For those unaware, Phil Collins (“Against All Odds (Take A Look at Me Now),” “Sussudio,” “Another Day in Paradise”) launched his “Not Dead Yet Tour” (named after his autobiography) on June 2nd in England.

If you missed that, you may have also missed that on June 7th he fell in his hotel room after getting up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

In the fall, he hit a chair and ended up requiring stitches for a gash on his head close to his eye.

He was held at the hospital for 24 hours for observation.

The good (amazing?) news is that he was able to resume his tour Sunday, just four days later!

Despite his ordeal, the singer looked in good spirits as he returned to the stage.

Collins sported a white bandage on his forehead for the performance in Cologne, Germany, covering a mass of stitches above his left eye.

Phil sat for the night’s performance, while his 16 yr old son Nic Collins backed him up on drums.

He sang many of his hits, both solo and with Genesis: “Against All Odds,” “One More Night,” “In The Air Tonight,” “I Missed Again,” “Sussudio,” “Follow You, Follow Me,” “If You Love,” and “Take Me Home.”

His performance earned him a standing ovation from the sold out crowd at Lanxess Arena, where he has a five-date residency.

“Last night was number two of five sell-out shows in the 16,000 seat arena and for the second night all of the audience was on its feet for the whole second half of the show,” Collins’ rep told the New York Post.

“Phil had a huge grin on his face, he is feeling better and better and although tired is very happy.”

He will also be performing in Paris and returns to London for a June 30 show in Hyde Park.

Collins’ canceled concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London for last Thursday and Friday were rescheduled for November.

His “Not Dead Yet Tour” marks Phil Collins’ first tour in nearly 10 years.

As for more concerts around the world, Collins tells WROR in Boston that he’ll evaluate after this month’s European run is over:

“I’m back a bit.”

“I mean, we’re doing these three cities… and we’re basically taking it as it goes.”

“I certainly don’t want to go back on tour again, but I think, y’know, two or three weeks of shows, then a month off, the two or three weeks of shows, that kind of thing might work.”

“So I’m hedging my bets here.”

“I’m just taking baby steps… But it’s exciting, and the dates are sold out so that’s more exciting ’cause it adds a bit of an edge to it.”

Phil Collins has released 8 studio albums, 1 live album, 3 compilation albums, 45 singles, 16 video albums, 38 music videos, 2 soundtrack albums, 2 box sets, and 1 remix album.

A Grammy and Academy Award-winning solo artist, Collins has sold more than 33 million albums in the United States, and 100 million records worldwide.

Yesterday’s shooting of congressmen practicing baseball got me to thinking about attacks on politicians in the 1980s.

For most of us, if there’s an attack on a politician in the 80s that leaps to mind, it’s likely the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 30th, 1981.

Reagan was shot in the left lung but survived; three others were wounded in the attack.

There were, however, others that you may have forgotten about or may not have even heard about.

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Russell G. Lloyd, Sr. served as the Republican mayor of Evansville, Indiana from 1972 to 1980 and was an alternate delegate from Indiana to the 1972 Republican National Convention.

On March 19, 1980, a mentally ill assassin (I refuse to name the killers in this article) arrived at his home.

They shot Lloyd four times with a handgun, in the head, neck, and shoulders, in a fit of anger after a brief argument.

Lloyd was taken to the hospital, where a brain scan indicated brain death.

Doctors announced “there is no hope” shortly before turning off Lloyd’s medical ventilator.

His killer died in the Indiana Prison’s medical ward in 2014.

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Allard K. Lowenstein was an American Democratic politician, including a U.S. Representative of the 5th Congressional District in Nassau County, New York for one term in 1969 to 1971.

Lowenstein was murdered in his Manhattan office on March 14, 1980, at age 51 by a mentally ill gunman who was convinced that Lowenstein had been plotting against him since their acquaintance at Stanford University.

The gunman then calmly waited for the police to arrive and arrest them.

On June 30, 2000, a judge found that the killer was no longer a danger to society and granted him a conditional release from all levels of custody.

A veteran of the United States Army, Representative Lowenstein is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

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Ed King was the Mayor of Mount Pleasant, Iowa from 1975 until his murder on December 11th, 1986.

He was killed during a city council meeting by an assailant had been in dispute with municipality over a clogged sewer line.

The killer first shot council member Ron Dupree, waved the small-caliber pistol at other Council members, and then approached Mayor Edward M. King, and shot him in the forehead.

As the 12 to 15 spectators scrambled in terror from the tiny City Hall, the assassin turned and shot Joann Elizabeth Sankey, another Council member, who was sitting next to the Mayor.

She fell to the floor with wounds in the head and abdomen.

They then walked back, shot the 53-year-old Mayor again in the head and then fired another bullet into Councilman Dupree.

Then the killer calmly sat down in the front row to await his arrest.

They were sentenced to life in prison and died in 1999 in Fort Madison.

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I’ll be praying for a quick and complete recovery for Steve Scalise, Matt Mika, Zachary Barth, Krystal Griner and David Bailey.

I hope you will, too.

I told you yesterday that we need a video card to begin streaming BlackLight Radio again.

A reasonable question would be, “why do you need a video card to stream radio?”

YouTube does not provide us a way to stream only audio to them; if we’re going to stream to YouTube, we’re going to have to stream audio AND video (even if that’s only a static image of our logo).

(This, BTW, is different than streaming audio, where even all you’re playing is pre-recorded files, you don’t even have to have a soundcard to encode and send to a server.)

The next reasonable question would be, “why do you need a different video card since you already said you might be using a static logo and 99% of computers come with video cards built in?”

The software we are going to be using, Open Broadcaster Software Studio, requires a video card capable of supporting OpenGL 3.2.

I’m not 100% clear on what OpenGL 3.2 is or how it benefits OBS; I just know that without it, the software won’t run.

The computer I have to do the encoding for YouTube is old enough that the built in video card doesn’t run OpenGL 3.2.

(In case you’re wondering, I’m running Linux on it so the load is light enough to let it encode for YouTube.)

The next challenge with this computer is that it is old enough that it doesn’t have AGP or PCIe slots… only PCI.

There are several PCI video cards which can do OpenGL 3.2 on Amazon, but the least expensive I’ve found is the Sparkle PC 210 DMS59 512MB DDR3 PCI Graphics Card 700033.

It’s $50 plus $9.15 for shipping.

With this card in my current machine, I have every reason to believe we would then be able to use it as a dedicated encoder to feed YouTube with audio and video 24/7.

Although I’m still learning the OBS software, I’m thinking that there should be ways for me to set it up to display the 45 RPM single picture sleeves when songs are playing.

I’ve seen other live streams include all kinds of real-time information from the time of day to current donations to the current song playing.

I’d love to see us able to stream the music video for songs when we have them available… but that is several learning curves away. 🙂

We currently have $20 in our PayPal account, so we’re still needing $40 to get this video card.

If you’d like to help make this happen and help bring back BlackLight Radio, please consider donating through the button in the column to the right of this article.

I check PayPal every day, so once the money comes in I will be sure to let you know, and keep you updated on the delivery status and installation.

Were I not between jobs right now, I’d buy the card myself, and if no one donates the money, I will purchase it once I am employed again and caught up on bills.

Thanks for reading this far, and thanks for considering supporting BlackLight!