06.23.06

Well that was a wash and I don’t even feel clean

Posted in random - June 23rd, 2006 at 8:51 pm by Cricket

Mimi: *looks at my feet as I’m complaining about sweating into the soles of my flip-flops* Did you cut your toenails when you’d been drinking?
Me: What? Uh, yes?
Mimi: Hahahahaha! You mocked that Bobby Pinson guy’s song about doing that and look at you!
*both collapse into laughter*

That, my friends? The high point of our night.

It’s not yet 8pm on a Friday night and we’re home. Not just at home but already back home. This is what happens when you pick a show out of the hideous weekly paper based on proximity to your house. See we’ve had really good luck with songwriter’s showcases in Nashville so far. Yes, we were feeling lazy; no, we will never pick something based on proximity again. [Sidebar, we were gonna go to the Bluebird, but it's fucking an asston of miles from where we live, and we're going to visit my family tomorrow, so we're lazy. Look where that got us.--Mimi]

Tonight was the Songwriters Night at the French Quarter Café. Yeah, so we came into this hideous stuccoed place full of black lights–sort of like your grandma’s living room, if your grandma was an ex-hooker. There was a boy and his guitar on the stage who looked like he belong in the movie Holes [Shia LaBeouf, dear.--Mimi] and couldn’t have been a day over 15. He finished his set as we sat down and introduced the next singer as the “next LeAnn Rimes.” Oh no. [*Cackles* I wish she WAS the next LeAnn Rimes, damn.--Mimi]

So freshman boy played on while this girl, also not a day over 15, sang trite pop country cover songs about working the long shift and drinking and other completely inappropriate 15 year old material. She wasn’t bad. I mean, like she was better than Avril Lavigne. [We also didn't figure out they were cover songs until the second to last song. This lead to some serious consternation on our parts. How could she write this well? Dear god. Don't let us out alone.--Mimi]

The crowd appeared to be entirely comprised of this high school pair’s middle aged family.

We drank beer quickly and wondered why we hadn’t thought to order Jack Daniels instead. More people filed in, all extreme parody examples of high redneckitude. I got yer middle American Friday night right here. The shrimp basket comes with spicy fries. [You need to DESCRIBE the people: one chick with a permatan in a string tank top and acid washed jeans with a huge belt and rodeo buckle and a bleached blonde shag hair cut, a guy in full Vols regalia including shoes, the table full of 40-something women in polyester sundresses chain smoking—you get the picture.--Mimi]

The teen talent show ended and the next bunch of songwriters came up. A couple guys. One was nondescript and of indeterminate age in a Hawaiian shirt, and the other had an older, groovin’ sort of an Albert Einstein/Bob Dylan look. I later heard the forgettable one tell the bartender they’d just come out from LA. Hadn’t even finished unpacking yet. They sang incredibly forgettable songs. Except Bob Dylan did a blues bit about counting rain drops that almost made lapse into hysterical laughter. I feel like I should win an award for suppressing it. [Suppress, what? I had to tell you to stop laughing because the dude could see you. But in her defense it as so bad I was watching the trashy chicks to keep from laughing at him myself.--Mimi]

There was a long lag before the next act and Mimi and I agreed the torture wasn’t worth it. We should just go. We paid, called a cab (yeah, we took a cab, we though it was going to be many rounds with many songwriters).

While we loitered outside a reasonably hot boy with a guitar walked past and into the bar. But it wasn’t enough, even though he smiled cutely at us, I couldn’t face the black lights and the odd middle aged, middle American crowd again (complete with not one, but THREE, babies in the BAR with them). [The whole baby thing was creeping me out. I assume they were the families of the acts, but all the same, there was heavy smoking in there, and did we mention the black lights?--Mimi]

I wonder now, how many teens are out there with a modicum of talent whose parents send them around to bars to play and hopefully be discovered? Is Nashville filled with stage moms, much like the kind of mothers who put their kids in creepy beauty pageants, putting their kids out their in hopes of vicarious fame?

Somebody pass me the Jack. I need a smoke.

[I also want to just shout out to perspective restaurateurs that New Orleans-themed bars/restaurants are freaking lametastic. Just don't do it. I don't care how much you enjoyed your vacation in New Orleans, please either come up with some new, cockamamie theme or go with junk joint.--Mimi]

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