Austin Lounge Lizards

dick · Post by **dick** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 1:06 am

My story and pics of meet up with LC on this site made it to my old boss at NECA -- he is a bright lawyer, and was a music major at Syracuse as an undergrad....
anyway, his note about the lounge lizards song said:

Dick

Liked your story about meeting Leonard on the website.

You aren't the only groupie in town. Last week I drove to the NECA Board meeting in Burlington , VT and on the way home stopped in at the
Grey Fox Festival in Columbia County , NY to see
the Lizards play. (Austin Lounge Lizards) Kind of a stupid thing to do. It
took me forever to find the place, nearly ran out of gas in the middle of
nowhere, wound up paying for a whole day's ticket just to see one
band, and they were only on for an hour. I didn't get home
until nearly 2 a.m.

But - they did do "Leonard Cohen's Day Job", along with a number of other songs from their old "Employee of the Month" CD which is probably their best ( I also highly recommend "Strange Noises in the Dark"). They introduced the song by explaining they were invited to an international folk festival in Montreal , were concerned they didn't know any international folk music, but were saved by Leonard Cohen's disembodied spirit who came to one of the band members in a dream and helped write the song about the garage job. I think it went over the heads of most of the audience.

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:03 am

Cool anecdote from your old boss, Dick. What is NECA?

~ Lizzy

dick · Post by **dick** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:21 pm

National Exchange Carrier Asssociation --- organization mandated by FCC at ATT divestiture in 1984 to handle tariffs and financial dealings with the then 2000 small, independent local telephone companies.

Hard as hell to say in one word.

lizzytysh · Post by **lizzytysh** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:07 pm

Geez, you got that right, Dick

! I hope the telephone receptionists are allowed to get by with saying 'NEKA' [phonetically

].

Thanks for your explanation

.

~ Lizzy

tomsakic · Post by **tomsakic** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 4:37 pm

FCC, at ATT?

dick · Post by **dick** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:00 pm

Federal Communications Commision -- regulates broadcast and telephone communications companies in US. AT&T 1984 divestiture was called "the break up of the Bell System." One big holding company with 23 subsidiaries became 7 local companies, one long distance company and Bell Labs (research) and Western Electric (Manufactruing) became Lucent.

NECA runs universal service programs which keep rates artificially low
in rural and remote areas that are costly to serve.

As with most goverment brainstorms, results have been less than stellar.

Back to Cohen! Enuf technobable already!

Byron · Post by **Byron** » Thu Jul 27, 2006 8:33 pm

C-o-h-e-n ?????