Rain rain, come again...

It has finally rained here. On and off for the last two days, with scattered showers over the next couple of days. We have not have a single thunderstorm this summer. Last year we had them regularly. The kind that shake the house with brilliant lightning that allows you to see the entire yard for a brief moment, and like in every horror movie where the silhouette of a serial killer holding a chainsaw is visible. It actually took a little time to get used to that type of storm again. Growing up in Georgia we had them all the time, but in 10 years in Colorado, I can't remember a single one.

Along with the brief rain has come a reprieve in the temperature. It was actually nice last night on the dog walk. Of course the hottest month here is typically September, so I got that going for me, which is nice...

Just Found This Beauty....

Coming out from under the wall at the rear door. Yes, It was in the wall!! I hit it with a shovel and ended it's night. Kinda like that scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark with all the snakes. Hopefully it didn't just get done laying 60 or so eggs.

Sleep tight.

The Blue Screen of Death

If you know what that phrase means, you can feel my pain. After over a year of loyal service climbing on roofs and banging into doorways, my work tablet pc is going through some tough times. Yes! I am actually using it for work as it has once again picked up and I'm out in the world protecting the interests of buying real estate clients in the greater metro Austin area.

TBSoD, as it can be referred to, is basically a complete shit-down of a system caused by one of 1.4 million different things. It renders the pc worthless, giving an infamous blue screen with way too much technical information, until it can recover or become the latest door stop. Well after some trouble shooting on the interwebs, I think I have an idea what is going on. Since I am out driving around all over the place every work day, I have been plugging my power cord into a "cheap" convertor that enables a regular grounded plug to receive power from the cigarette lighter of a car. Well apparently the pc/software doesn't like this and refuses to work in this environment.Tisk-tisk. It has been performing flawlessly for the last couple of hours, even through a couple of restarts and I am playing with the settings now and going to road test it tonight on the couch to see if it will behave.

So on this mornings inspection, I had to write everything down on a piece of paper on my clip board (gasp) and then transfer the data into the reporting software after getting back home. In a vain attempt to earn some brownie points, thinking I may be able to bribe the pc with them, I helped two old ladies cross the street, gave a panhandler some peanut butter crackers and didn't say "fuck" once today. Well it looks like my good deeds are going noticed!

You ask and you shall receive....

This is the weekend trip to NC to see Pavement 7/28/94-5??. Were you guys fighting on the way up there?, shocker. Its dark and I have my sunglasses on, hey! at least I'm wearing my seatbelt. The elevator shot, a classic pose for Zach. I had to ride shotgun on the way home, due to uuummmm... some bad shellfish I had the night before. We are wearing the most uncool sunglasses in the world.

Rock'n'Roll will never die!! prt 2.

So I couldn't stop... This time left to right from the top.

1989?- hollyfaith at Marist High School. I'm pretty sure Brant Rackley is the only person I know that had a hollyfaith t-shirt. It was probably mine until he took it.

4/29/97- Pavement at First Ave Minneapolis, MN. I was traveling around with the show producer gig in Greenville, SC and went to Minneapolis two days early to see this show. One many many solo shows in a foreign town. The Apples in Stereo opened and Pavement was great! First Ave is the 40 Watt of Minneapolis.

5/4/96- GBV in Portland, OR. I was living there at this point, but only lasted another 5 months. Call me crazy but I like the sun and its warming rays. A little known band from Austin, TX on their first west coast tour opened, I had never heard of Spoon. I stalked Stephen Malkmus all night, but he was too stoned to notice.

12/1/92- Smashing Pumpkins at the Point. The stub says $5.00 but I'm pretty sure I paid $50 from a scalper. They were in Atlanta recording Siamese Dream and this was a practice show full of new songs. They blew the place away. The Point used to hold roughly 200 people. Just awesome.

4/22/94-ish?- Mike Watt at the 40 Watt. I can honestly say this was the best show I have ever seen. Bull-hog or Tugboat is an amazing record full of guest appearances from the likes of Sonic Youth, Dinasour Jr, Frank Blank, Evan Dando, etc. all playing Watt's songs, he on bass and vocals. Check it out. Watt's band for the night was Dave Grohl on drums, Eddie Vedder on guitar, and on Watt bass. Super-fucking amazing. Who's this Foo Fighter's you might ask? The first FF record had not even come out yet! Hoovercraft was a instrumental group consisting on Eddie Veddar, his wife, and some other guy. Kinda noisy but cool to see Eddie Vedder. Mike Mills of R.E.M. stood right behind me the entire night. He was in this phase of wearing these sequenced suit outfits, ala Elvis & David Bryne.

6/2/97- Ben Folds Five at Bogart's Cinncianti, OH. This was another trip paid for by the marketing company. I was kinda out of my mind during this phase of my life and my actions this night proved it. I ended up with the reps from Baldwin pianos, what Ben plays, they fed me beers all night after realizing I was a superfan and alone and took a crazy cab ride through the projects on the way back to my hotel. I'll leave it at that.

2/14/97- Pavement at the Point on my birthday!! I hope I wasn't driving that night. Have no idea of the details of this show. Next.

7/28/98?- Pavement at the Cat's Cradle Chapel Hill, NC. They were recording Terror Twilight at Mitch Easter's Drive-In studio and played this show as practice. And I remeber it being just that, a practice. Very loose and trying new songs, stopping and starting, Still a classic.

9/25/92- U2 at the Georgia Dome. I was working at Turtle's Records when these tickets went on sale. This was back in the day of lining up outside the store in the wee hours of the morning with some Dunkin Doughnuts and waiting to rush the ticket counter. I was working the sale that morning and as soon as the computers came on line, the manager printed out 10 tickets and stuffed them into the drawer ,and then after wards divided them up. I took Todd Gallardo and we sat in the 12th row. This was a tour with cars attached to cranes and the phone call to the president's office. I had been a U2 fan for a long time and this was the first spectacle type show I had been to. Man those guys have made some money.

7/25/90- The Bob mould Band at the Georgia Theater Athens, Ga. This was within the first 2-3 weeks of moving to the dorm for the start of a college career. Looking back I should have probably been studying, but hey its Bob Mould! and I'm in college damn it!

12/29/88- 1988 what the hell am I doing out on a Thursday night? I don't have the stub I was looking for but previous to this night, John Sabol and I had sat on the floor of the Cotton Club (gross) and seen the Indigo Girls for the first time. I can remember thinking, "man there are a lot of chick here".  Hey we were from Roswell, GA, never seen a lesbian before.

Well congratulations if you've stayed with me on this Rock'N'Roll of yester-year trip. The memories are all good. No arrests and no crashed cars took place during the living of these days. I'd say I was lucky. I'm curious to get feed back from anyone who was in attendance at these shows. Or hear of your concert past.

Keep on Rocking.

Rock'n'Roll will never die!!

So Dogwoodgirrrrrl put up an old ticket stub and that got me looking through a box of treasures. WOW! I 've seen some good shows and some of them I can actually remember being at! A description of what you are looking at left column first:

8/9/92- Smashing Pumpkins at the Masquerade- I know Dave was there, this was probably after Gish and before Siamese Dream. I have a video of the show two nights later somewhere in FLA, so its kinda like remembering.

8/20/92- 2nd Lollapalooza: PJ, Ministry, RHCP, Sound Garden. The real emergence of GRUNGE music to the masses. Not the best Lollapalooza I would say. That would have been 1994, I think, Superchunk, Jesus Lizard, Pavement, Cyprus Hill, Sonic Youth. Anne please be discrete with your follow up comments- my parents do read this. j/k

4/14/94- Afghan Wigs at the Masquerade. This was one of those nights the good lord was looking after us. Dave and I, Kelly and Sharon drove down from Athens, it was a "strange trip" to say the least. I think My Bloody Valentine or Dinosaur Jr opened. And after a perilous trip in the car and through the new fangled toll plaza, the music was sooo loud, you wanted to throw up. Dave could probably give you the set list from each band, but I can barely remember being there.

10/7/94- Pavement at the Masquerade. There is footage of this show on their DVD release. It was as Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was getting popular. I remember Stephen Malkmus was selling t-shirts, and I remember thinking that they should have had someone else doing that, I mean this guy is a rock star! Great show! The floor used to bounce up and down which was always ac reepy feeling.

9/11/96- Sebadoh at the Cotton Club- Didn't even make this show until the last song of the lst encore. Karyn, April, and I ended up at Harris and Leigh's place just down the street, unable to be around a large group of people in a small environment, we finally made the push to go to the concert and it was over. Damn it.

11/11/89- The fabled R.E.M. in Macon show. See Kite Chronicles and Dogwood Girl for subsequent comments about this show. I sure it wasn't even that good...

3/3/90- Kevn Kinney at the Roxy. Remember Kevn Kinney? neither does anyone else. I can tell you there were some D'N'C ticket stubs in this box as well.

9/15/89- Guadalcanal Diary at the Center Stage (no cameras. funny). They almost hit it big in the wake of R.E.M. and the southern college-alt rock scene of the late 80's. What was i doing out at this concert while in high school?? The official story probably was that I was at the library studying. 

9/30/89- Not a bad two weeks for being in high school. If you can name 1 Fetchin Bones song without looking it up, I will pay you $1000 us dollars.

11/17/91- The Pixies at the Center Stage. Trompe Le Monde tour. Just awesome. The Drop Nineteens opened, again I know Dave was there but couldn't tell you anyone else. I saw the Pixies a few years ago in Denver on their "we still matter " tour. Not so impressive and certainly paid more than $17.25 for the ticket. Kim Deal is tasty. 

No News is No News

Well not to much happening here in the ATX this week. Work is slow, I mean dead. In the home inspection business there are always up and down periods of time. Things usually start off well at the first of the year until tax time, then there's the end of school, stays busy until school starts again, and then usually a good finish up to Thanksgiving and Christmas. However this year has been drastically different with the state of the economy and the housing sector. 

So how do I fill my time.... lots of house chores, watering, yard work, laundry, meal preparation, dog walks, home repairs, etc. 

Living the dream.