Turns out that flophouses don’t exist any more either. Frankly the sooner I get out of the US the better. It is not like the movies. Except from the fact music is playing all the time. We managed to wangle a room at a lodging house near the train station about a bar. It was fine while I was drinking, but the thudding sounds of nu-country kept me up feeling nauseous all night. Which is probably why, when I finally did fall asleep, I was too tired to hear the door being kicked in. Indeed it took two bottles of smelling salts and a playing of Your Arsenal to finally rouse me.
“Tanya Headon. You thought you could escape?” It was Agent Turner. Still with those damned sunglasses on.
“We haven’t done anything. Leave us alone.”
“Haven’t done anything. You have a rap sheet as long as my arm, and I have pretty long arms.”
“Is that the list of all the rap artists I hate. In which case I don’t think anyone has arms that long.”
“Enough. You will tell us what you know about that space creature on the moon. You will tell us how you got hold of this alien technology. And you will tell us how you plan to utilise it in a terrorist attack.”
The first two I can’t help you with. If you call waging a war against all musicians terrorism then fine. I call it freedom fighting.”
“We will torture you.”
“I think you will find I am made of sterner stuff.”
“I can inflict unimaginable pain upon you.”
“I’ve heard a Spaceman 3 album, I know all there is to know about unimaginable pain.”
“Alternatively – we could take you to the Grand Ole Opry.”
He had me there. I was strapped down, put in the back of a specially converted ambulance and driven to Nashville. The rest is too horrific to talk about.
THE NASHVILLE TEENS – Tobacco Road
Not from Nashville. Not Teens. Not any good.
Why did the Nashville Teens exist? Well it appears that in Germany in the early sixties there was a shortage of idiotic beat combos. Apparently the German youth were too busy getting educated, working and precipitating an economic comeback to waste their time with drums and guitars. And so we filled up the clubs of Hamburg with British beat combos whose had no desire to be educated or do anything useful with their lives. Pace The Beatles, pace The Nashville Teens.
A minor German club band then until a too loud cover version of country yawner Tobacco Road propelled them into the stratosphere of the charts. And like any projectile propelled in such a manor, once Tobacco Road went out the charts, so did the Teens.
There is nothing more embarrassing than people trying to reclaim the success of their youth: so there is really nothing more embarrassing than reclaiming very minor success. The Nashville Teens are still out there gigging, well into their sixties. Still not from Nashville. Still not teens.
Still I do like the line in the song when the ask for dynamite. Blowing the bastards up certainly would have been more merciful.