From the LA times today, comes this article:
Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been in talks in with HBO about making a two-season maxi-series out of "Year Zero," the dark future tale that Reznor has chronicled in his music as well as in a celebrated Alternate Reality Game (ARG) with the same title that was created by 42 Entertainment.
"It's the most exciting thing on the horizon, it's the thing that when I wake up in the morning it makes me say, 'God it would be cool if that happened," Reznor told me this week while sitting backstage before a Nails concert in Toronto. "This is my grand ambition. Will it happen? I don't know. It was fun sitting and telling [the HBO] guys and watching them shake their head and having writers on board and producers that are in to it. It's been a fun thing."
"Year Zero" began (as so many things do in the music of NIN) from a place of negative emotion and sonic experimentation. Reznor was increasingly outraged by the geopolitical situation during the Bush years and he wanted to channel that fury into music, but he was loath to drift into the limiting lexicon of protest lyrics.
"How could I express what I was feeling in a way that didn't sound like bitching about George Bush? I mean, you know, I love Neil Young but I didn't want to listen to that record, really," he said, referring to the singer-songwriter's "Living with War." "My reaction to that kind of record is, 'We know this. It's obvious.'"
"So it started with me trying to write it as a piece of fiction. I was thinking, 'It could be the worst idea ever in the world but, if it doesn't work, it doesn't have to come out.' I started by writing a kind of world bible about what life would be like around 15 or 20 years from now if things continue on the same path. I spent a few weeks filling it in with the events that could lead to this kind of time and place. Then as an experiment I started writing songs about people in this place and from different points of view."
The problem was the music was compelling and powerful, but it was more about sensation than story.
"I had a record that would make sense to me but no one else would ever know what it was because there was no narrative. It's modular, its a collection of snapshots. These were glimpses of a place. Maybe with liner notes I could communicate some of it, but how do you get liner notes in 2007?"
He considered a graphic novel. "That was the route we were going to go with initially. We talked to a different companies about releasing it. But it didn't feel quite right. We thought about a film, but that has a different timetable and too many people need to say yes. That wouldn't line up right. then I started thinking about how I could make it really interactive, something you experience rather than something you read."
Reznor remembered reading about 42 Entertainment and their deeply layered ARG for the Steven Spielberg film "A.I." He met with them and the result was a truly amazing through-the-looking-glass creation on-line, shaped by the 42 team working closely with the rock star and his art director, Rob Sheridan. "It's ahrd to explain it," Reznor said, and he's right. But the best way to get your head around it is through the nifty (and entertaining) case-study presentation that you can find here.
Reznor was delighted with the result. "It was probably the most fun thing I've done." Now he wants to finish the story he started and do it across a range of media.
"I just pitched it to HBO two weeks ago in L.A. It went great. Ideally, we're trying to get them to do a two-year limited series. I prefer that over a film. We would have a second ARG tying into the second album and ties into the series and they all happen together with a budget needed to pull that all off. There would be a tour down the road. The record completes the story, the ending that no one knows. I know what happens. I knew when I started it. And it's not what people think. "
-- Geoff Boucher
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Friday, April 27, 2007
-15 04.27
Those with Resistance LA cell phones received a message today:
“Listen up we think theses phones have been compromised we’ve got to go dark for a while but that is ok you don’t need us anymore it is up to you and your friends to carry the message you have a voice use it, this is your time, this is your hour, the hour of arrival remember that. Do’nt give up don’t give in you are the resistance now.”
This lead to what seems to be the final piece of this game, the site that discusses Danny Jane: http://www.hourofarrival.net
“Listen up we think theses phones have been compromised we’ve got to go dark for a while but that is ok you don’t need us anymore it is up to you and your friends to carry the message you have a voice use it, this is your time, this is your hour, the hour of arrival remember that. Do’nt give up don’t give in you are the resistance now.”
This lead to what seems to be the final piece of this game, the site that discusses Danny Jane: http://www.hourofarrival.net
Thursday, April 26, 2007
-15 04.26
Trent and Rob released three new multi-track files for use in Garageband today. Capital G, My Violent Heart and Me, I'm Not. Capital G had a couple of "extra" files. Capital G E.aiff and Capital G O.aiff.
The .aiff files when spectrographically analysed contained images of avatars from echoingthesound forum members. The avatars were from the following members, in the following order:
E:
Esoterrorist
Xanthippe
Heroicraptor
Ishtmail
O:
TheLeper
Without_the_underscore
Exploding Plastic
Nantucket68
Theartofdecay
Yamagu
**there is also a small amount at the end of this file that may be another avatar.
From this came what may be the final chapter:
http://www.exhibit24.net/
Most of the active players in the ARG are listed on the pages here, as well as a fairly comprehensive list of all of the sites and external clues in the game.
I'm listed by both of my aliases:
24.24.2.928 Erik
24.24.1.428 exej [Incarcerated]
One of me even ended up incarcerated!
There are still some things [MISSING] from the exhibit24 files, such as the mysterious Danny Jane letter.
We've got a complete set of Mailstrom buttons now though, and the cleansing wreckage finally has a shard match: http://www.themailstrom.com/cleansing_3Rrt45.htm
This has been a great trip so far... but is it over now?
The .aiff files when spectrographically analysed contained images of avatars from echoingthesound forum members. The avatars were from the following members, in the following order:
E:
Esoterrorist
Xanthippe
Heroicraptor
Ishtmail
O:
TheLeper
Without_the_underscore
Exploding Plastic
Nantucket68
Theartofdecay
Yamagu
**there is also a small amount at the end of this file that may be another avatar.
From this came what may be the final chapter:
http://www.exhibit24.net/
Most of the active players in the ARG are listed on the pages here, as well as a fairly comprehensive list of all of the sites and external clues in the game.
I'm listed by both of my aliases:
24.24.2.928 Erik
24.24.1.428 exej [Incarcerated]
One of me even ended up incarcerated!
There are still some things [MISSING] from the exhibit24 files, such as the mysterious Danny Jane letter.
We've got a complete set of Mailstrom buttons now though, and the cleansing wreckage finally has a shard match: http://www.themailstrom.com/cleansing_3Rrt45.htm
This has been a great trip so far... but is it over now?
Sunday, April 22, 2007
-15 04.22
The Resistance Flag appears several times during this week's "Bonus Round" on Gametrailers.com. The end of the show also features The Presence static from the end of "The Warning".
Friday, April 20, 2007
-15 04.20
They've added an edited quicktime recap video of the 4/18 LA Resistance meeting to Opensourceresistance.net.
It reveals that this is a piece of the game puzzle: 24.11.2
It reveals that this is a piece of the game puzzle: 24.11.2
Thursday, April 19, 2007
-15 04.19
Open Source Resistance has Print ads in the weekly papers in many US cities this week.
Austin Chronicle
Austin, TX
Seattle Weekly
Seattle, WA
City Paper
Philadelphia, PA
Weekly Dig
Boston, MA
Village Voice
New York, NY
Orlando Weekly
Orlando, FL
OC Weekly
Orange County, CA
Chicago Reader
Chicago, IL
San Francisco Guardian
San Francisco, CA
LA Weekly
Los Angeles, CA
We weren't lying. You have a voice.
http://www.actpatriotic.net was found by brute force hacking by scanning the subnets used by the Year Zero sites (some say this is "cheating").
It is still in PilgrimStream stage.
Also this fake story (the people that were really "detained" were questioned by the "police" and let go. they were taken back to the area where the bus dropped off the others and were able to collect their belongings and go without incident):
"Hello everyone: We are the two girls who were detained at the resistance meeting last night. This is our first time posting a message as the vikingtwins, because we want to remain as anonymous as possible. You never know who is reading these threads. We do feel it necessary to share our experience of what happened to us.
As far as the information about the plants, we cannot say for sure, but we suspect there were at least two. However, the police who busted in were very real as was the sobering experience of spending the night in jail.
Here are each of our accounts:
Vikingtwin 1's account:
During the piano solo of the Frail the swat team busted through the door and rushed at us. They were shouting and immediately started pushing us around. When I tried to defend myself and ask what was going on the response I got was the muzzle of a gun pressed to my chest. At that point I lost it. The next thing was a blur, but when I came to I was wrestling on the floor with one of the police. It was surreal, like an out of body experience. Next, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head followed by the sound of a crunch as my body was being flung into the air. Another cop was dragging me by my hair, then he threw me up against the wall. He put the gun to the back of my head and told me not to move. Behind me I could hear the band shouting and fighting with the officers.
Vikingtwin 2's account:
When the cops busted in there were loud bangs and a deafening alarm. I was confused when a cop came at me shouting. He started shoving me around, which seriously pissed me off. I struggled to get away, but he shoved me down and slammed me into the wall. I could hear more yelling and I know there was a struggle with the band, but all I could see was the wall. About a minute later I was handcuffed with plastic cuffs and led me outside where I saw with my friend, vikingtwin 1, standing handcuffed.
Here's our combined experience of what took place next:
Outside we were questioned for at least 45 minutes. They asked us questions like, "why were we there" and "what was going on", "what was the nature of the meeting we had attended". We told them it was a concert and a gathering of people who are concerned about the future of this country. We tried to make a point that our very being detained was a violation of our civil liberties, but communication seemed futile.
Eventually a Sherrif's van showed up and the took us to Central Jail, downtown. They charged us with unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, and battery of a police officer for vikingtwin1.
In the morning we were taken before a judge and pled not guilty. He dropped one of the charges and set the bail. Later, we were bailed out by someone involved with the band who didn't want to be identified. That's all we know.
One more thing, after having this experience we've realized. Now is the time for us to create a community of resistance. We wish more people would have stayed behind to fight. If so, maybe things would have gone differently. Now is the time to stand up for what we believe, if we don't join together, than separately we will surely fall.
Thanks to the mysterious person who bailed us out. (We think we know who you are)
Vikingtwins"
"i call BS on viking twin ... there is absolutley no way you will get me to believe that was a real raid ... those firecracker gun shots and that whack alarm were almost comical .... if it were a real raid not one person would have gotten out that door with out being questioned and Information (name ,address.etc.) taken from them
i love the whole idea of making YZ a little closer to life but dont think im gunna buy into the fallacy of that raid being real..."
"First of all those weren't gunshots, they were flashbang grenades meant to startle and confuse a crowd. Later, I asked the Deputies why were they shooting in the air and he laughed and said they were grenades not gunshots. They are used by police for crowd control.
Second, we were not the only ones taken in. There were others who never made it on the bus. I guess they grabbed whoever they could get their hands on (i saw a bunch of the roadies lined up). Everyone else ran. They could only get so many of us at a time.
In the end, you can believe whatever you want. But I can tell you, I can still smell the stench of piss from that disgusting "processing room" we spent the night in ."
Austin Chronicle
Austin, TX
Seattle Weekly
Seattle, WA
City Paper
Philadelphia, PA
Weekly Dig
Boston, MA
Village Voice
New York, NY
Orlando Weekly
Orlando, FL
OC Weekly
Orange County, CA
Chicago Reader
Chicago, IL
San Francisco Guardian
San Francisco, CA
LA Weekly
Los Angeles, CA
We weren't lying. You have a voice.
http://www.actpatriotic.net was found by brute force hacking by scanning the subnets used by the Year Zero sites (some say this is "cheating").
It is still in PilgrimStream stage.
Also this fake story (the people that were really "detained" were questioned by the "police" and let go. they were taken back to the area where the bus dropped off the others and were able to collect their belongings and go without incident):
"Hello everyone: We are the two girls who were detained at the resistance meeting last night. This is our first time posting a message as the vikingtwins, because we want to remain as anonymous as possible. You never know who is reading these threads. We do feel it necessary to share our experience of what happened to us.
As far as the information about the plants, we cannot say for sure, but we suspect there were at least two. However, the police who busted in were very real as was the sobering experience of spending the night in jail.
Here are each of our accounts:
Vikingtwin 1's account:
During the piano solo of the Frail the swat team busted through the door and rushed at us. They were shouting and immediately started pushing us around. When I tried to defend myself and ask what was going on the response I got was the muzzle of a gun pressed to my chest. At that point I lost it. The next thing was a blur, but when I came to I was wrestling on the floor with one of the police. It was surreal, like an out of body experience. Next, I felt a sharp pain at the back of my head followed by the sound of a crunch as my body was being flung into the air. Another cop was dragging me by my hair, then he threw me up against the wall. He put the gun to the back of my head and told me not to move. Behind me I could hear the band shouting and fighting with the officers.
Vikingtwin 2's account:
When the cops busted in there were loud bangs and a deafening alarm. I was confused when a cop came at me shouting. He started shoving me around, which seriously pissed me off. I struggled to get away, but he shoved me down and slammed me into the wall. I could hear more yelling and I know there was a struggle with the band, but all I could see was the wall. About a minute later I was handcuffed with plastic cuffs and led me outside where I saw with my friend, vikingtwin 1, standing handcuffed.
Here's our combined experience of what took place next:
Outside we were questioned for at least 45 minutes. They asked us questions like, "why were we there" and "what was going on", "what was the nature of the meeting we had attended". We told them it was a concert and a gathering of people who are concerned about the future of this country. We tried to make a point that our very being detained was a violation of our civil liberties, but communication seemed futile.
Eventually a Sherrif's van showed up and the took us to Central Jail, downtown. They charged us with unlawful assembly, resisting arrest, and battery of a police officer for vikingtwin1.
In the morning we were taken before a judge and pled not guilty. He dropped one of the charges and set the bail. Later, we were bailed out by someone involved with the band who didn't want to be identified. That's all we know.
One more thing, after having this experience we've realized. Now is the time for us to create a community of resistance. We wish more people would have stayed behind to fight. If so, maybe things would have gone differently. Now is the time to stand up for what we believe, if we don't join together, than separately we will surely fall.
Thanks to the mysterious person who bailed us out. (We think we know who you are)
Vikingtwins"
"i call BS on viking twin ... there is absolutley no way you will get me to believe that was a real raid ... those firecracker gun shots and that whack alarm were almost comical .... if it were a real raid not one person would have gotten out that door with out being questioned and Information (name ,address.etc.) taken from them
i love the whole idea of making YZ a little closer to life but dont think im gunna buy into the fallacy of that raid being real..."
"First of all those weren't gunshots, they were flashbang grenades meant to startle and confuse a crowd. Later, I asked the Deputies why were they shooting in the air and he laughed and said they were grenades not gunshots. They are used by police for crowd control.
Second, we were not the only ones taken in. There were others who never made it on the bus. I guess they grabbed whoever they could get their hands on (i saw a bunch of the roadies lined up). Everyone else ran. They could only get so many of us at a time.
In the end, you can believe whatever you want. But I can tell you, I can still smell the stench of piss from that disgusting "processing room" we spent the night in ."
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
-15 04.18
Open Source Resistance has updated with more artwork, added the Melrose and Ogden mural into their broadcasts and posted an update about tonight's meeting in LA:
We are going ahead with an initial meeting in Los Angeles today. A few people have been contacted:
you know who you are. If you aren’t one of those people, check back here for an update later tonight.
Beyond LA – listen, in response to some email that’s come into the site: yes, open source means open source.
Yes, we are putting out some of your messages. Yes, what you see here, you can use.
This is not a website: it’s an idea. You don’t have to like the books we read or the causes we support.
Your meeting in Detroit or Dallas doesn’t have to be like ours: but you should meet.
You don’t have to vote for my candidate: but you should vote.
You don’t have to say what I would say: but you should sure as hell speak, while you still have a voice.
I've also created a downloadable archive of the pages and files mostly accurate as of 4/17/07 that is available at http://savefile.com/projects/808479375
--
The first meeting of the LA Resistance took place tonight. Those summoned by cell phone met at a secret location and then were placed on a bus and driven to another secret location, a warehouse. Inside the warehouse, the meeting took place. The agenda was a six song concert by the subversive rock and roll act nine inch nails.
Early reports:
"(as heard from two different friends who were there) There was a show. 6 songs. They had to board a bus so they didn't know where they were going, then got on an elevator, then saw 6 songs, then it was broken up by a SWAT team. The entire band was there.
They played:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
We're In This Together
The Frail
There were apparently only 24 people with phones plus guests who showed up."
"I was there. We got a phone call telling us to go to a parking lot. We got to sign a release form saying that we didn't know where we were going or what were doing and that we were over 18 and ok with being filmed. We were searched (all electronics were put back in the car) and then loaded on a rickety bus, in which all of the windows and doors had been blacked out. We pulled up to an abandoned warehouse looking place; there were random people standing on the roof and around the entrance. We were led inside; there were more people and more cameras (there was a hand held camera on the bus, high quality ones inside). Neil Czarno (or whoever is playing him) gave a talk about how we should give a shit and change the world, and how we were stupid for allowing them to herd us like cattle onto a bus to who knows where with no form of communication (and for carrying around cellphones like tracking devices) and that we'd be dead if they were really after us. After his talk, we were led over the river and through the woods (the warehouse complex was really, really big). We were stopped briefly before we entered a room with lots of light and equipment. Next thing I knew, the opening notes of TBOTE were playing, and I was 3 feet away from Jeordie White on the far end of the line (and 10ft away from Trent Reznor, that's the closest that I'll ever get to NIN). There were about 50 people there, so it was a very small, intimate show. They then played Survivalism, Last (it was marvelous), MOTP, WITT (it was marvelous as well), and then The Frail. I knew that something was going to happen because you could see flashing lights outside. Policemen in riot gear entered the building and pushed us all out (they also had a few flash grenade thingies). There seemed to be a few people detained, but I'm not quite sure how they were detained; I was right where the police entered and made it out (and I was wearing a bright red sweater, so I wasn't hard to miss in the sea of black). I should have known that something was going to happen after I saw the 20 song set list that included The Perfect Drug . We were herded back on the bus after a run through the complex and driven back to our cars. People still have their cellphones, so they should be in contact with them. There weren't any clues (and I saw the porta potty, there wasn't anything interesting in there)."
"Honestly, I wasn't looking at them at that point. I was more worried about the people in riot gear pushing me out of the room combined with the flashing lights and the sirens. Rumor has it that they ducked. I'm pretty sure that the footage will be used to demonstrate the secret police busting up a secret show featuring non-BoM approved music. The riot police looked like the ones in the Survivalism video. I saw some of the guys who were handing out stuff on Friday at the show, as well as the guy with glasses who was giving out pins.
The room had the AIR flag stenciled on the wall; there were multiple AIR flags hanging from the roof in the first room where Neil Czarno talked to us. Also, at the end, they told us to be on the look out for more graffiti, murals, ads, etc."
"Tonight was amazing. Really overwhelming and so cool. I can't get over the amount of planning that had to go into everything. When we were being led through the building and finally came into that small room, and all of the sudden you started to hear TBOTE---crazy. There was a lot of filming but I have no idea what it will be used for but I hope we'll get to see it eventually. Hearing Last and WITT three feet away from TR was incredible. Insane night"
"AIR Meeting
April 18, 2007
Los Angeles, CA
Around 6 PM, Reyna (hhippo428) and I were at Echo Park awaiting the phone call to the next destination. It was literally right down the street from where we were. For the record, the phone scared the shit out of me.
When we made it to the parking lot, they had us huddled together in a corner barricaded off by caution tape. The people in charge told us to wait for our phone to ring. When it rang, we were supposed to take our guest and our self to get scanned and frisked. We were inspected twice to make sure we didn’t have cell phones or cameras. (Reyna and I left all our stuff in the car.) Then we showed our ID’s, they took our phones and gave us a card so we could get our phones back later and they let us on a bus.
The bus had black paper along the inside of the windows and a big black curtain to block off the driver’s window so we had no idea where the fuck we were going or what was going to happen when we got there. (Pretty much the situation that your mom always warns you about.)
When we arrived, we found ourselves at a warehouse. (Location UNKNOWN, so don’t fucking ask me where we were.) We walked up a ramp to this big ass room with chairs lined up in rows and we sat down. Mind you there was a camera crew filming us the whole time (even on the bus). While we were in this room, this speaker who looked and sounded like Samuel L. Jackson gave us a lecture, basically telling us what a bunch of fools we were to accept cell phones that *could have* been from the FBI or something, and had this been WWII Germany, we would have been locked in the room and gassed. And that part scared me, lol. His main message of the evening, “WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT!”
After that, they took us through another door and down some hallways with low ceilings and so forth and then through another door. Then we all got packed into a huge elevator and it took us down a level. This little girl in front of Reyna started shrieking “is that a stage? Is that a stage???” And it was time to rush the fucking thing.
I’ll take a moment to say something about the stage. There was NO fucking barricade between us and the band. We could see every facial expression of Trent and the band. It was truly the most awesome experience ever.
Now for the setlist.
1. The Beginning of the End (he just went right into it)
2. Survivalism
3. Last
4. March of the Pigs
5. We’re in This Together
6. The Frail
So, it was basically the American debut of TBOTE, Survivalism, Last, and WITT. SO FUCKING LUCKY TO HAVE BEEN THERE!
Halfway into The Frail though is when things got interesting. A SWAT team busted in and started shooting all around. Some of the SWAT members *TACKLED* Trent and the bandmates to the ground. By that time I was running my ass off to get the hell out of there just like everyone else. The SWAT team kept 3 people and 3 of their guests behind to “interrogate” them. Later, those folks got dropped off in a van while the rest of us took the bus back to the parking lot where we picked up our cell phones and left.
There were hints that we should keep our eyes open for stuff happening in the future.
I am too fucking excited/grateful/amazed/shocked/whatever!!!"
Opensourceresistance.net updated with a 54 minute version of the night's events, which included the meeting from two camera angles, followed by the full nine inch nails concert. This was replaced by a 39 minute version which uses the second, better angle of the meeting.
Here's a transcript I found online of Neil's speech at the meeting:
"BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION:
[reads off names]
What the hell were you thinking? I just want to start by saying, you’re all dead! You were seen gathering around a piece of protest art. A shady guy in a van gave you resistance themed material, and you took it, in public, without knowledge of who they were. What if they were if FBI, NSA? We gave you phones; cell phones send a signal out to the network every 10 seconds or so. Remember after 9/11 there was a bio-terrorism scare some guy sending the anthrax [inaudible] through the mail, the FBI caught him by triangulating on his cell phone signal. So, you self identified as dissidents, you kindly agreed to carry tracking devices on yourselves, you showed up for a resistance meeting and you singed a waiver that gave us permission to do… ANYTHING. You allowed yourselves to be hustled onto a van, you let us take away any way of communicating with the outside world that you had. We could have drove you to an unknown location and led you down to this room; if this was Nazi Germany, I would walk out that door laughing , and fucking Zyklon B would start hissing out of the vents.
You learned a lesson, guys. In a real resistance, you don’t get a lot of second chances. Look. you’ve seen some scary website about what the future might become, me too. So let’s start by saying, you’re not crazy, I’m not crazy, and go from there. ‘Cause like most people, I need a kick in the ass to change. I mean I was sort of politically aware, I guess, but mostly back then I read the Drudge report every now and then, and felt guilty. I might even get around to voting on Election Day. Then awhile back, some people I know, came across a.. uh… call it a transmission… uh… a few broken pieces of the future. That’s some scary shit, it shook my belief that it, you know, can happen. The other weird thing was, we thought we recognized a some things. Uh, a couple of names, uh, a certain style of a piece of art, the sound of the music. So we sent some of this stuff around to some people we thought we recognized. Obviously, we didn’t say, “dude look, you’ve been beamed back from the future”, because none of us wanted to get [inaudible] a state psychiatric facility. What we did instead was, we sent a piece of work to the person we thought created it. [inaudible] Like hey, is someone trying to copy your style? Like that. For instance, we sent a music clip to a certain artist, and said, “hey this sounds like something new, is it a uh bootleg or is it maybe somebody trying to leak something out of the studio on you?” A couple days later there’s something in my inbox from this artist, the subject line is, “How the fuck did you get this?” Turns out he had written the exact words down in a notebook a few days ago, he hadn’t started working the song. The rest you know. We’ve been trying to find as many of these transmissions as possible, trying to get them out there. People are waking up to this shit! I mean they’re painting street art, they’re writing songs, I’m involved with a website, Open Source Resistance, maybe you’ve seen it?! [audience responds with muffled affirmations ] Yeah! Is this the future? I don’t know, but I sure as hell hope not.
Unfortunately, that future is closer than you think. Think about what you all have witnessed in the last few years, right here in America. In the aftermath of 9/11, the current administration has done unbelievable damage to civil liberties. If you are not a US citizen, and the government decides, God help you, that you are an enemy combatant, which that can define pretty much at will. They can throw you in jail and keep you there, FOREVER! Is there anyone here who is not a US citizen? [one audience member indicates yes] Hey! Just being here at this meeting might be sufficient cause to call you an enemy combatant. Ok, if we were the feds, we might have set this up to scare the shit out of everybody else, but you, you don’t go home tonight. You, get a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay. What about those of us who are citizens? Tonight, you’re lucky, but what if there was another 9/11 attack? Big terrorist attack, something bigger even, something say, right here in LA soon. Lots of people killed, big chunks of the city evacuated. Do you seriously think the feds wouldn’t extend the Ashcroft laws to make catching terrorists a priority? Listen, I don’t wanna have my plane hijacked by Islamic terrorists either, I’m not crazy, but in the big picture there aren’t a lot of those guys and they don’t have a lot of money. The government has lots of money, and guns, and cops, and lawyers, you don’t want them to get in the habit of using that shit on ya. Keep them honest. Use your voice, be heard!
So what are the ordinary real things we can do to make a difference? Listen, you don’t have to be Gandhi to get involved. If politics seems big and vague, cut it down to size. You don’t have to stop the war in Iraq, look maybe you think you aught to give a shit about Iraq, but you just don’t. Listen, I grew up in Orange County, when they built state route 241 back in the ‘90s, I didn’t pay attention. They said it would make the commute a lot easier, and I was all for that. Then they bulldozed it, right over the Laguna hills, they literally cut the top of the hills and dumped the fill dirt in the valleys. They mutilated it, the place that I grew up in. So then they want to build a southern expansion to 241, they wanna bulldoze it right through the San Mateo Creek watershed, which has 11 federally recognized endangered species. They want to run it up to San Onofre State Park and the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy, and they want to wipe out the last piece of pristine coast in southern California. Which by the way [inaudible] Do I look like a surfer? But I joined the Surfriders association because those are the guys who are fighting the hardest against this thing, because it’s local and they give a shit. [audience member “Yeah!”] Yeah! The last attorney general threatened to sue the TCA if went ahead with the 241 extension. If you give a damn, when you go home tonight, send an e-mail mean bean Jerrod Brown, our new attorney general, and tell him the exact same thing, that’s all you have to do, to start. Does that make sense? Look, I’m not asking you to be Gandhi. I’m just asking you to stop, and recognize what matters to you and make a seeing effort to actually change your world and other people who didn’t vote on their guy. All I want is this: WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! Open your eyes and pay attention, don’t just swallow the spin, everyone’s fucking spinning, governments, gangsters, fortune 500s, the guy next door, do not swallow what they’re shoving down your throat. WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! And for God’s sake please, do not blindly follow the line of bullshit I am giving you right now, I do not want you to buy what I am selling! What do I want? I want you to… [audience “Wake up and give a shit!”] Nice. Do your own thinking; find out where you stand on things that matter to you. I had this really nice thing I was gonna say about how mad I was that you all showed up and all that shit, but let’s skip the bullshit. The future is ours to change, we better fuckin’ get on it. It’s time to move."
Here's a review and recap of everything:
http://digg.com/music/Resistance_meeting_turns_into_free_Nine_Inch_Nails_show_in_LA_w_photos
RESISTANCE MEETING TURNS INTO FREE NIN SHOW
"Tonight a group of about 50 Art is Resistance members, including the select few from last week’s A.I.R. gathering in LA, were gathered using a series of cellphone calls and directed to an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles for a private resistance meeting and intimate live Nine Inch Nails show.
The entire meeting was caught on video and is now streaming live on Open Source Resistance.
Last week they received calls on their issued cellphones (read the instructions they received here) telling them to be available tonight for another resistance meeting.
Tonight they received calls again instructing them to go to Echo Park (north of LA) and await further instruction. A few minutes later another call came through directing them to this location where they met several resistance crew members who promptly frisked them of any electronic device and hoarded them into an unmarked van.
The van took them to an abandoned clothing warehouse. One of the attendees named xaphor recited the experience on the Echoing the Sound forum:
Chairs were lined up facing a small makeshift stage.. We were confined to the left side with three sheets or red, white and black sprayed with the AIR logo broke the room in two. On both sides of the chairs about 5 crew members stood ominously overlooking the proceedings. Once everyone filled in our guide went behind a metal sliding door and a minute later a man in camo gear came out and took the stage.
He called roll and then lectured us on our stupidity in being seen at the mural meet receiving subversive material, willingly carrying the cell phone at all times allowing us to be tracked and herding on to a blacked out bus to an unknown destination. Had he been a government agency we all would have been dead. He then proceeded to mention our loss of rights and that we should wake up and use our voice…
He said “Let’s move” and left behind the same metal door. We were then herded through the same door and up a tight wooden staircase and across to either a freight elevator or another steep staircase that took us to a darkened landing with the only light being that which filtered through the dust from above. Once everyone was down, there were lights in a room up ahead and to the left and then screaming and sudden rush as people jockeyed for front and center position as Trent and Co. broke into The Beginning of the End directly in front of us.
This entire sequence was captured on video.
According to another attendee, this was the setlist:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
Were in This Together
The Frail
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Wish
The Perfect Drug
Only
The Big Come Down
Suck
Down In It
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Just as Trent began to get into “The Wretched”, a loud siren went off and tons of heavily armed and armored SWAT-like troops busted into the warehouse. This is all caught on the resistance video feed, where the last images show a SWAT member busting down the video camera and the picture goes blank.
More information as it becomes available.."
"Wow
What else can be said? What a night....
What a night...
For the illiterate, just skip all of this and see the fucking AWESOME footage at http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
On the 101 I recieved a call at around 12:45 or so. They told me that at 6pm, I was to be within a 5 minute drive from the fountain at Echo Park. That they would contact me from there with furthur instructions, and to stay in the car.
6pm?! What was I going to do until then? Oh boy!
I eventually got to Hollywood, where I met up with Tracy (TrentRoxMe) at around 1:30pm. I picked up my extra pre-ordered copy of Year Zero at the Virgin Megastore on Hollywood and Highland.
From there we decided to get some lunch, which is of course when we went to Pinks Hotdogs (Always Pinks). We enjoyed a nice meal, and then headed to the Mural to bide our time. We checked out the mural for a while, took some photos and then walked up and down Melrose, checking out all the sex shops along the way (There are a LOT). Eventually we walked off most of the weight we gained from Pinks, and started walking back to the Mural.
I got a call from Adrienne, one of the other phone holders, telling me she was in the area. Tracy and I met up with her at Coffee Bean and we walked furthur along Melrose to the mural. We took some more photos and got to my car. Adrienne's guest (and ride) was still in class so we decided to help her out and give her a ride. We headed to the parking lot Tracy parked in so she could get her sweater. And then, Adrienne lived across the street so we went to her place to use the restrooms and stretch.
After a weird confrontation with some hippy about where I parked in front of her house, we proceeded to Echo Park.
Even though Tracy nearly got us lost, and late, we arrived with 20 minutes to spare. A few phone holders were chilling in the park, so we joined them for a bit. Chatted a bit, and then 5 minutes before 6 we all headed to our cars. Adrienne's roommate met up with us at this point (this perky blonde girl who has never listened to NIN before in her life, and had no idea what was going on beyond the phones).
At around 6:03 they call us and tell us directions to this parking lot about a mile or two from where we were. To park, and bring ourselves and our ID. We pull into a gated parking area in an alley, the gates are all masked with black sheets, so we can't see inside. We park at around 6:20, and get out.
We gather in little groups, Tracy, Jessica, Russ, Adrienne, I, and all our guests. And others. Eventually, like ameobas we all converge into a corner of the parking lot. All 45 of us. They wrap caution tape around the area and tell us that they are gonna start calling our OSR phones and that when that happens, us and our guest must step up and get wanded and patted down to make sure we were free of recording devices. Soon after they started handing out waivers, stating that we may be recorded and that we give up our rights to be recorded, and that we were going to be transported and that we okayed that too.
Fuck it. Signed.
They called my phone, we stepped up, and got a thorough pat down.
We loaded up onto an old coach bus, with windows completely taped up with black paper, and the front had a black curtain so we could absolutely not see where we were headed. After everyone loaded up we headed off to the super secret location.
After an entertaining 15 minute drive, we arived. We all unloaded at this dilapidated old warehouse. There were OSR members everywhere. They were watching us from the roof, from windows, everywhere. Some of them even had cameras. We walked inside and there were seats and stage.
They sat us down and after a few quiet minutes a guy came out and gave us a very powerful speach about using our voices, waking up and making a difference. Not to necessarily listen to his opinion, but to realize we can form our own, and we have the power to use our voice. You can hear the whole shpiel on the footage.
At the end they took us all and made us walk through this labrinth of a warehouse. Up stairs, under pipes, through dark rooms, on bridges that conntected buildings. For about 3-4 minutes. Eventually we arived at an old elevator. We got inside the elevator, about half of us, the other half had to take the stairs.
The elevator goes down. Slowly...
And as we get furthur down, someone mentions amp lights.
Amp lights?
Someone mentions a stage.
A stage?
Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck.
Tracy grabs my arm and grips it hard. The elevator arrives and the door opens.
The OSR guys yell at us "Hurry, move, move!"
We don't need them to tell us, we're already half way there.
And there they are.
NINE INCH NAILS
In the dark, we see their shadows.
And then, before we even all arive to the stage (Which is not so much a stage but a few pieces of plywood, and Tracy and I are RIGHT IN FRONT, less than 3 feet away from touching Trent Reznor, literally), The Beginning of the End begins.
We all start going crazy.
After 6 amazing songs are played (Beginning of the End, Survivalism, Last, March of the Pigs, We're In This Together, and The Frail)....
The SWAT team BUSTS IN.
Alarms blare, the music ends, lights flashing... SWAT comes busting in through doors, through windows, guns and lights pointing at us. We hear gunfire and we all run. The OSR team is telling is to 'run and get to the bus!' and we do. We all run.
And we arrive at the bus. And we're all loaded up and we bolt out of there.
We get taken back to our cars.
And that's it.
The end.
They tell us they will be contacting us shortly on our OSR phones.
We all gather around the lot, talk about what we just experienced, and take some photos and we all leave.
The blonde newbie is ecstatic, calling all her friends and telling her all about the experience (Adrienne tells me she asked to have all the CDs burnt, niceeee)
We drop them off and then me and Tracy get Denny's.
We part ways.
And here I am.
Watch it all here... http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
They aparently replay the speech from a different angle in the video, it goes from 00:00 to 11:30, and then plays again, and then at the 25:30 mark you can see the continuation. From the walking the elevator, to the entire show, to the raid.
Enjoy.
Un
Fucking
Believeable
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/requieminadream/OSR1stMeeting"
"Apparently I wrote the post that echoed through out the ninternet tonight. I've rewritten it in a more coherent form (and it's even in more than one paragraph this time).
It all began when I met the person with a cellphone at the parking lot of the LA Police Academy. We then headed over to Echo Park to wait for the phone call (though I got us a little lost along the way). The phone call gave us directions to a nearby parking lot. We milled around in the parking lot for a while before they roped us off into a corner and handed out release forms. The release forms were very entertaining; they said that we didn't know where we were going or what we were doing and that we were over 18 and ok with being filmed. We were searched (all electronics were put back in the car; I at least got the name of the person frisking me this time, unlike the listening party) and then loaded on a rickety bus, in which all of the windows and doors had been blacked out. I was definitely afraid that the bus wasn't going to make it up some of the hills, and there were a few rough bumps. There was a guy with a hand held camera filming us on the bus.
We pulled up to an abandoned warehouse; there were random people standing on the roof and around the entrance. We were led inside; there were more people inside, and AIR flags hanging from the roof. The people inside all had neat black shirts with white AIR flags on them. There also was a mural with the angel, the guy with the face mask, and the robot with a skull inside from the mural in London with "Art is Resistance" written on the bottom. There was a camera when we first walked in and then another one inside. Neil Czarno (or whoever is playing him) gave a talk about how we should give a shit and change the world. I was rather cynical about his talk at first, but he redeemed himself by noting that we shouldn't just blindly accept what he was saying and that we should change the world in small ways. He also told us that we were stupid for allowing them to herd us like cattle onto a bus to who knows where with no form of communication (and for carrying around cellphones like tracking devices) and that we'd be dead if they were really after us. After his talk, we were led over the river and through the woods (the warehouse complex was rather large). We were stopped briefly before we entered a room with many lights and lots of equipment.
The opening notes of TBOTE began playing, and I was 3 feet away from Jeordie White on the far end of the line (and 10ft away from Trent Reznor, that's the closest that I'll ever get to NIN). There were about 50 people there, so it was a very small, intimate show. They then played Survivalism, Last, MOTP, WITT, and then The Frail. I'd honestly thought that I was going to have to wait six months or more to hear TBOTE, Survivalism, Last, and WITT live. There were people there filming the show with cameras, and Rob was taking shots of the band. There was a large AIR flag painted on the wall behind the band. I knew that something was going to happen because you could see flashing lights outside during The Frail. Policemen in riot gear (they looked like carbon copies of the ones in the Survivalism video) entered the building and pushed us all out (they also had quite a few devices like firecrackers that made noises that sounded like gun shots and that sparks; I got a very good look at them). There seemed to be a few people detained, but I'm not quite sure how they were chosen, because the six people were all cell phone people with their guests. I should have known that something was going to happen after I saw the 20 song set list that included The Perfect Drug . We were herded back on the bus after a run through the complex and driven back to our cars.
The people on the bus told us to be on the lookout for more graffiti, murals, and ads, and that they'd be in touch with the people with the cellphones."
"I was with cynic_muse the majority of the time so our accounts will be very similar but I’ll post mine as well.
I can’t really start without thanking Esrevni for giving me the opportunity to come along and to take his place in the event they would not accept his id. Thankfully they accepted his id and luckily for me there was someone without a guest who graciously invited me along (Thanks Al).
We were all instructed to Echo Park just North of downtown LA and to stay in our cars and await a phone call with further instructions. A few minutes past 6 the phone and we were given driving directions to a nearby parking lot alleyway (). From here we exited our cars and were rounded up into a corner of the lot boarded off with caution tape by about a half dozen crew members in black OSR shirts identifiable by a grey ‘r’ flag logo on the front. We were given waiver forms to sign which indicated we were boarding a vehicle of our own free will and agreed to be taken wherever they wished and for whatever they planned to do with us. At 7pm they called the phones and lined us up to be scanned and thoroughly frisked before taking our release forms. They checked each phone and provided a playing card which had an identifying sticker on the face side. Then it was on the well worn bus featuring blacked out windows and a black curtain between us and the driver. Once on the bus they were filming and photographing the rest of the evening non-stop. Every seat was occupied as the bus drove the 50 or so of us to an unknown location. Our “guide” introduced the event informing us that we are going to a meeting about the resistance and about using our voice. Along the way we entertained ourselves with a cappella versions of The Fragile and Wheels on the Bus (don’t ask me .
After about 15 minutes we arrived at an abandoned clothing warehouse and herded into the building. Chairs were lined up facing a small makeshift stage with a painting on the wall of 3 figures, the left one I recognized as the box face guards from the London billboard. We were confined to the left side with three sheets or red, white and black sprayed with the AIR logo broke the room in two. On both sides of the chairs about 5 crew members stood ominously overlooking the proceedings. Once everyone filled in our guide went behind a metal sliding door and a minute later a man in camo gear came out and took the stage.
He called roll and then lectured us on our stupidity in being seen at the mural meet receiving subversive material, willingly carrying the cell phone at all times allowing us to be tracked and herding on to a blacked out bus to an unknown destination. Had he been a government agency we all would have been dead. He then proceeded to mention our loss of rights and that we should wake up and use our voice. He drew upon an issue that was important to him, a freeway that cuts through the hills of Laguna Beach and the plans to extend it cutting through environmentally important areas of the coastline (
He said “Let’s move” and left behind the same metal door. We were then herded through the same door and up a tight wooden staircase and across to either a freight elevator or another steep staircase that took us to a darkened landing with the only light being that which filtered through the dust from above. Once everyone was down, there were lights in a room up ahead and to the left and then screaming and sudden rush as people jockeyed for front and center position as Trent and Co. broke into The Beginning of the End directly in front of us. Fake windows with strobe lighting would glow illuminating AIR graffiti on the wall behind the band. There were about a dozen crew members around us - some filming, some insuring we stayed together as a group. The next song was Survivalism followed by Last. When they played March of the Pigs I noticed quite a few of the crew members really getting into the music as well. Next up was Were In This Together which lead into The Frail. I overheard one of the crew members say, “keep them outside” over his phone and noticed a flashing red light through a side window that looked unmistakably like an undercover cop’s lights. When I looked over again, the window had been blacked, the light no longer visible. Right as the band were gearing up to break into the Wretched, the door was burst open by a guy in swat gear carrying a machine gun, shots sounded through the building and small fireworks were lit. I was pushed by a crew member and told to move and I followed cynic_muse as we were quickly sent back though the building.
Straight back onto the bus and while some people were asking about their jackets they left behind, I noticed the bus was not as full as before. They called roll and there were a few names absent indicating they had been detained along with the bag holding all the phones. Once all the missing clothing items were found (who cares about the detainees) we were on our way back to the lot. Everyone was psyched and in a jovial mood and the time passed much quicker on the return. Off the bus we gathered while we were handed back out phones by the playing card we received earlier. Two girls who missed the bus and assumed detained returned to the lot via another method. Once all the phones were returned we were free to go back to our normal lives.
Thanks to the band and everyone there.
http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
xaphor"
"5:30am and I am a awake and still filled with excitement.
Not much I can write that hasn't already been said.
Walking off the eleavator, hearing someone say, "Is that a stage?"
A bunch of screams of excitement and suddenly my little elevator group is running.
Seeing Trent motionless, brooding over his keyboard waiting for us is frozen in my mind.
All the girls instantly took up all the space between the two columns in front of the stage. I moved over to the right and Aaron was right in front of me.
Sometimes I had to duck as he flailed away. I could look down and see the zippers in his boots. I could look up and see his teeth weren't pearly white. Straight ahead, I could watch his fingers do magic on his guitars.
Setlist as best I can remember it:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
Were in This Together
The Frail
*******
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Wish
The Perfect Drug
Only
The Big Come Down
Suck
Down In It
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
So when The Frail was coming to an end, I had Closer on my mind. When the sirens started blaring, all I could think of was no Perfect Drug.
I was hoping that just maybe, when we got back to the parking lot the show would finish at the studio that was next to the lot.
But the night ended. The sun isnt even up yet and I'm still filled with excitement."
"Oh. My. God.
I wasn't sure what to expect last night, and I don't think I would have believed it anyway. From start to finish this was incredible, and it's possibly not even over (we still have the phones, we still might be contacted again). From the fantastically hilarious waiver (something along the lines of "I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what will happen, but sure, that's cool!") to the scary-ass bus to seeing fucking NIN right before my eyes. So close! Without any barrier, buffer, or staff! Just, right there!
I must say, while the meeting was cool, it was also kind of funny. "Don't believe everything people tell you! Oh, but repeat after me! Don't blindly follow orders! Now, follow me into this dark hallway!" God knows we would have followed that man anywhere. I mean, we'd just signed this fantastically all-encompassing waiver, gotten into a blacked-out bus without so much as a cell phone, and then into an unknown building for some type of meeting. Seriously, this was somebody's case study. And I'd gladly do it all over again.
What a fantastic, fantastic treat. I never dreamed I could see NIN that close and that personal. Just...wow.
Also? I learned that when ordered to run, I'll leave my friend(s) behind. Good to know. Perhaps I should work on that. Honest to god, I thought she was behind me, but I ran without checking. Nice."
We are going ahead with an initial meeting in Los Angeles today. A few people have been contacted:
you know who you are. If you aren’t one of those people, check back here for an update later tonight.
Beyond LA – listen, in response to some email that’s come into the site: yes, open source means open source.
Yes, we are putting out some of your messages. Yes, what you see here, you can use.
This is not a website: it’s an idea. You don’t have to like the books we read or the causes we support.
Your meeting in Detroit or Dallas doesn’t have to be like ours: but you should meet.
You don’t have to vote for my candidate: but you should vote.
You don’t have to say what I would say: but you should sure as hell speak, while you still have a voice.
I've also created a downloadable archive of the pages and files mostly accurate as of 4/17/07 that is available at http://savefile.com/projects/808479375
--
The first meeting of the LA Resistance took place tonight. Those summoned by cell phone met at a secret location and then were placed on a bus and driven to another secret location, a warehouse. Inside the warehouse, the meeting took place. The agenda was a six song concert by the subversive rock and roll act nine inch nails.
Early reports:
"(as heard from two different friends who were there) There was a show. 6 songs. They had to board a bus so they didn't know where they were going, then got on an elevator, then saw 6 songs, then it was broken up by a SWAT team. The entire band was there.
They played:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
We're In This Together
The Frail
There were apparently only 24 people with phones plus guests who showed up."
"I was there. We got a phone call telling us to go to a parking lot. We got to sign a release form saying that we didn't know where we were going or what were doing and that we were over 18 and ok with being filmed. We were searched (all electronics were put back in the car) and then loaded on a rickety bus, in which all of the windows and doors had been blacked out. We pulled up to an abandoned warehouse looking place; there were random people standing on the roof and around the entrance. We were led inside; there were more people and more cameras (there was a hand held camera on the bus, high quality ones inside). Neil Czarno (or whoever is playing him) gave a talk about how we should give a shit and change the world, and how we were stupid for allowing them to herd us like cattle onto a bus to who knows where with no form of communication (and for carrying around cellphones like tracking devices) and that we'd be dead if they were really after us. After his talk, we were led over the river and through the woods (the warehouse complex was really, really big). We were stopped briefly before we entered a room with lots of light and equipment. Next thing I knew, the opening notes of TBOTE were playing, and I was 3 feet away from Jeordie White on the far end of the line (and 10ft away from Trent Reznor, that's the closest that I'll ever get to NIN). There were about 50 people there, so it was a very small, intimate show. They then played Survivalism, Last (it was marvelous), MOTP, WITT (it was marvelous as well), and then The Frail. I knew that something was going to happen because you could see flashing lights outside. Policemen in riot gear entered the building and pushed us all out (they also had a few flash grenade thingies). There seemed to be a few people detained, but I'm not quite sure how they were detained; I was right where the police entered and made it out (and I was wearing a bright red sweater, so I wasn't hard to miss in the sea of black). I should have known that something was going to happen after I saw the 20 song set list that included The Perfect Drug . We were herded back on the bus after a run through the complex and driven back to our cars. People still have their cellphones, so they should be in contact with them. There weren't any clues (and I saw the porta potty, there wasn't anything interesting in there)."
"Honestly, I wasn't looking at them at that point. I was more worried about the people in riot gear pushing me out of the room combined with the flashing lights and the sirens. Rumor has it that they ducked. I'm pretty sure that the footage will be used to demonstrate the secret police busting up a secret show featuring non-BoM approved music. The riot police looked like the ones in the Survivalism video. I saw some of the guys who were handing out stuff on Friday at the show, as well as the guy with glasses who was giving out pins.
The room had the AIR flag stenciled on the wall; there were multiple AIR flags hanging from the roof in the first room where Neil Czarno talked to us. Also, at the end, they told us to be on the look out for more graffiti, murals, ads, etc."
"Tonight was amazing. Really overwhelming and so cool. I can't get over the amount of planning that had to go into everything. When we were being led through the building and finally came into that small room, and all of the sudden you started to hear TBOTE---crazy. There was a lot of filming but I have no idea what it will be used for but I hope we'll get to see it eventually. Hearing Last and WITT three feet away from TR was incredible. Insane night"
"AIR Meeting
April 18, 2007
Los Angeles, CA
Around 6 PM, Reyna (hhippo428) and I were at Echo Park awaiting the phone call to the next destination. It was literally right down the street from where we were. For the record, the phone scared the shit out of me.
When we made it to the parking lot, they had us huddled together in a corner barricaded off by caution tape. The people in charge told us to wait for our phone to ring. When it rang, we were supposed to take our guest and our self to get scanned and frisked. We were inspected twice to make sure we didn’t have cell phones or cameras. (Reyna and I left all our stuff in the car.) Then we showed our ID’s, they took our phones and gave us a card so we could get our phones back later and they let us on a bus.
The bus had black paper along the inside of the windows and a big black curtain to block off the driver’s window so we had no idea where the fuck we were going or what was going to happen when we got there. (Pretty much the situation that your mom always warns you about.)
When we arrived, we found ourselves at a warehouse. (Location UNKNOWN, so don’t fucking ask me where we were.) We walked up a ramp to this big ass room with chairs lined up in rows and we sat down. Mind you there was a camera crew filming us the whole time (even on the bus). While we were in this room, this speaker who looked and sounded like Samuel L. Jackson gave us a lecture, basically telling us what a bunch of fools we were to accept cell phones that *could have* been from the FBI or something, and had this been WWII Germany, we would have been locked in the room and gassed. And that part scared me, lol. His main message of the evening, “WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT!”
After that, they took us through another door and down some hallways with low ceilings and so forth and then through another door. Then we all got packed into a huge elevator and it took us down a level. This little girl in front of Reyna started shrieking “is that a stage? Is that a stage???” And it was time to rush the fucking thing.
I’ll take a moment to say something about the stage. There was NO fucking barricade between us and the band. We could see every facial expression of Trent and the band. It was truly the most awesome experience ever.
Now for the setlist.
1. The Beginning of the End (he just went right into it)
2. Survivalism
3. Last
4. March of the Pigs
5. We’re in This Together
6. The Frail
So, it was basically the American debut of TBOTE, Survivalism, Last, and WITT. SO FUCKING LUCKY TO HAVE BEEN THERE!
Halfway into The Frail though is when things got interesting. A SWAT team busted in and started shooting all around. Some of the SWAT members *TACKLED* Trent and the bandmates to the ground. By that time I was running my ass off to get the hell out of there just like everyone else. The SWAT team kept 3 people and 3 of their guests behind to “interrogate” them. Later, those folks got dropped off in a van while the rest of us took the bus back to the parking lot where we picked up our cell phones and left.
There were hints that we should keep our eyes open for stuff happening in the future.
I am too fucking excited/grateful/amazed/shocked/whatever!!!"
Opensourceresistance.net updated with a 54 minute version of the night's events, which included the meeting from two camera angles, followed by the full nine inch nails concert. This was replaced by a 39 minute version which uses the second, better angle of the meeting.
Here's a transcript I found online of Neil's speech at the meeting:
"BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION:
[reads off names]
What the hell were you thinking? I just want to start by saying, you’re all dead! You were seen gathering around a piece of protest art. A shady guy in a van gave you resistance themed material, and you took it, in public, without knowledge of who they were. What if they were if FBI, NSA? We gave you phones; cell phones send a signal out to the network every 10 seconds or so. Remember after 9/11 there was a bio-terrorism scare some guy sending the anthrax [inaudible] through the mail, the FBI caught him by triangulating on his cell phone signal. So, you self identified as dissidents, you kindly agreed to carry tracking devices on yourselves, you showed up for a resistance meeting and you singed a waiver that gave us permission to do… ANYTHING. You allowed yourselves to be hustled onto a van, you let us take away any way of communicating with the outside world that you had. We could have drove you to an unknown location and led you down to this room; if this was Nazi Germany, I would walk out that door laughing , and fucking Zyklon B would start hissing out of the vents.
You learned a lesson, guys. In a real resistance, you don’t get a lot of second chances. Look. you’ve seen some scary website about what the future might become, me too. So let’s start by saying, you’re not crazy, I’m not crazy, and go from there. ‘Cause like most people, I need a kick in the ass to change. I mean I was sort of politically aware, I guess, but mostly back then I read the Drudge report every now and then, and felt guilty. I might even get around to voting on Election Day. Then awhile back, some people I know, came across a.. uh… call it a transmission… uh… a few broken pieces of the future. That’s some scary shit, it shook my belief that it, you know, can happen. The other weird thing was, we thought we recognized a some things. Uh, a couple of names, uh, a certain style of a piece of art, the sound of the music. So we sent some of this stuff around to some people we thought we recognized. Obviously, we didn’t say, “dude look, you’ve been beamed back from the future”, because none of us wanted to get [inaudible] a state psychiatric facility. What we did instead was, we sent a piece of work to the person we thought created it. [inaudible] Like hey, is someone trying to copy your style? Like that. For instance, we sent a music clip to a certain artist, and said, “hey this sounds like something new, is it a uh bootleg or is it maybe somebody trying to leak something out of the studio on you?” A couple days later there’s something in my inbox from this artist, the subject line is, “How the fuck did you get this?” Turns out he had written the exact words down in a notebook a few days ago, he hadn’t started working the song. The rest you know. We’ve been trying to find as many of these transmissions as possible, trying to get them out there. People are waking up to this shit! I mean they’re painting street art, they’re writing songs, I’m involved with a website, Open Source Resistance, maybe you’ve seen it?! [audience responds with muffled affirmations ] Yeah! Is this the future? I don’t know, but I sure as hell hope not.
Unfortunately, that future is closer than you think. Think about what you all have witnessed in the last few years, right here in America. In the aftermath of 9/11, the current administration has done unbelievable damage to civil liberties. If you are not a US citizen, and the government decides, God help you, that you are an enemy combatant, which that can define pretty much at will. They can throw you in jail and keep you there, FOREVER! Is there anyone here who is not a US citizen? [one audience member indicates yes] Hey! Just being here at this meeting might be sufficient cause to call you an enemy combatant. Ok, if we were the feds, we might have set this up to scare the shit out of everybody else, but you, you don’t go home tonight. You, get a one way ticket to Guantanamo Bay. What about those of us who are citizens? Tonight, you’re lucky, but what if there was another 9/11 attack? Big terrorist attack, something bigger even, something say, right here in LA soon. Lots of people killed, big chunks of the city evacuated. Do you seriously think the feds wouldn’t extend the Ashcroft laws to make catching terrorists a priority? Listen, I don’t wanna have my plane hijacked by Islamic terrorists either, I’m not crazy, but in the big picture there aren’t a lot of those guys and they don’t have a lot of money. The government has lots of money, and guns, and cops, and lawyers, you don’t want them to get in the habit of using that shit on ya. Keep them honest. Use your voice, be heard!
So what are the ordinary real things we can do to make a difference? Listen, you don’t have to be Gandhi to get involved. If politics seems big and vague, cut it down to size. You don’t have to stop the war in Iraq, look maybe you think you aught to give a shit about Iraq, but you just don’t. Listen, I grew up in Orange County, when they built state route 241 back in the ‘90s, I didn’t pay attention. They said it would make the commute a lot easier, and I was all for that. Then they bulldozed it, right over the Laguna hills, they literally cut the top of the hills and dumped the fill dirt in the valleys. They mutilated it, the place that I grew up in. So then they want to build a southern expansion to 241, they wanna bulldoze it right through the San Mateo Creek watershed, which has 11 federally recognized endangered species. They want to run it up to San Onofre State Park and the Donna O'Neill Land Conservancy, and they want to wipe out the last piece of pristine coast in southern California. Which by the way [inaudible] Do I look like a surfer? But I joined the Surfriders association because those are the guys who are fighting the hardest against this thing, because it’s local and they give a shit. [audience member “Yeah!”] Yeah! The last attorney general threatened to sue the TCA if went ahead with the 241 extension. If you give a damn, when you go home tonight, send an e-mail mean bean Jerrod Brown, our new attorney general, and tell him the exact same thing, that’s all you have to do, to start. Does that make sense? Look, I’m not asking you to be Gandhi. I’m just asking you to stop, and recognize what matters to you and make a seeing effort to actually change your world and other people who didn’t vote on their guy. All I want is this: WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! Open your eyes and pay attention, don’t just swallow the spin, everyone’s fucking spinning, governments, gangsters, fortune 500s, the guy next door, do not swallow what they’re shoving down your throat. WAKE UP AND GIVE A SHIT! And for God’s sake please, do not blindly follow the line of bullshit I am giving you right now, I do not want you to buy what I am selling! What do I want? I want you to… [audience “Wake up and give a shit!”] Nice. Do your own thinking; find out where you stand on things that matter to you. I had this really nice thing I was gonna say about how mad I was that you all showed up and all that shit, but let’s skip the bullshit. The future is ours to change, we better fuckin’ get on it. It’s time to move."
Here's a review and recap of everything:
http://digg.com/music/Resistance_meeting_turns_into_free_Nine_Inch_Nails_show_in_LA_w_photos
RESISTANCE MEETING TURNS INTO FREE NIN SHOW
"Tonight a group of about 50 Art is Resistance members, including the select few from last week’s A.I.R. gathering in LA, were gathered using a series of cellphone calls and directed to an abandoned warehouse in Los Angeles for a private resistance meeting and intimate live Nine Inch Nails show.
The entire meeting was caught on video and is now streaming live on Open Source Resistance.
Last week they received calls on their issued cellphones (read the instructions they received here) telling them to be available tonight for another resistance meeting.
Tonight they received calls again instructing them to go to Echo Park (north of LA) and await further instruction. A few minutes later another call came through directing them to this location where they met several resistance crew members who promptly frisked them of any electronic device and hoarded them into an unmarked van.
The van took them to an abandoned clothing warehouse. One of the attendees named xaphor recited the experience on the Echoing the Sound forum:
Chairs were lined up facing a small makeshift stage.. We were confined to the left side with three sheets or red, white and black sprayed with the AIR logo broke the room in two. On both sides of the chairs about 5 crew members stood ominously overlooking the proceedings. Once everyone filled in our guide went behind a metal sliding door and a minute later a man in camo gear came out and took the stage.
He called roll and then lectured us on our stupidity in being seen at the mural meet receiving subversive material, willingly carrying the cell phone at all times allowing us to be tracked and herding on to a blacked out bus to an unknown destination. Had he been a government agency we all would have been dead. He then proceeded to mention our loss of rights and that we should wake up and use our voice…
He said “Let’s move” and left behind the same metal door. We were then herded through the same door and up a tight wooden staircase and across to either a freight elevator or another steep staircase that took us to a darkened landing with the only light being that which filtered through the dust from above. Once everyone was down, there were lights in a room up ahead and to the left and then screaming and sudden rush as people jockeyed for front and center position as Trent and Co. broke into The Beginning of the End directly in front of us.
This entire sequence was captured on video.
According to another attendee, this was the setlist:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
Were in This Together
The Frail
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Wish
The Perfect Drug
Only
The Big Come Down
Suck
Down In It
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
Just as Trent began to get into “The Wretched”, a loud siren went off and tons of heavily armed and armored SWAT-like troops busted into the warehouse. This is all caught on the resistance video feed, where the last images show a SWAT member busting down the video camera and the picture goes blank.
More information as it becomes available.."
"Wow
What else can be said? What a night....
What a night...
For the illiterate, just skip all of this and see the fucking AWESOME footage at http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
On the 101 I recieved a call at around 12:45 or so. They told me that at 6pm, I was to be within a 5 minute drive from the fountain at Echo Park. That they would contact me from there with furthur instructions, and to stay in the car.
6pm?! What was I going to do until then? Oh boy!
I eventually got to Hollywood, where I met up with Tracy (TrentRoxMe) at around 1:30pm. I picked up my extra pre-ordered copy of Year Zero at the Virgin Megastore on Hollywood and Highland.
From there we decided to get some lunch, which is of course when we went to Pinks Hotdogs (Always Pinks). We enjoyed a nice meal, and then headed to the Mural to bide our time. We checked out the mural for a while, took some photos and then walked up and down Melrose, checking out all the sex shops along the way (There are a LOT). Eventually we walked off most of the weight we gained from Pinks, and started walking back to the Mural.
I got a call from Adrienne, one of the other phone holders, telling me she was in the area. Tracy and I met up with her at Coffee Bean and we walked furthur along Melrose to the mural. We took some more photos and got to my car. Adrienne's guest (and ride) was still in class so we decided to help her out and give her a ride. We headed to the parking lot Tracy parked in so she could get her sweater. And then, Adrienne lived across the street so we went to her place to use the restrooms and stretch.
After a weird confrontation with some hippy about where I parked in front of her house, we proceeded to Echo Park.
Even though Tracy nearly got us lost, and late, we arrived with 20 minutes to spare. A few phone holders were chilling in the park, so we joined them for a bit. Chatted a bit, and then 5 minutes before 6 we all headed to our cars. Adrienne's roommate met up with us at this point (this perky blonde girl who has never listened to NIN before in her life, and had no idea what was going on beyond the phones).
At around 6:03 they call us and tell us directions to this parking lot about a mile or two from where we were. To park, and bring ourselves and our ID. We pull into a gated parking area in an alley, the gates are all masked with black sheets, so we can't see inside. We park at around 6:20, and get out.
We gather in little groups, Tracy, Jessica, Russ, Adrienne, I, and all our guests. And others. Eventually, like ameobas we all converge into a corner of the parking lot. All 45 of us. They wrap caution tape around the area and tell us that they are gonna start calling our OSR phones and that when that happens, us and our guest must step up and get wanded and patted down to make sure we were free of recording devices. Soon after they started handing out waivers, stating that we may be recorded and that we give up our rights to be recorded, and that we were going to be transported and that we okayed that too.
Fuck it. Signed.
They called my phone, we stepped up, and got a thorough pat down.
We loaded up onto an old coach bus, with windows completely taped up with black paper, and the front had a black curtain so we could absolutely not see where we were headed. After everyone loaded up we headed off to the super secret location.
After an entertaining 15 minute drive, we arived. We all unloaded at this dilapidated old warehouse. There were OSR members everywhere. They were watching us from the roof, from windows, everywhere. Some of them even had cameras. We walked inside and there were seats and stage.
They sat us down and after a few quiet minutes a guy came out and gave us a very powerful speach about using our voices, waking up and making a difference. Not to necessarily listen to his opinion, but to realize we can form our own, and we have the power to use our voice. You can hear the whole shpiel on the footage.
At the end they took us all and made us walk through this labrinth of a warehouse. Up stairs, under pipes, through dark rooms, on bridges that conntected buildings. For about 3-4 minutes. Eventually we arived at an old elevator. We got inside the elevator, about half of us, the other half had to take the stairs.
The elevator goes down. Slowly...
And as we get furthur down, someone mentions amp lights.
Amp lights?
Someone mentions a stage.
A stage?
Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck.
Tracy grabs my arm and grips it hard. The elevator arrives and the door opens.
The OSR guys yell at us "Hurry, move, move!"
We don't need them to tell us, we're already half way there.
And there they are.
NINE INCH NAILS
In the dark, we see their shadows.
And then, before we even all arive to the stage (Which is not so much a stage but a few pieces of plywood, and Tracy and I are RIGHT IN FRONT, less than 3 feet away from touching Trent Reznor, literally), The Beginning of the End begins.
We all start going crazy.
After 6 amazing songs are played (Beginning of the End, Survivalism, Last, March of the Pigs, We're In This Together, and The Frail)....
The SWAT team BUSTS IN.
Alarms blare, the music ends, lights flashing... SWAT comes busting in through doors, through windows, guns and lights pointing at us. We hear gunfire and we all run. The OSR team is telling is to 'run and get to the bus!' and we do. We all run.
And we arrive at the bus. And we're all loaded up and we bolt out of there.
We get taken back to our cars.
And that's it.
The end.
They tell us they will be contacting us shortly on our OSR phones.
We all gather around the lot, talk about what we just experienced, and take some photos and we all leave.
The blonde newbie is ecstatic, calling all her friends and telling her all about the experience (Adrienne tells me she asked to have all the CDs burnt, niceeee)
We drop them off and then me and Tracy get Denny's.
We part ways.
And here I am.
Watch it all here... http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
They aparently replay the speech from a different angle in the video, it goes from 00:00 to 11:30, and then plays again, and then at the 25:30 mark you can see the continuation. From the walking the elevator, to the entire show, to the raid.
Enjoy.
Un
Fucking
Believeable
Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/requieminadream/OSR1stMeeting"
"Apparently I wrote the post that echoed through out the ninternet tonight. I've rewritten it in a more coherent form (and it's even in more than one paragraph this time).
It all began when I met the person with a cellphone at the parking lot of the LA Police Academy. We then headed over to Echo Park to wait for the phone call (though I got us a little lost along the way). The phone call gave us directions to a nearby parking lot. We milled around in the parking lot for a while before they roped us off into a corner and handed out release forms. The release forms were very entertaining; they said that we didn't know where we were going or what we were doing and that we were over 18 and ok with being filmed. We were searched (all electronics were put back in the car; I at least got the name of the person frisking me this time, unlike the listening party) and then loaded on a rickety bus, in which all of the windows and doors had been blacked out. I was definitely afraid that the bus wasn't going to make it up some of the hills, and there were a few rough bumps. There was a guy with a hand held camera filming us on the bus.
We pulled up to an abandoned warehouse; there were random people standing on the roof and around the entrance. We were led inside; there were more people inside, and AIR flags hanging from the roof. The people inside all had neat black shirts with white AIR flags on them. There also was a mural with the angel, the guy with the face mask, and the robot with a skull inside from the mural in London with "Art is Resistance" written on the bottom. There was a camera when we first walked in and then another one inside. Neil Czarno (or whoever is playing him) gave a talk about how we should give a shit and change the world. I was rather cynical about his talk at first, but he redeemed himself by noting that we shouldn't just blindly accept what he was saying and that we should change the world in small ways. He also told us that we were stupid for allowing them to herd us like cattle onto a bus to who knows where with no form of communication (and for carrying around cellphones like tracking devices) and that we'd be dead if they were really after us. After his talk, we were led over the river and through the woods (the warehouse complex was rather large). We were stopped briefly before we entered a room with many lights and lots of equipment.
The opening notes of TBOTE began playing, and I was 3 feet away from Jeordie White on the far end of the line (and 10ft away from Trent Reznor, that's the closest that I'll ever get to NIN). There were about 50 people there, so it was a very small, intimate show. They then played Survivalism, Last, MOTP, WITT, and then The Frail. I'd honestly thought that I was going to have to wait six months or more to hear TBOTE, Survivalism, Last, and WITT live. There were people there filming the show with cameras, and Rob was taking shots of the band. There was a large AIR flag painted on the wall behind the band. I knew that something was going to happen because you could see flashing lights outside during The Frail. Policemen in riot gear (they looked like carbon copies of the ones in the Survivalism video) entered the building and pushed us all out (they also had quite a few devices like firecrackers that made noises that sounded like gun shots and that sparks; I got a very good look at them). There seemed to be a few people detained, but I'm not quite sure how they were chosen, because the six people were all cell phone people with their guests. I should have known that something was going to happen after I saw the 20 song set list that included The Perfect Drug . We were herded back on the bus after a run through the complex and driven back to our cars.
The people on the bus told us to be on the lookout for more graffiti, murals, and ads, and that they'd be in touch with the people with the cellphones."
"I was with cynic_muse the majority of the time so our accounts will be very similar but I’ll post mine as well.
I can’t really start without thanking Esrevni for giving me the opportunity to come along and to take his place in the event they would not accept his id. Thankfully they accepted his id and luckily for me there was someone without a guest who graciously invited me along (Thanks Al).
We were all instructed to Echo Park just North of downtown LA and to stay in our cars and await a phone call with further instructions. A few minutes past 6 the phone and we were given driving directions to a nearby parking lot alleyway (
After about 15 minutes we arrived at an abandoned clothing warehouse and herded into the building. Chairs were lined up facing a small makeshift stage with a painting on the wall of 3 figures, the left one I recognized as the box face guards from the London billboard. We were confined to the left side with three sheets or red, white and black sprayed with the AIR logo broke the room in two. On both sides of the chairs about 5 crew members stood ominously overlooking the proceedings. Once everyone filled in our guide went behind a metal sliding door and a minute later a man in camo gear came out and took the stage.
He called roll and then lectured us on our stupidity in being seen at the mural meet receiving subversive material, willingly carrying the cell phone at all times allowing us to be tracked and herding on to a blacked out bus to an unknown destination. Had he been a government agency we all would have been dead. He then proceeded to mention our loss of rights and that we should wake up and use our voice. He drew upon an issue that was important to him, a freeway that cuts through the hills of Laguna Beach and the plans to extend it cutting through environmentally important areas of the coastline (
He said “Let’s move” and left behind the same metal door. We were then herded through the same door and up a tight wooden staircase and across to either a freight elevator or another steep staircase that took us to a darkened landing with the only light being that which filtered through the dust from above. Once everyone was down, there were lights in a room up ahead and to the left and then screaming and sudden rush as people jockeyed for front and center position as Trent and Co. broke into The Beginning of the End directly in front of us. Fake windows with strobe lighting would glow illuminating AIR graffiti on the wall behind the band. There were about a dozen crew members around us - some filming, some insuring we stayed together as a group. The next song was Survivalism followed by Last. When they played March of the Pigs I noticed quite a few of the crew members really getting into the music as well. Next up was Were In This Together which lead into The Frail. I overheard one of the crew members say, “keep them outside” over his phone and noticed a flashing red light through a side window that looked unmistakably like an undercover cop’s lights. When I looked over again, the window had been blacked, the light no longer visible. Right as the band were gearing up to break into the Wretched, the door was burst open by a guy in swat gear carrying a machine gun, shots sounded through the building and small fireworks were lit. I was pushed by a crew member and told to move and I followed cynic_muse as we were quickly sent back though the building.
Straight back onto the bus and while some people were asking about their jackets they left behind, I noticed the bus was not as full as before. They called roll and there were a few names absent indicating they had been detained along with the bag holding all the phones. Once all the missing clothing items were found (who cares about the detainees) we were on our way back to the lot. Everyone was psyched and in a jovial mood and the time passed much quicker on the return. Off the bus we gathered while we were handed back out phones by the playing card we received earlier. Two girls who missed the bus and assumed detained returned to the lot via another method. Once all the phones were returned we were free to go back to our normal lives.
Thanks to the band and everyone there.
http://www.opensourceresistance.net/
xaphor"
"5:30am and I am a awake and still filled with excitement.
Not much I can write that hasn't already been said.
Walking off the eleavator, hearing someone say, "Is that a stage?"
A bunch of screams of excitement and suddenly my little elevator group is running.
Seeing Trent motionless, brooding over his keyboard waiting for us is frozen in my mind.
All the girls instantly took up all the space between the two columns in front of the stage. I moved over to the right and Aaron was right in front of me.
Sometimes I had to duck as he flailed away. I could look down and see the zippers in his boots. I could look up and see his teeth weren't pearly white. Straight ahead, I could watch his fingers do magic on his guitars.
Setlist as best I can remember it:
The Beginning of the End
Survivalism
Last
March of the Pigs
Were in This Together
The Frail
*******
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Wish
The Perfect Drug
Only
The Big Come Down
Suck
Down In It
Hurt
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole
So when The Frail was coming to an end, I had Closer on my mind. When the sirens started blaring, all I could think of was no Perfect Drug.
I was hoping that just maybe, when we got back to the parking lot the show would finish at the studio that was next to the lot.
But the night ended. The sun isnt even up yet and I'm still filled with excitement."
"Oh. My. God.
I wasn't sure what to expect last night, and I don't think I would have believed it anyway. From start to finish this was incredible, and it's possibly not even over (we still have the phones, we still might be contacted again). From the fantastically hilarious waiver (something along the lines of "I don't know where I'm going and I don't know what will happen, but sure, that's cool!") to the scary-ass bus to seeing fucking NIN right before my eyes. So close! Without any barrier, buffer, or staff! Just, right there!
I must say, while the meeting was cool, it was also kind of funny. "Don't believe everything people tell you! Oh, but repeat after me! Don't blindly follow orders! Now, follow me into this dark hallway!" God knows we would have followed that man anywhere. I mean, we'd just signed this fantastically all-encompassing waiver, gotten into a blacked-out bus without so much as a cell phone, and then into an unknown building for some type of meeting. Seriously, this was somebody's case study. And I'd gladly do it all over again.
What a fantastic, fantastic treat. I never dreamed I could see NIN that close and that personal. Just...wow.
Also? I learned that when ordered to run, I'll leave my friend(s) behind. Good to know. Perhaps I should work on that. Honest to god, I thought she was behind me, but I ran without checking. Nice."
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