invoke played the Third Thursday series at the Blanton Museum. It was an early that started at 5:30. They've recently scored an old (a classic?) animated film (Adventures of Prince Achmed) and presented some of the music they wrote and shared a bit of behind-the-scenes info on their scoring process. It was a very interesting show.
Michael Fracasso played at the Cactus Cafe with Sweet Gary Newcomb on guitar and pedal steel. What a treat—getting to see Gary twice in one week. They were both at the top of their games. Lots of good music and laughter.
I hopped over to the Continental Club Gallery as soon as Michael's show was over to catch Colin Gilmore and Nicolette Good subbing for Bonnie Whitmore at her Thursday night residency. I'm glad I made the show since neither of them have any Austin dates scheduled in the near future. It was a fun laid-back end to the night. And, my buddy Heather Miller also sang a song which was fun. I think that might've been her Gallery debut. Not sure about that, though. I forgot to ask.
Last night was the 2nd of 4 shows in Shawnee Kilgore's residency at The Townsend. Her guest was Jana Pochop. One of the goals Shawnee has set for herself in this residency is to not repeat a song through the whole thing and not play any song she's released on any of her records. Cool, eh?
It was a really fun show. Shawnee and Jana were on fire. I'm so glad I was there to see it live. Here are some Instagram links:
I went to a Music Firsthand event last night featuring music by Ali Holder and dinner by Giulia Millanta. It's called Comedians Interviewing Musicians. I'd been to one of these at a pub several months ago and had a good time. I like that the Music Firsthand folks are trying to get local musicians more exposure so decided to back their work by supporting their Patreon project. It was a fun evening.
I didn't clip any of the interviewing part...just the music. Sorry about that. Here are the links:
I decided—rather spur-of-the-moment—to hop down to Gruene Hall last night to see Brian Pounds. I texted Nichole and asked if she was interested in tagging along and she was. So, we went.
I didn't really expect a full-band show and I don't know why not. That's the only thing that really makes sense at Gruene Hall. Right? Right.
Brian was there with Derek Morris on keys, Einar Pedersen on bass, Matt Wiley on guitar, and Ethan Yeager on drumes. It was a fun show. Here are the links:
I've been wanting to do this for a long time and I've been putting it off for a long time. I was talking to Nichole about it last night and noted that this is just about the very least I could do to revive this page and document the shows I go to. So, here I am. I'm gonna post links to my music-related Instagram posts so they're easier to find when I'm trying to look back through time. I hope I can keep it up. I'll start with links to the show I went to last night. Stay tuned.
Do you suppose it's bad luck to kill a scorpion on Christmas Eve? I only ask because my brother-in-law spotted one in the dining room as we were finishing dinner this evening. He was concerned about one of the dogs spotting it. He was barefoot and I was wearing boots so the killing fell to me. I do not like doing that sort of thing but...dogs. And, well, it was a scorpion and I was going to be sleeping about 15 feet from that spot later tonight. So now I'm wondering if it's bad luck or not.
Note to self: check your boots in the morning before pulling them on; it's probably a good idea to check pretty much everything in the morning.
My paternal grandmother is on my mind because today would've been her 100th birthday if she were alive. Alas, she passed away in April, 2011 (follow the link to read what I wrote at the time). I miss her. I wish I could give her a call and tell her about the music I heard yesterday and how cold it is in Austin today. "Eeegh!" she would've said about the cold. Short for "Hijo!" I suppose. She used to say that a lot. I'm smiling a little and crying a little and am going to go listen to some young people play music in a little bit and smile some more.
I changed hosts for my web stuff a couple of weeks ago. My old host tanked big time. I got an email message a couple of months ago saying they were migrating to new servers and I had until the end of November to move my stuff if the auto-migration did not work or it would all just be deleted. I got another message at the beginning of November saying something similar with a link to a page where I could get updates on the success/failure of the migration process. I went to the page and couldn't get anything useful out of it. My stuff wasn't migrating but it wouldn't generate error codes or anything. I called tech support and had to wait for over an hour to talk to someone. The guy dug around and finally said that he'd found the problem: the quota for my account on the new system was set to zero. Ah! Nothing could migrate if I didn't have any available space on the new server!
He went off and came back saying he couldn't fix it but would get someone higher up the chain to fix it and that I'd soon be able to use the migration tools. I tried later that night. Same deal. Nothing was working and no error codes were being generated. I opened a chat session. Another wait of over an hour and finally connected to someone. I explained the situation and they said it could take up to 48 hours for the fix to kick in. I also submitted a ticket on their system asking if they could help me get myPhpAdmin working on the old site so I could export my databases so I could at least make a local copy of my blogs. I never heard a peep regarding my ticket. I didn't try it again for about 5 days. When I did log in, nothing had changed.
I called tech support again. Another wait of over an hour. Finally connected and explained the situation rather thoroughly. The tech went off and came back to report that my site hadn't migrated to the new system and she couldn't help. I told her I knew the site hadn't migrated and explained to her (again) that the problem was that the quota for my account on the new system was set to zero and that I had been waiting for 5 days with no change in status. I also asked her about the myPhpAdmin thing and she said she couldn't help with un-migrated systems and that I should submit a ticket. I told her and had already done that and she couldn't find my ticket. I tried submitting a new ticket with her on the line and she couldn't find it. I couldn't find it either. She offered to submit a ticket on my behalf. As soon as she did that, both tickets showed up on my old control panel. She could only see the new one. I asked her to transfer me to someone who could help with un-migrated accounts and she said there was nobody in the phone chain who could do that. Sigh. I hung up. I eventually got a couple of completely blank messages regarding the tickets (at least I think that's what they were but they were blank and provided no info).
Argh! I gave up on them. I logged into the blogging software on the old system on the 22nd of November and exported all of my content to text files that I could (hopefully) import into a new blog. I found a new host and updated DNS and started working on moving everything over. I used the online tools at the old host to cancel my account. One of the things it made me do was acknowledge the cancellation policy. The link to the cancellation policy went to a 404-Not Found page. Really. I have no idea what their cancellation policy is. I could not find it doing a google search. Bums. I'd used them (and their predecessor) for nearly 20 years. I never had a problem with them until now and have no idea what's going on over there. Oh well. BTW, I got an email message on the 28th or so of November telling me the migration had failed and my account had been shut down. About 8 hours later I got a message saying I had until the middle of January to move my stuff. Two completely different systems seem to be at war over there. It's almost comical.
So, here I am in a new home. I don't much like the design but also don't have the motivation to do much about it. Things seem to be working well enough. I think all of the old content is here. I decided to officially shut down my baseball blog (I hadn't posted there in over two years) and my photography blog (I hadn't posted there in over 6 years!) but am keeping the archives around.
Littlefield Fountain, 200 West 21st Street
Public Intoxication / Assault: UT Police Officers were summoned to a report of an assault in progress. Upon arrival, officers found the victim, a UT student, who pointed out his assailant—another UT student, who was under the age of 21. The investigation revealed, the suspect got into an argument with his girlfriend, yet a third UT student, over a text message he had received from another female subject. The suspect and his girlfriend ended their relationship over the text. The now ex-girlfriend asked the victim, who was an unsuspecting pedestrian at the time, to walk her home. The suspect then knocked the victim down and punched him several times. The assailant was also deemed to be under the influence of an alcoholic beverage to the point he was a danger to himself and chivalrous pedestrians everywhere. Occurred on 11/01/15 at 1:58 AM.
