Daily Journal: Day 22 of 365

The concert last night was quite fun. We saw the Old 97s at the Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas. The show began with Murry, the bass player, doing a solo set. He began sort of slow, and it seemed like he kind of lost a fair chunk of the crowd with a couple of ballads. He played a couple of songs people recognized, though, and managed to bring most of them back.

When Rhett came on stage and started playing his solo set, the crowd became really energized. He was all over the place, and as he mentioned himself, he didn’t have a single slow or quiet song in his set. It was all energy for the next half hour.

The whole band played for a couple of hours. They’re playing three more shows, and they said that they’re trying to not play any songs more than once except for “Time Bomb,” which is their set closer. So that means that this particular show wasn’t a “greatest hits” kind of thing, and I didn’t really know many of the songs. I’m sure I’ve heard a few of them before, but the only two I really knew were “Barrier Reef” and “Time Bomb.” Nevertheless, it was a really fun, really energetic show, and the girlfriend and I both had a lot of fun. It would have been nicer if the crowd wasn’t quite so close, but such is life.

The girlfriend was really happy with her birthday present, and that’s the thing that matters most…

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The daily rundown, April 27

The girlfriend and I slept in pretty late in the morning. I'm not sure if it was because of the drinking, the large amount of fried carnival type food, the late night, or some combination of all of the above, but she was definitely not feeling very good for most of the early part of the day. We did go downstairs and she made some breakfast for us and the roommate. Blackberry muffins and bacon. Not too bad a way to start the day. After she had cleaned up the kitchen a bit, she went back upstairs to lay down for a while. I stayed downstairs and watched the hockey game that was on, then came back up to work on some stuff on the computer.

Because she was feeling rather miserable most of the early afternoon, I was doubtful that we were going to make it to the jazz festival to see that last night's performance, but she seemed to be getting better toward the middle of the afternoon, and we got ready to head out to see the show. Her roommate didn't want to come along because he doesn't really care for Brave Combo, who regularly close the show at the jazz festival. Her friend who came the previous night was going to be there though, which was a good thing. She's kind of a kick, really.

It looked like there weren't quite as many people at the festival for the close as there were the previous day, but we still wound up sitting in almost exactly the same spot where we sat for Delbert McClinton's show. This time around, we didn't wind up buying very much of the overpriced and overgreased food, but the friend did buy each of us a corn dog. The girlfriend doesn't like corn dogs because she's a little leery of what might be in them. The friend and I each had one just because they're that kind of traditional carnival type fare that you just have to eat at an event like that.

The band that was playing when we got there was not half bad, kind of a R&B sort of group with a little more jazziness than the usual pap that's played on R&B radio these days. They played quite a few familiar covers, although now I don't really remember what they all were. I do know there was a lot of the old Motown stuff in there, but I couldn't name names at the moment. Might be because of the rum and coke I was drinking out of the bottle at the time, but it also just might be because I'm writing this up a few days after the fact. Maybe some kind of combination of the two. Who can tell?

The event of the night, however, was certainly Brave Combo. The girlfriend had warned me that they were a bit eclectic, which really doesn't bother me all that much. They were actually incredibly good players. The combo initially started out as the lead singer on guitar, a left-handed woman bass player, a drummer and an additional percussionist playing congas, and a three-man horn section of trumpet, trombone, and sax. I mention that they started out that way because almost all of the players aside from the drummer and bassist played various other instruments over the course of the evening. They also seemed to add another percussionist, although it's also possible that I just missed him, because he was sort of stationed behind the horn section. Several other folks aside from the regular lead singer also contributed to vocals, including the bassist, who did a nice little polka sort of number in Polish. Throughout the show, the bass wasn't necessarily all that flashy, but was definitely very solid.

The band played mostly cover tunes, but very interesting versions of them. They played things from all over the place: Latin, polkas, sambas, waltzes, as well as a number of not easily categorized tunes that definitely emphasized the fact that they were, as the girlfriend mentioned, somewhat eccentric. Overall, though, it was a very fun show. Nearly everyone at the place, probably about 1500 people, at least, were standing, dancing along, enjoying the audience participation sections, and generally having a fun, good ol' rollicking sort of time. I was even convinced to do the Chicken Dance, which is pretty much a staple, according to the girlfriend and her friend. And anyone who knows me already knows that me dancing is pretty much not a really common kind of thing, so it must have been a pretty good show for that to be happening. The band did a couple of encores, and then we headed off toward home.

Fortunately, the friend had parked her car near the site of the show, or at least a whole lot closer than the house, so we were able to hitch a ride home with her. Despite the fact that the show was over quite a bit earlier than the McClinton show, the friend had to head on back to her apartment to work on papers or something, so the girlfriend and I just headed upstairs and wound down for a little bit before going to bed. Overall, it was a pretty good end of the day...

The daily rundown, April 26

I got up fairly early when my girlfriend went to work. I think I was actually up at about 8:30 or so, which is definitely quite early for me lately. Unfortunately, I didn't take as much advantage of the extra time as I really should have. I got the cat fed and such and then plunked myself down in front of the computer and checked my e-mail and all of that good stuff. I had thought about driving down to Flower Mound, which is where the nearest branch of my bank is, so I could close out my accounts there and move them to a new bank somewhere here in Denton, but my lack of ambition got the better of me.

Over the course of the morning, I did subscribe to a new Yahoo list, which is the North Texas Crafters list. I posted a little message to it, introducing myself and what I do that is crafty, but I haven't heard back from anyone else yet. The list at the moment appears to be comprised of myself and the list owner, but hopefully more folks will add themselves and we'll get a little community going. I also noticed that I got a reply back from my posting to Tribe.net, but apparently their e-mail notification system didn't choose to notify me, so I didn't see it until I logged back on and had a look manually. Oh well. I need to take some pictures of some of the stuff I've been doing and post it up there.

On the job hunt front, I did add a couple more items to my online resume on the WorkInTexas site, but that's about the extent. I got a notification from one of the agencies I'd sent my resume to that they'd received it and would be looking at it to match me with their potential job openings, which gives me incredibly little hope that I'm going to get anywhere from them. Which is sort of a shame, really, because the job I'd applied for with them seems like it would be quite a good match for me. But that's the way the cookie crumbles.

From the band standpoint, I sent off messages to two new ads on Craigslist. One was for a possible Pink Floyd cover band here in Denton, which is made up of college-aged players. Not sure about that one, because I'd be old enough to be the father to most of them, but we'll see. And the other listing was for a dance rock band that needs a bassist and guitarist. I don't know precisely what kind of "dance rock" they have in mind, but I figure that the worst that can happen is a wasted trip to talk to them and possibly a couple of other people I know in the local music community. Not a bad deal, either way. The guy who posted that second ad wrote me back, asking me to call him after 4 PM, but I wound up having other things to do at that time. Hopefully I'll get back with him later, and we'll see what kind of music they're really playing.

After my girlfriend got home from work, which was in the early part of the afternoon, we had a bit to eat for lunch and each had a drink to "lay down a base coat," as she put it, and then we walked down to the site of the Denton Arts and Jazz Festival, which was going on this weekend. I was pretty astounded by the size of the thing. I had sort of expected a little outdoor stage with some folks sitting around on the lawn watching the band, but this was the size of a small county fair, with five real stages, as well as one small stage like I had expected to see, and probably a hundred or more booths selling food and various arts and crafts sorts of things.

We wandered through a few of the booths and such before stopping in front of one of the stages which was apparently the one where most of the UNT bands were to be performing. We met one of the girlfriend's friends and chatted with him for a while as we listened to some nice Latin jazz. The band switched over to playing more of a standard jazz after a few songs, though, and we headed over to see what was going on at some of the other stages. We made our way through the crowds of people and over to the jazz stage, which was pretty much the main stage for the event. We got there as one band was finishing up what sounded like a pretty decent set. It was pretty crowded, but we found enough room to lay out the little blanket thing we'd brought with us. I wanted to see Delbert McClinton, who was closing the night, so we kind of figured that we'd stay in that spot for the remainder of the evening, which we indeed wound up doing.

My girlfriend called her roommate and some of her other friends to see if they were going to come down to the festival. The roommate and one of her friends said they were, and they showed up after a while. The roommate was actually sort of funny because all he did was sat with his back against a big 50-gallon drum they had as a trash receptacle, facing away from the stage, and played his portable game system thing.

The first act that we got to see much of was a lady who went by the name of Annagrey. I'm guessing that her actual name is Anna Grey, but I guess they thought that naming the band that way was cooler or something. In any case, she was a singer in the vein of Sheryl Crow or something along that line, only fairly mediocre, really. I think a lot of the audience was just waiting to see Delbert, so the occasions when she tried to get audience participation or anything going wound up with lackluster results at best. But it didn't completely suck, which is always good. The bass player was halfway decent, although for the most part he just sat back and handled the groove. No real flashy solos out of him, and even his one real solo spot was more just sort of a funk groove thing, not a whole lot of trying to play as many notes as he could in as short a time as possible.

When Delbert finally started playing, the roommate left. For whatever reason, he doesn't like Delbert McClinton, but he thought the somewhat less entertaining (in my opinion) opening act was good enough to sit through. A little backward to my way of thinking, but I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks. My girlfriend, her friend, and I all had a good time watching Delbert play, although he didn't wind up playing the one song they both really wanted to hear ("Have a Little Faith in Me"). We nevertheless had a very good time, including the fun of watching some of the people who were in attendance. There were a couple who managed to get their own little nicknames, although they'll never know them: Turkey Leg Girl and the Stripper were the two that readily spring to recall.

Turkey Leg Girl was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, although I'm certainly not a great judge of that sort of thing. She looked like your typical little girl, but for some reason, when McClinton started playing, she decided that she had to stand up and dance while alternately holding and eating her big ol' smoked turkey leg. Of course, she was right in the spot where the girlfriend and I had the best view of the stage, and she was munching down these huge mouthfuls of turkey as she was turned facing back toward us. By the time that I thought about taking a few pictures of her just for posterity, she had already moved on to annoying some of the other members of her little group and was probably off blocking someone else's view of the show. On the plus side, she knew how to dance far better than I do.

Which is definitely not something that I'm going to say about the Stripper. This was a fairly attractive girl, probably in her early 20s, I'd guess, although I might be guessing a bit older than she really is. In any case, we noticed her dancing after the band had started. She was doing a fair number of moves that would probably not have been at all out of place in a strip club, but she had absolutely no sense of rhythm whatever. She was dancing very fast to a couple of slower ballads, and the faster tunes, which she seemed to be enjoying more, just caused her to be somewhat out of sync, as though she had the right tempo, but had started about a quarter beat behind everyone else. She continued dancing most of the evening, although we did notice that her mom was leading her back along the exit aisle at one point. Mom was looking none too happy, and we all figured it was because Stripper was rather wasted. Nonetheless, they returned to the scene a short time later. I'm not sure what became of her as the evening's entertainment came to a close, because the people were pretty much clamoring to get out, and it became difficult to see anyone not one or two people away from you.

Other fun events of the night included my first funnel cake, which was quite good, albeit very expensive. Not surprising, considering the carnival type atmosphere. We walked home after the show and then the girlfriend's friend had to head home to do some work on a school project. The girlfriend and I sat around and destressed for a bit before heading off to bed, looking forward to seeing another entertaining show the next night...

The daily rundown, April 25

So I've decided to write a little daily entry on here, in addition to my updates on some of the 43Things.com goals that I do, and possible other entries as I see fit. So, what's happened over the past 24 hours that's really of any interest, even to me?

Yesterday was mostly just a stay-at-home day. After the girlfriend* went to work, I checked my e-mail and such. Nothing very interesting going on. I was going to head up to the market and get a copy of the Denton Record-Chronicle to look through the ads, but I wasn't feeling all that ambitious about it. I did update my resume and such on the WorkInTexas.com website, and it wound up giving me a match for a Systems Admin job in Corinth. I checked the "how to apply" section and it was just an e-mail in your resume type deal. So I wrote a little cover e-mail and sent it to the appropriate address. I probably should have spent a little more time on the intro e-mail, because I think I kind of downplayed my skills and concentrated too much on my shortcomings relative to their job requirements. But, what the hell. The worst they can do is turn me down for the job, which isn't necessarily that horrible.

In between adding stuff on that website and sending off my C.V., I also read through a few days' backlog of e-mail and finished organizing my 43Things.com list. I moved a bunch of stuff down on the list that I'm not going to be able to do right now because the necessary items are stuck somewhere at the back of my storage unit, and it's going to take me a while to dig them out. Also, I moved down some of the long term goals and some of the things that are just going to take money. Can't throw money at any of the goals until I actually have a job, after all.

I did a little bit of organization around the computer room here, but not all that much. I did dig out my cross stitch stuff and did a little work on the 4th day of Christmas, which I'm now way behind schedule on. I don't really know if I'm ever going to be able to get myself caught up on that kind of thing now, but I at least managed to get a little bit of stitching done. I also posted messages to the cross stitch list on Tribe.net and my own little cross stitch forum on StumbleUpon. Thus far, however, no replies to either of those messages. While I was on Tribe, I also updated my profile to indicate my new residence and all.

One thing I found while organizing the room was that I actually did have the battery charger for my camera sitting in one of the boxes over in the closet. I thought that was one of the numerous things buried down in the storage unit, so I wound up ordering one from Amazon.com a few days ago after my camera started telling me the battery was low. Now I either need to deal with having an extra or I need to return the one I ordered. Decisions, decisions... It is nice that I'll be able to take pictures sooner than I expected, though.

As it started getting toward evening, I wandered downstairs and had myself some leftover turkey curry for a lunch/dinner sort of thing, and I turned on the hockey game, Montreal vs. Philadelphia. That was pretty much the end of any productivity for the whole evening for me. My girlfriend got home from work and after changing her clothes joined me to watch hockey and Battlestar Galactica, which is sort of a Friday tradition in the house. Her roommate was sleeping, though, and the friend who usually comes over had an important paper to finish, so it was just the two of us. We finished the evening watching the Stars beat the Sharks in overtime. I'm pulling for the Sharks, because they've always been one of my favorites. Of course, the Stars are the hometown team around here, so I'm sort of the outsider, but that's all right. However this series goes, I'll wind up rooting for the winner to go the rest of the way in the West, at least. If Montreal wins the East, I'll have to go with them to win the Cup, as they've been my favorites for as long as I've been watching hockey.

After the game, we came upstairs and I figured I'd check my e-mail before retiring for the evening. There was one message of particular interest to me. It was from my ex-wife. She had written this: "You need you to close out the joint checking account at [the bank]. As per our divorce agreement we were supposed to close all joint accounts. I think I have given you plenty of time since I discussed this with you. As I am authorized to close this on my own, I am asking you to do this within two weeks or I will do it. I am still liable for this account and would like to remove all ties I have to you. So if I haven't seen evidence of this by May 9th, 2008, I will go to [the bank] and close out that account."

I find it rather interesting that she didn't seem to think that the specifics of our divorce settlement were all that critical when our house sold for over a hundred thousand dollars less than we anticipated and I let her keep 90% of the portion of the profits that I was entitled to by that same settlement. And she didn't seem to feel that need to remove "all ties" to me when she asked me to give that reference so she could get into her new apartment, or when she needed to have some free work done on her computer. But, she is technically right that I should have closed the account earlier. I didn't because it was the account that I had all of my automatic bill deductions linked to, and to which my direct deposit paychecks were posted. But, since I'm now between jobs and such, it seems like it's a good time to do it anyway. And, since she's choosing to be a pissy little bitch, it's a good time to do just like she wants and cut all the ties to her. So, I sent her a similarly terse message saying that I'd do it on Monday, then I sat here and drank a bit before heading off to bed. Not the best night ever, but life goes on...

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* I refer to my girlfriend by that sort of impersonal sounding term not because I feel impersonal, but because she doesn't have her name posted on all of her websites and such like I do. So I don't really think it's my place to go spreading her actual name over the internet. Just so you know...

Lions at Dan's Silver Leaf, Saturday, April 19

On my first fully free weekend here in Denton, my girlfriend and I decided to get out of the house and check out something musical here in town. After reading through several descriptions and reviews of bands, we settled on going to Dan’s Silver Leaf and seeing Lions, an Austin-based band that was described in a newspaper review as having a 60s and 70s sort of vibe with a 90s fevor [sic]. We weren’t really sure if that was supposed be “fever” or “fervor,” but we figured it was the latter.

The opening band, whose name I didn’t catch, had a couple of catchy tunes going right after we first came in. They, like Lions, were a quartet, the usual lineup of drums, bass, and two guitars, with one of the guitarists doing what should be called singing, but which was primarily a cross between shouting and screaming to my ears. The singer/guitarist had pretty obviously had a bit much to drink, as my girlfriend leaned over at one point and told me something that he’d said. I told her that I understood what he had said, and she responded with, “Oh, I didn’t know you could translate Drunk that well.” Unfortunately, after the first couple of songs they played after we arrived, they seemed to go into several songs which were just extended jams. It pretty much seemed like they were just holding a public practice. If they could have maintained that catchy energy they had at first, it would have been a pretty decent show. As it was, not something I’d really care to pay to see again.

The headliners, Lions, got their equipment set up very efficiently and started their set only ten minutes or so after the first band left the stage. I could kind of see initially how they could be described a bit as having a 60s and 70s vibe. The girlfriend described them as being something like a cross between Led Zeppelin and Rage Against the Machine. For my part, I thought the 60s/70s part was more like the Who than like Zeppelin. In any case, Lions, too, sort of devolved into something of a jam band after the first few songs, primarily just riffing over a fairly solid rhythm section. They did seem to have a bit more structure to their material than the first band, but they definitely didn’t really cut it for me. Maybe their newly-released EP sounds better, but their live show struck me as little more than really, really loud.

See more progress on: Attend 12 live music events in 2008

Miss Derringer at Johnny B's in Medford, Feb. 1

Last Thursday, I got a message from an unknown party on my MySpace page. That party turned out to be a band from southern California called Miss Derringer. They were going to be playing on Friday at Johnny B’s, which is one of my favorite clubs here in Medford. Since I had nothing better to do, I figured I’d head over and see how they were.

I left home after 9:30, when the show was supposed to start, but by the time I arrive a few minutes later, the opening band was still setting up. The openers were the house band, the Cheatin’ Hearts, who describe themselves on their webpage as “whiskey drinkin’ shoot someone in the face music.” That’s a pretty appropriate description. The band went into a number of boogie-oriented numbers with names like “Tonight I’m Gonna Get Drunk” and “That Woman’s Got Me Drinkin’.” The group is nothing fancy or anything, but it’s good, fun music by nice enough guys.

Miss Derringer describe themselves as “Indie/Country/Gothic” on their webpage. While the guys in the band definitely try to look the “Gothic” part, dressed in their black clothes and sparkly black eyeliner, the music itself reminded me more of what I think Blondie would have sounded like if Debbie Harry was in a fit of clinical depression. I’d describe them as more “Gothic/New Wave” than anything remotely related to country. Overall, the music was performed well and the sound was okay, but it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I wound up buying a copy of the demo CD by the Cheatin’ Hearts, but the people in Miss Derringer were too busy acting like rock stars with their groupies after their set for me to be able to ask if they had a disc for sale. I probably won’t be attending another of their shows, even if the opportunity arose…

See more progress on: Attend 12 live music events in 2008