Catchup part 2

Memphis
Again, no hostel in Memphis so I had to stay in a motel, pretty close to the Greyhound station. I went to Sun records first, where Elvis had his big break, and it was a pretty cool place. They had a lot of memorabilia, and the story of Sam Phillips, the owner, and how he set up the studio, got sued for copyright, then, by discovering and selling Elvis, managed to break even and put out records by Jerry Lee Lewis and other famous country singers, was a fascinating one, and getting to see the studio where Elvis first recorded was pretty cool too. They still use it as a studio, with updated equipment obviously.
After that I went to the Rock and Soul Museum, which was excellent. It had a large blues, country, rock and roll, and soul collection, with an audioguide thingy that had about a hundred songs on it as examples of the various styles. If I'd had more time I would have sat there for ages just listening to it. I also suddenly saw what made Elvis so great. When playing the original "That's allright" by some blues guy (Arthur Crudrup) then playing the Elvis version you can see why the world went crazy. He adds a country style bassline, with more rocky guitar riffs, and you get rock and roll. The other big exhibit was the Memphis Sound of the sixties, with all the soul music with a horn section made in Stax records, which I visited the next day. I'm not particularly into soul music, but Stax was pretty interesting, even though I was only in there for an hour before it closed, as I had difficulty finding it.
I also visited Graceland, Elvis' home and gravesite, as well as a lot of other stuff. His house was pretty cool, a bit garish in places, but the hall with all his gold records was pretty impressive, as were his car collection and his aeroplanes.
The evening i was in Memphis I went to Beale Street, the music area, which is a bit cheesy touristy, but in one place I was in I saw a really good young guitarist/singer, as well as a lot of big blues bands which featured some good instrumentalists, but not much originality. Still, I'd like to go back there with a car, when I'm 21, so I can get to the further out places which are less touristy. The same goes for exploring the Delta, something which isn't really possible with Greyhounds.
Next I went to New Orleans, where I visited Bourbon Street, an absolute shithole, full of drunk tourists and more cheesy blues bands, although I did catch a couple of decent bands, a Zydeco band which is amodernised version of the folk music that comes from the Cajuns/Creoles, who are the various mixed groups who have inhabited New Orleans over its history, as well as a good traditional jazz band. The next day I went on a walking tour of the French Quarter, which was pretty interesting. The history of New Orleans is pretty fucked up with large groups of Spanish and French as well as a large influx of French Canadian catholics who came down when the British chucked them out of Canada. That night I went out with some people from the hostel to the area where the locals go. We caught an excellent blues band, then for some reason went back to Bourbon Street, tourist central, hovered around there for a while, caught another pretty good blues band, then headed back to the pub round the corner from the hostel, where we ended up staying til half six in the morning. The next day I understandably didn't do very much, then, yesterday I went on a tour of the cemetery where they shot Easy Rider, then caught the overnight bus to Austin Texas, which is where I am now, in the Youth Hostel which took me an age to find.

Catchup for the last week

Washington DC.
I arrived in mid afternoon, and after finding the hostel, went on a big walk round all the various monuments and so on. The Jefferson and FDR memorials were the best, the Washington one is a bit boring, although apparantly you can go up to the top which might have been nice. I saw the White House and the Capitol, as well as the Lincoln Memoria, which was packed. I went back to the hostel, which was pretty good fun, there was a good mix of people from all over the place, and we played Texas Hold'em (I lost bigtime) and lots of other card games. I was sleeping on the couch because they ran out of beds, but it was still pretty comfortable, so it was a good stay.

DC to Nashville
This was a 17 hour coach journey, with a stop in Roanoake, Virginia that lasted a lot longer than it was supposed to because the driver of the connection didn't get his wakeup call. The first driver was this crazy southern woman with ginger hair who was pretty funny, but she was also pretty rude to an asian guy who couldn't understand what she was saying. The next driver was a massive black guy with a realy cool voice, who also didn't have a huge amount of patience with foreigners, I think it's pretty standard in the South. I bought a bottle of water from a service station and the guy said it was $550 as a joke, the american sense of humour is a little messed up...

Nashville
I kind of cocked up my room selection here, ended up finding a motel way out of town, took a taxi there, and had to take a bus back but eventually got to the Country Music Hal of Fame, whcich was pretty good, there was some cool stuff, and I saw the first of what was going to be a lot of Elvis memorabilia. I also saw some TV footage of Dolly Parton at 21, and she looked absolutely stunning, compared to how she looks now... There was a load of Johnny Cash stuff too, that was pretty cool, he's got some great music.
It really reminded me of the R. Crumb cartoon that has a picture of three old folks playing banjo, guitar and double bass, and above it says "Where did it go, the music of our Grandparents?". Then it says very small underneath, "It died with them, that's where it went". It depressed me, especially to see some of the more modern country music, which is so cheesy it's untrue. At least the old stuff had something about it, the newer stuff is just missing something. Anyway, after that I wandered round the city a bit, but outside of the central blocks where all the bars are, it seemed a bit of a shithole. Maybe if I went back with a car it might be more fun.

Finally, internet access...

I'm in New Orleans, I've had real trouble finding internet cafes down south, even now I'm in the Loyola University library. It's only a brief use terminal so there are no chairs, and the space bar keeps jamming, so this won't be a long post.
Nashville was a bit of a shithole, but the Country Music Hall of Fame was pretty interesting, Memphis was good, especially Sun Studios and the Rock and Soul Museum. New Orleans is pretty horrible in the touristy area, though in the dodgier area where the locals go I saw a very good band last night.

I will go into more detail when I find a proper internet cafe, or at least somewhere with a decent keyboard.