Recently it became necessary for my wife and I to wade back into the swamps of Florida. The tales spawned by that journey are many but this post is about just one: a sojourn to The Haven on Monday the 19th, where I took in the phenomenal experience that is a performance by The Protomen, and had a fine chat with a couple of them besides.

Last Summer, I made a similar trek to Nerdapalooza with Bryan (that’s Autopsy IV to you) and was disappointed to see The Protomen’s efforts undermined by all manner of sound problems. Especially after, as Commander graphically retold at the recent show, they risked life and limb to get there; piloting their tour van, Jesse Christine, on a nervy course down the peninsula with a near-total lack of braking ability.

With The Protomen’s recent appearance at PAX East, YouTube has been flooded with (often crap, sometimes not) videos of their performance, reminding me that my previous experience was not representative. So when I discovered, my appetite already stoked, that my visit to swamp state would coincide with that of our freedom fighters, my excitement was …frothy.

And so it was that I found myself broiling wetly in the cell phone waiting lot at Tampa International Airport this past Monday afternoon, soon answering my brother’s signal to retrieve him and dash as swiftly as we dared through searing sun and relentless rain to land at dusk upon the threshold of The Haven, nodding and grinning foolishly to an amused Panther as he strode to the door, amused by my stupor.

A guitarist co-worker of mine told me to expect excellent sound and lighting at The Haven (the fortunate result of Full Sail University’s immediate proximity) and his words were true. The technical production of the show was flawless excepting only the volume of Panther’s Protoman helmet mic, which probably should have been set up separately from what he used for the rest of the show.

I wish I could give you a set list, but I’m terrible about that. I can’t interrupt my intake of the performance to take notes, and I’m simply unable to remember which songs were played unaided. Just pretend that, whatever your favorite Protomen songs might be, they were played. It was an energetic performance with few lulls, and a thoroughly engaged audience. There was clapping, stomping, more clapping, fist pumping, yet more clapping, indeed more fist pumping, and sometimes too much singing from the crowd.

When the music stopped, I turned to find the entire bar had filled behind me. Dazed, I made my way through the crowd, found my brother who had backed away when a sort of mosh pit sprang up even as I pushed through it to the edge of the stage, and left the bar. As I considered whether to find and attend the after-party at A Comic Shop (allegedly not far) others filtered out and conversations began, eventually including several of The Protomen.

I approached Commander and struck up a conversation that grew and mutated as other participants came and went, including Sir Robert Bakker and Nerdapalooza’s Hex. We talked about upcoming shows (they’ll be playing Nerdapalooza again this year, if you hadn’t heard) and Act III, which Commander was exceptionally cagey about and from which I took away two clues. But for the safety of The Protomen, I will maintain silence on those planned operations.

Yours truly surprisingly struck a nerve when asking why the Father of Death single was not made available digitally, sans accompanying physical media. Commander expressed, let’s say, passionate umbrage and some chagrin at my complete disinterest in owning CDs and records. So much that after our conversation had tapered and he’d disappeared into the bar again, he soon came pounding back out the door toward me, Act II case and its booklet open in his hands, perplexed album owner trailing after.

“This is what I’m talking about!” he proclaimed, going on to describe the art on every surface of Act II’s packaging and every page of its booklet, front-to-back, while swiveling and turning the subjects of his narration to ensure my maximum ocular intake. I smiled, nodding and returning comment with each new vision. “And here’s a train, ’cause there’s a train in the song!” “Oh yeah, Light leaving the city. Sure!” A less hardy soul, one who perhaps had not been on the front lines of humanity’s fight for survival against an army of oppressing robots for years now, may have felt satisfied that his message was communicated after a few of these exchanges. Commander soldiered on, stopping only when there was nothing more for him to show me.

The subject’s owner looked on, having eased slightly but still alert. Apparently Commander would provide the second-to-last autograph required for his complete set, decorating the interior of his Act II case. But when my tour of the Act II art was complete and Commander found a place for his scrawl, the marker was found to be dry, having sat open for the duration of his sprint and explication. Another marker was produced, black rather than the silver of all the other autographs, and the collector’s request was fulfilled.

I hadn’t simply been placating him with my responses to the narrated journey through Act II’s physical aspects. I was totally unprepared to defend my digital-only music consumption, giving only a lame “uh, portability…” when prompted to provide some excuse for it. But all of the usual arguments for physical media, though brought up, are not why I found myself agreeing with Commander. The thing about The Protomen is that their songs are a soundtrack for their story, which is delivered in whole in the CD booklets.

Before my brother and I decided to call it a night and make our way back to Tampa Bay by a reasonable hour (I’m not as young as I used to be) Commander decided I needed my own Act II package, retrieving it from the merch booth and delivering it himself. Whether he did it out of kindness or to challenge my anti-CD lifestyle, I don’t know, but I gladly accepted it with the anticipation of devouring the booklet’s contents as I eventually did during my flight back to cool, green Seattle.

Hex has finally posted more concrete details about this year’s Nerdapalooza. There’s good news and bad.

The good news is that Nerdapalooza is returning to a two-stage format, setting up in the newly-remodeled Orlando Airport Marriott, which is hoped to reduce the downtime between performances and the resulting, notorious schedule drift that was such a problem at last year’s event. Be sure to check out the event rates for rooms at the hotel in this post.

The bad news is that this required rescheduling the entire event, so that it is now on Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18. The reason that’s unfortunate is that it meant Dual Core was forced to withdraw from the bill due to scheduling conflict. Dual Core’s most recent album, Next Level, was one of our picks for 2009′s Essential Listening, so naturally I’m bummed about the news.

You can find the always up-to-date list of performers on Nerdapalooza.org. Personal favorites among them are MC Frontalot, Schaffer the Darklord, Captain Dan & The Scurvey Crew, and Random.

A few of the names I’m hoping to see appear on the list soon are The Protomen (their current tour dates only extend through May), Scrub Club (especially Kabuto the Python and Dr. Awkward), and Metroid Metal. To be honest, I’m on the fence about flying across the country for it this year (I was nearly local, last) without the addition of a few more of the performers I’m interested in seeing.

There’s an unfortunate lack of organized information on the official site, but you can find concise venue info on the Facebook event page, and info about the artists on this page of the official site. For anything else, you’ll have comb their blog, and failing that, contact the organizers directly.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the coolest gig poster of all time. Of all time!

Yours truly, a resident of the coolest neighborhood of all time (yes, of all time! it is the Center of the Universe, after all) in which mister The Front’s touring will occur for Seattle denizens, was happy to hear that he could lend a hand in getting the word out locally. But look, I’ve got a website that knows no geographical boundaries. I’m international. Intergalactic, even.

So while the poster above implores you to attend one of Fremont, Seattle’s fine venues, High Dive, on the 8th day of May, 2010 to bear witness to the astounding feats of lyrical and musical entertainment purveyed by MC Frontalot and our own Billy the Fridge, I also wish to provide for my readers outside the comfortable environs of Seattle a list of dates and locations which may be more suited to your geographical and temporal requirements.

Not yet familiar with the Front? Check out my recent post about his freshly born album, Zero Day, which is worthy of your attention at the least, and perhaps even a modicum of worship. If the samples included within said post do not sate you, and I assure you the reality is that they may not, you will find a bevy of additional treats on Frontalot’s own portion of the world wide web.

If you are of the type to have your visual stimulation habit supplied by Netflix, you also have available to you the documentary film, Nerdcore Rising, which takes you along for MC Frontalot & friends’ first tour some years past, culminating in his performance at the legendary Penny Arcade Expo (once PAX, now PAX Prime) in this very city. You may even stream this documentary film to your computer immediately, if you’re into that sort of thing. I know I am. I hope you are too.

See you at High Dive!

UPDATE: Here’s the Facebook event page!

As it happened, the weekend was a blast and while I feel I missed a lot, it only seems to underscore what a massive and awesome thing the Penny Arcade Expo really is.  And there’s no avoiding it, no one could see and do it all, but all that means is you will always find something fun, interesting, or exciting to do, every minute of every hour the convention is open.  I ended up eschewing the tabletop gaming (RPGs, CCGs, board games, and who knows what else) completely in favor of the expo floor and a few sessions.  And while I was well and truly tapped out by the time the concerts were up Saturday night, I did make it to Friday’s, which was the one I’d marked as Must Not Miss.  The expo hall was extraordinary.  I found myself crossing the floor in a straight line, wandering booths and shoulder surfing the people playing demos along the way, but when I’d look back after making it to the other side, I’d see at least as many things that I’d missed along the way as I’d noticed!

By and large, even the games I wasn’t terribly interested in had engaging and fun booth presence, but I have to point out how disappointed I was with the Blizzard booth.  I went by both Saturday and Sunday and both times it was the same thing: people silently playing Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 with intensity, people playing World of Warcraft: Cataclysm with scarce interest (there were no ready-made characters that I saw, so it was just the starter towns and level 1 abilities for both Worgen and Goblin characters), and, what I found very puzzling, the booth attendants just sat behind a bare counter talking with each other and looking vaguely annoyed by everything going on around them.  Maybe they felt they didn’t have to try, just coming from BlizzCon and all, but for someone who was extremely excited about all of their upcoming offerings, this was a major buzzkill.

A company that really managed to get it right was Take 2.  They had a great setup in their corner of the hall, with a set designed to look like a bar out of the upcoming Mafia 2, a viewing room for the Bioshock 2 demo (which I unfortunately did not get a chance to see) and a wicked open set for the Borderlands play demo area, which they timed and regulated with relentless precision.  I came to appreciate that regimentation when I got my turn and realized I could play Borderlands until my legs gave out (granted, not a long time given it was the end of Saturday).  Not only is it a very attractive game with a striking visual style, but it’s a very natural game to just pick up and run with.  And that’s coming from someone who has scarcely held an Xbox 360 controller before.  That team should be proud of themselves; their game is going to do very well.

I’m still a little confused by the release of Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited, but they had a fun booth and I actually attempted to install the game when I got home.  The installer had trouble with some Microsoft DLL dependencies under Wine, and I couldn’t muster the interest to resolve it.  So that’s that.  On the flipside, I was delighted to come upon the Serious Sam HD display and demo.  The first Serious Sam is a gem and while it had a great graphics engine for its day (mostly due to lighting) it unfortunately did not age well.  This re-release with upgraded graphics looks fantastic and I’m going to enjoy hopping on some co-op servers to plow through the waves of monsters with other gamers again.  You can see some comparisons here.

I was surprised and hooked by another game I hadn’t previously heard of, Fallen Earth, which is a sort of Mad Max scavenge-the-wasteland dystopian MMO, that has a sandbox design to it much like the more innovative notions that made Star Wars Galaxies such an inappropriate vehicle for its license.  I am so looking forward to playing this game (it was released last week) that I may pay full price even though it might not run in WINE and I’ll be forced to boot Windows to play.  Killer ideas.  If I designed my own MMO, it would have been very, very similar to what I see in Fallen Earth.  I queried someone at the EVE booth, and someone at the Pirate of the Burning Sea booth, and of course another at the DDO:Unlimited booth (of the three, I haven’t played only PotBS) and none of them felt or were able to communicate that their game would satisfy my needs in an MMO, continuous solo play, exploration, advancement without the grind, except for Fallen Earth.

One of the few scheduled events I decided to attend was the Star Wars: The Old Republic demo, and I left very happy with that decision.  Not only were all of the attendees treated to the first Knights of the Old Republic via Steam (coinciding with its debut there) but we were treated to an awesome play demonstration and the cinematic demo on the big screens.  When playing through KotOR on my old Xbox, I could not stop thinking about how this should have been the Star Wars MMO (I was long ago disappointed by Galaxies).  Seeing the confirmation that it was not only going to happen, but that it was going to be very, very, fun, was electrifying.  I’m looking forward to this game in a huge way.

I should also mention the Ubisoft presentation, which took place in the same hall and featured the new Splinter Cell: Conviction and Assassin’s Creed 2.  I love the direction they took with Splinter Cell.  I love the Thief series and playing stealthy where games allow it, so hearing about how they rethought stealth play and how to make it more engaging and fun was extremely interesting and definitely stirred my interest in a series that I’d discarded mid-way through the first title.  Likewise, I wasn’t all that interested in the news of Assassin’s Creed 2 previously (I still haven’t made it very far through the first one) they appear to have constructed a worthy sequel, with an interesting and beautiful setting and that special sort of gameplay that made the first stand apart from others in its class.

Among my favorite memories of the weekend are those involving the friend of all gamers, Wil Wheaton.  Each of the scheduled events I attended required an hour-long wait in line, and so too did shaking Wil’s hand and telling him he’s just an awesome guy.  While there I bought his chapbook, and I have to tell you all that when he releases fiction, do not miss it.  He is just as engaging and entertaining in this medium as in his non-fiction and blogging.  I also, fanboy that I must be, waited in line for an hour and a half to see him speak on Sunday for an hour (and a half, thanks, Wil!) and that turned out to be my entire PAX attendance for Sunday.  Three hours, all for Wil.  Yes, he really is that awesome.

Now, this is normally a music blog, though I do intend the occasional foray into gaming, so I’d be nuts not to include anything about Friday night’s concert, right?  Anamanaguchi was fun (I wasn’t expecting that) but I wasn’t particularly enthralled.  Chiptunes isn’t for everyone.  Metroid Metal, however, definitely impressed me and I’m looking forward to picking up their new album (which was released that weekend) Varia Suite.  But of course, the headliner MC Frontalot was the real reason I attended.

I hazily (read: dimmed by rum) recall meeting the Front at Nerdapalooza and seeing him perform a bit later.  So it was good to see him this time while sober and take in the whole thing.  I’m glad I did because the first thing that happened was Wil Wheaton stepping out from the curtain to play some fake plastic rock (Rock Band?  Guitar Hero? I wouldn’t know.) when the Front’s band-mates looked confused about the lack of said Front.  This was only a brief intro as Frontalot quickly took the stage and delivered his performance.  Joined at varying points by Beefy, Paul and Storm, Jonathan Coulton, and Rai Kamishiro, it was an epic trip through the Front’s catalog and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

All told it was way more than I was expecting or conditioned to handle.  I think next year I may need to train ahead of time with some kind of nerd version of the Ninja Warrior contestant’s home rigs they mock up to train for the course.  PAX was completely overwhelming and I came away full to bursting with appreciation for what Mike, Jerry, and their crew have put together.  PAX ’10 here I come!  (…Or, dare I say it, PAX East ’10?)

NerdLust.net is going to PAX!  While I’m missing most of the first day (grumble, grumble) I’ll be there this evening and throughout the rest of the weekend.  So, say “hi!” if you see this guy:

See you there!