So, I went to Memphis on Saturday night. I thought I’d take in some blues on Beale Street. I remember checking out the clubs back in the early 1990s. There was nothing but good soulful blues from club to club.
Things have changed. And I must say that I was very disappointed.
First, getting into the hotel was a pain in the ass because it was valet parking only, but no one could drive a stick shift. I had to park my own car. That’s fine, but it made for a little longer check-in process.
I spent an hour or two chilling after the long drive and then headed down to Beale at about 8:30. It was much different than I remembered.
I had to show my ID and go through security.
Just to get onto Beale, I had to go through a checkpoint. Okay, I get it, but what about the music. I walked up and down the street listening for the blues that I remembered on Beale years ago. I didn’t hear any.
I was hungry and stopped at an Irish place, Silky O’ Sullivan’s, for some food. I had to pay a $5 cover charge. There were dueling pianos as the entertainment. But they weren’t playing blues. They were playing pop covers. I’ve got nothing against Bryan Adams, but the “Summer of ’69” was not my idea of music I’d find on Beale. Oh, and the food sucked. I paid $14 for a very thin corned-beef sandwich and a few potato chips.
After about 45 minutes with pop-rock dueling pianos I set back out to find some blues. I heard hip-hop. I heard dance music. I heard a folk duo playing Led Zeppelin. I heard something with a little soul and a clap machine. But I still heard no blues.
Finally, at the tiny Club Handy, I heard a whaling blues guitar. It was less soulful and more rock and roll, but it was bluesy. I found another place where the music was bluesy but later a security asked me to leave the street when I walked a couple of feet past the street exit at BB King’s place to look through the window to see the band to consider going in. Asshole.
On a side note, on the short walk from the hotel to Beale and back, several drivers ignored walk signs and I basically had to dodge traffic as a pedestrian. Memphis has the highest rate of pedestrian accidents in the country. The following morning on the way out of town, a car nearly sideswiped me on I-240.
Overall, it was a shitty experience and I’ll likely never go back.
Beale is like Lower Broad in Nashville, worse really.
If you’ve been to Nashville lately, you might know what Lower Broadway has become. It’s a string of clubs with nothing but cover bands and drunks. But at least they’re playing the genre of music people come to see.
I went to Beale Street to see the blues and was very disappointed to find very little blues being played. Add the fact that you get cover charged for many of the clubs after paying to get onto the street itself? Seriously? What a joke.
But my biggest complaint has to do with both Broadway in Nashville and Beale in Memphis. They’ve both sold their souls.
I spent time in Nashville, New Orleans, and Memphis in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The live music was good in all three cities. Not only was there great music, much of it was original. Now, I hear nothing but cover bands and clap machines.
The entertainment industry is simply concerned with one thing: making money. The majority of people don’t go to hear great original music. They go to get drunk and hear songs they can sing-along to.
That’s what the rednecks want. That’s what they get. Cheap recycled music played by underpaid musicians who have been trained to play to a click track. I’m not impressed. – dse
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