We had the pleasure of meeting with East Bay Express Music Editor Rachel Swan last weekend, which resulted in this very nice feature in today’s East Bay Express! Thanks so much for the really well-written article! ❤ Check it out below:
East Bay Express | Love Songs for Game Boys
Above: Science and Honor! With Angel Nova of The Phenomenauts at The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz
Photo by AJAPOPFILMS
Our last few shows were a blast! East Bay Mini Maker Faire was a success and Matt spent most of the day teaching attendees how to mod their old Game Boys. We had an awesome lineup of chip artists from all over the Bay Area, including Doctor Popular, starpause, E.N. Cowell and A_Rival. We were also lucky to have Max Capacity and Adam Scradam return for visuals. Doc and Matt even found a bit of a break in the day-long event to hold an impromptu jam session with Nanoloop and banjo in the middle of the fairgrounds!
Doctor Popular and Matt Payne pumpin’ the jam.
Our East Bay Mini Maker Faire PulsewaveSF table!
Starpause with his shirt off before noon.
A_Rival x Max Capacity
PoW !
The following week, we played a really fun rock show with The Phenomenauts and The Bloodtypes at The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz. Now, we’ve played some rockin’ shows, but this one was definitely rockin’ in its own special way. I think all of the bands had amazing energy, fun outfits, and just overall knew how to put on a show. Major thanks to Grand Fanali Presents for booking this for us. Also thanks to AJAPOPFILMS for documenting the event. Matt and I dressed up as Chell and Rat Man from Portal 2. He even made a Companion Cube at the last minute out of cardboard, foam, and felt!
With The Bloodtypes!
We capped off that weekend with our last show of the year at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco with the super sexy, freakin’ funky Planet Booty, Easystreet, and Hottub DJs. It hasn’t been a month yet since our last show, and I thought we’d be able to have a nice, restful break, but things are picking up speed again.
With January coming up in less than two months, we’re finishing up our split release with Milwaukee friends Awkward Terrible. We absolutely adore those guys and can’t wait ’til they arrive in January to release this ish with us! Also on the plate is our second album, but that’s further down the line. Some of you guys were able to catch our new song at one of our last shows. We’ll be able to release some samples online soon. We’ll also have some new merch available soon, so stay tuned! Our 1-year anniversary is also coming up, and we’ll have a few special things revolving around that as well.
xoxo,
-lc
We’re gearing up for our last shows of the year at Café Du Nord in San Francisco and The Crepe Place in Santa Cruz, but we’ve got one more fun outing before we bury ourselves in lyrics sheets and LSDJ modules for our next album…
On October 16th, we’ll be playing at the East Bay 2011 Mini Maker Faire on the PulsewaveSF stage. Although we go on at 3:40, there’s awesome local chip being played all day – The Dualies, Starpause, Doc Pop, Louis Gorenfeld, E.N. Cowell and A_Rival will be gracing our stage as well as some special guests, and a half hour anything-goes jam session at the end of the day!
On top of that, we’ll have the blue-ribbon winning chip gear demo table that we showed off at the big Maker Faire in San Mateo in May, as well as a new modding workshop, where you can bring your own Game Boy and we’ll help you improve the sound output level, install a backlight, and more!
And on top of that, you have the entire rest of Mini Maker Faire to enjoy – fighting robots, crazy machines, everything you could possibly imagine doing with an Arduino… it’s all here!
Check out the faire at http://ebmakerfaire.wordpress.com/
And get your tickets at http://ebmakerfaire2011.eventbrite.com/
Get 20% off your tickets with discount code PULSEWAVESF!
Thanks to all who came to our show at Red Devil Lounge last night for Jonathan Mann‘s 1000th Song-A-Day and Album Release show. It was truly an honor and a blast to share the stage with over a dozen other extremely talented musicians. Aside from our own set, we joined Jonathan Mann on stage with his core band, The Rock Cookie Bottoms; Dustin Smurthwaite of Ladies & Gentlemen on trombone; Jeanne Geiger of Teeny Tiger (who also played trombone for Radiation City a few weeks ago at Bottom of the Hill); Ami Nashimoto of All My Pretty Ones on cello; Meeranai Shim on cello; Sarah Dabby of The Family Crest on violin; and Ivory “Sweaty Girlfriend” King on bass clarinet.
Matt also played trombone, keys, percussion, autoharp, and drums, and I got to play guitar and bass for some songs. The biggest challenge I think was trying to fit 13 or so people and equipment on that tiny stage, but Matt made it happen. Here’s the video for Mann’s 1000th song from last night. As you can already tell, even the camera couldn’t capture everyone on stage:
Our next show is actually coming up pretty fast, on Monday, Oct 3 at a new music venue called Vitus that recently opened up in Oakland. Not only do they have killer deep fried zucchini sticks and Bloody Marys with BACON garnish (yeah, dude), the show is also FREE! And we’re playing with our friend crashfaster, and an electronica duo named HoverKraft.
We’re playing a few more shows in October, so make sure you check out our Shows page on the site, but our LAST show of the year will be with Planet Booty at Cafe Du Nord in San Francisco. After that, we’re going to concentrate on new songs and a new album until 2012, so make sure you’re at Cafe Du Nord on Saturday, October 29!
-lc
This Wednesday we’re playing a mini set for Jonathan Mann’s 1000th Song-A-Day/Album Release Show at Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco. On top of that, we’ll be joining him during his set, accompanying his songs. Matt will do what he does best, playing multiple instruments, and Lizzie will be playing some guitar and bass on a few songs. Either way, this event is bound to be a historic one. Mann has been writing a song every day since 2009, and has also been known for his Game Jew series on YouTube and having his iPhone 4 antennae song play during an Apple keynote:
With October approaching, our show dates have been lining up. We’ve updated our Shows page with the following October dates:
10/3/11 @ Vitus, Oakland, CA
With crashfaster | 8pm | FREE | 21+ | Facebook10/16/11 @ East Bay Mini Maker Faire, Oakland, CA
With TBA | 10am | $2010/28/11 @ The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz, CA
With The Phenomenauts and The Bloodtypes | 8pm | $12 | Facebook10/29/11 @ Cafe Du Nord, San Francisco, CA
With Planet Booty | 9pm | $12 | Facebook
It’s hard to say what will be in store for us for the rest of 2011 in terms of shows, so make sure you catch one of these! We have big plans for new music for the rest of the year, as well as a 2012 tour, so subscribe to our mailing list on the bottom right sidebar of our homepage to get those updates.
Earlier this week, Lizzie was interviewed by The Joystiq Show about The Glowing Stars for their music episode. It went live today, so check it out!
The Joystiq Show – 006: Musical Players
Meanwhile, Matt’s wife gave birth to a beautiful baby boy!
While we’ve been on a break from shows this month, we’re still cooking up a lot of things behind the scenes. Lizzie is getting ready to do a few shows with crashfaster in the next few weeks. Catch their sets on Saturday, August 27 at PAX Prime 2011 in Seattle, and Thursday, September 8 at The Stork Club in Oakland.
The next The Glowing Stars show is in just two weeks! We’ll be playing at Convergence Fest at the Japantown Peace Plaza in San Francisco. Here are our upcoming show dates:
9/4/11 @ Convergence MMXI Festival, Japantown Peace Plaza, San Francisco, CA
With Teenage Sweater, SpaceKraft, Planet Booty, and The Bran Flakes
12 pm | FREE | Facebook | Flyer9/28/11 @ Red Devil Lounge, San Francisco, CA – Jonathan Mann’s 1000th Song-A-Day / Album Release Show!
With Jonathan Mann & The Rock Cookie Bottoms, The Backorders | 7pm | $8 | Facebook10/28/11 @ The Crepe Place, Santa Cruz, CA
With The Phenomenauts and The Bloodtypes | 8pm | $12 | Facebook
We have some more upcoming shows in October that we can’t quite announce yet, but when the time comes, you’ll know! Be sure to subscribe to our mailing list on the right sidebar. Also, Facebook and Twitter.
We’re really excited to announced the official dates for our Quest Coast Tour with crashfaster! We’ll be hitting up different cities in California as well as Portland and Seattle. Here they are:
Thu 6/9 @ Meltdown Comics, Los Angeles, CA – 8-bit E3 After Party!
Fri 6/10 @ The Video Game Music Show, KSPC 88.7 FM, Claremont, CA – Radio show + interview
Wed 6/15 @ The New Parish, Oakland, CA – Japan Benefit
Thu 6/16 @ Arlene Francis Center, Santa Rosa, CA
Sat 6/18 @ Deva Cafe, Modesto, CA
Wed 6/22 @ Backspace, Portland, OR
Fri 6/24 @ Seattle, WA – TBA
Sat 6/25 @ Apes Tapes, Portland, OR – Surprise Double Release
Thu 7/7 @ DNA Lounge, San Francisco, CA – PulsewaveSF Homecoming Show!
Check out our Shows page for updated tour dates. Our next show is next week at Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA. We’ll be playing both dates: Saturday, May 21 and Sunday, May 22.
In the meantime, we’re wrapping up recording our debut EP at monobomb. There’s still time to pre-order a limited edition physical EP on a custom Game Boy cartridge at our online store!
Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter! ❤
The Glowing Stars 