky). Many advance tickets are already available. Many venues let youngsters in if they pay extra. Do your research.

Hey, you live in one of those towns? Want to pass out flyers, posters, subliminal messages? Join a so-called street team. Volunteer by mail now and Front will get you coordinated starting April 21.

Speaking of coordination, a documentary crew will be following Front the whole way through the south & midwest. If you live in a tour town and wouldn’t mind a few scruffy equipment-toters following you around for a “day in your life” type of thing, write to the director: Negin Farsad.

NERD HELP SOLICITATION! Who out there is an expert with phpBB templating? Front needs such a person to skin the BBS into his new site design. Let him know.

Needy, needy, needy! Isn’t Front here to amuse you? Trust us, he’s working on it.

Getting excited for the Edinburgh Castle show? So’s Front. It reunites him with The Categorical Imperative (drummer on NCR) and will feature the backup stylings of Yook. Not only that, but Cat5 (featuring DJ Earflaps) is going to open at 9. HOORAY!!

You want a vaguely commie-themed flyer for your MySpace pages and shop windows? Here you go. It is thanks to Meredith of ladycartoonist.

Speaking of flyers and etc, there will soon be a whole giant resource page for aspiring street team members. Front will need at least one superduperfan in every town on his May tour. Front needs you to stick leaflets in comic shops, wear a sandwich board in front of the video game store, march in the streets extolling Front’s virtues, and show up at the gig with the region’s nerd elite in tow. Up to the task? Write in.

MAY TOUR DATES (CONFIRMED)

• 12th - Spartanburg, SC
  Ground Zero
• 13th - Mt. Pleasant, SC
  The Village Tavern
• 14th - Chapel Hill, NC
  Local 506
• 16th - Johnson City, TN
  The Hideaway
• 18th - West Columbia, SC
  The New Brookland Tavern
• 19th - Atlanta, GA
  the Drunken Unicorn
  tickets available now!
• 20th - Tallahasee, FL
  The Beta Bar
• 22nd - Baton Rouge, LA
  The Spanish Moon
• 23rd - New Orleans, LA
  Republic Nightclub
• 24th - Houston, TX
  The Proletariat Club
• 25th - Ft. Worth, TX
  The Aardvark
• 26th - St. Louis, MO
  Creepy Crawl Club
• 27th - Lawrence, KS
  The Jackpot

See the tour page for more details. Times, prices, club locations, and end-of-May dates all to come! Watch this space.

Don’t forget to get your PAX'06 registration taken care of before it get more expsensiver March 31. Front will be there again, rocking mics, signing CDs, playing video games, and making you roll a 20 for whatever the coolest thing behind the counter is.

Also, thanks internet. Thanks a lot. Like we don’t have enough complete bullshit to click on.

Front took to the stage at Soundz in Harlem the other night to an appreciative and close-pressed throng. Variousweb luminaries were in attendance. It was good clean fun with a one drink minimum. Who could ask for more?

Okay, fine; here’s lots more: San Francisco on the 29th! Do not miss it under any circumstances. An opening act has yet to be booked… is your band, magic show, or burlesque display a fine fit for Front? Write in with sample tracks if so.

Then! Off to the south and up into the midwest, starting May 12th. Those details will follow as the confirmations roll in, but we can share this much: between Spartanburg and Kalamazoo there are somehow 5308 miles.

Hey nerd. Yeah, you. You slaver for Negadon, Nacho Libre, future eps of House of Cosby. You seek Frontal infos at Voiceworks and CynicCenter. You wonder silently to yourself whether the Rolling Stones ever shilled for the Rice Krispies and whether anyone ever rendered the Simpsons intro without drawings. May you soon know peace in your nerdy heart.

OF NOTE: ambitious film-maker (and all around classy broad) Negin Farsad is putting together a large-scale indie documentary on Frontalot and nerdcore. She needs an intern in NYC! Her specs:

• new york city-based
• familiarity with Avid and/or Final Cut
  
• writing skills a plus
  
• perfect for a film/media studies student undergrad
  
• possible stipend

You better get in touch with her right this very instant.

Front has big newses for you!

LIVE SHOW in Manhattan on Sat, March 4. This one is way uptown [see details, left], and Front needs you to come out in full force so that he does not feel lonely. The door is ten bucks (five of which goes to the bar for your drink ticket). Keep in mind that Front’s rapping improves immeasurably when you’re drunk.

The next hot hot Frontal live-action appearance will be back in his hometown of San Francisco near the end of March. Get excited early; there may not be enough time to get properly excited once the details are set. We arethat stingy with info around here.

And then… holy smokes! Front tours the southern states in the second half of May. He will be in the Carolinas, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, you name it. There is so much to do! Front must arrange so-called Street Teams, prepare himself mentally for southern hospitality (it can be kind of shockingly pleasant), buy several pairs of high-impact touring slacks, shop for in-ear cordless vocal monitors, and get his hands on a van. Wait, you have a van that you want to loan/rent/sell to Front starting around May 12th? Perfect! Write in.

Did you hear Beefy covering Front’s “classic” Nerdcore Hip-hop? He’s also got three mc chris covers and plenty of originals at his site.

The dommah vid for Which MC is here [QT, 22MB]. If you don’t love you some quicktime (a quite reasonable non-love) there are low-res versions on youtube and google. Browsing youtube reveals other fan-made goodies.

Is Front missing several published interviews from the info page? His book keeping really is quite miserably bad. Write in with URLs or scans to aid him towards archival integrity.

It’s time for rhyme-o-links. Utah! Doo-da! Spinal medication! Final destination! Wham! Bam! Thank you, Van Damme!

Frontalot wishes love and happiness upon all his fans, whether they be shopping for relationship-affirming undies or just shopping for a relationship. To those who proudly eschew love and its Hallmark-engineered annual observance, Front offers a song he recorded a long time ago in which Gm7 yells at him for using the word “eschew.”

There’s a show coming up! It is again a Manhattan gig; its details will slowly emerge on the upper left of this very page. Why so often the NYC visits? Front has been too much busy to put together a Boston band. But this oversight he seeks to undo! Do you know a great and funksome drummer who would be excited to work for Front in the Boston area? For that matter, Front is short one bassist and one keyboardist. Write in with leads.

Impending LA superstar director and all-around fine gentleman Dom Mah delivers a fan video for Which MC Was That. It stems from some footage he caught with his pocket digicam when a sober Gm7 and a Scotch-wielding Front came upon an In The Groove machine in a bowling alley. If you want to laugh at Front for getting a low score on his own song on hell of easy mode, this is your chance: (quicktime file, 22MB).

Speaking of videos! Several teams (and a couple of dangerous loners) are working on vids for their favorite songs from Nerdcore Rising. Front feels mightily thankful for these volunteer efforts. On the other end of things, nerdcore auteur Keith Schofield likes the idea of tackling a video for This Old Man — but won’t, since Front cannot muster the seven or eight thousand dollars that would constitute the barest minimum of video budgets. Any wealthy fans with poor impulse control are urged to write Front’s video fund a huge check right this very instant. Your name will appear above the title.

Email!! MySpace!! Rich fantasy life! Fun online tests!!! Front knows all about these things. He is from the internet.

This may or may not be your final opportunity to see Front onstage in New York. While we only point this out in order to alarm you into attendance, it is quite possibly true. He moves to Boston right after PAX and will probably be pilloried there or else burned as a witch. Another chance! The lovely young songstress Jess Kleinhas asked Front to do an unnecessary rap breakdown in her lone reggae number Soda Water. This occurs June 15th at The Living Room. Come on by! But let us address the most pressing issue of the day. Did Front enjoyEpisode III? Yes! Did he deem it a worthy successor to any SW product created before he turned twelve (including the ewok special)? NOOOOoOOOoooooooOOooooo. That was some good clean fun! Front rocked the heck out of the Slipper Room in New York last night, to the delight of a full house.

Thanks for coming out, folks! The solid showing ensures a hot Sattidy night sometime soon, in an even fancier lower-east-side venue. Get ye onto the mailing list to make sure you don’t miss it.

Front won a songfight recently, thanks perhaps more to his enthusiastic fan base than the dopeness of his track or the freshness of his dog. Though Front’s dog is exceedingly fresh.

If you make songs on these here internets, you should fight at Song Fight! Every week it is a free-for-all the like of which is unseen outside of the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny.

Oh! By the way. Happy New Year. Front resolves to: tour; work up enough material for another album; finish his long-awaited duets with Broken English and Jesse Dangerously; destroy the Smurf village once and for all; and go stupid. What are yours?

2006 is certain to be a bang-up year. Front has compiled a list of recommended activities:

• Do some voting.
• Perform seemingly impossible car ballets.
• Catch up on your gaming.
• Film fake skate vids in promotion of cheap furnishings.
• See the doctor about that thing you’ve been meaning to have looked at.
• Face the tribunal for your role in a flame war.
• Be Front’s spatial friend.
• Pen a good review of his record.
• Buy his record.

Check all these off and your annum of awesome happiness is virtually assured.