Too Damn Hot!

From Columbus, GA USA

Sign from a church seen by NASCAR legend Darrell Waltrip: "I want my weather back! Signed, Satan!" How do singers get on hotter-than-oven stages and have a good time. How do NASCAR drivers crawl into cars that are 120 degrees and spend the afternoon? Hot time, summer in the city. Unless you are in some Pacific breeze-touched city like SF (and to Hell with you) ...the rest of us are hot.

Too hot for anything from Iowa to Regina and from Oklahoma City to Valdosta, The Summer of Sweat!

On the road to see a retro show and it was a great evening: The Happy Together Tour 2011. The Turtles, The Buckinghams, The Association, Mark Lindsay and The Grassroots. The music lives on forever. The "young" backup band sounded like the studio quality pickers of the '60s, not the garage band touring guys. It was first-class nostalgia.

Next up is something called The HippieFest, touring nationally with Dave Mason, Gary Wright, The Rascals, Mark Farner and more ... same format. A master band and change-out the leads every 20 minutes or so ... works fast and works well. Country shows have tried it from time to time in the past, but not so much in the present.

The two hot acts of the summer remain -- Blake and Jason at the stores and on the radio. At the ticket window with U2-like money -- Kenny Chesney and Taylor Swift. Some folks are making money in the Summer of Sweat. The big-buck section is good, too ... just not dramatic like a $4.6 million gross for a Chesney show in Pittsburgh ... His draw is nothing less than amazing. Just wrapped big shows in Calgary and Edmonton.

Footnote to the foolish ( I being one): Don't be stupid and download new software on the first day of release! Dumb! I did it with Apple new Lion OS. Big mistake! My USB Verizon Kaput! Gmail didn't work, though that repaired itself. Who knows what I haven't found! Big mistake. Be careful...

Summer gets slow in the news world ... in-between season ... artists out on the road, making money ... Vince Gill about to celebrate 20 years on the Opry on August 13th ... He's the best!

Chesney is so lucky; he even gets the tour spots where cool weather lives at just the right time: Vancouver ... he may be immune to heat anyway, but his fans aren't. The other artists are sweating from Iowa to St Augustine.

How about Dwight Yoakam on a big comeback with an Austin City Limits taping recently and taking a role as bad guy in the new Lone Ranger film (Dec., 2012).

A Nashville-based columnist pronounced this week that the current crop of Country artists have non-stellar sidemen. I have been thinking about that all week. I agree with him overall. Vince Gill is one huge exception with John Hobbs on keyboards, but not a lot of that level picker on the road with the boys and girls ... I just remember being able to name most all of the Allman Brothers Band ... and the Who and Cream ... and even Elvis's band and singers. They were stars, too. Name anyone out with a pop or country band ... a few standouts with Brad P for sure ... think about it ... interesting criticism and probably not very popular one ... Closest I get is the Paisley band. Marty Stuart's guys are outstanding. We need more John Hobbs like player on the road...That is the point...

Heat index here today 105....much hotter everywhere else ... very humid