History

The 4th of JuLive was recorded live on July 4th 2003 and was set to be The Brobecks debut album release through Shoshin Productions. Soon after the recording one of the bands frontmen and Lead Guitarist Scott Jones departed from the band, taking the songs he wrote for it with him. The remaining Brobecks chose to scrap the record, deciding that their first release should be a totally different experience than their live shows.

The band still didn’t want to waste the material, and so they released a 7 track version of the album through their mp3.com page in the form of some free downloads and a print-on-demand CD. This release lacked all of Scotts tracks and featured dubbed vocals by Mike Gross over the songs Lucinda and The Cowboy Song, as both were sung live by Scott Jones.

Shortly after the album was uploaded to their mp3.com page the site would be shut down, the band still listed it in their discography on their website but dubbed the album “Abandoned” and did not provide mp3’s. This would lead to the album becoming lost media in both its unreleased and released forms until 2020 when some say a strange teenager from the pacific northwest finally annoyed Mike & Matt enough to dig up the album and release the goods. Everyone say “Thank You Mr. Glass”

Trivia

There are some differences between this albums original 12 track version and the 7 track one that got released that make it difficult to organize, especially with the actual track order of the original being unknown. To simplify things we offer downloads of the original 12 track album, using the released versions track order and tacking on Scotts tracks at the end alphabetically. The 2 unique tracks from the released version of the album are included as bonus tracks that slot in at the end, this way you can make playlists to experience the album either way you want without having to download any duplicate files. Human ability to categorize things is awful, sorry in advance for any confusion.

This albums cover art was first seen on Matt’s DeviantArt where a version without text was shared on July 6th, 2003, called Brobecks Family Portrait, “It’s just an idea for a CD cover for a band I am in.” Thanks to this high quality original being shared Jules was able to construct a 1:1 recreation of the cover art after identifying the fonts used. This was done as the original cover art we have is very low quality.

The Goldeneyes (Mike Gross, Matt Glass & Scott Jones) decided to spruce up some old recordings in 2021, giving this album a remaster. It featured all of Scotts cut tracks, but used Mikes dubbed versions of the tracks The Cowboy Song & Lucinda. The remaster also lacked Dallon Weekes tracks as he was not involved in the project.

While this album was available on CD through mp3.com these DAM CD’s were made on demand, only as many exist as there are people who bought one. It’s possible and likely that one of if not the only copy in existence is in the hands of the bands drummer Matt Glass. Though finding a copy would not get us better audio quality for Mikes dubbed tracks, as mp3.com burned their discs with the same 128kbps files used on the site.

This release features a hidden track, at the end of Downtown after some silence the song Human Shoe by Matt Glass plays. Would you like to be worn by people from the future if you found yourself as a human shoe? If you were a person from the future would you wear a human shoe? These are questions we all must face.