I saw Gordon Lightfoot for the first time last night in Austin. It was a pretty amazing night on many counts. First, it was at an outdoor venue and the forecast was thundershowers all through the day and night. Also, it was a "rain or shine" concert. We resigned ourselves to get soaked, and brought our raincoats, tarps, wellies, etc. (no umbrellas allowed in this lawn-seating venue). We follwed the directions on the website for the venue and got lost. We arrived EXACTLY as he started playing! The weather was perfect...I mean perfect all evening. Gordon played pretty much non-stop (he doesn't do a lot of between-song talking does he?) except for his intermission break and 2 encores. There were probably about 500 people there, and he got several standing ovations (after WOTEF and IYCRMM), and of course, at the end. I had a great time, and am so glad I got to see him. I will always be disappointed I never got to see Stan Rogers before he died.

Perhaps the most inspiring thing about GL's performance is that he is working so incredibly hard to make sure he hits the notes. I'm a singer, and I respect anyone who has enough respect for the music to fight for the pitch. His has always been such an amazing vocal talent. A lesser man would not have been able to bring it like he did. It is a testament to how unusually talented he is. For whatever reason (cigarettes and hard-livin' most likely), his voice is very hollowed out...very thin. And in some ways it was kind of sad to hear certain songs when you're used to the young GL. But the crowd didn't seem to care, and I really didn't care all that much either. I knew about his voice going in, and I really just wanted to be in the man's presence. That I finally got to do under an absolutely gorgeous Austin sky.

Ken

I am so sad that I wasn't able to go to Austin. I am very jealous that you were able to see him.
You know, frankly, his voice is not why I go see him (I can listen to his cd's all day long) - it is being in the presence of such talent that means the most.
Did you meet any other Lightheads? I have made so many great friends due to our admiration for our great singer/songwriter. I know of three couples that are married thanks to belonging to the "mutual admiration society" of Lightfoot.
You are now hooked - make plans for May 2008 in Toronto.

[ June 23, 2007, 11:14: Message edited by: brink- ]

Nicely expressed, and congratulations on concert #1.

Wow :) Juat a few lines about the Austin concert as we are packing so we can get to Ft. Worth in time to relax a little before tonights show. When I saw him four months ago when he was already looking good. Now he looks great and at least 10 years younger. His voice is strong maybe thin once in a while but definately the concert took me back to years ago. :D The crowd truly loved and appreciated him. Did not meet anyone from this group. Is there someone out there going to Ft.Worth who wants to say hello to Rose, Ken, Norinne, and Kathy??? :D

Will try to send set list later.

sounds like he's rarin' to go! I know the weather has been crazy down there so it's great that there was a break like that just before the show!
Being in his prescence is a gift we should take advantage of while we can..July 8 can't come fast enough for me!
I hope all the shows on this leg of the tour are as terrific as this one was last night.
thanks for the report!

Nicely expressed, and congratulations on concert #1. [/QUOTE]It was the first time I had seen him since Denver, 1982(?)
There were a bunch of us there:me, my wife, and son, Steve and his wife from Plano, TX--Donnie from Arlington, Anne from OKC, Melissa and Denny (Sp?--sorry-I'm lousy at spelling names)--and a bunch of their friends and neighbors.
It rained as we ate dinner 100 yards from the venue, 1/2 hour before the gate opened, but the day turned off nice and the whole thing was great. It was pretty warm and very humid--and believe it or not, caused a bad case of dry mouth even among those of us in the audience. I can't imagine what it was like for him and the band!

It was a really great night. Gordon is doing 8 concerts in 9 days, so they have their work cut out for them. Roger missed Ed Mullens and wife Charmin who attended. Also, Janice drove all the way from San Diego. We had an all day picking session at Melissa's on Saturday. Derek had to miss due to family obligations. Ed recorded it all so expect to get a CD eventually of the latest "Austin Sessions" by the Lightheads.

Didn't forget--Ed and wife couldn't go to concert because of her recent surgery.I was just listing those at the concert. Heck of a good time! Oops--did forget Janice... Please don't blame me. I sorry!
Da%n--this getting old is for the boids...

"Da%n--this getting old is for the boids..."

Your sure right about that Roger, but ya gotta admit, it beats the hell out of the alternative.

pictures from austin:
http://members.unitewireless.com/~rogerguinn

Great pictures--thanks! But could someone convince our boy to eat a couple of double cheeseburgers with super-sized fries? Failing that, I've got an extra 15 pounds or so just sitting around not doing anything (except keeping me from touching my toes).
DQ

he's a lean mean legendary performing machine!
lol
great pics!

Thank you all for the great reviews and thank you , Roger, for the marvellous photos . DSR, you´re right - he looks so good!!! Absolutely stunning. In my mind I´m always there with you. Vera

the first one is a gorgeous picture young Roger-me-lad but WAY too big to display here because

• you have uploaded to your own webspace the original dfiull sized megapixel file straight out of your Sony DSCP93A camera which measures according to its properties 2048 by 1536 pixels, whereas we have found out to our chagrin that the maximum safe width to show here is only about 640 pixels . larger than that and everybody would be forced to scroll to read all the text and anybody daft enough to be still using an outdated limited resolution monitor (or indeed ungeek enough to have their screen resolution still set so low that any picture greater than about 640 pixels wide does not properly display will be gnashing teeth at you right Ron??)
• your uploaded picture is over 1.3 MB which will and did take several ages to download for us poor under priveleged dial-uppers

the solution dear boy is exceedingly simple , instead of using your own valuable (paid for) web space simply hi on over to http://www.imageshack.us/
who will happily host your picture for all time for free and moreover will even give you the option of reducing its size to the desired 640 pixels as it uploads
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/9...kresizeld4.jpg
and then to cap it all gives you several codes including the necessary UBB code used here.
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1...ckcodesqd9.jpg
Note that the [img] etc code presented will actually create a picture link to their site for that reason I prefer to use the final "direct link to image" address and then add my own opening [img] and closing [/img] UBB tags but if you simply copy that address/link to your clipboard you can then use the "instant UBB code"... image system that is provided under the blank reply text box it is easy peasy as I have tried to demonstrate before in my quick and dirty mini-tutorials here
I have taken the liberty of doing just that but suggest that for practice you now take at least one of the otherr 6 pix you uploaded and try the same process yourself, (that way you will earn a certificate as a graduate of Uncle John's picture displaying academy to join such worthies as CHar and Peterbro9
anyway here is the sample picture
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4659/austinew6.jpg
I loved the drapes against a daylight background instead of the usual (internal) stage's blackness
John Fowles Bt

Thank you John. That's why you get paid the big bucks. I wanted to get the thing up first(Call me "Scoop")and couldn't figger out how to reduce the size.
I'll try that tonight

You amaze me Roger.A man of your accomplishments and a digital camera to boot should have had no problem sussing out how to reduce the size of your megapixel originals. indeed as sure as egss are eggs your camera came with free software ( possibly on CDs that you just might have chucked out with the packaging oh dear oh dear oh dear!!, but there are hundreds if not thousasnds of ways of resizing using freeware programs, indeed I have previously mentioned a nifty bit of freeware
Photo Gadget
Free and easy tool for resizing images
Photo Gadget Pro is a shell extension that adds image editing options to Windows Explorer. Simply select images to work with, then right-click the selection ...
that adds a most convenient option to the right click menu
http://www.xemico.com/photogadget/shot01.gif
selecting that produces a simple popup
http://www.xemico.com/photogadget/shot02.gif
where as you can see the first option is the desirable 640 by 480 resizing
Another useful bit of freeware I very successfully used recently is
Batch Thumbs
because after our return from down under I found that I had well over 500 3.2 megapixel sized jpegs
including our group shot taken in Melbourne that Mende Joveski I know is anxious to see
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/OZ_NZ_2...il_28_2007.jpg
from the left Mende Joveski,(catman)Ron, Moi,Newsgrouper Peter Treloar,my wife Susan,Ron's wife Roz.
I blanched at the thought of using photogadget or come to that any other editing program on each picture individually
but then I had a bright idea. cue drumroll!!
Batch Thumbs is basically intended for firstly making small thumbnails of a batch of pictures then optionally creating the full HTML code for a most suitable gallery page presenting the thumbs in a table each one clickable to open the full sized pic,a good example being the gallery I created for our foray up the Scottsdale Road in search of the megalopolis of Carefree during our 2002 visit to Borderstoneville AZ
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/carefree/
My bright idea was to think outside the bun and realise that the program allowed you to select any size of "thumbnail" and it would then automatically make such "thumb" from each full sized jpeg in a folder. Thus by specifying a large "thumb" of 640 width and selecting the "force width" option every picture in a folder could be rapidly resized.Eureka already!!
I used the "force width" option which particularly applied to those pictures taken in the vertical "Portrait" mode as opposed to "Landscape" mode
Prior to the thumbnail operation I had used another useful feature; somewhere along the line my right click menu also acquired the instant ability to rotate an image using these two rotate operations
http://www.johnfowles.org.uk/tutoria...te_options.jpg
Now I'll have to try to find where that feature came from
I hope that gives some of you food for thought
Just trying to help
John

[ June 26, 2007, 11:02: Message edited by: johnfowles ]

Nice picture of you & Mende, et al John. Is the date on your camera off a tad ?

Bill :)

amazing that you noticed that Bill not only was it 2007 due to my error in trying to reset the time after changing time zones from Central Australia but also I had at that time not corrected for losing a day getting there so it was in fact Sunday the 29th

I wondered about the date too..lol
It's good to see a pic of Peter! You all look wonderful.
What a fab trip..Get those pics onto your site and send the link!

(Read this with a haughty English accent)
"I find it amazing that while wielding the technological wizardry that I do, I failed to set the correct time on my photographic device."

All in good fun Sir John. Click on the picture and you'll see the date has been corrected for you.

http://www.imagewoof.com/view_thumb/...il_28_2007.jpg

LOLOLOLOL!!!

;)

thanks for the pic john!

Roger you are a good man, thanks for the pictures. I was mighty sad to miss that concert, but I have a couple here in Colorado to see - that will cheer me up.
Nice picture John, nice to see the faces behind the names.

Brilliant weekender.(But those who know me will I trust agree that I do not have what anybody could call a "haughty English accent" other than what all Brits being blessed from birth with, the upbringing to speak the Queen's English with absolutely no accent whatsoever.
In fact coming from the West Country county of Dorset
http://www.ngw.nl/int/gbr/d/images/dorset.jpg

http://www.sherbornetown.co.uk/image...of%20arms2.jpg

http://www.travelpublishing.co.uk/Hi...s/dor29657.JPG
The Three Elms near Sherborne my local pub for many a year
I consider that I really have a most unhaugthty twang, because a Dorset accent is quite broad me acker.
I would have sent you a Private Message but in that regard it is you who are the haughty one as it appears you do not want anybody to PM you. I was going to congratulate you on a job well done and ask if it took very long as I fear I have quite a lot of jpegs similarly misdated. More importantly, could you remove the date completely, as I ran into quite a lot of flak when Susan realised I had taken every picture with the date imprint turned on. I have about 500 plus all together but if it does not take too long I would love it if you would volunteer to remove the imprint on the best say 100.
Could you respond by a Private Mesage rather than bore the other punters here
TIA

[ June 27, 2007, 16:12: Message edited by: johnfowles ]

Sir John,
Thanks for taking the joke-only going by imagination on your accent! A private message is on its way...

By the way I did fulfill Sir John's request and removed the date...but caused some bruising.

http://www.imagewoof.com/view_thumb/...il_28_2007.jpg

If anyone else wants to handle John's Greatest Hits (The top 100) be my guest!

What marvelous pictures! Kudos!
Gord looks awesome!! Yes, he does look ten years younger. So happy for him! :)

{We've been on vacation, so have a couple days of reading posts coming up. :) :)

Hello fellow Lightheads!!
My name is Kathy. Just returned from Texas, where I attended 3 concerts... Austin, Ft Worth, and Houston. All 3 were tremendous!!! I even had the opportunity to meet Gordon and his orchestra again (first times were Anaheim, CA on 01/31/07 and Temeculah, CA on 02/02/07), which was the fulfillment of my dream of nearly 40 years! I attended a couple of dozen concerts between 1971 and 1980, but never believed I'd actually get to meet THE MAN. I LOVE him so much!!

I want to say a special hello to Dream Street Rose. I love you too!!

Hi Kathy,

Ken and I want to thank you for adding to our wonderful time in Texas. You were very helpful and easy to travel with. :)

I look forward to the day we can all travel together again and spend time teasing Gordon and the other wonderful men that give us that special music. Next time we will try to steal Kerstin for a longer trip.

How blessed I am to have you as my friend.


:) :D :cool:

Hi Char,

I agree, he's a lean mean legendary performing machine. I know you will be seeing him soon. Have a wonderful time. Thank you again for all you do for this board.

DSR :)

WOW! Nice and very interesting photos.
Thanks,
Kimberly

Maybe John was being too modest to point it out, but take a closer look at this picture...
http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/1...agedivenq0.jpg
Shot at 2007-07-03

Darn. I put it under the wrong topic...

Never mind N-S you made your point brilliantly although I fail to recall why I was so obviously green with envy!!

Is that??? Could that be??? Oh my gosh, what a party animal? HA HA HA! Thanks for the laugh, Next Saturday, this fine Tuesday morning!