Dunham's Contest

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The Button (The Box spoof)

Tesla (and Great White) in Bay City, MI on Friday, June 25, 2010

Anyone there last night? Great White was okay and I was glad I got to see them, but Tesla was incredible. Even better than when I saw them in the early 90's.

I know I don't have the show memorized, but here are the tracks I remember them playing:

Forever More
Hang Tough
Modern Day Cowboy
Little Suzi
Mama's Fool
Breakin' Free
Heaven's Trail (No Way Out)
The Way It Is
Call It What You Want
Love Song
Song & Emotion
What You Give
Into The Now
Cumin' Atcha Live
Signs

Did they play I Wanna Live and/or Look @ Me ?

Only tunes I would have liked to hear would have been Edison's Medicine and Gettin' Better, but the setlist is certainly NOT something to complain about.

The boys were tight and in fine form. Highly recommended and highly enjoyable!

Xbox 360 repair

About a month ago, my son got a strange error on his Xbox 360 - he would put a game in the machine, it would spin, say "Reading", then "Open Tray" and eject the disc. After spending a bunch of time on the internet and YouTube, finding out that my warranty expired 2 months ago (ARGH!), that you can't easily replace just the DVD drive, and that there are at least three different DVD drives Microsoft has used in them, we bravely cracked open the Xbox this week. It was a pain to take apart, but the most likely YouTube video explained that there was probably grease built up in the spinner. We cleaned it, followed the instructions to back off on the screws, and VOILA - a working Xbox!

Figured we saved at least $100 on a repair bill and $200 on buying a new one.

Gotta love YouTube and the internet.

My next project is to tackle my long-dead PS2 that has the CD tray sticking out of it...

Airbag!

Check out this band from Norway - Airbag at:

http://www.airbagsound.com.

They have several tracks, including a full EP, available for free download.

They sound like a combination of Pink Floyd, RPWL (http://www.rpwl.de), and the lighter side of Porcupine Tree (http://www.porcupinetree.com).

New Laptop

Got a new laptop this week and trying something new called Windows Live Writer to (finally) update this blog.

Laptop sorta works okay (so far), but definitely wish I would have got a 500GB drive instead of the 320GB this came with.   That way I could have all my music files on the laptop instead of the external hard drive I use.  Maybe I can upgrade?  Maybe I can get a different laptop without having to pay the stupid restocking fee?  Maybe I should just not worry about it…

Later.

New Music

Okay, picked up the new AC/DC CD (Black Ice) at WalMart, but only because that was the only place you could buy it. I'm not sure how I really feel about these WalMart exclusives, but it does seem to work out for the bands. In the last couple of years, I've purchased the Eagles, Loverboy, Journey and now AC/DC there. But I digress...

I listened to most of the disc yesterday while getting the oil changed, and it sounds like...AC/DC. I was hoping for more of the Back In Black days, but that will probably never come again. It's been said before that AC/DC has been playing the same song for the past 30+ years, and it sounds like it again. It rocks, but it's pretty generic rock. WalMart did have a bunch of their back catalog on sale for $7, so I also picked up High Voltage. Bought the new Rick Springfield too (stop it!), and it's decent enough pop/rock. The first song sounds a lot like "Jessie's Girl", but I suppose that's a good thing.

I'm not going to date myself, but I've been using MySpace a bit this weekend. Mainly because my son and older daughter have gotten in to it, and it's a way to have fun with them.

Also bought the entire Rock Band 2 setup for my family this weekend, it is a BLAST! I purchased Guitar Hero III for my son a few weeks ago and picked up the first Rock Band for a song (pun intended) from eBay earlier this week. While Guitar Hero III is fun, RB2 is better yet. I like having everything wireless. I see GH-WT comes out this week too. I'm wondering if the video game music business is like radio of 25 years ago...the "new" way to find out about music. It seems to have spurred music interest in my kids.