Great news sci-fi surf rock fans – Man Or Astro-man? is getting back together for a series of shows, including this year’s SXSW festival!  Word came first from drummer Birdstuff (aka Brian Scott Teasley) via his Facebook page. They will be playing The Bottletree in Birmingham, AL on March 6th, then will follow it up with an appearance at SXSW. However, rumors are spreading that additional dates will be announced – Bookman has even said they’re working on some Northwest dates! The video below is from their last reunion show, back in 2006.

UPDATE (1/23/10): Fresh off Man Or Astro-man’s MySpace Page:

Greetings to anyone who cares—You may have heard by now that we have knocked the frost particles off and are properly thawed for live music experimentations. Everyone is excited about playing again. You may know we did it in 2005 or 2006 (when was it?) for the Touch and Go 25th anniversary party. To be honest, and not to say we weren’t thrilled to be playing then, we predominantly did that for everyone in the extended Touch and Go family who really wanted us to play. I don’t mean to imply that it was a favor, but it was a little less “for us” and more about pleasing dear old human friends.

I guess what I’m getting at is this present endeavor to play again came about organically, almost hermetically you could say, and was something we all wanted to do. It will be me–Birdstuff, Coco, and Star Crunch plus a yet to be disclosed 4th member (just so you know, the 4th member has been in the gene pool before). We’ll be doing a lot of material off Experiment Zero, 1000X, and Made from Technetium, but there’s also some early stuff thrown in just to prove we can still go old school Astro-style. Right now, plans are very open-ended, and all we have booked is an Atlanta show on March 5, a Birmingham show on March 6, and various shows in Austin, TX from March 17-21. That said, who knows what we will and won’t do in the future—that is, unless we’ve already been there and done it. Ha! I still got some chops, right?

Again, the excitement level is genuinely high. I think the 10 years of cryogenic storage has given us a perspective we never had. We were so lucky to get to do what we did. It just seems astounding to me that we would travel all over the country (I suppose the world really) and have Coco set his head on fire or shoot 1,000,000 volts of electricity out in a club, and then people would let us stay at their house and sleep on their floors! We never had any expectation for the band and just stuck with the idea that if we worked really hard and tried to put on the best show we could every single night maybe we could get to do it some more. By 1997 we did over-work ourselves and that was a big part of the break with Star Crunch, but we never phoned it in or didn’t try to bring the A-game. Out of all the things we did or were about, I’m most proud of that.

It’s hard to analyze your own band and I am personally of the ilk where I thought every show could have been better. During our original lifespan, I always thought we sucked, could have played tighter, or gone crazier at a show, but watching back through old performances after years of being away from it, I actually think we were a decent little band who even when were hungry, sick, tired, or whatever, put on a pretty alright live show. This is not to mention the fact that we put out 3 albums I am very proud of—I can hardly ever listen to music I have been part of without cringing or thinking it could have been way better. All said, I really appreciate the other Astro-Men now more than ever.

I don’t think I ever realized in the moment what a great guitar player with a truly distinct sound Star Crunch was / is. We started playing together as alien teenagers and he just always seemed like the guy I played with so it didn’t ever occur to me to think “Holy shit this guys can really play some amazing guitar.” And as far as Coco goes, Jesus, besides being a true-to-life mad scientist and deranged inventor, I don’t think there has been a more entertaining personality in the last 20 years who has played in a rock band. He cared more than anyone I have ever met in any band about the fans and the people who supported us. I can’t fathom the number of times it would be 2:00 in the morning and we’d be ready to go and he’d be teaching some kid how to build their own theremin or be explaining how the Tesla coil worked or how to use the O.R.I. real-time sampling gear–Back to Basics. Forgive me if I sound like a fan of my own band. Pretty lame, huh?

Okay, so to close: I try not to read that much stuff about the band, but I made the mistake of doing it earlier today. It’s funny the things that are just extremely factually wrong. I’d like to clear just a few things up.
–Man or Astro-Man? has not reformed multiple times. We have only done, before now, 2 shows with Star Crunch since 1997 (the aforementioned Chicago show and a warm-up show in Birmingham, Al before the Touch and Go 25 thing.)
–There have really only been two main lineups of Man or Astro-Man? One with Star Crunch (and various people playing an auxiliary / touring role) and then one after Star Crunch parted ways with the band. The 2nd, shorter-lived Astro formation was from 1998-2000.
–The band started playing in 1992, not the late eighties!!!
–The clone tour: Shit. I’ll have to spend some time on this one. Here’s the deal—we spent a lot of time in a van back in the day, maybe more than any other band in the 1990s. Like a lot of bands, we constantly would jokingly come up with insane and outright absurd ideas for the band. The difference with our band and a lot of other bands is that we actually executed our insane, absurd ideas.

That Dolly the sheep cloning thing had just happened and Star Crunch, Coco and myself thought it would be cool to do a tour where we cloned ourselves and had other people play our music. It may have been the first time in music history where a band formed it’s own tribute band. It was meant to be fun and most people did take it that way. What bums me out though is the occasional bullshit saying that we did it to “cash in.” The truth is we lost a good bit of money doing it. Having 3 sets (the real band, Alpha Clones, and Gamma Clones) of equipment, 3 vehicles, and paying the clones for the hard work they did, is by no means a smart way to profit off your band. We did it because…shit, just because we thought it would be something people would have good time with and talk about for a long time— I always said we did it because Fugazi couldn’t.

We never ever, as I’ve seen claimed, intended to dupe anyone (in our contract with promoters it was distinctly stipulated that any advertisement have the clone bands billed as “Man or Astro-Man? Alpha Clones” or “Man or Astro-Man? Gamma Clones.” Also, Coco and I did various legs of the tours to hang out with people and sell merch. We even had pre-taped video interaction of us explaining what was happening that would appear in different segments during the clones’ set. The Alpha (boy clones) did 2 tours of about 20 dates each and the Gamma (girl clones) did one tour of 20 dates or so. That’s it. It was a good time, and I hate if you missed it because the clones did a really good job channeling all things Astro. I like to think of it as “limited edition” touring. It never was a permanent installation or replacement for the real band.

Does that clear things up any? Hope so.

Okay, more soon. I’ll update you on any new plans or shows here, but we do hope to bring our website into the modern age as well at some point. Sincerely, thanks so much for reading this and supporting us over the years. As was the case with the Monkees, you’d better get ready, because we may be coming to your town.

For press inquiries or questions concerning Man or Atsro-Man?, contact Miranda Lange at PMA PR: miranda@pmapronline.com.

For booking inquiries, contact Ali Hedrick of the Billions Corporation: ali@billions.com