It’s gonna be a hot one today. I have to admit I’m entirely over the summer. It’s been too humid this year. It’s been great for the plants, but it was starting to remind me of Sydney in the summer. Horrible. If this was climate change it would carry on into winter, but it won’t. By January things will be frozen over and that will suck too. People screaming about extreme weather probably need to be sent to re-education camps at this stage, they’re so gone in the noggin. I’ll drive the bus.
In the UK Andy Pandy has decided that nobody should be sleeping rough. “Andy Burnham made ending rough sleeping his first pledge when entering Downing Street in July and now says he wants “to get everyone in for Christmas”.
Isn’t that nice. What’s going to happen after Christmas? “According to official data, there were an estimated 4,793 people sleeping rough on a single night in England in the autumn of 2025, a 96% increase in five years.” The question has to be asked, why are people without housing in 2026? Surely humanity should be at the point now when this phenomenon is a thing of the past?
I just don’t get it. All over the developed world everything is turning to shit when things should be getting better. Isn’t that what progress is all about?
On the Rock and Roll music front, Frank Beard the drummer for Texas boogie band ZZ Top has died. The band’s bass player Dusty Hill died in 2021. This leaves Billy Gibbons the sole surviving original member. I’m not a great ZZ Top fan but I will say that their song “Legs” was one of the first songs the Slaughtermen played in public which as I recall, was a New Year’s eve party in 1985? The song didn’t last long in the set list. It just wan’t me.
Speaking of set list the band might get together this week, I don’t know. When your entire public music performance schedule occurs on Youtube there’s no urgency or hard work involved in getting out and playing. I have probably hundreds of hours of live performances stashed away on hard drives that haven’t seen the light of day yet.
I can’t keep up with it all. There may be no audience here, but it’s not like I’m slacking off or anything. I could, in fact, live stream it but it’s technically a pain. I’m already doing too much just to get this down for the record. All I wanna do is play, but I’ll be damned if it just disappears into nothing.
I was reading today that there is an army of Gen Z folks who never left the house after the so-called pandemic. Social contact is just too much for them so they interact with each other online. While I don’t shun social contact, as far as playing music in front of an audience goes. I’m more comfortable not doing it at the moment.
There’s nowhere around here that I know of where you can play original music and I’m not playing covers. That’s all people want to hear anyway. This would be fine if I was 25 years old because I’d probably find places that the band could perform if I really wanted to. We’ve all been there. It’s different now for a number of reasons. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but someone else might have to organize it.
I had delusions of taking my band to Australia but nobody was interested and I asked several people. While it’s a little bit discouraging I can totally understand, and in fact the idea of sitting on a plane for a day and a half to play in some half full inner city venue doesn’t appeal to me at all. If nobody wants to hear my music, then I don’t wanna go there.
Good Day.
Sydney 2014 or 15? Half the audience left after I said something negative about Obama. This was entire table of people who I was having a discussion with between sets.