Adultery Relocation Saga Part Five: We're going to Tennessee!!

I'm from just south of Nashville originally (and I moved back to Nashville from NYC a couple years before I moved out here to Seattle), so if you have more questions about it, let me know, and I'll try to be as specific as possible.

also, if Elvis lives, he most likely still lives in Memphis... other side of the state.

I hear the crime in Memphis is off the hook. We'd rather be further North anyway, closer to our fam in nyc and michigan

roxie, martin - how about jobs? A buddy of mine was saying there's an 'employee shortage' in nashville, if such a thing can be believed. He was saying that outside McDonalds there's a banner that says they're hiring and offering $7/hr, 401k, etc. This sounds too ridiculous to be true...

thanks for all the info, i appreciate it. We can't afford shit (one of the main reasons we're leaving nyc) and will have less than a grand between us to get set up, so we're looking CHEAP.

We're not afraid of rednecks - I grew up having to defend myself against gwedos every day, so hicks are no problem. Some would say we're pretty much trash already anyway. We've been known to embrace Dixie culture in that 'grass is always greener' kinda way - we Yankees so love to delude ourselves!

The live music scene is better in Nashville than Memphisto, gone are the days of the Gamblers/Oblivians/Impala at Barristers, but there are occasional bright spots at the Young Ave. Deli that get me to drive up from my near-Tupelo home -- Tortoise really tore it up last week and Yo La Tengo are coming in about a months (1st memphis show?).

Get ready to sweat.

*2nd-loudest concert I've been to (deaf for 3 days)... loudest was the Go-Go's in '84 (deaf for 4 days).

My friend Ren may be moving to Nashville this summer.

Ha ha...who, the Tenderhooks!?

I'm from Nashville, as my moniker implies. Grew up in the Belmont neighborhood. It's great, yeah, but it has gotten way pricy. Not New York expense of course (I live in Brooklyn now), but cheap living it ain't. You might still be able to find a decent house or duplex to rent in the further stretches of East Nashville. Lots of cool folks live in the south Nashville area, but even in the area between Granny White Pike and Franklin Road, rents are up a lot. As for record stores, I go to Grimeys and Great Escape when I'm in town. Phonoluxe is too fuckin' expensive.

I like Knoxville a lot, but I'm still smarting about Raven Records closing, and that was nearly a decade ago.

If I were to move back, I'd live in the sticks. Maybe out near Ashland City or something. If I were to move to Knoxville, I'd do the same thing-- I really like Maryville, on the way out to the Foothills Parkway.

Ideally we'd like to pay &700 or less a month. Knoxville?

What's Tupelo like?

No one would dream of breaking into our 1992 Pontiac Bonneville with 111,000 miles on it and an NRA sticker on the back bumper. If they do, well, i'd like to shake their hand for being so intrepid and indiscriminate.

Quiet is nice - what about jobs? i'm not above pumping gas or something while I search for a better job - right now I manage a one hour photo lab.

we're gonna be in tennesse for a few days in mid-July, so there won't be much time to look. I figure I'll check the Tennessean before we go and set up to see a few places. You've been a huge help but anything further you can do to narrow it down for us, i'd appreciate it!

My true hometown!

East Tennessee and the the outlying Nashville area definitely win the beauty contest. Memphis is poor, dirrrtay, and the crime is for reals. But it is (or I should say can be) insanely cheap to live. And it's all around cooler here. I've been here six years and some one would have to pay a handsome salary to make me move.

plus, all my friends that moved to N' ville have turned into complete douchebags.

Having lived there off and on for a good chunk of my life, I can say that Knoxville has many things to recommend it. You can browse a coupla decent bookstores, see some good shows, etc. and you're still within an hour's drive of stepping over black-bear shit in the heart of a beautiful national park. It is somewhat more conservative and sleepy than the state's other major cities, true, but at the same time the living is easy and relatively cheap, so it has traditionally drawn and kept a lot of interesting folks close to heart as well. College town, don't you know. If I were going to move back and wanted a nice cheap place in a nice neighborhood, I'd look in North Knoxville (Fountain City, etc.) or especially South Knoxville, over the river, which is where my dad still lives. West Knoxville is a waking nightmare of stripmall sprawl with a superhighway running through it and is to be avoided at all costs.

I lived in Memphis for a year. It's an interesting place, for sure, but I didn't find it a very friendly one. Rents are likely to be higher and decent jobs harder to come by there than in Knoxvegas.

a trend that more should follow

Nice to know that Raven still has a spot in the hearts of regional music geeks. It's still one of the best jobs I ever had.

Speaking of reckah sto's, if you move to Knoxville you will be a mere half-hour drive away from Roy's Records in downtown Maryville, where old vinyl goes to die and they have Hank Williams' dinette set in a glass case.

When they learn to read, ho ho ho.

Yeah that's me, Tracer.

I was always under the impression that the student and quasi-student population of Knoxville made it harder to find a job. Certainly it's not hard in Nashville to find drudgework.

Hey, I'm not gonna stick up for Nashville other than to observe that there must be something to the fact that you all notice what a bunch of pricks we are, but we barely note your existence. Nashville: the rest of Tennessee :: NYC : the rest of the country? Anyhow, I've never found people stuck up except among those out of the MBA/Harpeth Hall fancypants world. It's really easy to find friends-- go to the Working Stiff at Springwater and talk to someone, they're all nice there.

Oh, you worked there! Know Jas0n Peters?

Br14n McK3ndry, anyone? (aka MR. L1V3D0G)

difficult listening - You speak of 4L4n "Wolfgang" C0l3man, I think. He and I still keep in touch, he's teaching here in DC now. He and Livedog and I were in a noise band, I still have a ton of material on CDR and DAT lying around. Those were the days.

Now it's called "The Torch" and they cleaned it up a bit, the broadcasting department finally turned it into a training facility the way they always wanted it, from what I've heard.

Now we're all old. Life sucks.

OH MY GOD - SAM AND ANDY'S.

MASSIVE.

DESPAIR.

Oh god, Carousel. And Vick & Bill's, yeah, that's still around but never suited me as well as Gus's Good Times, where the millions of autographed photos of football players and cheap obnoxious domestic beer promos appealed to my inner ironic jockist, or something. Those fries were so good. Where else can you go to get a cheesesteak, fries, a 32 of the Blue Bull and still feel good about yourself?

We were some bored and spiteful jackasses. This past Friday I played our track "No Tight Pants" on Allyzay's radio show! The legend lives on!

Typical. (har)

Oh, you worked there! Know Jas0n Peters?

He came along a few years after I left, though I met him a few times.

I also worked at WUTK, so long ago I don't wanna say when.

Gus's may still be there, but what about Gus?

A Google search reveals this:
http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/places/knoxville.html

"Another good example of their absurd tax policy: Knoxville has a special 'entertainment tax' that was originally levied on all public musical/art performances to help pay the bonds for a local sports/music venue. A few years after levying the tax, politicians decided to *exempt* all performances at the new venue (performances with large draws), while leaving it in place on smaller performing locales. In effect, the small struggling acts are subsidizing a venue for well-established performers.

Needless to say, Knoxville doesn't get much decent music. Popular performers even steer clear of the lower-cost large venue because Knoxville has gained the reputation of a cultural wasteland."

But, really, Knoxville is a decent town, but you will earn people's eternal scorn if you don't profess to be a Vols fan. I was in disbelief when someone told me they changed their area code to 865 (which spells out V-O-L on the phone), but apparently it's true. They still get a few good shows every so often - I'll probably drive over and catch Saturday Looks Good to Me there on May 29. And the Downtown West gets a decent selection of movies.

The Metro Pulse is their free weekly. And yup, housing is cheap in East Tennessee.

The Vatican
The China King
Planet Earth
The Industry

I'm young.

For me it was --
the mercury
the neptune
some guy's house
some other guy's house

Remember the Snake Snatch, though?

Heh...don't worry, it's just an observation and nothing from my personal experience. I'm just sayin'...be warned, Mr. Adultery.

So..East Tennessee / South Knoxville then?

I'm psyched. You guys have been a big help

lee g - what's city paper? any work there? should i bother trying to find employment at The Tennessean? I've worked for Gannett before if that helps...

The Mercury Lounge I certainly remember, but not the Neptune.

The China King was a ratty Chinese restaurant on the Strip. No one I ever knew ate anything from there except once my friend T41t B34ty ordered an egg roll for the shock value of it. (This is the same guy that became ate peanut butter and mayo sandwiches on white bread, but only in front of other people.) We all went for the metal and harcore bands. The proprietors eventually created some signs that said "no slam dancing" and fixed them on the walls and ceiling with duc-tape.

The Vatican was similar, but it was a pizza place, and the pizza was actually pretty good. They had a sign in front of the Pope taking a bite of pizza, with a long stretchy bit of mozarella hanging between his mouth and the slice.

I remember the bands at both of those places feeling truly dangerous, just dark and twisted and pained. Lead singers were practically obligated to writhe on the ground and wind their mic cables around their own bodies and fuck the floor. By the time I had my own car those places were gone, though, I think. Planet Earth had more potential-record-deal type bands, and the Industry - or was it called the Underground? - was a pretty sizeable dance club. For me it was kind of the ultimate big city experience. I heard "Stigmata" by Ministry for the first time there. I was really drunk, and the entire place just started moshing as soon as it came on. It was really disorienting and my impressions of it are blurry and charged. I think I'd already had sex by then but THAT was what I thought sex was supposed to feel like.

x-post BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

The UTK football team is the Volunteers. If anyone asks you, Jesus bleeds orange.

As for clubs and bars and things of years past, I'm proud to say I was a regular at the Snatch. I lived within staggering distance and made the most of it. In fact, Jackie offered to give me the bar at one point after she had to close--not the business, just the bar, which she had stored behind her house, and may still. The Grifters played there, Jack-o-Nuts, lotsa good music and drunken hanging out. And I spent plenty of time at the Mercury, the Vatican, and China King. (I remember the guy who ran the place, Mr. Lee, was notorious for busing your half-empty beer bottle when you weren't looking, just so's you couldn't throw it and you'd have to buy a new one.) And the Branch--my mug's probably still behind the bar at the Branch. I had almost forgotten that Planet Earth ever existed; wonder what Chuck's up to now?

I have to say that bringing up all this stuff--not to mention the Vols--has not made me miss the place. Still, it's some pretty country with a decent little city right in the middle of it. If that's what you're looking for, check it out.

The Neptune was the club opened up by the Mercury owner after he had to give up on the Mercury, it was a much bigger space but in a real shit part of town, we did New Rock 90 nights there I think every Wedensday for a couple of months one summer, that taught me I never wanted to be a professional doorman/club owner/promoter for sure.

Knoxville has the highest per capita number of restaurants in America, because they do so much business during college football season that they are able to bleed revenue the rest of year and remain profitable. Esp. BBQ, tex-mex and hot wings type joints. Strangely Hooters has yet to gain a foothold on the Strip.

I used to be in the Pride of the Southland. I've played Rocky Top more times than any of you probably want to imagine. I also hate Peyton Manning (HI PEYTON, I'M THE RED ZONE, PLEASE FUCK EVERYTHING UP IN ME)

I get more strange-o feeling walking around Market Square, to be honest. There's something kind of unnatural about it. That whole part around Gay Street just feels dead and weird.

Ha, I went to Ole Miss (slagged off above), "Speed Limit 18," so I'm used to Manning worship.

1. Reveille
2. Rocky Top
3. USAF Song "Off We Go Into The Wild Blue Yonder"
4. Tennessee Waltz
5. The Stars and Stripes
6. Fight, Vols, Fight
7. Sweet Home Alabama
8. Taps

Please stop frontin' like you're old. K thx.