**ADVISORY**
This letter is meant to be read while listening to the OFFICIAL Sound Wave Music Festival Mix here: http://soundcloud.com/lightning-eyez/eyezonsoundwave-pre-game
Aloha Earthlings!
(more specifically those from Phoenix, Arizona and the surrounding southwest area)
Me llamo John Monsoon aka Lightning EyeZ. Eye just got booked to play the upcoming Sound Wave Music Festival at Big Surf Waterpark in Tempe on Saturday April 9, 2011. Eye wanted to take the time to write all the fans of dance music in this region and express my gratitude to you. The FANS make everything happen in music, not big label executives, not tastemaker DJs, nor event producers ... these people are all fans of music, and its the people that make the decisions - remember this fact.
This is the first major dance music festival for Arizona. It is the first of many to come. Of course there have been a large amount of events in our history already; however, this is the first time that a large event producer (Insomniac of Electric Daisy Carnival & Electric Forest) has teamed up with an experienced local producer (Steve Levine) to develop a fresh festival concept for the Grand Canyon State. The most important part is the venue. Big Surf gives us access to a 10,000 person capacity venue! Besides stadiums and arenas, this is the biggest venue we currently have an ability to throw events. As a really cool side-note, Pink Floyd played the entire length “Dark Side of the Moon” at Big Surf back in September, 1972.
To truly understand the epic importance of these facts, we must consider that the true reason why Phoenix’s music scene suffers in comparison to less populated cities like Denver, Las Vegas, Seattle, and San Francisco is a complete design flaw that is integrated into economics and politics. The details are not important here, just the main fact: Phoenix lacks enough music venues (of all shapes & sizes) and a decent urban environment to support those establishments (proximity & transit). These two issues create a situation where big artists choose the cities with better music scenes over Phoenix on the best nights like Friday and Saturday.
We must rally together to support this event. There is a 100% guarantee that more events will be held here every summer when 10,000 people show up each time. Insomniac and other big event producers will begin to take notice, and more capital can be invested into making our Phoenix & Arizona music scene more sustainable. More venues will be opened in urban areas like Downtown Phoenix, Mill Avenue District in Tempe, and OldTown Scottsdale - not to mention Tucson, Flagstaff, Prescott and other surrounding cities. Imagine having massive festivals in Sun Devil Stadium (to save the educational budget), and legendary camping festivals in the forests of Northern Arizona (to support sustainable farming & forestry). We won’t have to travel far and wide to experience great music anymore (although that is still recommended and fun). Inversely, more tourism can be generated by our state from people traveling here for great weather and even better events in the Spring, Summer (Northern AZ), and Fall. We can all go to amazing music festivals at least once a month. We just need to make Sound Wave a resounding success, no pun intended.
This is also good for the quality of life in our state. When more investment is made into urban areas, the less limited resources we require, and the more sustainable resources we develop. Sustainability is important for the future of our environment, in addition to the survival of our civilization.
Sustainability also greatly relates to equality. When people interact with each other at events, we get to experience connections with a variety of individuals. We understand that our similarities are much more interesting than our differences. We need to support our fellow humans, embrace the amazing cultural variety in Arizona (especially our Hispanic & Native American roots) and bring everyone together for social bonding events like Sound Wave. We must end the boycott of Arizona, by supporting the things that matter in our lives. Love. Peace. Music. Aloha. ONE.
Eye sincerely hope you have enjoyed reading this letter from the bottom of my heart, TOGETHER we can create the music scene & community of our dreams.
Mahalo! ON’AHOLANOTHALEVEL
John Monsoon aka Lightning EyeZ
PS. My crew and Eye have hard tickets available for the festival, we can deliver.
If you wish to buy your tickets online, kindly utilize my promo code: 7235
Check out my website here: http://www.lightningeyez.com/ (Hours of free music)
Also submitted an entry for the Festival's T-Shirt Contest - which Eye will be giving away the tickets to my fans somehow. Please like: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150135125668837&set=o.109228605824719&theater
**FYI you have to "like" the Sound Wave Festival page first:
http://www.facebook.com/SoundWaveAZ
Please Please Please share this with your friends. Bring your entourage!
