Austin Fanzine Project

fucking time. Someone even thrust tambourines into our hands at one point.

All three nights pretty much went like that. Since a girl travels faster when she travels alone — and I'm nothing if not fast — it was a new experience to have company in Memphis. Ever since our esteemed editor Jennifer La settled down, got married and started having kids [one boyfriend, one dog —ed.], she hasn't been able to go with me on my little trips. But this time I had other folks to show me around, to take to Ellen's soul food, the AmVets Thrift Store, Schwab's Dry Goods and Neely's BBQ. And we even went out for a night of dancing at Green's Lounge with Scott Bomar and Mike Tole. Green's Lounge was this truly nasty blues dive where we saw Wilroy Sanders play. There's usually a few white folks there, but it's generally populated by neighborhood types, older black folks drinking, dancing and macking — the same shit we do on a Saturday night, but with better music. You're served Budweiser in quart bottles with paper cups and can bring in your own hard stuff and buy a set-up. Margaret brought in some vodka and got fuckin' trashed, Andrea danced with every guy that asked, and my purse got stolen — par for the fuckin' course if you ask me. What a great night.

I can't explain how much I love listening to the music you find in these spots in Memphis. It inspires vastly conflicting feelings. On the one hand, I'm terribly grateful It's still around for me to hear and it makes me feel right at home. On the other, I feel no better then some cultural tourist who gets to pop in and listen for a while, then say "Wow, fellas, thanks for living the underprivileged life so's we could hear those snappy tunes! See Ya!" That liberal guilt sure was eased by having my purse stolen, though, I can tell you that. Oh, Green's Lounge burnt down last year, RIP.

JUNE 1997

A few years ago, Jennifer La and I attended the first Dixie Fried fest in Memphis and I've managed to hit all three now. Sadly, this year's Dixie Fried was the last time I got to hear Junior

years in that casino. It was kind of cool that my ill-timed hit at a blackjack table made one drunk redneck lose a grand, though.

LABOR DAY WEEKEND 1997 Readers of GW understand our fondness for the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, so you can understand how a more ideal combination would be hard to come up with: The Thinking Fellers were to play the Shangri-La Shindig in Memphis this year —at Green's Lounge, no less! It was Steve Decon's turn to come to Memphis with me, and he'd just returned from his summer in Mexico, so I figured this trip would help ease the shock of his return to the U.S. The actual show was really interesting. While we were sitting around outside, some guy was babbling on and on about Princess Di, then he pulled out a printout from some internet news site that proclaimed her death. Then we rocked out. The advertised "Hippie in a Cage" turned out to be GW friend Dave Dunlap, who was penned up in the corner behind some chicken wire, taunting the audience. His shirtless, body-painted, joke-crackin' self whipped the audience into a frenzy. An angry frenzy. I truly love Dave's near total disregard for punchlines — I think he's avoided the pitfalls of "humor" that bog down many lesser comedians.

Then the Thinking Fellers played and were pretty good, although their sound isn't so hot in a little concrete box. They played that Butthole Surfers song they cover, the name of which I can't remember right now. That damn band is one of the few reasons I like music right now. They are capable of expressing themselves in a very subtle manner, something to be missed when every stupid band thinks they have to hit you over the head with a goddamned mission statement. Banjos and mandolins are terrifically underused in the rock idiom these days, and their presence in the Thinking Fellers' music isn't anything but vital. Really, when have you ever listened to a Thinking Fellers record and found an element of excess present? Doesn't happen.