Yesterday evening I attended the Basilica Block Party, which is a big outdoor concert in downtown Minneapolis. It’s on the grounds of a Basilica and is sponsored by the church, but it’s really just a big rock concert. I ended up hearing the Olympic Hopefuls, Carbon Leaf, and the Wallflowers. I’d been wanting to hear the Olympic Hopefuls since I missed their visit to Carleton, and I’m glad I caught them yesterday. The singer had a few intonation problems, but the songs were good and the band was clearly enthused. Carbon Leaf is a group from Virginia that I’m not really familiar with. The lead singer was pretty good and the crowd seemed pleased, but their song writing didn’t quite match their performance – the best songs they played were covers. The Wallflowers were clearly the big draw of the evening, and the crowd was very large and enthusiastic. They sounded very polished and had a few good songs, but most of them sounded pretty much the same. I think the live setting drowned out some of the vocal nuances, but that may be a bit generous. Still, it was a fun evening.
Work has been a bit hectic lately. Some days I’ve felt overwhelmed by work I need to do, but other days I’ve spent waiting for emails from my collaborators to give me some idea of what to do. I think I’ve finally got a specific objective, but unfortunately I don’t really know how to accomplish it yet. I need to learn enough OpenGL to visualize the results of a wavelet transform. Whatever, I’m sure I’ll figure it out.