DOWNLOAD: Harry & The Potters and Uncle Monsterface, "On Tour" (mp3)
Day one:An inventory; emails and dishes; the Aquabats and their influence on Uncle Monsterface; an explosion at the Slavic Center; the light in God’s basement; a song, a song!; the relics of monsterhood.
Joe: I’m almost finished packing the van and taking inventory of everything we are taking with us. I have three albums in the basement that I have been listening to for the past six hours over and over again: Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, Les Savy Fav’s Go Forth, and Soltero’s Hell Train.
Paul: Joe’s supposed to pick me up, but he’s late because he was up all night loading the van. What a trooper! I send some last-minute emails and do some dishes. We pick up the monsters and stuff everyone into the van.
Joe: Marty puts on the Aquabats and starts to tell us how big of an influence they’ve been to Uncle Monsterface.
Marty Allen: Brooklyn’s Polish and Slavic Center never looked better. Or so we’ll have to assume, because we don’t end up playing there. Apparently the boiler at the Polish and Slavic Center blew up, so we get to play in a church basement instead. It’s a pretty sweet church basement, as they go, complete with twirly lights and lots of sparkly, dangly thingers. I'm 100-percent sure God would be proud to call it His basement.
Jesse: The bands have had decided that touring a different city every night isn’t enough; they’re also going to write a song a day and document the trip in a series of video diaries for the web. The music is composed and recorded almost entirely on one of the two laptops in the van, the vocals recorded on the road or in that night’s lodging, with occasional “real” instrumentation where available. Joe, with headphones on, cobbles together the simple-but-catchy debut song of the day, a fun sing-along called, “We’re on Tour!”
Paul: Marty opens his expertly packed monster head to discover that Uncle Monsterface has evidently got in a fight with some of our luggage. And lost. When I said expertly packed, I lied. He was wrapped up in a blanket. In retrospect, he definitely needs more protection. Maybe some kind of chest from which you can lift the head, as if it were some historic trophy relic, you know, like all ark-of-the-covenant style. And then hold it up and display it to amazed onlookers. Yes, that is the majesty that the monster head demands. Maybe we will encounter such a chest in the future, but for now all the monsters are a little sad because they thought their Uncle would have put up a better fight against that luggage.
Joe: Dave Roman is at our show! He tells me how much Uncle Monsterface reminds him of the Aquabats.
Marty Allen: Some hot glue and emergency paint bring Uncle Monsterface back to life, though we are understandably jostled. So, too -- jostled, that is -- is our DVD player. The DVD player is the backbone of our rock ’n’ roll machine, accounting for about 80-percent of our musical genius, and a commensurate percentage of the sounds and images one encounters at our shows. We got it working after six to eight deafeningly awkward minutes, and despite a few colorful moments, I was still able to use my bullhorn for the first time ever, thusly fulfilling the first of several rock and roll fantasies.
Joe: We just finished our first show. Uncle Monsterface rocked the faces off of people and turned those who weren’t rocked into monsters. During “Keeping Secrets From Me” I tried to do a Bruce Springsteen slide to the front of the stage, but I ran out of stage and fell into the audience, and rolled around a lot.
Marty Allen: Our dear friend Kyle sheltered us on our virginal evening of rock, also revealing to us a magical bar that gives you a free pizza with every beer (I'm convinced the bartender learned everything he knows about society from Cocktail).
Marty Allen, postscript: Jesse snores, but he is also a very good snuggle-buddy.
From the sockpuppet journal of the Nutty Bunny: It is cramped in this bag. I think one of my whiskers fell off. We live for the fleeting moments of life and animation when we can dance and sing with a large hand crammed inside of us. Is it all worth it? If I had paws of my own, I would contemplate taking my life.
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