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Body & Soul • November/December 2003
The String Cheese Incident

The counterculture is alive .and welt if Boulder's String Cheese Incident is any indication. One of many post-Dead jam bands, SCI is distinguished .by its songwriting skills, forays .into bluegrass and other traditional music, and strong social consciousness. Formed in the early'90s, the band avoided signing with a major label and instead launched their own in order to retain artistic and business control of their music. They sell their own low-price tickets to their shows to spare fans the surcharges imposed by large ticket agencies (in fact, in August they filed a lawsuit against Ticketmaster, alleging that it monopolizes the concert ticketing business). And they've launched or backed a long list of what they call it'Gouda Causes," including food drives, scholarship funds, literay programs, and urban renewal projects.

On their new Untying the Not (SCI Fidelity), the group teams with producer Youth (formerly of the industrialrock band Killing Joke) for a wild ride of pop songcraft, alternately spacey and folksy mini jams, and aural collages full of careening noises and spoken-word texts. It all works primarily because of the pacing: Just when you begin to feel that you've been, stranded off Pluto, the Cheese bounces back with another poppy gem.