Thoughts from a busy weekend

We made up for our weekend off last week with three gigs this week - a private party, a public show and a sound gig. Many thoughts arise from such a busy weekend. Here's a rundown:

• Summer has arrived in Austin. Criminey, it gets hot here.  


• In light of bullet #1, air conditioning is a wonderful thing. And whoever thought to put it in cars should be knighted or something.

• You can do a song a million times, and one day, you stand on stage, and your brain just farts. You can't remember lyrics, notes, nothin'. It can even be a song you wrote. I don't know why, but it just happens sometimes. It sucks pretty much anytime it happens, but it particularly sucks if it's the first song of the show, because anyone who hasn't seen you before hears about 10 seconds of you stumbling around, and the die is cast - "Hack." You can kill it the rest of the set, and maybe you redeem yourself somewhat, but as the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression, and I'd prefer for that first impression to not be that I just stepped on stage for the first time.


• If you buy a house next to a live music venue, please don't complain about the live music and make it your mission to kill said music. Move.

• It's pretty cool to watch kids playing instruments and performing on stage, some for the first time, instead of spending their time watching TV or playing video games. Hope for the future of music!


• If you want to feel like an amazing singer and/or musician, go watch some kids who are just learning to play instruments. (Oh sure, it's pathetic to feel superior to kids, but you're never going to feel like a stud if all you compare yourself to is actual rock stars.)

I know this image doesn't exactly match the bullet point,
but I found it and couldn't NOT post it.

• If you manage a venue, and someone brings an event to your venue that will make you money during a time you wouldn't normally make much in the way of sales, instead of being a sour, gripey pill to the people who are putting on the event, try being nice. You're not doing them a favor. If anything, it's the other way around. 

One last thought, not inspired by any of our gigs but by the Billboard Music Awards - when is Justin Bieber going to go away?

Band vans and missed TV

We've been talking a lot lately about what our dream band van would be like. Of course, the DREAM band van would look something like this:

But unless one of the members of U2 adopts us then dies immediately, leaving us his estate and future royalties, we're not likely to be traveling in that kind of style. And if we DID travel in that kind of style, I guess we'd have to call it a "bus" rather than a "van."

You know what? We don't have to do anything. We're calling it a van even when they're profiling us on a "Extreme RVs."

And when we get this VAN, I'll have to re-join Netflix or something. If we're rolling around in this bad boy, we'll obviously be traveling a lot, and you see that awesome TV mounted where you're supposed to be looking at the vistas ahead? Well, there are a number of TV series I've missed and would like to catch up on while on the highways and byways. Among the shows I would force Joe to watch with me, beginning to end (since Johnny would be driving):

Mad Men

Boardwalk Empire

Veep

Sherlock 

Downton Abbey

24 (Nope - never seen it.)

Eastbound and Down 

Flight of the Conchords (I've seen several episodes of this when my TV provider has given me free HBO preview weekends, but I want to watch EVERY episode! Love, love, love.)
Chapelle's Show

After I worked my way through those, I'd probably give Friday Night Lights a shot. I saw the movie, but I never watched the TV series, and that seems wrong, given that it was filmed near Austin and it's about football in Texas - two of my favorite things in the world. I also adore Connie Britton (we've been watching "Nashville" and never miss an episode).

I'd probably also have to give Doctor Who a shot (starting with the original episodes from the '60s), mainly because I'm curious about it but also because it would be the one series out of my whole list that Joe might actually watch with me instead of sleeping through. Never having seen it, I'm fairly certain that Community's imaginary series Inspector Spacetime is based on it, so that seems an endorsement if nothing else:

Should we fail to achieve Super Band Van Amazingness, I'll have to some day set aside a few months devoted to nothing but watching all the shows I've missed over the years. I suppose some would call that "retirement" but I like to think of it as a sabbatical. I could announce what TV series will be playing non-stop on our TV until it's through, and anyone who wanted to watch could come join me and bring me food. When I'm done, I'll return to my regularly scheduled life.

Seeing that I don't have time these days to watch the stuff currently on our DVR, the dream of this little sabbatical kind of keeps me going. "Someday, I'm going to sit down and watch every episode of Mad Men, in order. Then I'll know what all the hubbub is about." I hate not knowing.

What series did you miss out on that you'd like to go back and watch all the way through?