#phish colorado

[phishartdotnet]

Phish Dick's Run 2024

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

Last summer, a candidate for the New Mexico state House showed up on Nathan Jaramillo’s doorstep. Jaramillo, the Bureau of Elections administrator in Bernalillo County, said Peña had previously sent threatening emails to both himself and to others in the county. Jaramillo brushed it off, annoyed at the personal intrusion but unconcerned. Five months later, Peña, a Trump supporter who lost his election and rejected the results, was arrested and charged with organizing a string of brazen drive-by shootings targeting public officials. Jaramillo thought back to five months earlier, when the man had shown up at his doorstep. The severity of the situation “really hit me,” Jaramillo told HuffPost. “In hindsight, it was a lot more scary.” Now, Jaramillo’s office assigns ticket numbers to emails they receive, organizing them by sender and keeping tabs on the office’s responses, in the hopes of anticipating anyone who could escalate their complaints into something more serious.

But the incident with Peña — who has pleaded not guilty, and whose attorney did not respond to a request for comment — is just one scene representative of an increasingly tense era of American politics. Fueled by Trump’s lies about election theft, supporters of his have spent years threatening election workers and the democratic process — and acting upon those threats. Now, as the 2024 presidential campaign charges toward November, election offices are taking steps they’d never dreamed could be necessary. Several election officials HuffPost spoke to laid out laundry lists of upgrades — everything from ballistic windows, doors and walls to new security cameras, electronic access badges and location trackers on ballot boxes. And as the Republican Party continues to push lies about election integrity — a scripted Republican Party call last month falsely claimed there was “massive fraud” in 2020 — election officials are gearing up to protect what promises to be an even more tense presidential contest this year.

[...] Around the country, election officials are working on evacuation and “quick containment” drills for future potential envelope attacks — even just using a bucket to contain a suspicious envelope — and stocking up on masks, gloves and naloxone, just in case, said Jennifer Morrell, a former elections official in Utah and Colorado and co-founder of an election consulting group during a recent call hosted by the National Task Force on Election Crises.

[...] “Prior to 2016, it was a pretty sleepy industry. People trusted their election officials and the process,” she said. Then, Hall said, “everything changed: When you have rhetoric coming from the top, it empowers and activates people all the way down the food chain.”

[...] But election workers’ preparations for 2024 are complicated by the sheer range of security issues that could come up: Since 2020, for example, Trump supporters across the country have tried — sometimes successfully — to copy data from sensitive equipment like voting machines and ballot tabulators. In Michigan, for example, several prominent Republicans, including a former GOP nominee for state attorney general, have been charged with felonies for their roles in an alleged conspiracy to improperly gain access to ballot tabulators. In Colorado, a former county clerk faces felony charges for allegedly allowing a computer technician to get into election machines under false pretenses; information from the machines was subsequently shared at an election fraud conspiracy theory summit. The answer to these growing threats, according to election officials, is a mix of background checks, digital protections like phishing training for staff and multi-factor authentication for accessing databases, in addition to physical measures like electronic badges that allow different levels of access to observers, volunteers, election workers and government employees.

[...]

Brain Drain

For veteran election administrators, the Trump era has brought with it a troubling wave of resignations. Workers at all levels have decided they’d rather not participate in a process that, in recent years, has led some of their neighbors to think they’re part of an anti-democratic cabal. What used to be considered sleepy “clerk work” is now heavily scrutinized — and, as the Republican attacks against Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss showed, may make people vulnerable to nationwide defamation campaigns. In North Carolina, there’s been a “huge increase” in directors of elections retiring, Bowens said. And Jaramillo described “individuals that were with our office for 20-plus years [who] made the determination that they weren’t in it for the 2024 ride.” Mast said he’d seen an “incredible” number of election workers retiring or changing fields. Among elected clerks, Mast said the position has gone from one filled largely by career administrators who served lengthy tenures to one with roughly 30% turnover every four years. After the “environmental changes” of 2020, experienced clerks have begun leaving the field more often, he said. “It’s incredible to see.”

Election administration was once a sleepy nonpartisan industry, but with rampant election denialism instigated by Donald Trump and fellow right-wing bad actors, election administrators are looking to make safety upgrades before this fall's election.

[mariacallous]

Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the United States about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat.

The coalition of top law enforcement officials, spearheaded by New York attorney general Letitia James, says the “dramatic and persistent spike” in complaints concerning account takeovers amounts to a “substantial drain” on governmental resources, as many stolen accounts are also tied to financial crimes—some of which allegedly profits Meta directly.

“We have received a number of complaints of threat actors fraudulently charging thousands of dollars to stored credit cards,” says the letter addressed to Meta’s chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead. “Furthermore, we have received reports of threat actors buying advertisements to run on Meta.”

“We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” the officials add. “Proper investment in response and mitigation is mandatory.”

In addition to New York, the letter is signed by attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and the District of Columbia.

“Scammers use every platform available to them and constantly adapt to evade enforcement. We invest heavily in our trained enforcement and review teams and have specialized detection tools to identify compromised accounts and other fraudulent activity,” Meta says in a statement provided by spokesperson Erin McPike. “We regularly share tips and tools people can use to protect themselves, provide a means to report potential violations, work with law enforcement and take legal action.”

Account takeovers can occur as a result of phishing as well as other more sophisticated and targeted techniques. Once an attacker gains access to an account, the owner can be easily locked out by changing passwords and contact information. Private messages and personal information are left up for grabs for a variety of nefarious purposes, from impersonation and fraud to pushing misinformation.

“It's basically a case of identity theft and Facebook is doing nothing about it,” said one user whose complaint was cited in the letter to Meta's Newstead.

The state officials said the accounts that were stolen to run ads on Facebook often run afoul of its rules while doing so, leading them to be permanently suspended, punishing the victims—often small business owners—twice over.

“Having your social media account taken over by a scammer can feel like having someone sneak into your home and change all of the locks,” New York's James said in a statement. “Social media is how millions of Americans connect with family, friends, and people throughout their communities and the world. To have Meta fail to properly protect users from scammers trying to hijack accounts and lock rightful owners out is unacceptable.”

Other complaints forwarded to Newstead show hacking victims expressing frustration over Meta’s lack of response. In many cases, users report no action being taken by the company. Some say the company encourages users to report such problems but never responds, leaving them unable to salvage their accounts or the businesses they built around them.

After being hacked and defrauded of $500, one user complained that their ability to communicate with their own customer base had been “completely disrupted,” and that Meta had never responded to the report they filed, though the user had followed the instructions the company provided them to obtain help.

“I can't get any help from Meta. There is no one to talk to and meanwhile all my personal pictures are being used. My contacts are receiving false information from the hacker,” one user wrote.

Wrote another: “This is my business account, which is important to me and my life. I have invested my life, time, money and soul in this account. All attempts to contact and get a response from the Meta company, including Instagram and Facebook, were crowned with complete failure, since the company categorically does not respond to letters.”

Figures provided by James’ office in New York show a tenfold increase in complaints between 2019 and 2023—from 73 complaints to more than 780 last year. In January alone, more than 128 complaints were received, James’ office says. Other states saw similar spikes in complaints during that period, according to the letter, with Pennsylvania recording a 270 percent increase, a 330 percent jump in North Carolina, and a 740 percent surge in Vermont.

The letter notes that, while the officials cannot be “certain of any connection,” the drastic increase in complaints occurred “around the same time” as layoffs at Meta affecting roughly 11,000 employees in November 2022, around 13 percent of its staff at the time.

[baddluckclub]

things about callie: 

she’s going to school in colorado 

she’s a bit of a hippie, dresses like she’s from the 70s

loves jam bands like the grateful dead and phish lmao 

she loooooves musical festivals (not edm/electronic/whatever) 

she doesn’t know about sam. her parents told her he was killed in an accident as a kid bc they didn’t want to have to explain the truth 

she is also a mutant! her powers manifested around the same time as sam’s did. she has power over plants and nature 

her lil apartment is just covered in plants 

in an ideal world, one day she’ll have a farm of her own with a big ol’ greenhouse 

yeah! idk! ask me questions if you want i have to go do life things now 

[theghostpinesmusic]

It's been awhile, apparently, since I've written about "Madhuvan" on here. Though, interestingly, a quick search reveals that the last time I did was actually the first of what has become a series of many, many dives into many, many Goose jams: it was the Paris "Madhuvan" from 11/3/23, which now feels like a lifetime ago.

The song continues to be one of my favorites though, despite the last-year-that's-felt-like-five-years and Goose's recent drummer change, and this version from the second night of the Fiddler's Green run back in summer tour is one of the best to come down the pike since Cotter joined on, in my opinion.

It's also been awhile since I've written about any jams in general (I blame the woods for making me hike and camp in them and Phish for making me drive to Denver to see them last weekend), but the last time I did I wrote about how awesome the first night of the Fiddler's run was in general, and how awesome the 6/7 "Jive Lee" was in particular.

Well, 6/8 is also great, with a choice setlist in the opening frame that's anchored by a huge "Drive" jam that flows into one of my favorite new Goose songs in awhile, "Give It Time." The second set opens with this huge "Madhuvan," but also features a great "Arrow" -> "Hollywood Nights" pairing. And, of course, the band sends Colorado off in style with the whole Autumn Crossing suite as the encore.

Both of these shows felt a little on the short side to me, but it's hard to complain when they are both so jam-packed with...jams.

Okay, to the "Madhuvan"!

Like a lot of recent Goose sets, this one opens with a bit of ambient noise/general squirreliness before settling down into the song proper about twenty-five seconds into the video. Immediately I notice that Trevor's bass is turned up to 2024 levels, so I'm happy.

The song part of the song (if that makes sense) is pretty standard fare here, though the band sounds locked in. I dig the lights at about 4:10.

The jam starts pretty much right at seven minutes, and at least at first does what most modern "Madhuvan" jams does: starts with an abstract, deconstructed soundscape before eventually coalescing into something more easily recognizable as rock music.

This time around, it's just a bit...weirder than usual.

The part where Pete starts playing Murder Keyboards around the eight-minute mark is great, and it's accented by some jarring, angular playing from both Rick and Trevor. Pete moves to his guitar looper around 9:00, and briefly this all sounds together like elevator music on an elevator to hell.

But, like, Beetlejuice hell, not like Christian hell.

Around 9:30, Rick starts chording a bit more regularly and Cotter and Jeff add a bit more of a beat to what's been mostly an amorphous blast of sounds so far. The drums continue to give nearly-discernable form to the otherwise chaotic sound of the next few minutes. There's a bit in there where Rick seems to almost start playing a coherent melody before Trevor and Pete tear it back apart. It's really weird and cool.

Eventually, around 11:30, an uneasy equilibrium is reached, with Pete playing absolute crashing nonsense on his guitar and Rick playing a pretty melody on his, with the rhythm section mediating between the two. This is not really a Phish-like jam, but it's got that same chaos-through-telepathy feel that I get from many of my favorite Phish jams. To my ears, Goose has rarely attempted to improvise in such an avant-garde way, though most of those attempts have happened since Cotter joined, so I'm hoping this is going to be a trend going forward. I have no interest in seeing these guys try to be "the next Phish," but I think they can make their own music their own way and achieve a comparable level of improvisational artistry.

With, like, a few more decades' practice.

Anyway, everyone eventually converges around Trevor's bass at 12:30 or so, and the jam becomes somehow anthemic and spacey at the same time. I could listen to the next few minutes of this on loop for...forever, I think?

Things take a turn for the hectic around 15:00, once again seemingly led by Trevor (at least to my ears), which in turn inspires Peter to move to a more distorted, sinister tone on keys from the warm haze he was laying down earlier.

The band has used drone shots during shows before (Red Rocks '23 comes to mind) but they've often been sort of pixelated and jerky and just sort of not-great looking, but here (15:54) I thought this was a great, up-there shot of the venue paired with the moment the music turns back toward being uplifting again.

Rick's trilling guitar and Peter's syncopated playing on keys mesh really well at about the 16:45 mark, and together start to push the jam in a slightly more propulsive direction for the first time since it started nearly ten minutes earlier.

Everybody contributes to laying down the blanket of sonic bliss that follows, but once again Trevor is the standout to my ears. His tone here is immaculate.

Unfortunately, our traipse through the poppy fields comes to an abrupt end at 18:18, when Rick steers the band into a new minor-key space. Pete responds with a move to the Vintage Vibe, and the rhythm section keeps the momentum going with zero hesitation. This bit feels a little more like "typical" Goose jamming to me, but Cotter and Jeff's interlocking playing elevates it to something beyond a run-of-the-mill dark jam.

Okay, the bit at 21:50, with Peter banging out distorted chords and Trevor dropping bass bombs as the drone pans around the venue from above is pretty badass.

At 23:15, Cotter executes a well-placed shift to a more rock-and-roll beat, and though this doesn't lead to a major change in the jam at first, everyone slowly but surely starts to move away from the funereal dirge of the last few minutes into something faster-paced. Around 24:20, this transition feels complete as Rick's rhythm playing and Peter's absolutely haunted keyboards lead into something that can only be described as a Ghost Knight Rider Jam.

Even the smoke machines get in on the groove here, which is stupid, but maybe you're more capable of enjoying life than I am.

If you can tune out the constant hissing of the smoke machines, this section is pretty freaking rad.

It seems like Rick initiates a key change around 27:30, but maybe also screws it up? Regardless, the band keeps raging along. The lights here are killer.

I have to say here that I kinda love that teasing "River Lullaby" has sort of become Rick's version of Trey's teasing "Streets of Cairo" or "San-Ho-Zay." There's even a long tease of it on Ted Tapes 2024, which I just learned this weekend even though everyone else probably knew it already!

Anyway, here the tease is at 28:30. Peter unleashes the Hell Siren shortly thereafter.

At 29:40, Rick introduces some skittish chording into the jam and everyone else piles on, building tension until an excellent transition back into the key of "Madhuvan" at 30:25.

Not content to coast to the finish in this already absolutely ridiculous version of the song, Rick throws down some 80s-style shredding for a bit, and then finally at 31:55 they drop into the end of the song off of an enormous peak and Trevor goes absolutely nuts. How these guys have this much energy after already laying down a thirty minute jam is beyond me, but holy hell.

And that's just the beginning of the second set!

[b2bcybersecurity]

Gezieltes russisches Phishing auf 800 EU- und US-Organisationen

From Russia with love: Ausgefeilte Social-Engineering-Kampagne hat es auf Zugangsdaten von 800 Organisationen abgesehen. Interessant: die Ziele liegen alle in der EU oder in der USA. Sophos-Experten sehen russische Verbindungen. Innerhalb von 51 Tagen verschickte eine Gruppe von Angreifern, die vermutlich aus Russland stammt, mehr als 2.000 Phishing-E-Mails an fast 800 Unternehmen und Organisationen aus den Bereichen Regierung, Gesundheitswesen, Energie und kritische Infrastrukturen. Die Ziele befanden sich in Großbritannien, Australien, Frankreich, Deutschland, Österreich, Italien sowie in den USA und Niederlanden. Perfektes Phishing mit viel Aufwand Die E-Mails zeichneten sich durch eine ungewöhnliche, hochgradig personalisierte Technik aus: die Einbettung eines Webseiten-Logos, das von einer eigenen Seite der Zielperson stammt, in die Phishing-Seite selbst. Nach dem Öffnen wurden die Zielpersonen aufgefordert, ihre Passwörter in die Anmeldeseite der scheinbar eigenen Webseite einzugeben. Anschließend schleusten die Angreifer die gestohlenen Passwörter in ihre Telegram-Kanäle ein. Offenbar haben die Angreifer das Wissen über online nachvollziehbare Communities ausgenutzt, wodurch das Sophos-Team auf die Kampagne aufmerksam wurde. Andrew Brandt von Sophos X-Ops erhielt zunächst eine E-Mail von einem der Angreifer, als er für die örtliche Schulratswahl in Boulder, Colorado, USA, kandidierte, wobei der Angreifer vorgab, einer seiner Mitkandidaten zu sein. Als die ersten BEC-E-Mails (Business Email Compromise) fehlschlugen, wechselten die Angreifer zu Phishing-E-Mails und schickten Andrew eine E-Mail mit einem Anhang, der die Anmeldeseite für seine scheinbar persönliche Kampagnen-Website enthielt. Social-Engineering-Kampagne „Die BEC-Kampagne war zwar recht einfach gestrickt, zeigt jedoch, dass die Angreifer geschickt eine Analyse der online verfügbaren, sozialen Kontakte im Umfeld der Zielperson ausnutzen, um möglichst realistisch zu wirken“, so Andrew Brandt. „Bedeutend ausgefeilter war hingegen der nachfolgende Social-Engineering-Versuch. Die Verwendung von grafischen Elementen, die die Zielperson selbst nutzt, zeigt die Raffinesse, mit der Betrüger ihre Attacken mittlerweile vorbereiten.“ Mehr technische Infos bietet dazu auch ein Blog-Beitrag.     Passende Artikel zum Thema Lesen Sie den ganzen Artikel

[writer59january13]

Oh Mondseer: the muck cob brie muenster saga...,

crafted when Wallace and Gromit returned from their trip to the moon, which I can prov-olone huck curd (within Trump con feta ration) – as cheesy poem crafted whey back when the following Gouda eye idea occurred while milking the cows.

Yea of course writing ideas unstoppably

burst asunder at the most inconvenient

opportunities such as driving Miss Daisy,

taking a shower, or using the bathroom.

Accursed ambition becoming a prolific

wordsmith (case in point Stephen King)

Woolworth riding, oddly lumbering

lackadaisical shoehorning out this

being from a self made gully. The jury

yet to decree if attempting to extricate

muss elf from tangled web of decades

old setbacks via literary output successful.

Every morning, noon and night, this chap

blunders, flounders, (like a phish out of water),

yet plod his shipshape reclusive quiet-natured

person along the boulevard of broken dreams.

Oft times, huff hind aye muss elf entering The

Dead Zone (bordering a Pet Sematary). Earlier,

a previous saunter found me surmounting

The Green Mile. Attendant in regard to these

Bag Of Bones, and Desperation to acquire

telephone contact with Cell phone quickens

pace despite Insomnia. No matter unexpected

Sleeping Beauties warrant kisses, my determination,

motivation, and slight trepidation occasionally breeds

(The Dark Half), doomsday facet deftly jackknifing lust.

Occasionally, a feeble goading simply under minds

any corporeal aim to restore endeavor to experience

Joyland. IT (creative juices within) spur meeting Rose

Red and her restorative powers. Onward atheistic

soldier goes this chap. No matter tipping point (vis

a vis hungry fatigued body clamors for Needful Things.

Revival (for food and sleep) frequently appears grim.

Downcast state of body, mind and spirit reinforced

by mirage. The Dark Tower looms ahead! Adjacent

to ominous evil looking structure silhouette casted

of a Black House. The initial ambition to ward off

abysmal results summon forth creative literary juices.

Simultaneously a migraine headache pounding pitted courtesy spluttering, nauseating, and foaming LIX spittle.

They hammer horrifically, ferociously, and diabolically.

Shades of shad rock Under The Dome. Ma noggin

Aches like The Tommyknockers! Every attempt to locate

a royal crowning coeval counterpart jinxed with laborious

ill luck. Hell in a handbasket plight usually generates

nostalgia for destiny to Carrie be back to Old Virginny.

Sage advice from Christine, Delores Claiborne, or The

Colorado Kid, yours truly blithely heeded. As a result

(The Outsider within this paperback writer wannabe)

sports defeat written all over face. Concomitant figurative

futility gussies and kickstarts leaving invisible pockmarks.

Ordinary Dreamcatcher fate invariably finds aptly named

Writer Errs Block. Need to back track arises (figuratively)

along vista. The roads have no name. They command

stubborn respect. Near impossible mission manifested

To transcend mental hindrance. This more difficult than

playing Gerald's Game. Hence sigh embrace The Shining

opportunity to avoid Misery. Doctor Sleep would undoubtedly

encourage braving, challenging self confronting The Eyes

Of The Dragon. Such a risky pursuit could force facing pitbull

Cujo. No matter gamble foisted prospect fraught frightfully

being burned at the stake by a Firestarter. Voluntary action

brings small hairs to tingle. Hunchback, sans severely curved

spine straightens. This (The Stand) ding pose offered supreme

vision as promised by The Talisman. Tidbits by me alias

Mr. Mercedes carefully just in case The Girl Who Loved

Tom Gordon chanced to stumble upon this redoubt versus

her hours spent staring at a blinking cursor. Metaphorical

po' wet tick feet took me where they would into the Shining and happy place called Willoughby located within the outer

limits of the twilight zone.

[mylovetyrantkoalabear]

Phishing scam dupes Colorado couple out of $137K | FOX31 Denver

[trendingnewschronicle]

ALSCO's Secure Gateway Technology Highlighted in Bank of America's Patents

Discover the cutting-edge technology revolutionizing cybersecurity at Bank of America! Their recent patents for identifying suspicious code in isolated computing environments are making waves in the industry. But what’s even more intriguing is their citation of ALSCO’s Secure Gateway technology in these patents.

ALSCO, a leading technology company, has developed a proven solution that provides a secure network environment. Their Secure Gateway technology analyzes and filters traffic in real time, protecting businesses from malware, ransomware, and phishing attacks. It’s no wonder Bank of America looked to ALSCO as a reference.

With cyber threats on the rise, the need for robust security measures in financial institutions is paramount. Bank of America’s innovative technology, inspired by ALSCO, plays a critical role in safeguarding sensitive data and mitigating risks. Stay ahead in the cybersecurity game with ALSCO and Bank of America.

Also Read: Behind the Tragedy: Insight into the Colorado Springs Shooting and Its Far-Reaching Effects

[posterdrops]

Reposted from @phishdrygoods We have three posters for Phish's Dick's run. Here are the first two by @jdombrowski Johnny Dombrowski. Swipe for details. 18"x24" Main Edition of 1,300 with a pink Variant Edition of 600. There will be an early stand at 4PM today outside of Gate F. Limit of 1 poster per person + show ticket to buy early. You must stay in line in order to grab your poster. No space holding for others. Reminder: abusive and bullying comments will not be tolerated at Dry Goods. Humans create these and humans are reading these. #phish #phishdrygoods #screenprint #gigposter #colorado (at Dick's Sporting Goods Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch-PS2npOe_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[phishartdotnet]

My commemorative ticket stubs for Phish’s 4-day run at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City, CO.

By the time I started working on these, my summer had ended and I was back to teaching. My free time was very limited, and the surprise of the SPAC shows threw my timeline off. In my search for inspiration, I was looking at pictures of the view of Denver from Commerce City. At this point, I was getting frustrated and in a state of artistic delirium, just thought “What if I replace the mountains with the buildings? What if I replace the clouds with buildings?” This amused me enough that I sketched up the possible scenarios and then created the paintings.

Stubs available

[joyaltee]

This cutie, enjoying the comfiest pants ever!😘❤️♻️🌈 . . . Always different!😍😘🙌🏼💫 . . . Thank you @alixricci1 for the sweet pic!😍😘 . . . . . . #entrepreneurs #businessowner #tiedyeing #motivational #smallbusiness #recycle #recycled #upcycle #upcycled #reuse #upcycledtshirt #upcycledshirt #joyaltee #joyalteeaddict #texas #durango #colorado #fashioninstituteoftechnology #nyc #ecofriendly #eco #phish #gratefuldead #clothdiaper #patchwork

[5280customframing]

Colorado ‘88 Phish photograph taken in Telluride custom framed with acid-free materials and UV glass!

[randomvarious]

Sturgeon General - “Live the Life” Boycott Radical Records 1999 Third Wave Ska / Reggae

Although the bio from this group's Facebook page is kinda long, it really seems to capture a lot of the irreverent essence of being a small-time touring ska band in the 90s:

The decade of the 90’s was a distant time: the internet was in its infancy, “texting” was unheard of and climate change…was still a myth. Seattle grunge may have been an institution, but close on its heels SKA music was making waves. Nowhere else was this more evident than along the somewhat obscure, conservative Wasatch Front in Utah where the likes of Swim Herschel Swim, Stretch Armstrong, Insatiable and Sturgeon General were whipping crowds into a frenzy on a nightly basis. Formed in the early nineties by front-man and bari-saxophonist Craig Waddell, Sturgeon General epitomized the cozy underground followings SKA had generated around the country. In direct opposition to grunge’s baleful dirges and angst-filled bravado, SKA proffered a carefree, hyperactive outlet of brass energy underlying its reggae-on-steroids tempo. The band filtered many members through its fraternity over the years, but staples Zach Griffen, Bill Hosack, Ken Marvel, Devin Affleck, Joe Kaufman, Pablo Anderson, Nate Robinson, and Richard (Phish) McCallister were welcome anchors for a band that eventually toured for more than four years nationally while promoting two albums of original material.

Sturgeon began playing at Salt Lake City’s Bar-and-Grill (9th south), Ashbury Pub and their ever-staple gig at Burt’s Tiki Lounge. In the Sundance burrow known as Park City, Sturgeon regularly played to sellout rooms at The Alamo and Jammin’ Salmon where they attracted their manger, Ben Rosch. The energy of performances were electric and it was often difficult to determine who was more wired: the band or the ‘skankin’ crowds, as many a busted stage floor can testify to! Fan favorites Mojave, Edge of the Knife and Shut Up seldom left the dance floor empty or dry from sweat and spilled beers. One of the great advantages of watching Sturgeon play was that fans would sweat out as much as they imbibed, making the bartenders happy while accounting for an intense aerobic exercise session.

Life on the road was filled with all of the glory, frustration and insanity that many have come to associate with the rock-star life. Sturgeon General wandered far from Utah, frequenting the east coast and making a name for themselves in small college towns and metropolises alike, gaining fans wherever they went.

How crazy you ask? Band highlights from the road include streaking the campus at Mount Holyoke (a conservative women’s college), performing semi-regularly at the SKA Brewery in Durango Colorado, getting their own beer named after them by the Mt. Olympus Brewery: Sturgeon General Stout, 4th of July gig at the VFW in San Antonio, Texas with Monkey (band), and touring the east coast when 1999’s hurricane Floyd struck the region making for a crazy set of weeks! Sturgeon also recorded a radio commercial for Corona beer in the late 90’s featuring their song “Saturday” that teased with vaulting them into the national spotlight. Then there’s the time tenor player Jacob(his body still painted green from an Incredible Hulk Halloween costume, and currently lead in the E street band), nearly drove the tour van off the road in a blinding snowstorm. Kicked out of hotels, stiffed by club/bar owners, fights, music label disputes, out of money, getting lost; all in a day’s work for the indefatigable touring SKA band! Through it all, Sturgeon General endures.

Always particularly enjoy reading about bands that come from strait-laced places like Utah. It's just fun to imagine moms and dads and clergymen losing their cool because of the combined sequences of musical notes and words they just heard. Just a funny thing to imagine someone being pissed off about. There's something to the idea of a thing being cool and attractive because the people in charge find it objectionable and uncouth. Controversy rocks, and the more uptight a place is, the easier it is to rustle its jimmies. And at the end of the day, that's just plain ol' fun, right? A tale as old as time, really.

This silly song appeared on two albums in 1999: Sturgeon General's eponymously titled second and final album, and Radical Records' Boycott Radical Records various artist compilation. Not really sure why or how this particular song ended up on a Radical comp since SG never released anything through them, but it happened!

I guess the most striking and interesting thing about “Live the Life”—besides its "Dueling Banjos" open(??? 😂)—is that while "third wave ska" and "ska-punk" are terms that tend to get used interchangeably, this third wave ska song brings all the speed of a skatepunk type of jam, but without any of the actual punkiness; there's no scratchy guitars, no bratty vocals, and no fast-mashed drums. But it has fun breaks from all of that breakneck speed that see the song suddenly shifting in and out of varied bouts of chilled-out reggae grooviness.

Maybe you find Sturgeon General's choice to use this song as the title track to their second album to be a bit odd, but you gotta remember that they were primarily a touring band, and I don't think it's all that hard to imagine them tearing down every venue that they wound up playing it at. Gotta be a fun one to experience live for sure 😊.

[theghostpinesmusic]

Well, I've decided I want to put off working for real for a little while longer so the 6/7 "Jive Lee" HAPPENS NOW

It was both exciting and weird to watch the band's two-night Fiddler's Green run from the couch at home. As I've written about a few times already, I was so full of Goose-related fervor in '22 that I drove out to Colorado that summer to see two fantastic shows at Dillon Amphitheater and then a just-fine debut night at Red Rocks. I had the chance to go back to Red Rocks for what turned out to be a spectacular two-nighter in '23, but passed on it because for the same amount of mileage on my car and a similar amount of money I was able to do a six-show run from Missoula, Montana down to Los Angeles (it was worth it). I'd imagined another long run in Colorado this summer and fully planned to make the pilgrimage, but when the band announced only two nights (fine, but not worth driving 2,000 miles for) at Fiddler's Green (bigger and downtown-y-er and way less fun than Red Rocks or Dillon) I decided to stay home.

Well, they turned out to be two fantastic shows, but I think I made the right decision watching from home still because now I'm seeing Phish for four nights in September instead.

So, anyway: Fiddler's Green night one. As I said, this was a killer show. Most of the first set was pretty song-y, but the setlist is fantastic and the whole thing is anchored by a really unique, surprising jam out of "Jive Lee" (which I'll get to momentarily).

The second set was a five-song jam- and vibe-fest, opening with a hugely blissful take on "Wysteria Lane" that I dubbed in my own head "The Holy Wysteria," then proceeding through "Feel It Now," a big "Hungersite," the rare and beautiful "Peggy-O," and finally a kind-of-hurried but still jammy "Dripfield." Oh, and an encore of "(dawn)" sans "Same Old Shenanigans"?! Destroy me!

I think the must-listen jam from this show, if I had to pick one with a gun to my head, would be the "Wysteria," but it's also basically one long extended climax for many, many minutes, so there wouldn't be much for me to write about. The "Jive Lee" is maybe more interesting for a few reasons, not the least of which being its recent emergence as dark horse jam vehicle.

I wrote about the song and its place in the "Jivefecta" and the rarity of it being particularly exploratory back during the Euro tour, so I'll skip past most of that here so as to not repeat myself. The short version is that despite being an instrumental that normally gets played for ten to twelve minutes a go, "Jive Lee" opens with a particular melody, and usually the entire jam builds directly off of that melody (with sometimes a brief variation here or there). There were a few versions in late '22 and throughout '23 that stretched out a bit further and/or longer (I'm partial to the Spokane version since I was there), but generally "Jive Lee" remained a fun, energetic, but firmly "Type 1" jam.

Until recently. In my memory, that Glasgow version from late '23 was the first version I've heard that wholeheartedly abandoned the beaten path, but since then there's also been this version (6/7/24) and another mind-boggler a week later at Northlands (6/14/24). I hope this begins a bigger trend, because there seems to be something about this song lately that (sometimes) inspires the band to take it places they normally wouldn't go at all sonically.

This version is twenty-one minutes long, but unlike a lot of Goose songs, there isn't really a "song" taking up the first five to ten minutes of the video's run time in this case. Instead, we get the opening "Jive Lee" riff, which the band jams on for about (literally) thirty seconds before Peter's enjoyment of the OB-6 draws them off into a 70s funk-ish jam that's a great example of 2024 Goose's willingness to leave some space between the notes.

I love this "Jive Lee" first and foremost because of what the rhythm section does in it (Trevor is an absolute beast during the first five or so of these summer shows), but because I normally focus on the guitar and keys most when doing write-ups...I will maybe be less than up to the task of describing the majesty that occurs this time through.

That said, early on here Rick and Peter do a good job of playing off of each other while laying back and letting the groove (mostly) run the show. Around 3:15, Peter moves over to the electric piano (?) and leans in a bit more, which in turn draws Rick out somewhat. Somewhere in there, Peter starts a synth loop that becomes really audible at 3:50, then he moves (perhaps inevitably in such a groovy jam) to the xylo patch, but continues to just add color to the jam here and there. There's a great camera shot of him experimenting with some echo-y goodness around the 5:00 mark.

Trevor well and truly takes over shortly after, prompting Rick to echo him and then stop for a minute to dial in maybe the weirdest tone I've ever heard him play on guitar: it sounds both ethereal and digital at the same time. He and Trevor go back to playing off of each other.

By 7:20, Peter and Rick's tones are blending really nicely, and contrasting well with the grungier, angrier tone of Trevor's bass. Cotter and Jeff have moved to a bit more of shuffling beat at this point.

Ultimately, the band sits in this space and explores it for a bit, which I totally don't mind because this is really different from anything I've ever heard them do before.

Rick and Peter both change things up a bit around the 10:00 mark, and it feels like the jam slows down a little, though in reality it probably doesn't.

Cotter and Jeff start driving things around the 11:00 mark, while the others continue to flesh out the sound here and there. I would love a Ted Tapes album with a bunch of tracks like this!

Around 11:30, Peter hits on a very "Fly Like An Eagle" sounding tone on his keys, and right about the same time Rick starts riffing on a very "Ghostbusters"-like idea. It's a really great combination, especially with the rhythm section still going apeshit in the foreground.

Once again, the band hangs out in this newfound groove for awhile, but that's okay because it fucking rules. Again, it might be my imagination, but I feel like the intensity and the tempo are both growing as the jam continues on...meanwhile, Rick is putting on a masterful show playing rhythm guitar and Pete moves back to the xylo patch.

Shortly after this, Rick takes the lead with a heavily distorted solo, but the rest of the band maintains the DNA of the groove we've been riding for the previous sixteen minutes or so at the same time. It's a potent combo that drives this "Jive Lee" into "NES Castlevania Boss Fight At The Dracula Disco" territory.

Cotter should be illegal.

If you absolutely need some guitar peak with your jam, the area around the 19:00 mark should have you covered :)

Rick continues shredding for the next few minutes, but I can't not just hear Trevor absolutely leveling the pavilion in the meantime.

Finally, just before the 21:00 mark, the band smoothly transitions into the outro of "Jive Lee" completing, for my money, the best version to date (though that might well have been dethroned by 6/14, which I shall endeavor to find video of before long).

[holtbys-left-eyebrow]

the NHL but it’s an ice cream parlor

special thanks to @burkymakar and @capsfightclub for flavor suggestions (and encouragement)

ATLANTIC:

Boston Bruins - boston creme pie bc absolutely iconic

Buffalo Sabres - buffalo wing sauce (i’m so sorry)

Detroit Red Wings - squid ink. black like the heart of every detroit fan

Florida Panthers - pistachio bc quote “florida is where the old people live and old people love pistachios”

Montreal Canadiens - poutine (it could be good? idk)

Ottawa Senators - ice. no cream. worst attendance in the league.

Tampa Bay Lightning - lemon? zing!

Toronto Maple Leafs - maple syrup. duhh

METROPOLITAN:

Carolina Hurricanes - sorbet bc they’re bougie

Columbus Blue Jackets - they already have one that’s why i’m doing this

New Jersey Devils - devil’s food cake

New York Islanders - new york cheesecake

New York Rangers - apple pie

Philadelphia Flyers - cheese whiz (no i’m not sorry)

Washington Capitals - either red velvet (Rock the Red) or pop rocks (Unleash the Fury)

Pittsburgh Penguins - toothpaste and oj (not sorry here either)

CENTRAL:

Chicago Blackhawks - vanilla. bc white people.

Colorado Avalanche - blue raspberry/some kind of fresh berry

Dallas Stars - s’mores

Nashville Predators - peanut butter cookie

St. Louis Blues - two-ball screwball, these weird ice cream cone things from the ice cream truck that are super artificial and had a fucking hard ass gumball at the bottom with a flavor that only lasted 10 seconds

Winnipeg Jets - oatmeal raisin bc they’re deceptively disappointing

Minnesota Wild -  party animal crackers

PACIFIC:

Anaheim Ducks - popcorn/kettle corn 

Arizona Coyotes - prickly pear

Calgary Flames - cinnamon

Edmonton Oilers - rocky mountain oysters (be careful googling this one)

Los Aneles Kings - rocky road

San Jose Sharks - phish food

Seattle Kraken - mint chocolate chip bc they’re fresh and fun and it’s only a matter of time before everyone hates them bc of the expansion draft

Vancouver Canucks - whale blubber / akutaq (shoutout to the Alaska and Pacific Natives)

Vegas Golden Knights - a really intense chocolate (you know. sin city.)