I'll post more details soon, as they develop...

Mike

I think I'm currently in the midst of making plans for my next trip to Phoenix.

Hopefully I'll be seeing you there.

--joe

Mike

Packed up the car and headed out to Phoenix. We made it to the bar and met up with Mike and Van a little before the show. I started to sweat the crowd, as it seemed that there weren’t that many people there, but they started to trickle in and by the time ARF took the stage the place was pretty well packed.

Even though I think the majority of the crowd was there to see Army of Robots and Radio Free America, they really came around to ARF. I was surprised at the amount of noise from the crowd, I mean usually the opening bands get no love, but ARF really went over well.

The set was pretty good overall. Just like Mike has been describing, it was a mix of the album plus some live tweaking, so it was cool for people familiar with the album as well as those hearing it for the first time. Mike and Van have also put together a sweet light show, with fog even, that seemed to go over pretty well.

Frankly, ARF was the highlight of the night. We stuck around for AoR and RFA, but that really wasn’t my cup of tea so I won’t go into it much further. A longer set would have been nice, but I understand that ARF wasn’t headlining so that wasn’t possible. Hopefully the noise.to.signal.05 tour will feature an extended set. Considering this was the first ARF live show, it went really well. There will probably be some real minor tweaks before the tour, but I think that ARF is ready for the road.

What else.

Oh yeah, the video. I did shoot the whole ARF set but I need to talk with Mike a bit. I’ve got a _very_ raw 30 second clip that I’m hoping Mike will give me the go ahead to throw out for you all to see shortly. Sort of a teaser to entice everyone to hit the noise.to.signal.05 tour. I’ll keep you posted.

So in summary. Was the trip worth it? My ass was firmly planted in a car for 5 hours each way, wrecked my stomach on espresso during the day, had the shakes from driving and concentrating through city traffic, I ate terrible nachos at the bar, and paid $2 for a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon. But, I thoroughly listened to Micronaut's Europa and got to see Amish Rake Fight’s first live show. At the risk of coming off like some sort of psycho fan-boy, I’d say it was worth it.

And to Mike and Van specifically, great job on the show. I can't wait to make the same pain in the ass trip in a few months for the noise.to.signal.05 tour.

--joe

<Edit>Holy Crap Batman, this thread bounced back up but my video link don't work no more</Edit>

The audio is pretty crappy, the video is too dark, but it is a clip from the ARF show. I captured 30 seconds from a random part of the tape, no real reason for for the selection. Czech it out; hopefully there will be some better video available shortly.

--joe

There are also some preliminary plans to go out again, most likely in May. But it's too soon to be more specific about that.

I like synths ;p