Let me preface this by saying, I will probably do a few blogs because we (me and my lovely wife) did a shit load of stuff on our honeymoon (as in my lovely wife just recently became my wife and we went on a honeymoon). So I'll start somewhere around here...
We left New Bedford on Monday morning (June 11th) after a very drunken and raucous bachelor/bachelorette party on Fri. the 8th, getting hitched on Sat. June 9th, and Mrs. Evil resting on Sunday while I finished mixing the new Taints record with Greg and Tono (who did an amazing job recording us the previous week). Let me say this, my lovely bride really wanted to fly, I on the other hand have always had this love affair with the road trip. I have since ended this affair and future vacations will involve being airborn for a few hours instead of driving for twenty. It took us three days to get to Memphis (our planned final destination) and while driving on endless stretches of highways (one stretch was of the 500 mile variety and another was of the 400 mile variety) we finally got to Memphis.
Around 5pm we get into Memphis. First stop: Goner Records, owned by Eric "Oblivian" Friedl, who happened to be there when we arrived. I really can't say enough nice things about Eric (between seeing him at the bars and at Goner Records he was always super awesome). I also can't say enough things about John (Goner employee) who was also extremely nice and helpful (if you ever go to the Goner store it can be a little overwhelming, I dropped about $150.00 on records in a half hour). They also informed me that it was Jeffrey Evans (68 Comeback, Gibson Brothers) birthday and that he would be playing later that night at the Buccaneer Lounge (where me and the missus spent most of our nights in Memphis). Onto the Buccaneer: It was pretty awesome. I got to talk to Eric some more and I got to talk to Mr. Jack Oblivian also. And he, like Eric, was also very nice and accomodating. I also said happy birthday to Monsieur Evans and he offered me a hit off of his whiskey bottle. Fucking awesome. The evening ends with me (being delirious and drunk) and Lady Evil going back to our hotel.
Fast forward to Friday......
We found out that Harlan T. Bobo was playing an acoustic show at this coffee shop. We both love Harlan's cd "Too Much Love" (if you don't have it, get it, it's awesome) so we were really psyched. He did not dissapoint. Also not dissapointing was this coffee house served alcohol (well beer anyways) and we happened to be there during "happy hour" (to those that don't know what "happy hour" is, much like Mrs. Evil, who had no idea what-so-ever about "happy hour", it's a special time of the day where you get discounted drinks. I got a bunch of Bud lights at half off, awesome). The coffee house show ended at 11pm so off we went to the Buccaneer Lounge to see some cool Memphisonian punk rock. We ended up seeing several bands most notably the River City Tanlines who were pretty rockin'. On Saturday we went to a different club (Murphy's) and saw a band called the Antique Curtains, also really good.
Other notable fun stuff:
We went to Sun Records like good tourists and music fans should and our tour guide was none other than John Michael McCarthy, director/writer of "Sore Losers", a low budget rocker of a movie (starring Jack Oblivian no less with the basic plot having a bunch of hippies getting killed, can't go wrong with that!!!). And being the predictable non-thesaurused person I am, he was also amazingly nice and awesome.
Also, Stax was cool and the Memphis Zoo was cool.
So I guess that's about it. We got to see some of the cool shit Memphis has to offer in terms of underground rockin'. If I forgot anything (which I'm sure I did) I'll edit this little fucker (hey if George Lucas can update shit so can I, fortunately Greedo won't shoot first in any of my blogs).
Episode 2: Attack of the Bones coming soon!!!!!