Nashville was as horrific as I expected. You could smell the rotten, fetid, stench of country music. People have often asked me how something which is composed of sound can have a smell. Maybe I have an advanced form of synesthesia, but to me all music stinks.
Agent Turner had me and Crispian strapped down in the back of a van on route to our final destination. I know a little about escapology, but our shackles were very professionally tightened. Left on our own for much of the journey, I managed to chat to Crispian, and make it very, very clear that this is was all his fault, and that any pain I was put through would be taken out of his wages.
“No point asking you questions now,” Agent Turner said after our transfer in Nashville. “We are taking you to a special facility in the area, perfect for prisoners like you. But before we get there I like to butter you up a bit. This afternoons round trip will take us though Chattanooga – for the Choo Choo, Union City for its Blues and of course we will allow you to stretch your legs in Memphis.”
“You fiends,” I said. And I refused to do any walking in Memphis. Just to make a point.
CHER – Walking In Memphis
This was Cher when her larynx was replaced by a voice synthesizer and a penny whistle so no wonder it is so poor. The original song was so rubbish that it was improved by being turned into a bog standard rave anthem: “I’m Raving I’m Raving”. The admission of being stark bonkers acted as a useful deterrent after all.
However, to the photofit woman, Cher. A woman who was so loathsome that her ex Sonny not only legged it from her but killed himself skiing into a tree to get away from her (and that nasty voice). Why she felt covering Mark Cohn’s tedious dirge about Tennessee rambling. Can you even see Cher wearing Blue Suede Shoes? Not to mention the trouble they would get in if it is raining. The fashion faux pas does not bear thinking about.
Realistically Cher would have known Elvis, not to mention Reverend Al Green. So her singing a hero worship song about these people seems very odd. Perhaps she is trying to remind us all how great the early sixties musicians were, and then hint to us she was one so she must be great too. No lines of this argument work as:
a) Early sixties musician were rubbish then
b) Even they were good then, they would probably be rubbish now
c) This is Cher: the human equivalent of a blow-up vinyl armchair.