Goldenvoice Sucks and So Does Bill Fold

A few months ago, Goldenvoice, the ass-faced corporation (read: necessary evil) that promotes Coachella contacted me.  Why?  Because years go, I setup my username on YouTube as "Coachella."  I'd never pretended to be the festival, it was just designed as my way to pay tribute to my favorite gathering of music and art.

So Bill Fold contacted me, and told me they wanted to take over the name.  He realized I was a huge fan of the festival, and told me to make them an offer. I said I'd get back to him.

So of course, I called my friend George, an intellectual property lawyer.  George told me that there was really no precedent for this, and that it would cost them at least five figures to write up an initial complaint.  Based on this information, I asked for what I thought was fair (30 g's, legal fees, and me plus three to all Goldenvoice events forever). This was about three months ago.

So today, I tried to log into my account, only to find it had been suspended.  When I went to my old account at www.youtube.com/coachella it was all theirs.  They'd successfully fucked me out of my account, all my videos are gone, and there's pretty much nothing I can do about it.

Well, almost nothing.

My new username on YouTube (until it's taken away from me) is "goldenvoicesucks" and I made sure I was the first person to post on their little account.

Fight the power, even if it's with a garden hose against a gaggle of flaming assholes.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Music Box in Hollywood, CA February 23, 2011

Before they dropped off the face of the Earth at the turn of the century, Mediaassassin's Little Helper and I flew all the way to Chicago solely for the purpose of catching their live act. And what a show it was. It was at The Abbey, and we meandered from the floor to the balcony and back as the 11+ piece orchestra wove dirge after dirge against a backdrop of multiple film loops playing behind them, some simultaneously.

It was probably the most expensive ticket for a show I've ever bought, and it was totally worth it. Despite the plane, hotel, rental car, and towing charges for parking in the wrong place after the show, it was all fine in the end.

Now this post-everything collective of musical alchemists is back, and they're playing in Hollywood this coming February. We will be there.  And if you can handle the sheer ripping emotion that a show like this will bestow upon you, you should too.

It was all instrumental that night at The Abbey back in 2003, until the very end of the show when Efrim stood in front of the single microphone.  The crowd fell silent.

"Right now, somewhere in Iraq, there's a kid holding a gun, he's got a house full of fucking furniture that he bought on credit.  And right now, there's a woman in Iraq, she can't go outside her house to buy food because the bombs won't stop dropping.  This song is for the two of them."

Presale starts today at 10:00.