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April 27, 2007: Chromelodeon’s Final Show.

I was not in attendance for this show. Heck, I’m not even sure I had even heard of the band at this point. It wasn’t until the Pause re-release of The Final Recordings that I got to experience what I now regard one as one of my favorite albums of all time.  Listening to The Final Recordings for the first time set in motion a chain of events that has led not only to a new appreciation of a branch of music that I hadn’t really explored before, but also to meeting a whole group of people I’m happy to count as friends.  So, despite not even having seen a live Chromelodeon show, I can think of no other band which has had such a profound effect on my life.

Perhaps it’s because I missed out on Chromelodeon’s heyday that I started seeking out live recordings and video clips, looking for glimpses of the “viceral” performances I had only read about. This was the beginning of my own personal archive. It wasn’t until a handful of years later that the idea of putting together an online archive such as this set in.

 

And now, five years to the date of Chromelodeon’s last show, I’m happy to reveal this ‘labor of love’: the Chromelodeon Archive.

 

Part of my intent with this website is to have a means to share my endless appreciation of this band with others. In the past, I’ve passed links to the Final Recordings album to friends to be greeted with enthusiastic responses… and then having to guide people through an endless array of broken mediafire links to Chromelodeon’s other, out of print material. This site serves as a central location to grab the past releases.

For those who already have all of the usual stuff and looking to complete their Chromelodeon collections, I wanted to gather up whatever live recordings and rarities I could find. In a lot of cases this was challenging: a LOT of time was spent scrounging through old message board posts only to find long dead links to individual MP3s. Luckily, I’m not the only dedicated fan out there, and a few kind individuals dove into their collections and shared what they had.

As well, I’ve put effort into procuring the highest quality encodings available. Where possible, I’ve included lossless FLAC downloads in addition to the regular MP3s. In cases where no lossless source was available, transcoded sources were avoided. (Yes, I fully admit to being an audiophile douche bag. I’m sure someone out there appreciates my effort.)

Lastly, I intend for this site to become not only a central location for Chromelodeon’s audiovisual output, but to host editorials, reviews, and first-hand accounts of live shows. I’m not really much of a writer so I open up the floor to anyone willing to contribute: shoot me an email!

This website and it’s content would have not have been possible without the contributions and permissions of many, including (but not limited to) the following (in alphabetical order):

Brendan Becker
Chris Berdoz
Dino Lionetti
Edward Tsang
Johnny Rogers
Kyle Crouse
Mikhail Ivanov
Patrick Todd
Pierre Capillon
Ryan Soloby
Shawn Phase

 

Enjoy.

Given some recent additions to the site I figure it’s time to do a little news post pointing out the new content:

  • A Merchandise archive with images of old t-shirts, buttons, flyers, and misc merch (a fruitelodeon stein?  okay!).  Thanks to Zach Patterson, Mikhail Ivanov, Luke Delengowski, and Kevin Martinez for the images.  I know there’s more out there (anyone have the Gameboy thought-cloud shirt?), so send in what you’ve got!
  • As a direct result of creating this image-heavy page, a site-wide improvement of the image galleries has been implemented.  Pages load faster, and images are much easier to navigate as a result.
  • A YouTube channel was set up, and playlists were created listing all of the videos and songs I could find on the site.  Some of these playlists have been integrated to the various pages in the archive… which brings me to this:
  • A full 53 minute video of a 2006 set has surfaced!  Thanks to Epileptic Peat (of This Place Is Haunted and You Bred Raptors?) for providing the footage, George Force for filming, and Kaptain Carbon for providing the show flyer image.

 

 

Hey folks!  Some new and noteworthy content for you all.

Eddyrocku has provided some previously-uncirculated live recordings:
2005-12-17 at North Star Bar, which might be the best sounding audience recording of the band available to date, and 2002-05-31 at Scooters which features some early Choose Your Own Adventure-era material, including a previously unheard song!

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Huge thanks to Eddy for providing these.  You’re the best, dude!

Also, in case you missed it: this happened.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the original CD release and final show, The Final Recordings has been re-issued on vinyl. mig50 spearheaded the project over the course of a year, and I was happy to contribute audio sources and artwork assets which were used to prepare this vinyl pressing.  

To coincide with this anniversary and reissue, the Chromelodeon Archive is proud to present:

The 10th Deathaversary Lost Media Collection


buried for 10 years, now RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE

Over the past few weeks, I have been digitizing video, ripping CDs, scanning photos and flyers, and cataloging the contents of a twenty-five pound cardboard treasure chest sent to me by Ryan Soloby. This unearthed media chronicles the band from it’s earliest incarnations, right up until the final show on April 27, 2007.  As if this wasn’t enough, there have been a few other interesting tidbits which have been added to the archive, including some upgrades, additions, and corrections to previously available content.

Ryan provided the following message to accompany the content:

Reasons why this is a thing, and why it might matter to some people:

  1. It is lucky that the following content survived. Chromelodeon was never very organized to begin with. This stuff was jammed into various boxes labeled “to sort later” and shuffled between moves for a decade. On top of that, the FORMATS of them were a nightmare. Chromelodeon existed before the era of iPhones. We had stuff spread cross analog and digital film and cameras of various formats (VHS? Why?).
  2. A brief glimpse into some of daily band life, from start to finish. Weeks and weeks and weeks spent on the road, pockets of friends across the country, enough of an occasional adrenaline rush to keep the moment up, years spent of the band cracking and repairing itself until the experience was over. A lot of the good times (and bad) are captured here. Sometimes, the two blended together. If you were a friend or a frequent show go-er, there’s a chance you are in a picture or video here.
  3. The very first Chromelodeon show video was found, and on top of that, the very first Drive Thru Pharmacy show was found (the ska band that comprised mostly of Chromelodeon members, in the 90’s). Interesting to have on record the beginning phases of this musical trip, if you can manage to get though it.

So take a browse while waiting for the upcoming 10th anniversary vinyl release, or while listening to it. Enjoy a final taste, and thanks for listening.

-Ryan

Browse all of the new content here, watch the new video footage on YouTube, or check out the highlights listed below (in rough chronological order).

2017-04-28 edit: “But wait, there’s more!” 
I just received a package in the mail containing 4 discs worth of goodies from the 3rd US Tour in 2005:

Endless thanks to Dino, Patrick, Dan, Denny, Dave, Eddy, Cameron, Brendan, Matt, and especially Ryan for their contributions of content, advice, assistance and support.

In the middle of the scramble to process this new content, both the backend and frontend of the site was updated and reorganized. If you encounter any broken links, corrupt files, or other site-related oddities, contact me at admin {at} chromelodeonarchive {dot} com.