"The only band that matters."

On this day 1982 The US Music Festival opens for three days in San Bernardino, California 400,000 fans hear Fleetwood Mac, the Police, the Cars, the Talking Heads, the Grateful Dead, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson among others. The festival is divided into Four days; New wave, Rock, Heavy Metal, and Country. The festival lost about 20 million dollars for the main festival sponsor Steve Wozniak of the then upstart software company Apple Inc. One of the main headliners VanHalen had secured a $1,500,000. Guarantee and Eddie Van Halen had been quoted in Rolling Stone as saying that “punk rock sounded like something I played in my garage as a kid” During the Van Halen set David Lee Roth was quoted as saying “The only people that put tea in Jack Daniels bottles are The Clash”. The Clash on the other hand had asked that a portion of their guarantee be donated to various charities, and Joe Strummer was quoted backstage as saying “VanHalens music is for idiots” and at one point during the weekend the Clash and Van Halen got into an altercation, by all accounts the Clash kicked ass! I didn’t make it to San Bernardino that weekend, however me and a few friends did make it down to the Tucson convention center a few weeks prior to see The Clash. There are those moments, in retrospect, where you can see what you were like before and how diffrent you were after. even though its been said a hundred times before, may gods love be with you Joe Strummer !!



On September 3, 1997 in Salt Lake City Utah, only eight days after classes began, Jacob Lawrence Orosco hanged himself at his mother's home. Jacob was 17, a senior in high school, incoming President of the East High School Gay/Straight Student Alliance, a student support group brought together by Jacob to deal with issues of persecution. Jacob was openly gay. To stop having to accommodate the Alliance the school board had banned all extracurricular activities at East High. State law forbids Utah's public school teachers from saying anything in the classroom that would imply acceptance or advocacy of homosexuality. This effectively ostracized Jacob in the community blaming him for all extracurricular activities being banned at East High. And opening Jacob up to threats of violence and resentment in the community.

“None of us are free until the weakest of us is free”