Monday September 24th gig at The Palms

Good crowd tonight. Place filled up early. They got a serious throw-down, too. Band was loose, happy, and energetic. Jerry pulled out the Flamenco, too, and they segue'd straight to "Canta Con Amigo," which is so fine (it's on the first CD, 2nd disk, BTW).

I had a few no-shows at my table, so eventually a couple from Alberta, Canada came up and asked if they could sit at my table. First time in Vegas for them, and someone had told them about the band. They were speechless by the time the night ended. "Living For The City" finished them off, big-time.

New fans!

BTW- Props to former Tower of Power vocalist Brent Carter in the house tonight. Brent now appears with the kick-ass NY Bad Boys horn group FUNK FILHARMONIK. Props also to Andy Ebon for the plug and the link. And, gotta recognize our friends from the incredible MOSAIC in da house. Those cats, yikes!

Rob Mader can wail with the best of 'em on tenor. He seriously reminds me of the SNL dude.

Above: Man, Nathan was havin' a Good Hair Night tonight! Lookin' good, bro'. Below, a random assortment of tonight's shots.

Don't forget, BTW, Michito's Salsero night on Tuesdays in the South Point Fever Showroom.

We also gotta thank all the fans who bought CDs tonight (and thanks to Cheryl for taking care of all that). We had a good night at the table. Really helps the band keep the fire burning.

Man, those new originals are, as Champlin would say, ridiculous! Stoooopid!
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RECENT BLOG TRAFFIC DATA

Interesting (click to enlarge). Bil Champlin/Sons of Champlin week gave us a big bump in hits. We've been steady for quite a while, with mostly the same repeat viewers week after week (most of 'em locals, with a small random smattering of hits from around the planet). Notice in the graph above the repetitive Tuesday hit spike caused by folks going to the blog to see what I posted about the Monday night Palms gig. Us stats heads call that "periodicity" or "seasonality." The purple trend line at this point evinces an upward slope that is pretty much the result of Champlin week. Now if we can just hold that viewership gain, and figure out how to grow it. We're a small but devoted group, LOL! By contrast, an irreverent and eclectic "liberal" political blog where I hang a lot (FireDogLake) gets on the order of 100,000 to a half-million hits a day. I would kill for those kinds of numbers.

NOTE: these data are from the Google Analytics page for the blog, covering the past 30 days, which I scraped off and dumped into Excel. Tech stuff: the "R2 = 0.3978" is known as the "R-square / Coefficient of Determination," essentially the square of the 1st order Pearson-R linear correlation coefficient, i.e., tells us how significant the trend line is. The larger the number, the lesser the variation around the trend line (and the more comfortable you can be in leaning on your extrapolations out to the future). Now, if I wanted to go all high-falutin' & stuff, I could pump up the R-Square by goin' to a higher-order polynomial (Excel will give you up to a 6-degree polynomial) that would more closely fit the trend estimator to the data peaks and valleys, resulting in a recurring wavy trend line.

The "y = 1.86275x - 72303" thingy (recall high school algebra? Didn't think so) tells us the slope of the trend line. Geek shit. Most of what I've been doing since hanging up my axe in 1985, LOL!

FYI- KELLY CLINTON UPDATE

From Kelly's website:

NEW ONE WOMAN SHOW - OCT 1

Versatile performer Kelly Clinton will preview her one woman show "Out of My Mind: An Evening with Kelly Clinton" at the Family Music Centers on Oct. 1 at 7 p.m.

Tickets are $25 with proceeds benefiting the Southern Nevada chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team in Training campaign.

Clinton, who performs weekends at the Stirling Club and is the private venue's entertainment director, will be introducing a cast of characters that have played a role in her life through the years. "You might call them my alter egos who have supported my career," laughs Clinton. "They like the stage as much as I do and I love sharing it with them."

The eclectic evening will also include her vocal styling with her band and other surprise guests.

Members of the local Team in Training, which includes Clinton's brother, John Clinton (director of slots marketing at Bellagio), are preparing to run the Chicago Marathon Oct. 7. Their stepfather, Alfred Issa, recently completed his battle with lymphoma and, after six months of chemotherapy, has received a clean bill of health! John said, "I'm very proud of how he has fought his way through this, and he inspires me everyday to keep working to be prepared for the marathon."

All of the Team in Training is raising funds to help stop leukemia, lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma from taking more lives. John is completing this event in honor of Alfred and all individuals who are battling blood cancers. "These people are the real heroes on our team, and we need your support to cross the ultimate finish line - a cure" he added.

The limited number of tickets for the evening can be purchased by calling 210-9721 or 810-0995. The Family Music Centers is located at 8125 W. Sahara.