I tagged along with Ashley and her friends from Grad School as they celebrated Christine’s 26th birthday at Austin Karaoke. The place was cool in that each group got their own private room/booth and it was BYOB. While I was hesitant at first, I soon participated in nearly every song. I was told I “acted a fool”. I apologize for any embarrassment this may have caused for my loved ones. Highlights involved songs by Queen, Prince, and Madonna — these are always karaoke classics, so no surprises there. The low point was when it turned out that no one else was familiar with Patience by Guns ‘N Roses and I had to sing it by myself.
When hanging out in Berkeley, I walked past some club and noticed that The Coup was playing. I totally dropped everything and went. The show was in a basement club called Shattuck Down Under and reminded me of the Elephant Room here in Austin. It was a fantastic performance, especially since The Coup are from that area. Here are some highlights:
40 Acres Fest was last Sunday. This year the Octopus Project opened for the Roots in front of the famous UT Tower. In case you didn’t know, the Octopus Project is an Austin band that plays some sort of electro-pop-rock. I’ve seen them several times already and they are always fun. They are perhaps best known for dancing around with their instruments and rocking the theremin more than most.
I remember back in school when a guy was building his own theremin in the Electrical Engineering Lab. The schematic was pretty simple and I always wanted to build one myself, but that one has since been filed in my large folder labeled “Projects Larry plans to work on, but never will”. Join the club.
The Roots took the stage afterwards and really tore it up. Check out this guitar solo from their epic cover of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War.
