They are making progress. Progress is being made, of the destructive sort. Just across the way is the building where Elvis slept. And, before that, a bunch of college students, and then some guests to the city, and then people worked in there. Now the building, long in the tooth in it’s seventh decade, as being pulled apart. A green space will be where the Poplars Building is. This only means that no one has decided on a better use for it yet.

I wonder if the person who had the room-converted-to-an-office knew they had Elvis’ room. Seems like you’d spend a little time trying to figure that out, no?

Anyway, we’re several weeks into this now, and they were scraping away ferociously on the east end of things today. No ETA on when the job will be completed, or when the adjacent parking deck will reopen, but I shall try to keep you up-to-date on this, the least useful, interesting or successful feature on the site.

Let’s balance that out with the most successful feature on the site, the weekly check on the kitties. They’re doing just great. Having a ball. Despite my playing zone defense these last two weeks, don’t let them fool you. They will try. But I have documentary evidence. Here’s a blissed out Phoebe enjoying an evening cuddle.

And here, Phoebe is surveying her queendom in a most grand style.

Poseidon, meanwhile, is playing the role of the jester of the royal territory. He often does.

And, last night, he got in a bit of reading with me. It was, again, a nice cuddle. Don’t let him tell tall tales. He will tell tale tells, fib, fabricate, dissemble and lie.

We went to a rock ‘n’ roll show tonight, making for a long but fine day. Earlier this summer we finally saw a 2020 concert in Indianapolis. It was postponed, twice, because of Covid, but when we finally got to see the show, it was great. Concert tickets purchased in 2019 age well, turns out. That adventure was a wonderful little return to normal — whatever that is these days.

The same bands were going to be playing Cincinnati last month, and The Yankee found a good deal on resell tickets and made a good impulse buy. But someone in the tour got Covid, so they had to postpone that show. We found out at the parking both of the concert. It’s a quick two hour drive, and the weather was nice that evening, so we walked around a bit of Cincinnati and made silly videos that never got used anywhere, I’m sure, and had some acceptable-north-of-the-Ohio-River pork barbecue.

Tonight was the rescheduled show. Or, to be more precise, tonight was the re-re-re-rescheduled show. The original was in 2020, and then they tried to run it in 2021. And then again, and now, finally … oh, and a thunderstorm was moving through lower Ohio.

But the lightning stayed away, and the 90s and turn-of-the-century pop music blared forth. Another great show, even if we knew the setlist.

As an added bonus, I can spread out music on the site for the next three days. So here’s Toad the Wet Sprocket, playing all the alt radio mainstays of the 1990s.

I don’t know if Crazy Life was my first protest song or the first for my slice of my generation, but I’m pretty sure it was the first one I really noticed. The first one I read about. And I read a lot about Peltier. I’ve never really settled on how I felt about it, not really, but this is Wounded Knee.

The Eighth Circuit thought a jury would have acquitted him had information improperly withheld from the defense been available, yet the court denied a new trial. And if you really dive into the story it’s easy to question how the system was used. But I don’t know, not really. None less than Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and the Dalai Lama have campaigned for him, though, and that means something.

The point is, this song made me look it up, and think, and ask questions of things in general and specifically. And I probably shouldn’t like a pop song this much, but anything that scrapes your brain for a quarter of a century is worth noting.

They did a Best Of album in 2011 — and it’ll come up much later in our regular music feature — in part to regain control of their masters. They reworked a few small things in some of their songs, including the ending of this one. This is still good, but I much prefer the original.

Toad opened the show, playing a short set, but most of their hits. In fact they removed two songs from the previous show in Indy, for whatever reason.

It must be weird to be a still-working band, on what is the growing and, hopefully, lucrative nostalgia tour circuit, knowing you can only get in so many of your songs. Of their eight songs tonight, seven singles, six of which charted, were released to great success in the early or mid-90s. The newest song they played was a ditty from 2013. I’d guess most of the audience wasn’t familiar with it. They released a new album last year, all new material, but not the first selection made the set list.

If you can play a half dozen top 10s decades hence, and people still pay to see you do it, you play the hits.

Speaking of which, more of that tomorrow in this same space.