Coming This Winter...

Here is a Sunday Funny for you from the folks at Bad Lip Reading! (When the link pops up to watch the extended scene, hold on and wait until the end - there's a link for them)

Let it rain!

We don't even really try to go to the ACL Festival anymore. It's harder for us to be on our feet for 12 hours a day than it used to be - where you have to walk a mile to find a spot to sit - crowded and sweaty. This year it wasn't just sweaty, on the penultimate night of it we got something like 4 months worth of rain in one night, so they cancelled that day. A lot of the bands did 'popup' shows, last-minute-arranged stuff you need to be on twitter to find out about. One band played at the homeless shelter for just food donations. Atoms For Peace, which sells out venues at the $100 range, played for $10 a ticket. Many bands put on free shows! Lionel Ritchie picked up a house concert and played for maybe 50 people, don't know what he charged though.

I got happy because one of my favorites, The Lone Bellow, played a couple of free shows -- one of them at 5:00pm (perfect for us old timers who just wanted to get home in time to watch The Walking Dead, then hit the sack for the workweek) (priorities).

I love these guys! This one is a slower ballad but most of their songs are up-tempo -- check them out if you like this:


Still getting some rain (so wonderful) and later this week it will cool down enough to maybe turn off the air conditioner.

Arizona fun

Still working the scanner like a fiend, trying to post photos in chronological order (but we'll see how long that lasts). This gallery is in a similar time and place, 1951-1956 in Arizona. This is an event held annually in Wickenburg AZ (small community about 60-odd miles out of Phoenix) called "Gold Rush Days." It's very cowboy-themed! See the video below (video not mine) shot in 1958... as close to it as I have found. I love seeing all these folks decked out in their 50s best (I think it will enlarge if clicked), and the rest of the shots of cowboys and cheesy floats.

In other news, the weather is FINALLY cooling off, still warm enough to call summer up further north, but feeling less like an oven. We spent Tuesday night of this week attending the Austin City Limits TV taping of Neko Case - who has a haunting voice like no other. She spent some time in Tucson AZ herself (recording an album), her father was in the Air Force (like mine), and told the story during the show of have a stuffed iguana as a kid - not a plush toy but a real dead iguana with painted teeth, stuffed with cotton and (I'm sure) wires... this was funny to hear for me because when I was a kid I had a similar companion -- a stuffed baby alligator (or possibly a crocodile) named Kilroy. Parents can make strange choices sometimes.

Is this thing on...?

Waving helloooo after a long absence from the Oasis here. I miss it. Facebook drives me crazy sometimes, but also wears me out because it's constantly updating. Anyway, I am up to a lot of my usual activities, going to hear live music once or twice a week, almost too much to list except to make note of attending the Dawes Austin City Limits taping a day after my 60th birthday (OUCH).

I've also been keeping myself busy with the great historical photo and letter sorting project. Great progress, and have been keeping the scanner going. I have cleaned up my old Flickr account and am going to try and post as much as possible there. The first set is of a racetrack in Arizona where my dad worked as a side job in the pit crew for one of the drivers. I love seeing the way people people used to dress! Manzanita Speedway

All Hail the Autumn seasonal change!

Will be checking in and browsing around when I get the chance.