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[RallyMonkey]

I just read this off of The Decemberist's MySpace on why they are not coming to Houston. It's pretty insane, what do you guys think?


"Hi,
If you live in Houston and want live music to still come to your town, get involved in this tragedy. So many of you have been writing to us and asking us to come to Houston. Seeing this really makes me never want to come back again...The information to file a complaint is listed at the bottom of the page. Please call in.

http://blog.myspace.com/dsharber

or

http://myspace.com/hpd_has_problems

Two Gallants are friends of ours, we toured with them in Europe. I have to say they are the nicest guys in the world. They are quiet vegans and weigh in at about 100 pounds each for god sakes. There is no way they would have done something to deserve or instigate this this kind of treatment. If you live in Houston (or beyond) you should be outraged."

The "hpd_has_problems" didn't work for me, but the first one has very good info on it, even though the writer seems to lack grammar knowledge.

What do you guys think of this?

[BrittanyMarie]

There's some stuff on the Two Gallants' messageboard.

http://pub16.bravenet.com/forum/1366218622/show/646762

Watch the videos; it's crazy. I feel really bad especially for Langhorne Slim as his band's upright bass was broken by the cop pushing a dude on it.

[RallyMonkey]

On the second video on that Myspace blog, the guy who fell on the bass was filming. And I felt pretty bad for him too, because the cop was chasing him with a tazer, and he falls on it, then gets up and starts going "I'm sorry, I'll pay for it. I'm sorry."

Yet, I can't figure out if the owner of the bass was yelling at the camera man or the cop, but he was going "Why the fuck would you do that?" and the camera guy kept apologizing, so I couldn't tell.

Yet, I can definitely understand why the former bass owner would be mad, because supposedly the bass was 90 years old.

In the first video, you can tell the lead singer was slammed down hard too.

UPDATE:

ABC News is clearly extremely objective.

Police say an officer was checking out a noise complaint at Walter's bar, when he and the band got into an argument.

Authorities say the crowd joined in the argument, and the officer accidentally tasered some of them while trying to make an arrest.

Some who were in the crowd that night are questioning the officer's side of the story. The policeman suffered minor injuries, but will be OK.

One band member and several customers were taken into custody. The officer suffered several cuts on his arms.

[BrittanyMarie]

The officer was clearly being a dick--you do not accidently taze someone. If someone is in your way to taze a suspect who is not cooperating, you don't shoot. It's that simple. Cops should know this--they all have to get tazed themselves before they can have one, or at least that's how it's done here. (The county police where I'm from recorded the session where they all had to go through it-it's AWFUL) He had the tazer out and ready from the very beginning.

Although... the crowd should have just left, and he should have just stopped playing the guitar when the officer asked him to. I don't really think that matters in retrospect though, especially after seeing the videos.

[RallyMonkey]

According to the reports, he never asked him to stop playing. I'm not taking the eyewitness reports as absolute fact, I'm sure they're a bit biased, but come on.

Yeah, the crowd should have just gotten out of there, but you know that that's not how people work. If something interesting is going on, they're not willingly going to leave, and who expects a cop to go tazer crazy.

[muffy]

That whole thing was entirely messed up.

I'm fully aware of the fact that I care more because it's a band I absolutely love, but then I guess it's things like that which bring your attention to a rather serious problem like Really Stupid Cops With More Meat Than Brain Cells and the authority to use it in such a threatening, childish manner. They're meant to be the authority, for god's sake, not there to intimidate people on what seemed like a whim.

[greenMonkey]

I hope that cop gets fired and punished.  Even if the so called noise complaint was valid, the cop had no rationale for acting in the manner that he did.  You can clearly hear his tazer in several of the videos.  Why the fuck did he start beating up the band?

[Action_franky]

I'm from Texas and it's a fact ALL Texas cops are dicks.

they all think they're cowboys and have a high incident rate for beating people without reason.

they suck balls.

[Johnny C]

The HPD Has Problems has moved here. As well, Pitchfork did an interview with Two Gallants about the incident. Excerpt (the first two quotes being from Adam Stephens, guitarist and Taseree):

"I think he was getting on the stage right when I was turning around. Had a flashlight in his hand and it was turned on, he was pointing it at me and walking towards me and yelling at us to stop. And I questioned him--I don't remember my exact words, but I don't think it matters. I asked 'why?', or said 'what's the problem?' just wanting to have some explanation, which I think I'm lawfully due. And I questioned him once and he didn't give me any answer, he just yelled at me to stop again. And I think I questioned him one more time.

"I wasn't rude about it. I had no idea what was going on. I had no idea if there was some huge problem, maybe he needed to evacuate the building for some reason. I didn't immediately think this was an antagonizing situation, but I wasn't about to stop just because he said 'stop.'"

Vogel was equally confused. "I just looked up, and there was this huge guy shouting at Adam. I didn't know what he was doing."

Stephens continued, "He didn't give me any explanation after me asking twice. This all happened in a matter of seconds. And at that point, he simultaneously put his arm around my guitar and around my neck and threw me down to the ground. And Tyson was there immediately. As far as I remember Tyson was there pretty much when he grabbed me, because Tyson jumped over his drums. And he threw Tyson down immediately as well, and was on top of both of us trying to do something--I don't know what his intention was."

According to McDuell via the Houston Chronicle, Stephens "used a sexual obscenity and shoved the officer with his shoulder."

"There's no way I shoved him at all," Stephens said. "I think anyone with a little bit of reason, if you just picture the situation, we're there to play music, not to attack police officers. We're playing music and a cop comes in, we had no idea what was going on, why in the world would we immediately attack a police officer for walking into a venue while we're playing? We're not on tour to take down law enforcement. It's just ridiculous to me that someone would make up that rumor, because why would anyone do that? He completely took the first offensive move by throwing us to the ground."

The videos appear to corroborate this, as well as the claims that Officer Rodriguez went out of his way to taser people.

It's utter bullshit, the whole thing. If you want a show to stop and it's in a venue, it's ridiculous to hop up on stage where it's going to be the loudest, shine a flashlight in someone's face and shout "stop" without giving a reason. You tell the sound guy to stop, and if it doesn't work then, fuck, call for backup or something. There should be no Taser usage or mass arrests at a noise complaint.

Fuck tha po-lice.