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Polar bear with carrot

Monday, October 6, 2008

It was a beautiful day...







The heptagenarian and his comely consort have been clubbing. Leslie and I went to see ace fiddler David La Flamme and It's a Beautiful Day the night before last at a beautiful old church in Normal Heights. Part of Carey Driscoll's Acoustic Music, San Diego series, which is always excellent.

An excellent band from the sixties, with a sound that had wonderful moorish and gypsy overtones, heavy on the harmonic minor scales. It was my fourth time to see him - once in 1970 with Dan Hicks, Once at the Tribal Stomp in Berkeley where he stole the show amongst heavyweights like Butterfield and Van Morrison and at Papa John Creach's funeral with the Jefferson Airplane.

The band we saw averaged about 40 years of playing together. Very tight. Very happy. Great vibes between the husband and wife musicians. She has kind of a Grace Slick bay area female singer voice.

It is nice to see very good psychedelic bands touring. This one was a bit dated at times, but when you let yourself groove with them, still very rewarding and worth seeing.

Last night we ventured over to the Belly Up and saw Nick Lowe.  You talk about a great singer in total command... His voice, playing, banter, a consummate professional.  He is a thinking person's singer with  a wry perspective about women, loss and heartache.  An almost 50's smooth Bobby Darin or Colin Blumstone voice of honey.

We are pooped tonight and will hang out at the homestead.

It has been an interesting week with the blog. I put a hit tracker that showed where my readership was and the global nature kind of took me by surprise. I took it off when I realized that maybe my readers could be tracked and will look for a better tool. ( Note: I just reinstalled it. If you don't wish to be picked up, set the Feedjit Widget "option" to ignore browser.  However they say that they don't give out addresses and that there really isn't any privacy issue.)

What the fuck is a blog, anyway? I have been writing for 6 or 7 months now and I don't have a clue.  I went through some other blogger blogs out of boredom and found a lot of vanilla. As in Ice cream socials and knitting. I think I might be at the edge with this thing. Also found a blogsite graphically promoting the wares of some Oaxacan hookers which was a little frightening. Some blogs are commercial, they sell things, some are diaries. When I write personally about my own experiences I tend to get the most response. Dylan and sex are always good, too.

However if I was to go commercial and put ads up and go legit and all that, do you think I would need to dial down the more personal stuff? No one gives a shit about what I had for breakfast. I have pissed a few friends off with the relentless nature of this thing and they have thrown up the whiteflag. Then I get relative strangers who read me religiously. The reality is that this gives me a reason to write every day and that is important to me - a chance to be creative. The other reality is that some people haven't figured out how to bookmark the blog or save it to favorites and depend on me to send it to them.

Are there blog schools or rules out there?  Do I care?

Anyhow, I am trying to back off on sending it out. Peak readership is a couple hundred hits a day. Thats fine with me. Hopefully more of you will contribute. Email me at blheron atpacbell.net if you wish to become a casual contributor.

Thanks for reading.

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