A friend just passed this video along to me. It's kinda freaky:

fascist.mov, QuickTime Format, 15.7MB

Here's what Utah would have you believe...

Here's one of the DJ's accounts:

Last night, I was booked to play an event about an hour outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The hype behind this show was huge, they presold 700 tickets and they expected up to 3,000 people total. The promoters did an amazing job with the show.. they even made slipmats with the flyers on them to promote in local shops.

So, we got to the show around 11:15 or so and it was really cool. It was all outdoors, in a valley surrounded by huge mountains. They had an amazing light show flashing on to a mountain behind the site, the sound was booming, the crowd was about 1500 people thick and everything just seemed too good to be true really. Well...

At about 11:30 or so, I was standing behind the stage talking with someone when I noticed a helicopter pulling over one of the mountain tops. I jokingly said "Oh look, here comes big brother" to the person I was with. I wasn't far off.

The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops" rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really sticky.

No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying, guys are cussing... bad scene.

Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..

- One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.

- The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not all though. Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.

- The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead and said "get the fuck out of here right now."

Now.. let's get the facts straight here.

This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh, I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards for possession.

Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's right. They didnt arrest her, but made her leave her own property!!!

Don't get it twisted, this is all going down in probably THE most conservative state in the USA. And this is scary.. a gross violation of our civil liberties. The police wanted this party shut down, so they made it happen. Even though everything about this event was legal. The promoters spent over $ 20,000 on this show and did everything they had to to make it legit, only to have it taken away from them by a group of radical neo-con's with an agenda.

This was one of the scariest things I have ever witnessed in person. I can't even begin to describe how surreal it was. Helicopters, assault rifles, tear gas, camoflauge-wearing soldiers.... why? Was that really necessary?

This needs to be big news across the USofA. At least in our music scene (edm as a whole)... this could happen to any of us at any time. When we're losing the right to gather peacefully, we're also letting the police set a standard of what we can get away with. And I think that's BULLSHIT!

The system fucked up last night... They broke up a party that was 100% legal and they physically hurt a lot of people there at the same time. The promoters already have 6 lawsuits ready to file with their lawyers and the ACLU is already involved.

I'm sure some pictures (and hopefully some video) will surface soon. I'll make sure to post them up here on 404, so you can see the Police State of America at work.

p.s. - there are more stories of police brutality that i'll post up later. gotta hit the airport soon. can't wait to get the fuck out of this shit hole state.

And here's a ton of other accounts or what went down: http://utrave.org/showthread.php?t=20020

J esus. Not even protesting -- just dancing. And here comes the National Guard. Anyone else find this a little twisted and fascist? I'm kind of glad to not be playing in Utah anymore. I hope SLC2K5 continues without a hitch... :P

ok, so it's been crazy allergies today. i am a bit doped up on a an antihistamine and i just want to curl up below my desk and go to sleep. even if i did take a nap, it wouldn't be a wise idea. i would most likely sleep until 9pm and then not be tired tonight. laura says "no good".

yesterday, we hit a double header at the movies. we went and saw 40 year old virgin and red eye. to be perfectly honest, i have to say that i wasn't overly impressed with either flick. the 40 year old virgin definitely had some "laugh out loud" moments, but other than that, it was the same tired joke throughout the entire movie. wedding crashers is so far superior. red eye, unfortunately, was just NOT scary. it was entertaining, but i really felt like not much happened and it really wasn't too tension filled. C+ maybe would be my rating.

this week will be another busy week, but at least we're done with monday. i am still working on the "smoke through it" shows that we can hold as mini release parties. ack..i'm too tired to think any more about this.

i guess i'll just make some popcorn head to my bed and watch some sappy chick-flick. josie and the pussycats is calling me name!

talk spaeter -

L

This week has been something else. I am tired, stressed and a bit "off". Things have been difficult. Work has been busy. I have had meetings every day this week. One after another. I love it, I get to network and meet people, but it is so exhausting!

Another depressing note- - two people that we were extremely close to at one point are getting a divorce. It's the first friends that are close to me that are divorcing. The circumstances are just shitty. Here's what happened:

Wife gets pregnant (at husband's request) - about 7 months into the pregnancy, husband goes off cheating with some 35 year old married bartender with 2 children. Ya know, like ya do. So - wife has a baby (3 months old and he is just darling) and is left out in the cold by self-centered, vindictive husband. He gets mad at her because she files for divorce because he's sleeping with another woman, because he thinks she should give him time to think. here's the funniest part, just had to write this. this guy is the one who had had several "party of five" moments with nick and me because we smoked. seriously, it was like tear-jerking bad afterschool special interventions. and of course, this bartender that he's dating smokes like a chimney. IRONY.

well without his wife, he'll be able to devote all of his time to his band, his new "cool" friends (you know the type, the guy that was so angry at everyone because he was never cool got together with other people like that and became exclusive) FUN! The successful bartender also does booking, so that's a pretty sweet hook-up for him!

anyhow - the story goes on and on with more selfish shit that he's done, beyond belief - certainly nobody in the world deserves what he has done to her.

I have talked with her quite a bit, we met yesterday and she's actually looking for an apartment right around us. It will be nice to get to know her without the negativity we always had to deal with. she is not a negative person, and i think it already shows that she'll be better off.

She was very upbeat and taking it very well. When we first talked with her, I even thought she sounded better than she ever has. She is raising a child and since her husband acts like a bratty 5 year old, it's better if he isn't around to demand attention and throw tantrums (I think everyone who knows this guy has seen him do it, or just the way he mopes when things aren't going his way).

anyhoo - that's really depressing for me. they had been together for almost 10 years. we went to their wedding and we were like family for 2 years after that...

Everyone is just shocked. What is a mid-life crisis called if you're only 27 when it happens? He has sort of almost cheated on her before they got married, so I guess that's when you learn "once a cheater, always a cheater".

anyway, just had to write about it - - it's so heavy on my heart. Especially when I met the litte boy who is just to die for. (of course daddy wants very little to do with him) - it's almost too cliched to believe that it actually happened, but indeed, it is true. I think the lawyers are going to have a field day with this one in court. Hmmm...wonder who the court is going to be in full favor of??? :)

on a good note, we went out with somegirl on thursday night which was super fun. we are going to be working on some projects with them in the near future. we're so close to being done with the cd, but i am so ready to be done. ack.

it's the finishing touches that seem to take the longest. almost there...i can see home stretch.

i can hear nick working on it now, i guess i better go and see what we can finish up today!

ciao!!!!

L

[np: Machines of Loving Grace - Concentration]

Well, here it is -- down to the last page of notes on the album, doing some tweaks then mixing and mastering. It so close I can smell it's sweaty armpits... Er... Yeah. So, so close, and sounding pretty damn fine. We swore this time we would take the extra time to polish, and it's showing -- all the tracks are on a "next level" above our self titled album. Not a single part was left as "that's good enough, I guess"...

Yeah, I'm kinda proud of this album... ;)

It's been kind of a rough week. Laura and I have both been kind of down for whatever reason. Probably has a lot to do with hearing the horror stories of a broken relationship... I can't believe that human beings can be so incredibly evil and self-centered, and it kind of gets you down on humanity in general. It gnaws at you. Combine that with the stress of getting all our ducks in a row for the smoke through it release, and there's a lot of pressure weighing down. Pulls you down a bit.

And it doesn't help to be hung over today, either. Had a little too much fun with Stephen and Rebecca of Somegirl last night... Ugh. Goes to show what taking two weeks off drinking can do to your tolerance... Anyway, that was a really exciting meeting none-the-less -- it was really great to hang out with musicians that are just *normal*. We shared a lot of goofy stories, including the realization that we had both worked with the same particularly bratty vocalist, probably near the same time. Small world. We also kicked around some ideas for collaboration, which sounded really cool...

I'm ready to get back into the creative aspect of music again after spending hour upon hour on the same eleven songs. Laura and I are probably going to play around with some new ideas and new projects just as a release from EB for a while. While smoke through it heads out into the wild. A few collaborations with Somegirl will be a blast, but we also have something completely different in the works, an idea Laura and I have been playing around with since last winter. Plus I have a zillion other little projects I've been putting off because of the album...

Anyway, I'm tired. Gotta finish the mastering, then off to bed for me.

Ciao.

This week marks many new things. Finishing "Smoke Through It". After many months of writing, recording, editing, etc (and frankly with no clear end in sight) the album promises us to be ready this coming week (fingers crossed). This Tuesday marks the end of the 2 weeks of hell (aka Southbeach phase one). I figured I'd try it. How hard could it be? Well, lemme tell ya. It sucked. I guess I just don't really like meat & dairy. I am a big veggie person, but I really am not a carnivore. So I just felt exhausted and winded for the past 14 days. Plus, I didn't like the whole "you can't drink" thing... :)

Tuesday night - I'm having a nice big glass of good red wine. Because I deserve it!

This album is going to be so much more exciting for me this time around because I have had so much more of a hand in the production. Not to mention, that we have gotten so much better response from our new songs than we ever did with our older tunes. We also have two surprise guest vocalists on this album - - very very cool stuff.

Last week, we had the show at Club Inferno of Madison. We had not performed there since STATE4 (more than 3 years ago). It was nice to perform and have a great show. We played well - - last time we played, we were all so green. It was nice to have the command of the Inferno Stage. The booking guy is super cool and the sound guy was excellent.

We also got the chance to meet "Some Girl" in person. These guys are great. They are also a guy/girl duo and their sound really goes well with ours. So we had a blast hanging out together with the Amanda & Stephen of SG and Stephen's Wife, Rebecca. In fact, they are from Milwaukee, so Nick and I are getting together with Steve & Rebecca this week. It's too bad that we won't be able to go to the SLC Synthpop festival (they are performing on Friday night), but shit, what can ya do? No money means No Money! :(

As time goes by, so nears the closing date for our condo. I cannot wait. We have picked out all of the flooring/countertops and fixtures. Now we just wait until it's done. I am looking forward to living in the neighborhood. We have some cool neighbors (we went to one of the girl's housewarming parties last week and it was super fun).

Anyways -- sorry about the boring entry. I guess things are just sort of flowing right now = = we'll get back to you soon with a CD update!

Back to the recording booth -

L

man, these tracks are killing me. i just spent about 5 hours editing the vocal tracks for just 2 songs. I am taking much more control on the vocal editing than I did for the last album. Which makes so much more sense. First off, it saves Nick a hell of a lot of time. And I am more of a perfectionist when it comes to matching harmonies, pitch, etc. And I definitely have timbres of my voice that I, for one, cannot stand. When I have those days, I almost want to erase everything that I've done. It gets tricky, though. We just had this sort of problem with our song, "The Feeling". I had one take from a couple weeks ago that was right on emotionally and pitch-wise, but it was very harsh sounding. The song has this beautiful and painful tone to it, so I wanted my vocals to match that. Be very strained, yet beautiful with a lot of emotion behind it. So I re-recorded it to sound prettier. What I got was a line of vocals that was very pretty, but lacked emotion almost completely. It just sounded like I was singing a lullabye, when the words are pretty potent. After comparing the two, I did a final take where I tried to be a little of both - - still capturing the pain while making the vocals a bit more sing-songy. While the take wasn't 100% perfect, it was enough for me to mix and match from the 3. But, not without spending a trillion years doing it! :)

I also worked on an old/new song called "forever". This song was originally written by Nick when he was playing as a Solo act for STATE4. It was revived with the first singer of STATE4 and then again when I started in S4, but we didn't get it to the point that we wanted to record it. Now after Nick has remixed the song about 10 times, I think we're at the point that we want to be. For one thing, we slowed it down tremendously - which is hard for me to grasp, as I'm so used to the old versions. Well, at least the main editing is finished.

And it certainly does get to a point where everything starts to sound bad and things at the beginning of the song that you have already fixed start to sound wrong. That's when you have to quit, when one gets "studio ears" - as Nick calls it. I think I may have finished just in time before this happened.
I think I picked almost two of the hardest ones to do in one day. Tomorrow, I will pick something that goes a little faster. As for these two songs, I will leave the rest in Nick's hands, to do the effects, EQ-ing and all of the other production shtuff he is so good at doing. Then, the song comes back to me for critique. Damn, I will be so glad when this is done!

More scratches to arrive shortly to the website for your listening pleasure. L OUT

[np: Faith No More - The Real Thing]

Okay, there is some strange cosmic nexus that somehow links Madison's Club Inferno and Wisconsin Dell's Noah's Ark. Last time we were at Noah's Ark we ran into Apollo, owner of said club. I mean, of all the places to run into the owner of the gothiest club in Madison, I'd have to say Noah's Ark, wholesome family fun water park, is at the bottom of my list. But there he was. Today, on our way to take our cousins for a bit of watery fun at the Ark, we get a call from Trace that we'll be playing the Inferno next Thursday.

Crazy.

Well, it's been a while since I wrote an entry. July has been a weird month in general, and I've had trouble getting it together enough to focus my thoughts. That and the fact that I've been insane busy both at work and on the album.

Well, one of the strangest experiences was attending my 10 year high school reunion. Yes kids, I'm that old. My home town held a lot of demons for me, so it was definitly not an easy thing to go back to it after so many years. But the reality of it was that I returned as a different person, and a lot of bad karma got put to rest for me. Many people had changed completely -- people I loathed were actually people I could see myself tipping a beer with. Other people were exactly the same, and I was the one that changed, which was an odd feeling. And the cool kids? Yeah. Not so cool anymore. They were boring and they knew it. We hung out with the smokers outside...

I also had an amazing music related experience, one that was almost beyond words. I saw two of the music groups that shaped my early years in high school very profoundly, both in the one live music venue in Belen, three weeks before it was to be torn down. Wow, it's crazy just writing those words down. The first was Tommy Jaramillo, an incredibly talented guitarist a year ahead of me. I remember seeing this cat play for a school related festival, and he knocked my socks off. Now I had never really seen a real live guitar virtuoso before -- such beings were the stuff of legend and lived only on my CDs, not in the world of mortals. But here's this guy, just a year older than me, and he rips it up like no other I'd seen. He brought me to realize that music-making was not something out of my reach -- I could do this as well.

The other band I saw was the first "real" band I ever met, Stoic Frame. I remember seeing these guys playing out in Timen Park under the stars and by the headlights of cars, and totally rocking out with them. Now I hear they play the Whiskey in LA once a week. I see that, I see them play once again after so many years of being away, and it's such an uplifting thought. Just three words: They made it. It fills me with something I haven't felt for my home for a long time: pride. And hope -- there is a place in this world for musicians from Belen, New Mexico.

Whew. This has been a pretty deep entry. I'm going to go focus on music now -- I'm feeling it tonight.