Crossroads KC @ Grinders

STS9, Ghostland Observatory

Sunday September 5th: A family member of ours has a shortwave radio that we have all been messing around with. We had been using it for sound effects and noises when one day it was left it on in the studio. Keyboardist David Phipps� daughter Aya was playing around with the dials when all of a sudden it stopped on this voice on the super low frequencies of the spectrum. It was a woman's voice, artificial we later found out, counting off numbers in a very clear and concise way. We became obsessed with what we had heard and for weeks we sat behind the dials trying to find more voices.

There was only one more to be found, the voice we sampled for the beginning of the song �Central�. After a bit of research, we found that these were numbers stations, thought to be coded messages various governments use to send correspondence to spy's overseas. This of course isn�t publicly acknowledged by any government, even though in 2001 the United States tried the Cuban Five for spying using information they supposedly received and decoded by broadcast from a Cuban numbers station.

STS9 has always been fascinated by numbers; finding this transmission captured our imagination so much that we had to see if there was something more to what we had found. Immediately we enlisted the skills of a crypto-hacker friend of ours to see if she could find any relevance to the sequence we had recorded. When she ran the numbers as coordinates corresponding to a map of military bases in California, she came up with an exact location in Big Sur. We immediately went to check it out and sure enough there was a trail about 10 miles back off of Nacimiento Rd. just south of the park that led to this old abandoned bunker type structure. It was crazy. We were all looking at each other in disbelief but there we were. We crawled through a hole at the bottom of the fence and walked inside. There we found a rusted metal box that had a few pictures, documents, patches, passports, and a knife in it. The first picture was of a document from Allen Dulles to J. Edgar Hoover on brainwashing. The second was of two men standing over a map of the Middle East. That image became the cover of our first single �Atlas� off the upcoming release �Ad Explorata�. One of the patches we found was the most intriguing of our finds. It had this physically impossible symbol on it that looked futuristic next to all of the older documents. It�s the symbol we lay over top of every image you will see for the album. In doing some research, we later found an old book of 'black ops' military patches at the Prelinger Library that had a brief description of this patch. It was thought to be for a secret unit that first used satellites to gather SIGINT (signal intelligence) from other countries during the Cold War. The story is that this team actually gathered signals from another civilization in our galaxy. Their motto was 'Ad Explorata, Forward into the Unexplored'.

We�re not ones for conspiracies but sometimes the truth is stranger than anything we could imagine. www.sts9.com

Girl Talk, Quixotic

Friday September 10th:

Avett Brothers, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

Saturday September 25th: www.theavettbrothers.com/

Drive-By Truckers, The Henry Clay People

Sunday September 26th:

Blue October, The Parlotones

Sunday October 3rd: Sponored by:

Most people fail to make The Leap in life because they make the same mistakes over and over again and fail to correct them. Justin Furstenfeld made The Leap precisely because he made the same mistakes over and over again and failed to correct them. The jarringly frank �Hate Me,� is one of many reasons that his chameleonic modern rock outfit Blue October is evolving from an intensely beloved cult band to fledgling mainstream radio conquerors. While first three full-lengths The Answers (1998), Consent to Treatment (2000), and History for Sale (2003) resonated deeply with rock fans craving sincerity, eclecticism, and unpredictability, 2006�s Foiled has shattered the glass ceiling, soaring towards platinum sales in just eight months on the strength of �Hate Me� and the luxuriant �Into the Ocean.�

The Texan quintet�rounded out by violinist Ryan Delahoussaye, guitarist C.B. Hudson, bassist Matt Noveskey, and drummer Jeremy Furstenfeld�has been practicing their exhaustingly intense games of emotional give and take since forming in 1996. Frontman and principal songwriter Justin (the younger Furstenfeld by 14 months) naturally assumed the lightning rod position, literally crafting diary entries into shockingly forthcoming tunes about all things abuse and addiction (�Hate Me� being the watershed). Blue October�s rabid admirers responded in kind, roaring confessionals right back at them, a phenomenon gorgeously captured on the band�s 2004 double-live CD/DVD Argue With a Tree, which synchronizes the vocalist�s telling lyrical anecdotes with similarly heartfelt fan testimonials. So what exactly is going on during those infamously cathartic live outpourings? �Frustration and getting it out,� Furstenfeld chuckles. �Or complete mad love. I try to live every song as I can. The ones that I wrote years ago, I can�t take it back to that spot, but I try to sing it for the fans who are actually going through those situations.�

Of course, there are countless bands out there splaying their hearts on their tattoo sleeves; what distinguishes Blue October is the astonishing breadth of their influences. Class act rock guitarist CB Hudson dialed down (and deep) to compose Foiled�s electro-orchestral closing suite �18th Floor Balcony.� Noveskey and Furstenfeld applied their uncanny synergy to �soup up� evocative opener �You Make Me Smile,� originally written largely acoustic six years ago. Industrial junkie/multi-instrumentalist Delahoussaye�s nimble hands are all over the crushing �Drilled a Wire Through My Cheek� (also on the Saw III soundtrack). And big brother Jeremy�s penchant for alt-country restraint constantly tempers not only Blue October�s ADD, but Justin�s unchecked extroversion.
�We wanted to make an album like we�ve always wanted to do,� the frontman claims. �With the eclectic style of it being beat-oriented, it being ballads, it being hard rock. Whenever we do rock, we make sure it�s the heaviest it can possibly be. We want to come out sounding as heavy as Deftones would. And as light as Cowboy Junkies would. And as thought-provoking as Peter Gabriel. Musically and lyrically we try to [extend] our bounds as far as we can.�

Blue October have clearly benefited not only from endless rinse-lather-repeat tour cycles, fortifying relationships with their followers, but a genuine curiosity about the creative approach of predecessors. It�s no accident, for example, that Furstenfeld sounds even more vocally encompassing on this record. �In hip-hop, they double-track the important parts,� he explains. �I noticed how it�s just so clean and precise. It worked out for more of the lyrical �quick-talk� kind of stuff�you know, the real confident, wordy parts. You don�t miss any consonants or any vowels. You get every �s� and every �t.� It�s just really pretty that way, I think.�

Plenty of other people think so too. As incredible as the reaction to Foiled has been so far, after over a decade of hard work and development, Blue October are just getting warmed up. Their Leap is still peaking, and they aren�t leaving anyone behind.
�It�s all walks of life: black, white, Asian, Hispanic,� Furstenfeld notes of the devoted. �And it�s not just one genre. It�s people who like hip-hop, it�s people who like rock�� He pauses and laughs. � I don�t really separate them as categories.� www.blueoctoberfan.com