String Cheese Incidents: Cops swoop on fans

Midway between "heavy-handedness" and "shooting fish in a barrel", police targetted two Vail dates on String Cheese Incident's farewell tour, swooping up about ten drug arrests each time.

The band have chosen to distance themselves from the fans on this one:

“The String Cheese Incident does not and never has condoned any kind of illegal behavior,” said Carrie Lombardi with Madison House Publicity in Boulder. The company handles publicity for String Cheese Incident.

“The band is not responsible for fans’ behavior,” she said. “They’ve been together for 15 years without much incident, and these things are the irresponsible behavior of the few that the media always pays attention to.”

So, that's fifteen year without "much incident" - she doesn't say if there's ever been much String Cheese. It would have been nice for the band to have said something that sounded a little less like a disappointed headmaster, especially since the media has generated a response like this, from the Daily Sentinel:

String Cheese Incident was formed in 1993 in Boulder. Described as a jam band, String Cheese Incident has been compared to the Grateful Dead, because both bands toured much of the time with fans who followed them. Drug use by fans during Grateful Dead concerts has been documented.

Nice - people say this band sound like a band whose fans used drugs, ergo, the targeting of their fans is a sane response. Rather than allowing their publicist to aid this sort of media froth, shouldn't the band offer something more of a stand?