Skyrocket in flight!  Afternoon Delight!

I wrote about this band once before.  They don’t really need the press but I want to re-iterate just what a great cover band they are.  The better the camera I have when I shoot, the better they look.  Could it be the same way with their sound.  I spent a lot of time speaking to a special fan of the band.  This conversation led me to believe even more in this pre-apocalyptic good time band that makes you forget that Jesus and his ilk are coming soon to smite us and leave us with the unfaithful to party until the lights go out.

I paid my $10.00 cover, having completely pissed the owner of the bar off previously by vociferously demeaning the possible sexual orientation of a band that played the week before,  (A band which by the way had many a great looking cougar standing in rapt orgasm.  Hello Ecstasy!!!!)  I slipped and fell on the oozie floor!  I paid my tab and enjoyed the results.  But enough about me and the beautiful older succubi.

“This is a song for my mother and the boy she raised”.   Not quite actually.  This is a siren about the band SKYROCKET.  These people love what they do.  I can not say it enough.  The attention to detail staggers the imagination.   I have played cover songs in my own band for 27 years.  I always try to make them my own.  This is a lazy stoner’s way of saying I can’t do it like they do it on the album.  These songs from Skyrocket sound like they came straight from am radio back when Star Trek was a new fanagled show, and my man Lester Bangs was railing against this feel good music in the pages of Rolling Stone and Cream magazines.  This was the soundtrack of my childhood.  Back when the public parks had slides that were twenty feet tall and and my parents thought it was ok to bring a Styrofoam cooler full of booze to a church school activity.  Back in the day when John Denver had a variety show and Saturday morning cartoons were educational.

So I wish to say that this band should be seen, if for no other reason than they will make you think.  That is so long as you were old enough to vote in 1990.  If you are younger than that, go check them out because this is the music your parents were listening to when they conceived you.  Dig?

Arnold Wells

Go Fight Win!  Dig yourself, because if you don’t no one will.

See some music, and enhance your mind.  Support the artists of this “The Live Music Capitol of the World”.

Yep… Ass burn.  There was a vendor giving out samples of some ridiculously hot sauce with that ever so appealing moniker.  People were standing in line waiting for the spicy torture that can let loose an amazing rush of endorphins.  The only problem is that if it goes in hot…  you get the point.

The 19th annual Austin Hot Sauce Festival is a regular part of the Wells family Austin calendar.  It is always during the hottest part of the summer.  This year it was nice at 99 degrees in the shade.  We were there to eat drink and listen to some music.  We came to the right place.

Two beers down and I leave my wife and daughter in some shade and head for the front of the stage.  Three other bands had already played and Paula Nelson was on the band stand crooning into the microphone.  I dont know whether it was the heat or what but she seemed reserved.  Her smile was omnipresent and her voice was crystal clear, but it seemed to me that she was holding something back.  Having seen her before tearing up the stage at Bat Fest in 2008 (another Wells family calendar item), I guess it was the heat.  I took a few photos and went back to get more beers and ice for my daughters neck bandanna.  We stood around a while next to an Austin head-shop vendor trying to convince my 4  year old that those pretty glass pipes were not toys or Christmas ornaments.  They did have some bubbles though.  We headed for the cooling station after that for some water and a turn standing in front of an evaporative cooler.

The last band of the afternoon was called T-Bird and the Breaks.  I wrote about them in this blog in January I think.  They had opened up for The Diamond Smugglers.  Anyway these guys have been on the road all summer playing what used to be the chitlin circuit.  Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and of course Austin.  They do this new old-school funk with a simple driving base line, super rhythmic guitar, three horns and some hot chicks singing back up.  The drummer was like a metronome.  Song after song the made the crowd, us included, bounce in the sunny heat oblivious to the dangers of dehydration and stroke.  Damn they jammed.  This is a band I would pay good money to see with or without my camera in tow.  Go and see them when ever you can.

Hot, still sweating, and wishing for Ice cream, go out and see some music.  Where ever you are in Texas.