I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas today.
Merry Christmas!
Help Save Nashville Speedway
A part of Nashville history is under attack. A “grassroots” group is out to get rid of the speedway at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Ostensibly they want to “relocate” the fairgrounds and the track. Realistically, there’s no way it can be feasible to build another race track in Davidson County. So in effect,they want to shut racing down in Nashville.
To counter one “grassroots” movement with a real one, I’ve created a web site called Save Nashville Speedway. There’s an online petition that you can sign to show your support. I’ll be updating the site often, so be sure to go and check it out. Over the next days and weeks I’ll be posting pictures and other historical data from the track.
If you’re a race fan and you don’t want to see this historic facility be pushed aside for “progress”, then I would appreciate it if you would go to Save Nashville Speedway and sign the petition.
The Next Great Nashville Band
The producers of American Idol had a little free time, and decided to find out who the next great American band would be, so naturally enough they created a show called The Next Great American Band. It’s been airing on Fox on Friday nights for the last couple of months (and Friday night is a horrible night for this show; it should have been on on Monday or Tuesday).
Anyway, it’s similar to Idol, in that you have a dozen performers (in this case, bands), three judges, a host, and the American telephone-voting public.
Friday night was the penultimate episode, and the final three are bands called Sixwire, Denver and the Mile High Orchestra, and The Clark Brothers. What I find the most interesting is that the bands came from all over the country: California, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Florida, and Nashville. And the three finalists are all from Nashville.
The Clark Brothers are by far the best of the three (they’ve been the band to beat from day one). Sixwire is good as well. While Denver and the Mile High Orchestra isn’t quite my cup of tea, their musicianship is top notch. The funny thing is, living here in Nashville, I’ve never heard of any of them.
My prediction for next week’s finale is that the Clark Brothers will win, followed by Sixwire, with Denver and the Mile High Orchestra coming in third. I’m not sure this show has enough of a viewership to propel one of these groups into Carrie Underwood stardom, but it should be enough to get at least the Clark Brothers (two of whom used to play with Underwood) noticed.
Honorable mention goes to Cliff Wagner and the Old #7, a bluegrassy band from California, who got booted off way too early.
I’d like to see this show come back next year. From the outset, the talent was top notch; you didn’t hear any sour notes from anyone. It always amazes me how bad some of the final four or five sing sometimes on American Idol. The producers didn’t play any silly games by highlighting bad auditions, and and the series didn’t drag on for months and months showing auditions.
My favorite show in this genre still has to be Nashville Star, since those performers are also expected to write music and to some extent play an instrument. That’s partly what made The Next Great American Band interesting to me; the bands were allowed to play original music. American Idol should take a cue from Star and Band and allow their performers to sing original songs at some point during the competition.
So, next week is the season (or series?) finale. Good luck to The Clark Brothers.
Com(spam)cast
For a company that touts their anti-spam stuff as much as Comcast does, they sure let a lot get through. I have a Comcast email account, which I’ve never given to anyone. Yet I get spam on it every day.
A few months ago, I found an email address on Comcast’s web site that would let me report spam in order to help prevent it. You basically forward the email as an attachment to them. So I figured why not. I was getting one or two a day, so it wasn’t that annoying, but I thought it might help.
Funny thing is, after I started forwarding these emails to Comcast, I started getting more spam. I’d get as many as 10 a day. I kind of thought that was a little odd (about as odd as getting email on an account I’d never publicized).
Then I stopped forwarding to their spam reporting email. My spam email dropped back to one or two a day. I don’t know what’s going on, but Comcast seems to be a party to the spamming; I don’t know how else to explain it.
I know they have the power to shun an email address; they’ve shunned mine (my regular email address) a couple of times, after I’ve forwarded messages to my wife. I had to go through there web page to tell them that I wasn’t a spammer. It’s a real hassle, especially when you consider that they’re not really stopping spammers.
What I should do is just stop checking that email address. Maybe when Comcast’s email server fills up with spam, they’ll really tackle the problem.
Save Nashville Speedway!
A few days ago, it was brought to my attention that a group (actually one guy) has started a drive to move the Tennessee State Fairgrounds and “redevelop” the property. He’s gone as far as creating a non-profit organization to raise money to this end.
Nowhere on his site does he mention anything about the Speedway. It’s obviously assumed that the “green” area that will replace the fairgrounds will also do away with the speedway (which I think is the real motive behind this movement). He also doesn’t mention that the house he owns in the neighborhood of the fairgrounds was purchased in 1999 for around $45,000, and that as of a couple of years ago, it was appraised at over $90,000, and that he’s complained about the noise from the track.
It just blows my mind how some people have the nerve to move next to an airport or race track or interstate and then complain about the noise. Uh, if you don’t like the noise, move. I live almost exactly two miles from the track (as the crow flies), and if the wind is blowing right, I can hear the cars during a race or practice. I live a lot closer to the interstate and can hear the trucks go by (despite the speed limit being lowered to 55 mph a couple of years ago, which was spearheaded by a lady who moved next to the interstate). I can also hear the trains occasionally at the CSX yard 3 miles away. Heck, I can even hear the Hillsboro High School band play on Friday nights. If these noises truly bothered me, I’d move away from them; it would never cross my mind to be one to complain about something that I knew full well was going to happen before I moved here.
To combat this, I’ve created a site that will hopefully counter this guy’s attempt at plowing under this historic site. It’s called SaveNashvilleSpeedway.com. The site just went live Sunday night with a placeholder page in order to begin getting indexed by the search engines. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be putting more info on the site, including historical information about past races there.
If Nashville put a tenth of the effort into saving this historic landmark as it did into saving the Predators NHL team, there wouldn’t be a problem.
So, take a look at SaveNashvilleSpeedway.com, and keep checking back over the next few weeks.
Oh, if you have any files or info regarding the track’s history, please feel free to send them to me at the email address on the site. I hope to make this an archive of race results, photos, and other mementos of the track.