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Notes from underground, 2008/2009

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What a difference a year makes … the venue’s the same, another New Year’s Eve at SomArts in SF, and Liam’s playing again in the psytrance room.  The rest of the world, and my frame of mind?  Very different.

I’ve been rereading a lot of my posts from the last year as we work on wrapping up our first draft of Tales from the Net … the ones on psytrance may or may not wind up in the book, but in any case they’re an amazing lens for the year.

It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties is at the midpoint, balanced between two cities and two causes: the happiness of Pink Saturday in the Castro in the aftermath of the unanimous California Supreme Court marriage equality decision, and the blossoming of Get FISA Right and social network activism — it was the day after Senator (now President-elect) Barack Obama had responded to our open letter.  It brings tears to my eyes when I reread it now.

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Notes from underground: Geo-solstice

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Eight inches of snow in Seattle wreaked havoc with our travel plans but the good news is that I wound up getting to go to the Geo-solstice, at the Gingerbread House, geomagetic.tv’s party celebrating nine years with the Phoenix Family.  Solid sets from Saturnia and Witchdokta and then a great one from Dr. Spook.  Good stuff upstairs too from ClyMAX, Diplomatic, and Kush Aurora.

It was a young crowd … hanging out on the stairs at one point, a guy started up a conversation with me by saying “at your age, you’re still coming out here, do you still feel the vibe?”  Yeah, totally, but I’m not sure how I feel about the the “at your age” part.  The dialog continued:

“Is this something you were doing back when you were our age?”

“No, I was a punk.”

“Huh.  In one sentence, what’s the same between the scenes?”*

“Out of the mainstream.  It’s not the mall.”

“And what’s the biggest difference?”

“Musicians are a lot more competent now.  Back then a lot couldn’t even play their instruments.”  Which was part of the rawness and excitement but still.

Then he had me pick one word to write on him to sum it all up — somebody had just written “juggler” on his chest.  He pointed to a place on his shoulder.  I thought about it for a moment and wrote “better”.

jon

* are they teaching precision questioning in college these days?

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Notes from underground: the weekend after

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Psymbolic 4, at the Gingerbread House in SF.  Liam Shy, Dr. Spook, Predators (with their CD as a bonus) … it had been a long week so we left at about 3 a.m. and missed the last few DJs, but a fine night nonetheless.  As we said our goodbyes to Spook on the way out, he commented that it was a happy crowd.   Gee, I wonder why?

A few months ago Amy Alexander had said to me that if Obama won, there would be a huge mental sigh of relief across the country.  Indeed.

And what better way to relax!

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Notes from underground (Hallowe’en pre-election version)

Last year on Hallowe’en , right before my last day at Microsoft, I wrote

Hallowe’en’s always been one of our favorite holidays, and of course our hood is one of the best places to celebrate it.  We’re both in a fairly low-key mood tonight, so rather than trick-or-treating, we’ll have a nice relaxing dinner, perhaps a glass of champagne and a bottle of wine (Chateauneuf de Pape probably suits our mood better than Adastra) … and no doubt a scrumptious dessert.

This year, after a summer of fighting for civil liberties and a new rebirth of freedom, it’s the homestretch — and I’m right in the middle of it, with Voter Suppression Wiki and Twitter Vote Report.  Jeff Santos had me on 1510 the Zone (a Boston sports radio station doing a week-long special election series) to talk about voter suppression today, and introduced me as a patriot — and not in the corrupted neocon sense of the word either.  (I mentioned 866-OUR-VOTE and 888-YE-Y-VOTA and veyvota.org at least a half dozen times, and AALDEF as well.)  Fox News did a fair and balanced piece on TVR today; Voter Suppression Wiki will be able to get the word to CNN on election day if we need to, and Brad Friedman’s will be checking in with us.  I feel really lucky to be working with such incredible people and organizations — the Voter Suppression Wiki and everybody else at the intersection of the grassroots election protection and citizen journalism movements…. and I wonder if the rest of the world looks at the 8-hour-long lines in Georgia as a parallel to the first post-apartheid election in South Africa?

Who knows what Tuesday will bring.  Right now, it’s infintite possibilities … and the sense that a change is coming.

And after dinner once again at Ma Tante Sumi (Chateauneuf du Pape again), Geomagnetic.tv’s Phantasmagoria 8 is tonight — Hallowe’en and psytrance in San Francisco, hanging out with the woman I love most of all on a special night.

What a difference a year makes.

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Notes from underground: HOTwired Seattle, tonight!

hotwired flyerIt’s the first Friday, so time for our favorite Seattle psytrance monthly, HOTwired at Noc Noc — nwtekno thread here. Osiris Indriya and Amanita are spinning, of course, along with Shadowvex and Philly G.  Be there or be square!

It’s been a few months (and several activism campaigns) since the last time we made it to HOTWired … can’t wait!

And next week, in SF: Geomagnetic presents Psymbolic 3.  How cool is that?

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It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties

Originally sent to the Senator Obama – Please, No Telecom Immunity and Get FISA Right mailing list.

I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the situation. There’s a huge amount at stake and the anger, frustration, and disappointment so many of us (including me) feel comes through in every post. Realistically, the odds are still against us.

Still. We have a chance. We’re in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and in a conversation with Barack and his aides. Like the vast majority of us who have weighed in so far, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the content of his response, and I wish it had come out earlier in the day, but even so … we’re managing to get our voice heard. We’re not out of it yet.

We could turn the tide; and even if not, at the very least we’ve succeeded in getting our message out. There are a lot of people in this country who care about civil liberties, and we are getting very tired of telecom donations being put ahead of the rule of law.

It’s the Fourth of July, and we’re fighting for our civil liberties. How cool is that?

jon

To celebrate Independence Day, the Get FISA Right wiki is currently featuring fireworks. I heart wikis.

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Kinetic 3, at the Pacific Science Center

Dancing with the dinos … how cool is that?

Infinite Connections does a great job with these parties.  As always,  nwtekno has the details.  I’m psyched!

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Notes from underground, 2007/2008

As TantraSF says:

Remember the days before the underground split into many different scenes and moved into nightclubs? Remember when you could hear trance, breaks, techno and downtempo in a big warehouse with an old school vibe? Remember back in the good old days? We do too, so this year Tantra is teaming up with Get Freaky, Know:Audio, the Ambient Mafia and Word of Mouth to present:

“NYE 2008, an underground resolution”

Liam and Dutch in the psytrance room!?!?! A happy new year indeed!

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Notes from underground: Geo Solstice tonight!

string art by andresHeading out soon to Geomagnetic.tv’s Geo Solstice 2007 at the Gingerbread House in SF tonight. Geomagnetic’s Dr. Spook, who did the pscychedelic Ad Astra visuals and rotating globe, is on at midnight; string art by Andres!

The psytrance, dark psytrance, and darkwave scenes are feast-or-famine in SF: sometimes there’s a ton of good stuff going on, sometimes nothin’. Between this, Death Guild’s XMas, a legal absinthe party, and the usual great stuff on New Year’s Eve/Day, Holiday season 2007/8 is shaping up as an abundance of riches!

w00t w00t!

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