VenuePilot

IVY ROOM PRESENTS

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MONDAY JUNE 16TH

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MC Frontalot & Schaffer The Darklord

plus special guests

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7PM Doors / 8PM Show

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Advance Tickets Available / $18 Day of Show

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IVY ROOM

860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+

(rsvp on facebook)

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MC Frontalot

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MC Frontalot (née Damian Hess) is the original mastermind of Nerdcore Hip-Hop

and still its Final Boss.

Front was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley. He was tall and scrawny,

had trouble breathing, and could not see well. A special teacher was called in to

help him attain basic competence on the monkey bars, another to give him

standardized tests meant for older children. Thusly, he was the most popular kid in

his elementary school. Just kidding! He got pushed down a lot and called “nerd.”

Did he maybe even deserve it? I mean, really – who strikes out at kickball?

He spent the next twenty years or so trying to get over it. And kind of succeeded!

Flash forward to 1999: the dotcom bubble is maximally inflated; nerds everywhere

imagine themselves to be popular and/or hip. Damian is getting overpaid to code

web pages, which leaves him free in the evenings to play with audio software. A

longtime idolizer of rappers, he has been committing his own esoteric hip-hop

compositions to four-track tape since high school, revealing them to nobody. But,

suddenly! Multi-track desktop studios, cheap pro-grade recording hardware,

skyrocketing bandwidth, semi-anonymous web publishing: these factors converge

on Damian’s rap hobby like a flock of winged monkeys. He posts an MC Frontalot

web page, dubbing his output “Nerdcore Hip-Hop” because his audience is

composed of several Star Wars figurines who live on his desk (and also random

internet people who click on his MP3s by mistake).

Somehow, it is a quarter-century later. Nerdcore has metastasized into an internet

phenomenon and underground touring powerhouse, with dozens of well established

live acts and hundreds of home-studio rhymers self-identifying within the subgenre.

MC Frontalot, called alternately the movement's godfather or grandfather (thanks,

kids), leads the charge, performing for thousands around the country and at

prominent geek gatherings such as Comic-Con, DEF CON, the Penny Arcade Expo,

Super MAGFest, and BlizzCon. He’s been featured in The New York Times, Spin,

Wired, XXL, Newsweek, CNN, Blender, XLR8R, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly,

The London Daily Telegraph, NPR, G4TV, Esquire, Playboy, CMJ, The Guardian (UK),

The Wall Street Journal, and scores of city papers nationally and internationally. He

has released seven studio albums, Nerdcore Rising (Sept 2005), Secrets From The

Future (Apr 2007), Final Boss (Nov 2008), Zero Day (Apr 2010), Solved (Aug

2011), Question Bedtime (Aug 2014), and Net Split, or the Fathomless Heartbreak

of Online Itself (March 2019). The documentary feature, Nerdcore Rising: The

Movie, which focuses on Front’s live band and exposes the the Nerdcore

phenomenon in general, debuted at the South By Southwest Film Festival in 2008.

Front lives in Berkeley, CA, and still spends most of his time rapping into a

computer.

Schaffer The Darklord

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Schaffer the Darklord (or STD) is a New York City-based rapper, drummer and

comedian with material best-suited for nerdy and/or hedonistic audiences. With manic

energy fueling a cartoonishly commanding stage presence, STD skewers such topics

as substance abuse, sexual compulsion, urban anxiety and obsessive cat-enthusiasm.

Imagine a Frankenstein-esque monster assembled from equal parts Bill Hicks, Adam

Yauch, Joey Ramone and Prince, stitched together inside the shell of a maniacal heavy

metal ex-patriot. STD has released nine albums and is a founding member of the

touring nerdcore hip-hop collective known as the Four-Eyed Horsemen, along with MC

Lars, Mega Ran and MC Frontalot. When he's not on the road, he produces the NYC

burlesque/wrestling hybrid event called “TasselMania.” STD continues to write, record

and perform with great frequency and has no intention of stopping until his rock and

roll lifestyle destroys him.