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Timothy S. McTaggart's Archived Blogs Oct-Dec 03

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So we've made it thus far through December. Am doing a blog from the parents' computer to wish all reading, a merry Christmas. MGB's next gig is New Year's Eve, and I'm sitting that one out, to jamm with DCB, which I haven't done in several years. I've been stuck in Knickerbocker with the Old Hat Band for New Year's Eve the last several years and since that one is not a factor at present, I'm gonna hang with DCB for the night. I've had good years in the past, ringing them in with those guys. MGB has a capable bass player to sit in for their gig, and I hope they rock the house, too. MGB has had cogitations about changing the name of the band. MGB originally was for Med Group Band. Although the majority of us are with the med group, several folks aren't. I'd like to come up with something where we could keep the initials. So far the only thing anybody remembers being suggested was 'May Go Blind'. No comment. Well, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody!!

We are within a day of getting to the last month of this odd year. So I think of the old Merle Haggard song "If We Make it Through December", despite my recent regurgitation (or should I say renouncement) of most songs Country and Western. It was with some regret (but also an enthusiastically hit Delete key) that I took Old Hat Band off of my local bands web page, for bands that I play in. Old Hat Band has also seemed to have changed its name to "Old Dogs - New Licks". I did a web search and found a posting about their gig last night at some place out in big city of Alpine. The posting listed "Classic Rock" first in the types of music played, which is a decided surprise to me. Had this been the case during my tenure with them, I think I would have been more inclined to stay with these folks. But enough about that. MGB rocked another enthusiastic but sparse crowd last night (college hangout over Thanksgiving weekend), and we broke out two more songs in our repertoire. Got asked to do both of them again too. Seems we have some other clubs around here interested in us, especially for New Year's Eve, except we have key personnel that won't be able to make the gig. No telling how that 's going to go. MGB's second name should be ADD. At least that should be a possible title for a forthcoming CD. Crazy bunch of folks to work with, at least. We're a few seasoned musicians together with young undisciplined talent. Sometimes it can be amazing that we all actually can practice (or play) the same song together. But when it happens, look out!! Later.

Okay, at least it's still November as I add another entry to my blogs page. But it is nearly the end of the month with the Thanksgiving holidays being this week. Folks are already putting up Christmas decorations too (not just stores, as have been known to do since August). Christmas is not one of my more enjoyable holidays, and my reason for that is (call it cliche if you want) it has been grossly hyped and commercialized. It's enough to make you lose your religion. I could rant for several blogs, but I'll quit at this point for now. Okay, on to funner things. MGB, our band has been gigging at several watering holes just about every Saturday night for a couple of months. We rocked the house again at O'Brians's last night. Unfortunately, Ed our horn player was laid up and unable to make it, so he missed out on a good one. The folks missed him too, so on the mike I wished him to get well. Our keyboardist did a good job emulating some horn parts, though. Also missing was one of our louder guitar players, so the mix was a heck of a lot more balanced. With a few less folks playing, the songs get noticeably tighter. It was one of our better gigs, and boy, I think we were due for one. Although a few people actually danced, most of the crowd seemed to be there just to listen to us. Good crowd response for most of our songs. We're booked to play at Bailey's Sports Bar this next Saturday. A local country (?!) station has been running ads for this gig, touting us as some great country band. I hope we get that straightened out with said radio station, lest the people showing up suffer a rude surprise (or maybe we can convert them from C&W....?!?!?!?). I'd been put in touch with the person who produced the ad, since they needed a recording of us to use in the ad. I therefore provided a CD from my recording of a recent gig. If this person was unable to ascertain from the contents of the CD that we are not a country band, that could say much about the IQ levels employed at our local radio stations (not to mention the rest of that industry). So, hopefully that gets sorted out before the gig!! On another front here, some outfit hijacked the web browser on my computer. So when I opened the browser, it was going to some odd page in 'luckysearch.com'. I located a program on the web called Cwshredder, which backed out the registry entries (hopefully all of them) the hijacker managed to contaminate my computer with. So far, no reoccurrence of this, although it's been stated to happen. (If you've run into the same thing on your computer, please E-mail me, and I'll tell you what I know.) I think this is even worse than spam, so I'm tempted to seek legal avenues against folks participating in this activity. I sure as hell will not patronize any products or services I find these folks to be touting. Well, I think I need to wrap this blog up. Gotta get up at ouch O'clock in the morning, since this is my early week to come in and check the new computer, to make sure everything is working okay before the docs get in. Also have to report the 'all is well' on the 0630 conference call. Most of the time, I can split early for the day, lest we have some crisis going. Mondays are still a bit rough. Will be good to have Thanksgiving and the Friday afterwards off. There are plenty of things to be thankful for. More later.

I know it's cliche to make observations about the year going by, but dang, it's November already! The weather is cold and drizzly this evening as I cogitate what to put into another one of these thrilling blogs (boy, if that comment doesn't make you feel like reading these things, I'm not sure what would -sorry). Since I blew off church again on this Wednesday evening, I actually have a few moments to collect my thoughts and crank out another one of these things. Two people at my office were deployed to Afghanistan earlier this week. I actually found myself being envious for a few minutes. Hope that if they make it to Kabul, they could check, see if our old house is still there (I've only seen it on a satellite photo, and have no idea what shape it is in). The AISK page has a recent picture of a fellow AISKer's house, which is still standing from days gone by. This person is also a fellow musician, with whom I've done things musical more recently. She tells me I'd have no trouble getting bass player gigs in Galveston, either. I'm probably about ready to find a beach anyway, given the crazy stuff over the last several months at our office. As for playing bass, I'm gigging with MGB almost every Saturday at a few local watering holes. We're trying another place this coming Saturday, this time with somebody appointed to run sound. It's gonna be interesting as this person may have run a mixer a couple of times before, and not necessarily for a band. He about scared the hell out of me last night during practice, when I let him work my small Peavey board with just vocals going into it. I'm hoping he was just playing with the settings, trying to get a feel, but it wasn't what I'd want to hear coming out of the mains during a gig. My past experience with letting odd folks run sound in other bands has been that I end up taking that duty over again, mostly by popular request. But I'll give this person the benefit of a doubt, as well as a little more instruction. Okay, what other bloggish tangents can I go off on at this point? Well it's almost time for the local news to come on -probably one of the few things I still watch on the television. So I'll wrap this entry up and ask loyal readers to please stay tuned for more. All the best meanwhile....!!

MGB, my 'new' band has been gigging in local watering holes over the last three weekends. The 'new' part for this 'office band' is our venture into subject watering holes, after playing for many an office party over the last three years. We did two Saturday nights in a row at O'Brian's Sports Bar and then did this last Saturday night at the Lone Wolf Pub. We return to O'Brian's on 1 Nov and then go to Little River Club the following weekend. We're playing a bunch of the 60's through 80's 'party rock' as well as some funk and a few ballads. We also throw in some more recent songs, some jazz and esoteric junk as well. No C&W nor any Britany (explicative deleted) Spears are in our set list. Man it's good to be playing the rock and roll again (although my bass playing fingers have had to reacquaint -ouch). The crowd seems to love us too. Got this coming Sat......

(Well dang it, looks like some blown FTP session managed to hose the rest of this page and until I can locate a backup, you're not seeing the rest of this 19 Oct entry or anything before it in this quarter's archives. Used to be I could go to Google, and find where it cached my stuff, but they seem to have quit doing that. RATS!!! -TSMT 7 Jan 04)

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