Still Beatin

Back in the 80's Huey Lewis had a song called "Heart of Rock N Roll". It was a song in which he was happy and relieved to find that Rock and Roll was alive in well in various cities across the U.S.

Last night I went to the Derby for a Rockabilly show. Like Huey, I was happy and relieved.

A roomful of the right people and the right frame of mind.



It was a three band night, all of them really good. The headliner was the Dave and Deke combo, a fairly well known country swing/light rockabilly band of ten or fifteen years ago. Fantastic! Perhaps one of the tightest acts I've ever seen. It gave a chance for the cats and the kitties to come out and dance - and boy did they ever. Think Swingers and you have the picture. Well, that is exactly the picture, isn't it?

It was a good evening to shake some of the cobwebs loose and put me in the right head for a scene I'm rewriting in "Diamond Road" (Which is a Rockabilly action adventure after all.)

Insert CD, Rip. Next.
Though I have hundreds of Mp3's, I'm finally ripping my CD collection. Windows Media Player finally got the process of music archiving, ripping, etc. right. Like many of Microsofts products - they gotta rip someone else off. Once they do, it takes a couple iterations to get it right. However, once it's right, it's better than pretty much anyone else.

Generally, I leave my computers spartan. It has been a requirement of high end video editing -- can't have any other crap slowing things down. Now, since I'm not immediately editing with my new lappie, I'm allowing myself some of the fun doodads that makes computers go round.

Insert Disc, Rip... oops, classical - beef the data rate to 320.

Pretty cool. There's quite a bit of music I haven't listened to in a long time, so it'll be a chance to broaden my listening base.

In a few moments I'm heading out to sail the high seas to Catalina island. Twenty six miles across the sea. About six hours.

Finally, here is something that I used to see more of on the East Coast, though not to this size. A sign of trouble for farmers and bible carriers when they swarm, the sounds they make remind me of the dogs days of summer.


Locust Chiming in.


Enjoy your summer day, doing whatever.