Ups and downs this week, more than usual. Work was feast or famine, either waiting for things to happen, or being stuck on the phone for 5 straight hours during a Reply-All-Pocalypse. Emotions were a bit of a roller coaster: at different times, I was both my best and my worst self. I got the chance to deliver some good news to important people, but it also seems that something new breaks every damned day. I’ve seen some of the best, and some of the worst, of the rest of humanity (though honestly, it’s been mostly the worst…) Just a ton of swings of the pendulum, and it’s been, frankly, not entirely cool.

That said, it wasn’t all bad. I’m feeling relatively good about how the show this weekend is going to go, especially after a couple of successful open mic nights over the last week or so where I got to play a few sets in front of actual people, and they generally dug what I was layin’ down, in the slightly out-of-fashion parlance.

I’ve also gotten (as I type this) about sixty solid miles behind the tires of my bicycle over the last four or five days, and those rides have done a lot to help me shake at least some of the baggage as described in the first paragraph, and I’m hoping to get a bit more of that on the agenda this afternoon and tomorrow.

That’s really about that. Happens to the best of us. Best we can do is, as I say above, strap in and hang on.

Tunes this week are definitely a throwback…with a couple of exceptions, the whole thing could have come out of the ancient radio tuned to the local classic rock station stuck in the corner of the food trucks I spent my college summers working out of. That’s what I get for listening to a few “Best of Rock, 198x” playlists over the last week or two. Could be much worse; except for #3, which is the worst, a not-entirely-terrible song that, unfortunately, has become the bane of the existence of every working musician, even if their last name happens to be Van Zant. Oh well:

1. “Dirty Laundry” – Don Henley
2. “Crest Of A Wave” – Rory Gallagher
3. “Free Bird” – Lynyrd Skynyrd
4. “Stone Cold” – Rainbow
5. “Still of the Night” – Whitesnake
6. “Hair of the Dog” – Nazareth
7. “Thing of Beauty” – Hothouse Flowers
8. “Cleveland Rocks” – ThePresidentsOfTheUnitedStatesOfAmerica
9. “In A Gadda Da Vida” – Slayer
10. “Cover Me” – Bruce Springsteen
11. “Alone With You” – Sunnyboys
12. “True Faith” – New Order
13. “Kids Wanna Rock” – Bryan Adams