saturday, 24 june -- daily

[jdd2]

Here you go...

[drlj]

Another day much like the others. The only difference is the humidity jumped from 45% to 85% and, since it is supposed to be 90 today, it might be a tad uncomfortable.
Enjoy what you can.

[Cornflake]

Good morning. It's very pleasant out but it'll be around 100 this afternoon. Not much to report.

Wordle 735 5/6*

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[howard lee]

Good morning. Having a Continental breakfast and will be off in a little while to Retrofret to meet John Bushouse and his wife there. Then perhaps a quick train ride to the Lower East Side to TR Crandall Guitars, then a stroll through brownstone Brooklyn and dinner. Looking forward to a fun day.

[paleo]

Good morning.
After a fruitful day at the cabin yesterday, installing a new burner in the grill, and trimming trees, I was in no mood to cook dinner last evening.

I decided I was hungry for a taco salad and so I set out to Vinton to find one. I stopped at the restaurant formally known as LA Reyna, now called Las Lomitas. It looks to me like the only thing that has changed is the name. I did notice that the salsa, with the chips and salsa, seemed a little spicier. The place was pretty busy, so the town folk seem to like it.

[howard lee]

Jun 24, 2023 8:14:16 GMT -5 paleo said:

Good morning.
After a fruitful day at the cabin yesterday, installing a new burner in the grill, and trimming trees, I was in no mood to cook dinner last evening.

I decided I was hungry for a taco salad and so I set out to Vinton to find one. I stopped at the restaurant formally known as LA Reyna, now called Las Lomitas. It looks to me like the only thing that has changed is the name. I did notice that the salsa, with the chips and salsa, seemed a little spicier. The place was pretty busy, so the town folk seem to like it.

Did ownership change hands?

[Marty]

Good morning

68F-85F mostly cloudy

Standard Saturday shop and then off to Menard's for some shop supplies. Then the girls invited Us to buy them lunch at Cabin 61 with the nice deck but weather may not cooperate so it might be indoor dining.

[billhammond]

From Jon Bream of the Strib (another long-sold-out show is set for tonight):

She wore a gossamer gown, a faux fur coat, a one-legged, one-armed bodysuit and too many shimmering sequins for a costumer to count. We counted 17 or so different looks for Taylor Swift Friday night at U.S. Bank Stadium.

And 44 songs, 14 dancers, six musicians, four professional backup vocalists, 64,287 volunteer backup singers, three stages connected by a runway, multiple set pieces and giant video screens.

The concert was Taylor Swift on steroids.

And it was wow-inspiringly spectacular at times, wonderfully intimate at other times. Not to mention longer than a major league baseball game (no pitch clock necessary) or any other concert these days. A super-generous 3¼ hours, not including the two opening acts.

...

Her show Friday may be the most fan-fulfilling show I've ever seen in 48 years of reviewing. It's rivaled only by Barbra Streisand's 1994 tour, her first in 28 years, that left her fans verklempt.

At the Vikings stadium, Swifties were overwhelmed and overjoyed. Who can blame them?

Like Streisand, Swift, 33, doesn't miss a detail.

A snake-enveloped microphone during the "Reputation" era, a smoking chimney on the bucolic cabin for "Folklore," a moss-covered grand piano for the foresty "Evermore," and faux snowflakes falling during the lyric "I still remember the first fall of snow" for "All Too Well (10 Minute Version)" from "Red (Taylor's Version)." Yep, a special effect for just one line. Details.

[billhammond]

Off to Trader Joes, w/ intermediate stop for an Egg McMuffin and java. Rain on the way, they say, sure hope they are right. I look out my window at Fields of Gold.

[Marty]

Jun 24, 2023 8:58:16 GMT -5 billhammond said:

Off to Trader Joes, w/ intermediate stop for an Egg McMuffin and java. Rain on the way, they say, sure hope they are right. I look out my window at Fields of Gold.

I hear rumbling in the distance, or maybe that's a jet. But the weather app has upped the chance of rain from 30% to 80% in the next half hour. Best get the cats inside.

[Dub]

Jun 24, 2023 8:14:16 GMT -5 paleo said:

Good morning.
After a fruitful day at the cabin yesterday, installing a new burner in the grill, and trimming trees, I was in no mood to cook dinner last evening.

I decided I was hungry for a taco salad and so I set out to Vinton to find one. I stopped at the restaurant formally known as LA Reyna, now called Las Lomitas. It looks to me like the only thing that has changed is the name. I did notice that the salsa, with the chips and salsa, seemed a little spicier. The place was pretty busy, so the town folk seem to like it.

La Renya had a line of goods sold locally in stores. We sometimes bought them at our New Pioneer Coop grocery. Do you know if those are gone too?

Or are they still being sold under the new name?

[paleo]

Jun 24, 2023 8:17:54 GMT -5 howard lee said:

Jun 24, 2023 8:14:16 GMT -5 paleo said:

Good morning.
After a fruitful day at the cabin yesterday, installing a new burner in the grill, and trimming trees, I was in no mood to cook dinner last evening.

I decided I was hungry for a taco salad and so I set out to Vinton to find one. I stopped at the restaurant formally known as LA Reyna, now called Las Lomitas. It looks to me like the only thing that has changed is the name. I did notice that the salsa, with the chips and salsa, seemed a little spicier. The place was pretty busy, so the town folk seem to like it.

Did ownership change hands?

I probably should defer to Todd to answer that.

As I understand it there was some kind of conflict between the owner of the old Pizza Hut building and the people who opened a Mexican restaurant there.

I believe the Pizza Hut Mexican restaurant people move in with, or pushed out the old LA Reyna people.

Now there are 2 Mexican restaurants and I saw a Mexican food truck in town earlier this week. There must be a lot of profit in Mexican food.

[david]

We had a surprising, but welcome, little rainstorm yesterday. It started right as I opened the door for the guy I had contacted from a Craigslist ad for a Zoom H4n Pro recorder.

I have an H2, but the screen is too small for my eyes. I recorded an almost error-free version of Al Pettaway's Spindrift, using my Martin 000-28 and the H4. The recording sounded great. I am very impressed with this unit.

[epaul]

Morning!

There has been a lot of scattered little thunderstorms over the last week to ten days, but today, a large general soaking type rain is moving into the region. There shall be wheat and barley this year.

(corn and beans, wait and see, they will need more rain later on in the summer)

((and they may will get it))

(((we'll eat)))

[epaul]

Ah..., it's raining right now. A nice steady rain with substance to it. And radar promises a nice stretch of it. Oh, did we need this.

[james]

Gavin McNamara review  of the Steve Earle gig I went to. 

REVIEW: STEVE EARLE, ST GEORGE’S – ‘THE VOICE OF A FALLEN ANGEL IN A ROOM FULL OF ECSTASY’

As the day cools and the last rays of sun roll down Park Street, there’s a sleepy, smiley laziness, a hand beckoning you over, the promise of fun as the night unfolds. There’s a gentle hum about the place, a buzz, a thrum that rises from the pavements. It’s impossible to resist.

A buzz and a thrum rises from Steve Earle too. He opens with the Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace with God and this seems, somehow, fitting. Like Shane MacGowan, Earle is a fallen angel, a survivor, a certifiable genius.

There’s always been something about a gig-filled, summer evening in Bristol.

His version lacks the Celtic fizz of the original, instead there’s a blues-y twang from a battered six-string, a world-weary resignation, the idea that falling from grace is an inevitability.

“I like to start with that one,” Earle says “because Shane MacGowan is one of the greatest songwriters on the planet”. 

(He also said "but nobody can understand it when he sings it"   - James)

Of course, one of the other great song writers is Steve Earle. The first twenty minutes of the show have the feeling of a philanthropist who has just found a roll of 50s in his suit pocket. Earle flings complete classics around with total abandon. Fistfuls of songs, that lesser writers can only gape at, are bashed out with ridiculous ease.

The Devil’s Right Hand is probably even more relevant now than it was back in the 1980s, when it appeared on the Copperhead Road.

There’s an added urgency now, the anti-gun anthem fuelled by a punk sensibility. He thrashes away at his guitar, barely pausing for breath as one song crashes into another. His voice, though, is just as good as it has ever been. It’s the sound of real life, of anger, of everyday frustrations, of desperate love.

For My Old Friend the Blues lights trace intricate patterns across the St George’s ceiling. It all seems a tiny bit incongruous, a bit flash, you feel Earle would be as happy singing these songs in some dusty old tavern somewhere, or simply out there, under the stars.

Forty years ago, Guitar Town celebrated the freedom of the open road and playing music, now it seems to be defiant, an affirmation that the best things are still the simple things.

It is everything that you need on a sunny evening. Everything you could wish to sing along to. I Ain’t Ever Satisfied does that too, there are woo-oohs, a harmonica and massed ranks of 50-somethings crooning into the dusk.

Everything about this solo show (part of the Bristol Beacon Presents programme) is precision tooled, custom made, to utter perfection. The ragged acoustic punk classics give way to four songs about girls, and they, in turn, give way to three desperate blues.

The desperate Blues numbers track the well documented difficulties that Earle has faced, and overcome. It’s as though he forces himself to look at the difficult stuff, to remind himself that he can do this.

South Nashville Blues and CCKMP are scorching admissions, postcards from the drugged depths. Neither preach, neither hector, neither wallow; they are honest, real, wonderful songs.

They are made all the more poignant when he sings Harlem River Blues, written by his son, Justin Townes Earle, who died of an accidental overdose almost three years ago. Even then he refuses to pontificate but, with a crack in his careworn voice, reminds us to “be careful”. As we sing the chorus and find our own Gospel-tinged spirituality, so Steve Earle smiles.

If there were any thoughts that he had exhausted the classics, he finishes the night with two of the greatest songs ever written. Both Galway Girl and Copperhead Road will be cherished long after most of us have gone.

They merge seamlessly into one another, stitched together with a mandolin, the voice of a fallen angel and a room full of ecstasy. They are the gleeful promise at the end of a beautiful summer’s day.


Wordle 735 4/6*

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[billhammond]

Sad news from Up North -- Fire early this morning destroyed Papa Charlie's, the sprawling bar/restaurant/music venue at the Lutsen Mountains Ski Resort north of Duluth. Insult to injury is that the resort's communication gear and all their servers were housed in that same building. No injuries reported, thankfully. Nearby lodging buildings were spared, thank goodness, as they were no doubt filled with cyclists participating in the Lutsen 99er mountain bike race this weekend.

Many big-name acts played there, as well as regional acts. (I even played there once long ago. Wonderful sounding room.)

Sadly, logs tend to burn once they get going. Six fire departments, all volunteers, responded.

[billhammond]

I almost never watch local newscasts because they are so laughable, but I happened to have WCCO, the CBS affiliate here, on after the Travelers golf tourney ended, and kept it on cuz there were some weather alerts afoot. The demi-literate Hair Anchor reported that a train with tanker cars had derailed into the Yellowstone River in Montana today. A photo much like this one was on during his entire spiel, which he ended with "Cause of the derailment is unknown at this time."

I'm guessing that the bridge collapsing might have been a strong factor, there, Hair Spray.

[jdd2]

The problem with local anchors is that they don't have the hair and makeup support crews that the major networks do.

[billhammond]

Jun 24, 2023 17:52:01 GMT -5 billhammond said:

I almost never watch local newscasts because they are so laughable, but I happened to have WCCO, the CBS affiliate here, on after the Travelers golf tourney ended, and kept it on cuz there were some weather alerts afoot. The demi-literate Hair Anchor reported that a train with tanker cars had derailed into the Yellowstone River in Montana today. A photo much like this one was on during his entire spiel, which he ended with "Cause of the derailment is unknown at this time."

I'm guessing that the bridge collapsing might have been a strong factor, there, Hair Spray.

Dub, do you perchance hold stock in Aqua Net?