Having listened to more Blues than is good for anyone during the morning drive through the back roads of Missouri, I switched to Country for the afternoon . . .
The Dixie Chicks - from Dallas, this trio of ladies has put a new face on Country / Rock and managed to piss off virtually every Republican in the United States as well as solicit death threats from some "music lovers" after their lead singer "insulted" George Bush before the war began in Iraq. All she said was she was ashamed that the President of the US was from Texas. (I'm sure another 49 states in the US are very relieved he's not from their state so her comment was really pretty fair - but not for the ultra right of the US who boycotted their albums and concerts as a result - including ceremonies to burn their CDs in public places).
Anyway, this latest album of theirs, "Taking The Long Way" is excellent and thoroughly recommended to anyone driving 2,500 miles across America (the long way!)
Sheryl Crow - country / folk rock singer who is from Missouri, so very fitting for the road trip. A voice and a sound that have spanned more than 20 years in the business with a great crossover from blues to folk to country to rock. And she's hot too. And is another musician who has spoken out strongly against the Bush regime and the war on Iraq.
Townes Van Zandt - for anyone who doesn't know Townes Van Zandt then they should rush to buy his music immediately. A Texan country singer with a particular talent for melancholy and pain, Van Zandt is a troubador who sadly died in 1997 cutting short a career which has influenced many leading musicians who have since covered his work. Waiting Around to Die is an all time classic and the title alone sums up the Van Zandt approach to lyric writing. He also possessed an amazing voice which matches his lyrical output perfectly . . . . for more info on Mr. Van Zandt check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Townes_Van_Zandt
Just before leaving Missouri I succumbed to a Route 66 souvenir shop in Carterville - just outside Webb City. The owner was a pleasant enough guy initially and had even heard of Dubai - including knowing that the Burj Dubai was due soon to be the tallest building in the world - lots of points for that knowledge. BUT . . . after the initial banter died down and I had committed to a Route 66 T-shirt, he began . . .
This guy was a major Route 66 nerd. I was "told off" for not having visited a Drive In Movie Theatre from the 1950s in some tiny town somewhere which isn't even on Route 66. I was castigated for not having an official Route 66 road book with maps and history (promptly purchased on the spot) and bemoaned for using GPS SatNav to get myself around.
I then had a guided tour of his shop - which, of course, was an original gas station in the 1930s serving Route 66 traffic and which this guy had bought and was now turning into his house as well as his shop. His wife must be delighted.
To be fair to him, his passion was admirable (if not contagious), but it did raise a question for me about my journey. . .
Is it important to be absolutely faithful to the Route - or is it the "spirit" of the Route that is important?
I.e. Should I try and cover every mile and every bend of the original Mother Road to get my experience or is it simply about crossing America in a car and driving through the countryside and small towns seeing the Americana that is seldom visible?
I had begun my journey with the latter being firmly the approach - but today spent quite a bit of time tearing off the Freeway whenever I spotted the little brown "Historic Route 66" signs and spent perhaps far too much time driving narrow one lane roads through the country at 35 mph.
Some of the sights and landscapes were beautiful and some of the little towns still had some character and the old buildings from the 30s and 40s - to the extent that I found myself getting quite addicted to "authentic" Route 66. That is until I met the shopkeeper - who pushed me back to thinking that it really is about the journey across a massive country and the experience one gets while journeying across this nation.
After amassing my fair share of memorobilia, I continued to weave around small towns and creeks - including a visit to a very impressive Deli in Webb City Missouri which was built in 1931 to serve Route 66 and is still in pristine condition today. I sat at the counter in front of the original soda fountain and drank a "Lemon Phosphate" (basically fresh lemonade with soda) and took some photos of the place which was like walking into a time machine.
Then off to Kansas for a brief visit before crossing the State Line into Oklahoma and into rain and The Will Roger's Turnpike. The Will Roger's Turnpike is not apparently named after the former Labour and SDP MP in Britain, but after some American celebrity - but it took me fairly swiftly to Tulsa where I am stopping for the night after what has been a long day in the saddle - around 9 hours of driving with very few and short stops.
Tomorrow will see me cross Oklahoma and through to Texas. I have two vows - one is not to listen to depressing music in the morning, no matter how good it is and second is to avoid dining at McDonald's for the third day running.
I know I am in America, but a day without the Blues and attempting to consume something resembling a fresh green vegetable will be a good thing . . .
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
Day Four - Morning across Missouri
A slow start getting out of St. Louis and a hunt for a gas station before hitting empty.
Then off on the original road for Route 66 along Gravois Avenue / Road....
Then I-44 for a while and on to original Route 66 again.
Sounds were all Blues this morning - Mance Lipscomb, Clifton Chenier (zydeco music from New Orleans) and more Lightnin' Hopkins - plus some Willie Dixon, Roosevelt Sykes and more...
Off the beaten track and you see another America - one without Wi-fi, without Interstate Highways and one without much progress in the last 50 years.
Made a stop at a "Country Store" in the heart of Southern Missouri to get gas and take a nature break. A lot of men round here with sleeveless shirts, baseball caps and tattoos - all seamingly by the name of Earl and Floyd... And they are very scary in their pick up trucks complete with gun racks....
As you drive down Route 66 you see the villages and towns that once prospered from this rich artery until Eisenhower introduced the Interstate Highway system having been inspired by the German Autobahn system he had seen in the war. Straight, wide lines across the country making travel speedy and direct - but leaving lots of small communities without an income from gas stations, diners and motels.
Lots of great American place names in Missouri - Eureka - surely the town of constant discovery and Doolittle Missouri - a natural landing pad for the indolent were two favourites.
I notice that many towns feel the need for a strapline - some of which are so bereft of imagination it is shocking. Lebanon, Missouri is subtitled "Friendly people, friendly place".... Just like the real Lebanon in the Middle East - except this one doesn't have the Israelis leaning on it all the time....I assume the people of Lebanon, Missouri refer to themselves as "Lebanese"?
A quick stop for some McCholesterol at lunchtime outside Joplin and then it's just 18 miles to my first waypoint in Kansas - the state that has just 13 miles of Route 66 before it heads into Oklahoma.... And my road then takes me to Tulsa...
Day Three - Chicago to St Louis
After next to no sleep and a slightly thick head from WoodChuck cider mixed with Pencloxin Trihydrate and tabasco sauce . . . I was in a shaky condition when the door was knocked and my astronomically expensive breakfast arrived. . .
Judging by the price of the eggs they serve in the "W" Hotel I estimated that the full chickens must retail for around $1.7 million . . . and the pig that provided the excellent bacon would be around $2.9 million for the whole thing.
Even the coffee was priced as though it had been brought from Columbia that morning by 14 year old mountain virgins from Alta Rica . . . although to be honest it tasted like crap.
Struggling through breakfast, shower and packing saw me leave the hotel and head to the Hertz lot to pick up my gleaming Hummer which would be awaiting my arrival. WRONG!
"No Hummer in stock sir."
Bollocks.
"Would you like the smaller Hummer sir?"
No, certainly not. Do I look like a girl?
Time for some quick thinking and decision making . . . the Shelby Mustang convertible (A brute capable of devouring whole chunks of tarmac with one light touch of the pedal) or a regular Mustang hard top but with GPS Satellite Navigation . . .
For once sense grabbed a hold of me and stopped me in my tracks. The choice was simple: drive a guided missile while map reading and end up spending the rest of my days driving in circles in Alaska or rely on a computer to steer me across America in comparative safety. . .
A regular Mustang hard top in candy red was promptly delivered and after much bitching on my part about the Hummer, a mighty discount was promptly offered on the Mustang and I was off.
To be fair, the regular Mustang is a bit of a brute anyway - the difference is that the Shelby version has been convicted for GBH, while the regular Mustang has just been cautioned for being rowdy. . .
Out on to Interstate 55 which has replaced much of the original Route 66 through Illinois (although there are regular signs along the way reminding that this road is the original "Historical Route 66") and off to St Louis in Missouri.
Music for this stage was:
Back to Black - Amy Winehouse. Excellent start to the day with a 21st century take on the 60s RnB / Detroit Soul sound from a mouthy Jewish girl from London. Fantastic.
The Very Best of Boubacar Traore - the bluesman from Mali. Great rhythms settled me into the clacking sound of the tires as they ran over road seams on the highway while cruise control allowed me to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Buddha Bar IX - disc one. Cool ambient lounge sounds to take my to the South of Illinois and clear my head of all crap before arriving in . . .
Springfield, Illinois. Population 110,000. Home to two of the greatest ever Americans . . .
Abraham Lincoln and Homer Simpson.
Strangely, while there is a whole host of memorials and historical sights dedicated to Mr. Lincoln, including his original home, there is little to celebrate Springfield's other great son - Homer.
I looked high and low for Mr. S, but i guess he was out of town promoting his new movie. In the meantime, Springfield is The Simpsons. Decidedly small town with little to commend it other than the fact that it is decidedly small town and has little to commend it.
It has a feel that more rural parts of the USA have - of superficial rectitude but underlying torpitude. There is a sadness about these towns. You can't help thinking of American Beauty and how behind the neat hedges and well cut lawns there is pain and angst ruling lives of certain direction and lack of escape.
And then there are the poor - who actually number many people in America, despite the nation's wealth - with a McJob to cling on to and then shopping at 7 Eleven and collecting food stamps.
All the more depressing when you can still see by the roadside the evidence of prosperity and hope that once existed in these towns 50 years ago with brightly coloured diners and stores with glowing neon, now faded to dust colours and rust and the neon lights long broken and never replaced. But people still plant the Stars & Stripes in their gardens or on the porches and continue you to believe in the Apple Pie American Dream, although the apples are now made with artificial additives and preservatives and the pastry is made in Korea or perhaps Mexico. . .
I "dined" at the Springfield McDonald's and watched a woman in front of me order enough food to have kept me "nourished" for a week - all pure grease - and then sit down and smother everything she ordered with ketchup and mayo and launch in.
It was almost enough to put me off my lunch - but not quite. I ate my burger in silence while contemplating small town America and keeping a watchful eye on the car to make sure it didn't get ripped off while I was busy furring my arteries with McCholesterol.
St Louis was less than 100 miles and the journey was easy - aided by the rich voice of Blues legend Lightnin' Hopkins . . . which saw me cross the Mississipi and leave Illinois and enter Missouri - and St Louis, the Gateway to the West. Famous for its arch, its baseball (The St Louis Cardinals) and its beer (Anheuser Busch, makers of Bud, has its home here).
I was taken to dinner in "The Hill" - a district of St Louis which is populated by the Italian immigrant community. Immigrant district always spells good food and I was not disappointed here.
My hosts were a business associate and her family and we gathered round a table and ate one of St Louis's specialities - Toasted Ravioli.
This dish was apparently discovered by accident and involves regular meat filled ravioli being coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs then deep fried. After deep frying they are drained, dusted with parmesan and parsley and then grilled until crispy. They are then served with a marinara sauce - delicious!!!!
St Louis is a nice "clean" city with simple street layout and pleasant architecture. The locals are into beer, music, food and baseball - the last being incredibly important. Crossing through this city - "The Gateway to the West" gives a sense of anticipation for what lays ahead on the planes of Kansas and Oklahoma. . .
Next stop Tulsa - and hopefully some great music in the tradition of the Okies - and in particular JJ Cale . . .
Judging by the price of the eggs they serve in the "W" Hotel I estimated that the full chickens must retail for around $1.7 million . . . and the pig that provided the excellent bacon would be around $2.9 million for the whole thing.
Even the coffee was priced as though it had been brought from Columbia that morning by 14 year old mountain virgins from Alta Rica . . . although to be honest it tasted like crap.
Struggling through breakfast, shower and packing saw me leave the hotel and head to the Hertz lot to pick up my gleaming Hummer which would be awaiting my arrival. WRONG!
"No Hummer in stock sir."
Bollocks.
"Would you like the smaller Hummer sir?"
No, certainly not. Do I look like a girl?
Time for some quick thinking and decision making . . . the Shelby Mustang convertible (A brute capable of devouring whole chunks of tarmac with one light touch of the pedal) or a regular Mustang hard top but with GPS Satellite Navigation . . .
For once sense grabbed a hold of me and stopped me in my tracks. The choice was simple: drive a guided missile while map reading and end up spending the rest of my days driving in circles in Alaska or rely on a computer to steer me across America in comparative safety. . .
A regular Mustang hard top in candy red was promptly delivered and after much bitching on my part about the Hummer, a mighty discount was promptly offered on the Mustang and I was off.
To be fair, the regular Mustang is a bit of a brute anyway - the difference is that the Shelby version has been convicted for GBH, while the regular Mustang has just been cautioned for being rowdy. . .
Out on to Interstate 55 which has replaced much of the original Route 66 through Illinois (although there are regular signs along the way reminding that this road is the original "Historical Route 66") and off to St Louis in Missouri.
Music for this stage was:
Back to Black - Amy Winehouse. Excellent start to the day with a 21st century take on the 60s RnB / Detroit Soul sound from a mouthy Jewish girl from London. Fantastic.
The Very Best of Boubacar Traore - the bluesman from Mali. Great rhythms settled me into the clacking sound of the tires as they ran over road seams on the highway while cruise control allowed me to sit back and enjoy the ride.
Buddha Bar IX - disc one. Cool ambient lounge sounds to take my to the South of Illinois and clear my head of all crap before arriving in . . .
Springfield, Illinois. Population 110,000. Home to two of the greatest ever Americans . . .
Abraham Lincoln and Homer Simpson.
Strangely, while there is a whole host of memorials and historical sights dedicated to Mr. Lincoln, including his original home, there is little to celebrate Springfield's other great son - Homer.
I looked high and low for Mr. S, but i guess he was out of town promoting his new movie. In the meantime, Springfield is The Simpsons. Decidedly small town with little to commend it other than the fact that it is decidedly small town and has little to commend it.
It has a feel that more rural parts of the USA have - of superficial rectitude but underlying torpitude. There is a sadness about these towns. You can't help thinking of American Beauty and how behind the neat hedges and well cut lawns there is pain and angst ruling lives of certain direction and lack of escape.
And then there are the poor - who actually number many people in America, despite the nation's wealth - with a McJob to cling on to and then shopping at 7 Eleven and collecting food stamps.
All the more depressing when you can still see by the roadside the evidence of prosperity and hope that once existed in these towns 50 years ago with brightly coloured diners and stores with glowing neon, now faded to dust colours and rust and the neon lights long broken and never replaced. But people still plant the Stars & Stripes in their gardens or on the porches and continue you to believe in the Apple Pie American Dream, although the apples are now made with artificial additives and preservatives and the pastry is made in Korea or perhaps Mexico. . .
I "dined" at the Springfield McDonald's and watched a woman in front of me order enough food to have kept me "nourished" for a week - all pure grease - and then sit down and smother everything she ordered with ketchup and mayo and launch in.
It was almost enough to put me off my lunch - but not quite. I ate my burger in silence while contemplating small town America and keeping a watchful eye on the car to make sure it didn't get ripped off while I was busy furring my arteries with McCholesterol.
St Louis was less than 100 miles and the journey was easy - aided by the rich voice of Blues legend Lightnin' Hopkins . . . which saw me cross the Mississipi and leave Illinois and enter Missouri - and St Louis, the Gateway to the West. Famous for its arch, its baseball (The St Louis Cardinals) and its beer (Anheuser Busch, makers of Bud, has its home here).
I was taken to dinner in "The Hill" - a district of St Louis which is populated by the Italian immigrant community. Immigrant district always spells good food and I was not disappointed here.
My hosts were a business associate and her family and we gathered round a table and ate one of St Louis's specialities - Toasted Ravioli.
This dish was apparently discovered by accident and involves regular meat filled ravioli being coated in parmesan and breadcrumbs then deep fried. After deep frying they are drained, dusted with parmesan and parsley and then grilled until crispy. They are then served with a marinara sauce - delicious!!!!
St Louis is a nice "clean" city with simple street layout and pleasant architecture. The locals are into beer, music, food and baseball - the last being incredibly important. Crossing through this city - "The Gateway to the West" gives a sense of anticipation for what lays ahead on the planes of Kansas and Oklahoma. . .
Next stop Tulsa - and hopefully some great music in the tradition of the Okies - and in particular JJ Cale . . .
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Day Two - Movies . . . and the Blues
Eventually I woke up . . . took some more antibiotics and recalled how well they had mixed with Guiness the previous evening and resolved immediately to try the combination again.
I struggled with the concept of getting up and walking around Chicago and instead elected to watch some American TV to gauge how America is doing. After 20 minutes of Fox News, and some shopping channels I decided that America is taking too many drugs and needs to spend some time at the funny farm. How people watch TV in America is just frightening. If you have a mental age higher than four and a half then I challenge you to stay lucid after 45 minutes. . .
I moved on to movies.
A morning / afternoon of celluloid indulgence included The Sentinel (Secret Service thriller), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp excellent as usual in a great remake) and Fracture - another thriller starring Anthony Hopkins. Also very good.
Feeling much refreshed and relaxed the next step was to venture out into downtown Chicago and wander around before heading off to Buddy Guy's again for the evening Blues sessions.
Chicago is certainly one of America's architectural marvels - some stunning buildings around the centre of town flanking the Chicago river and this is the home to the world's first skyscraper built at the end of the 19th century.
The city has a pleasant feeling and the inhabitants are intensely proud of their city and all that it contains from media to music, food to fashion, art to architecture. And rightly so.
One of the city's famed foodstuffs is the Chicago version of the Hot Dog more usually associated with New York. Indeed there are Gourmet Hot Dogs in this city . . . .but they will have to wait for my next visit - my mission was the Blues.
Walking down Wabash avenue (which runs parallel to the main drag of Michigan Avenue - shopping galore), you run under the "loop" which is the raised metro line which provides much of the characteristic metalwork running above the streets in downtown and made famous in every car chase and gangster movie set here. Wabash starts fresh and nice and progressively gets more and more down market as you head towards the South Side.
As the neighbourhood starts to crumble in quality, so the character increases and the dirtier but more interesting side of urban America starts to feature. 754 Wabash Avenue is Buddy Guy's Legends club and I started in around 7.30pm - in time to catch the first set on Saturday nights which is a semi acoustic set. Tonight featured Jimmie Johnson - an old bluesman with the polka dot shirt to prove it and a voice which began slightly lower than his boots. He was accompanied by Big Dave (another one) whose girlfriend Kellie was sitting next to me at the bar.
Kellie is a designer and perhaps the only person I had yet met on this trip to the States who knew where Dubai was. Mainly because she had heard that folks were wealthy in Dubai and so was keen to hear how she could start doing business there. One of her best questions was: "Do those Arabs hate the Americans?". Nicely indicative of the black & white nature of the majority of American "thinking". She did go on to apologise for the US President (the first of many!) and promptly blamed him for all ills foreign and domestic. Not a huge surprise in predominantly democrat Chicago.
The second set was a band by the name of Stan Skibby and his Love Soldiers. The name hadn't given me cause for huge enthusuiasm in the run up to them appearing on stage, but it just goes to show that you can't read much into a name.
Stan is a genius. Full stop. And the Love Soldiers are an incredibly tight band - especially the bass player who was a knock-out. Stan is much inspired by Jimi Hendrix and played several tracks including Fire and Hey Joe. If you shut your eyes you would swear to God you were listening to Jimi at Monterey - but then if you shut your eyes you would miss Stan playing the solo to Fire with his teeth in original Hendrix style and leaping around the stage with his guitar smoking with his amazing solos.
Stan was the real deal I discovered. He came over to the bar during the last set to chat with a guy who knew him. He was wired and worried. When the guy next to me asked him how he was, he replied "I am messed up man. I got me some problems with the State and I'm real messed up. Gotta get me some money man and straighten' mysel out. I am real messed up." But on stage he was anything but messed up and played some of the best live guitar I have ever heard.
The last set was Jimmie Johnson with his band - some very cool cats with outrageous headware including a giant white Stetson for the bass player who must have weighed about 300 pounds.
Jimmie is old school, but his "2nd" guitarist, Chico, was new school and he blew the doors off the bar with the first three numbers with powerful, screaming electric blues of the kind that made Chicago famous. I sat and listened to the Blues for about 5 hours washing my throat with American WoodChuck cider and eating one of Buddy Guy's signature "You're Damn Right" burgers . . .
A couple of middle aged women hung out around the bar - on a business conference in Chicago I later learned in conversation.
One of them struck up a conversation having barged into me by accident as I was sitting minding my own business at the bar and enquired as to where I was from. When I said "Dubai" - I may as well have said Ulan Bator. She not only had never heard of the UAE, she didn't even know where the Middle East was. She then mentioned that she had been thinking of getting a passport at some point - although she had no desire to travel outside of the US. Scary stuff. And this is typical of Americans. Despite their super high technology and highly progressed way of life, many of them are blind, backward and isolated when it comes to anything beyond their borders. Indeed some people can't even stretch their brains beyond the state line. Anyway, the lady went back to her girlfriend, not before apologising for President Bush and the way I had been treated at immigration, and welcomed me to America. Hallelujah and Amen to that.
After the quantity of WoodChuck cider that I had consumed went beyond the recommended sanity levels for those taking super strength antibiotics I managed to fall outside and eventually into a cab back to the hotel. Sleep was almost instant but unfortunately ruined by a 3.30 am call from a client in Abu Dhabi (my fault for not turning off the phone) and then sleeplessness was maintained by a crowd of drunken shitheads shouting in the corridor from 4.00am to 4.30am . . .
Tomorrow -Route 66 begins in earnest with Stage 1 to St Louis...but I'll definitely be back to Chicago some time. Nice place and very good blues.
I struggled with the concept of getting up and walking around Chicago and instead elected to watch some American TV to gauge how America is doing. After 20 minutes of Fox News, and some shopping channels I decided that America is taking too many drugs and needs to spend some time at the funny farm. How people watch TV in America is just frightening. If you have a mental age higher than four and a half then I challenge you to stay lucid after 45 minutes. . .
I moved on to movies.
A morning / afternoon of celluloid indulgence included The Sentinel (Secret Service thriller), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp excellent as usual in a great remake) and Fracture - another thriller starring Anthony Hopkins. Also very good.
Feeling much refreshed and relaxed the next step was to venture out into downtown Chicago and wander around before heading off to Buddy Guy's again for the evening Blues sessions.
Chicago is certainly one of America's architectural marvels - some stunning buildings around the centre of town flanking the Chicago river and this is the home to the world's first skyscraper built at the end of the 19th century.
The city has a pleasant feeling and the inhabitants are intensely proud of their city and all that it contains from media to music, food to fashion, art to architecture. And rightly so.
One of the city's famed foodstuffs is the Chicago version of the Hot Dog more usually associated with New York. Indeed there are Gourmet Hot Dogs in this city . . . .but they will have to wait for my next visit - my mission was the Blues.
Walking down Wabash avenue (which runs parallel to the main drag of Michigan Avenue - shopping galore), you run under the "loop" which is the raised metro line which provides much of the characteristic metalwork running above the streets in downtown and made famous in every car chase and gangster movie set here. Wabash starts fresh and nice and progressively gets more and more down market as you head towards the South Side.
As the neighbourhood starts to crumble in quality, so the character increases and the dirtier but more interesting side of urban America starts to feature. 754 Wabash Avenue is Buddy Guy's Legends club and I started in around 7.30pm - in time to catch the first set on Saturday nights which is a semi acoustic set. Tonight featured Jimmie Johnson - an old bluesman with the polka dot shirt to prove it and a voice which began slightly lower than his boots. He was accompanied by Big Dave (another one) whose girlfriend Kellie was sitting next to me at the bar.
Kellie is a designer and perhaps the only person I had yet met on this trip to the States who knew where Dubai was. Mainly because she had heard that folks were wealthy in Dubai and so was keen to hear how she could start doing business there. One of her best questions was: "Do those Arabs hate the Americans?". Nicely indicative of the black & white nature of the majority of American "thinking". She did go on to apologise for the US President (the first of many!) and promptly blamed him for all ills foreign and domestic. Not a huge surprise in predominantly democrat Chicago.
The second set was a band by the name of Stan Skibby and his Love Soldiers. The name hadn't given me cause for huge enthusuiasm in the run up to them appearing on stage, but it just goes to show that you can't read much into a name.
Stan is a genius. Full stop. And the Love Soldiers are an incredibly tight band - especially the bass player who was a knock-out. Stan is much inspired by Jimi Hendrix and played several tracks including Fire and Hey Joe. If you shut your eyes you would swear to God you were listening to Jimi at Monterey - but then if you shut your eyes you would miss Stan playing the solo to Fire with his teeth in original Hendrix style and leaping around the stage with his guitar smoking with his amazing solos.
Stan was the real deal I discovered. He came over to the bar during the last set to chat with a guy who knew him. He was wired and worried. When the guy next to me asked him how he was, he replied "I am messed up man. I got me some problems with the State and I'm real messed up. Gotta get me some money man and straighten' mysel out. I am real messed up." But on stage he was anything but messed up and played some of the best live guitar I have ever heard.
The last set was Jimmie Johnson with his band - some very cool cats with outrageous headware including a giant white Stetson for the bass player who must have weighed about 300 pounds.
Jimmie is old school, but his "2nd" guitarist, Chico, was new school and he blew the doors off the bar with the first three numbers with powerful, screaming electric blues of the kind that made Chicago famous. I sat and listened to the Blues for about 5 hours washing my throat with American WoodChuck cider and eating one of Buddy Guy's signature "You're Damn Right" burgers . . .
A couple of middle aged women hung out around the bar - on a business conference in Chicago I later learned in conversation.
One of them struck up a conversation having barged into me by accident as I was sitting minding my own business at the bar and enquired as to where I was from. When I said "Dubai" - I may as well have said Ulan Bator. She not only had never heard of the UAE, she didn't even know where the Middle East was. She then mentioned that she had been thinking of getting a passport at some point - although she had no desire to travel outside of the US. Scary stuff. And this is typical of Americans. Despite their super high technology and highly progressed way of life, many of them are blind, backward and isolated when it comes to anything beyond their borders. Indeed some people can't even stretch their brains beyond the state line. Anyway, the lady went back to her girlfriend, not before apologising for President Bush and the way I had been treated at immigration, and welcomed me to America. Hallelujah and Amen to that.
After the quantity of WoodChuck cider that I had consumed went beyond the recommended sanity levels for those taking super strength antibiotics I managed to fall outside and eventually into a cab back to the hotel. Sleep was almost instant but unfortunately ruined by a 3.30 am call from a client in Abu Dhabi (my fault for not turning off the phone) and then sleeplessness was maintained by a crowd of drunken shitheads shouting in the corridor from 4.00am to 4.30am . . .
Tomorrow -Route 66 begins in earnest with Stage 1 to St Louis...but I'll definitely be back to Chicago some time. Nice place and very good blues.
Day One - Rain, planes & anglophiles
Britain is depressing - especially since introducing new laws banning smoking from EVERYWHERE . . . but flying from Britain is especially depressing . . .
My journey began with the cab dropping me at Terminal 3 at Heathrow at around 10am in the middle of a massive thunderstorm. Thanks to increased security I had to run in the pouring rain with my bags including an extra suitcase just to hold my camera equipment about 300 metres into the terminal. They also don't have an awning so no chance for a cigarette - my last having been smoked at 8am in the morning.
In Britain you can only carry on one item of handluggage - everything else must go in the hold. The ONLY country in the world to have this ridiculous rule and the reason why I was laden with an additional suitcase.
Check in took ages - and then on to the Fast Track channel. The only thing I can say about that is that I would hate to see Slow Track in action . . . and then through to scan my shoes in a seperate area. NOTE TO SELF - never fly from Britain again if possible.
I consoled myself with the fact that a steaming Starbucks and a Marlboro were just a minute or two away. Wrong!
Starbucks yes - smoking no. NOT ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE AIRPORT. Nazi, fascist, boring legislators have made it impossible now to smoke anywhere inside the terminal - not even a small horrid room full of cancerous desperados is allowed now . . . much to my extreme displeasure.
The lounge was the same old United Airlines lounge - last refurbished in 1974 and ghastly. It used to at least redeem itself with a dedicated smoking area - but alas now, this is no more....
They have also cut back on the food supplies inside and seemingly the only things on offer were celery sticks and health bars with fruit. Not good.
It was also packed and I had to sit next to the obligatory IT project manager from Sadness, Tennesee who was keen to share his opinions on his company and their latest mega project with anyone who would listen and indeed anyone within a 100 metre radius. Unfortunately for me and several hundred other passengers he had encountered an old guy who also worked for the firm. He didn't shut his mouth for nearly two hours and murderous thoughts passed through my mind on more than one occasion. Luckily for him his flight was called just before I could implement my cunning plan to stab him in the face with a celery stick and force feed him to death with "health bars".
Boarding for the flight was delayed by about 45 mins. Apparently to do with the rain which surprised me as rain is hardly a new weather phenomenon in Britain but hey - what am I going to do?
We eventually boarded and I was seated next to Homer Simpson. Unfortunately not the real one, but a similar version from California who also worked in IT (whatever I have done, I have certainly angered somebody to get two IT geeks in one day). Homer also had a chronic cough (although, sadly, not bad enough to bring about his early death before take off) and this was beginning to annoy me. But he was saved by my anger being focused on the airport / airline again when the Captain came on to announce that take-off was going to be delayed - because of the rain.
We were eventually subject to another two and three quarter hours delay sitting on the plane with a nice seven and a half hour flight to follow. Worse - Homer wanted to chat.
Having discussed beer and American politics for an hour Homer asked me how I had amassed such in-depth knowledge of American politics. Well, actually his question was: "How comes you know so much stuff about American politics and shit?". I consider myself woefully uninformed about American politics actually, but it is now evident that I am better informed than the average American voter whose expertise and interest begins and ends at beer. Scary but true.
I passed the plane journey alternating between considering my early death due to the extreme turbulence that had me actually put the seatbelt around my laptop too so as to allow me to work without fear of the laptop becoming part of the ceiling decorations and writing a long speech for a client in the UAE.
Only 16 hours without a cigarette and we landed in O'Hare airport in Chicago . . . my first time in the Windy City. Having filled out my immigration form on the plane and spotted only 19 people in front of me in the passport queue I relaxed knowing that nicotine was only minutes away.
Wrong again.
Because I am resident in the United Arab Emirates and in the course of my business travel to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran, I was singled out for special treatment and asked to wait in front of all the other passengers who looked at me as though I was a cross between the Uni Bomber and a convicted paedophile.
Eventually a man with a an IQ lower than the number of bullets in his hand gun came and escorted me to a holding area for further questions. I was with an Italian who had also been singled out for "the treatment" and we discussed our fate in my rusty Italian mixed with his comedy English. Neither of us could muster "dumbf&ck, knee jerk, fascist, racist morons with a superiority complex" in the other's language but we were both thinking it. Oh yes, we were both thinking it.
I was interrogated by a Latino immigration official who wanted to know where exactly I was going, why, when, how, with whom, where I had come from, where I would go after Chicago and so on and so on. I retained my cool using the logic that my nicotine would come more quickly that way and having weighed up that the satisfaction that I would gain from letting rip would be outweighed by the beating, the jail time and the total denial of nicotine. To be fair, the thought of being in a holding cell with Mr. Big asking me to pick up the soap in seven different languages was also a deterrant - plus I wanted to ACTUALLY start my holiday.
Nice that America's closest allies in the so-called "war on terror" are the English. The authorities at Chicago airport certainly do not fall into the camp known as "anglophiles" . . .
Once eventually cleared of immigration (without a tracking device being injected into my brain - I think) the men with guns took me to the baggage carousel which I thought was rather courteous until I realised that the fun wasn't over when the guy wouldn't give me my passport until my bags were found and then took me off to the "special" section of the customs area.
Luckily the customs area was extremely efficient and well staffed with polite and speedy individuals committed to minimising the amount of hassle and inconvenience for travellers. . .not.
One hour later - queues and unpacking and repacking EVERY last button and sock in my bag while being watched over by Dumb & Dumber and their pyschobitch sister, I was released into the United States of America. The Land of the Free.
I smoked. Vigorously and with purpose. And then I smoked again.
I got into a cab with a nice man from Eritrea (an Arab African nation on the East coast of Africa underneath Sudan). I told him my story and he laughed gently in sympathy and understanding. Then he drove like a complete lunatic to the centre of Chicago while I shut my eyes and prayed to all known Gods to deliver me from Hassan Al Schumacher in one piece.
Got to my Hotel - the swanky W Hotel Lakeshore and remembered why i don't normally stay in "W" Hotels. Everyone in the hotel including staff were ultra cool super models wearing the latest fashions and talking a language so hip I felt like an illiterate mute when I came to ask where the elevators were. Note to self #2 - stay in a Marriott and feel like an ultra suave cool meister with amazing dress sense and poise.
I felt like death having hoovered lots of antibiotics and gone without sleep for about 20 hours so and considered going straight to bed. Instead I started to look at my travel plans for the next few days and check out what to do in Chicago. Blues is one of my big interests and Chicago is the launch pad of some of the greats including, of course, Buddy Guy. Three mouse clicks later and I was out of the door and heading to Buddy Guy's Blues Club on Wabash Avenue . . .
The club was great - the real deal with a cat called Clyde on stage with his band playing raw electric blues and snarling into the microphone wearing his trilby hat and a kind of zoot suit . . .and this bar allowed smoking - indeed there were dozens of the practisers of the Black Art of Nicotine consumption proudly puffing away, drinking beer and listening to live music. A combination which has now been banned from almost all other American cities and now of course, Britain.
The crowd was a mixture of afficionados - easily spotted as one can tell that in the real world they are seriously mal-adjusted and sport strange clothing - and the typical Americans. What was interesting to note is that all young American males - almost without exception - sport bad haircuts and all young American women fall into two camps. Anorexic twigs or hippopotami.... Five vegetable and fruit portions a day are evidently being mixed with nine pitchers of beer and a bucket of fried chicken with the inevitable results.
I lasted about an hour and a half until the combination of Guiness (yes - Guiness, poured badly but still recognisable), some of the medical profession's strongest antibiotics and no sleep for 24 hours or so rendered me a cabbage and I had to leave.
A nice Pakistani taxi driver picked me up and kept me amused as he swore voraciously at everyone and everything on the journey to my hotel. I got to my room and crashed out almost instantly, waking at 4.30 am to the noise of people in the corridor about to be sick, have unwise sex and a hangover - not necessarily in that order.
I returned to sleep and dreamt of cigarettes, the blues and beer . . .
My journey began with the cab dropping me at Terminal 3 at Heathrow at around 10am in the middle of a massive thunderstorm. Thanks to increased security I had to run in the pouring rain with my bags including an extra suitcase just to hold my camera equipment about 300 metres into the terminal. They also don't have an awning so no chance for a cigarette - my last having been smoked at 8am in the morning.
In Britain you can only carry on one item of handluggage - everything else must go in the hold. The ONLY country in the world to have this ridiculous rule and the reason why I was laden with an additional suitcase.
Check in took ages - and then on to the Fast Track channel. The only thing I can say about that is that I would hate to see Slow Track in action . . . and then through to scan my shoes in a seperate area. NOTE TO SELF - never fly from Britain again if possible.
I consoled myself with the fact that a steaming Starbucks and a Marlboro were just a minute or two away. Wrong!
Starbucks yes - smoking no. NOT ANYWHERE IN THE ENTIRE AIRPORT. Nazi, fascist, boring legislators have made it impossible now to smoke anywhere inside the terminal - not even a small horrid room full of cancerous desperados is allowed now . . . much to my extreme displeasure.
The lounge was the same old United Airlines lounge - last refurbished in 1974 and ghastly. It used to at least redeem itself with a dedicated smoking area - but alas now, this is no more....
They have also cut back on the food supplies inside and seemingly the only things on offer were celery sticks and health bars with fruit. Not good.
It was also packed and I had to sit next to the obligatory IT project manager from Sadness, Tennesee who was keen to share his opinions on his company and their latest mega project with anyone who would listen and indeed anyone within a 100 metre radius. Unfortunately for me and several hundred other passengers he had encountered an old guy who also worked for the firm. He didn't shut his mouth for nearly two hours and murderous thoughts passed through my mind on more than one occasion. Luckily for him his flight was called just before I could implement my cunning plan to stab him in the face with a celery stick and force feed him to death with "health bars".
Boarding for the flight was delayed by about 45 mins. Apparently to do with the rain which surprised me as rain is hardly a new weather phenomenon in Britain but hey - what am I going to do?
We eventually boarded and I was seated next to Homer Simpson. Unfortunately not the real one, but a similar version from California who also worked in IT (whatever I have done, I have certainly angered somebody to get two IT geeks in one day). Homer also had a chronic cough (although, sadly, not bad enough to bring about his early death before take off) and this was beginning to annoy me. But he was saved by my anger being focused on the airport / airline again when the Captain came on to announce that take-off was going to be delayed - because of the rain.
We were eventually subject to another two and three quarter hours delay sitting on the plane with a nice seven and a half hour flight to follow. Worse - Homer wanted to chat.
Having discussed beer and American politics for an hour Homer asked me how I had amassed such in-depth knowledge of American politics. Well, actually his question was: "How comes you know so much stuff about American politics and shit?". I consider myself woefully uninformed about American politics actually, but it is now evident that I am better informed than the average American voter whose expertise and interest begins and ends at beer. Scary but true.
I passed the plane journey alternating between considering my early death due to the extreme turbulence that had me actually put the seatbelt around my laptop too so as to allow me to work without fear of the laptop becoming part of the ceiling decorations and writing a long speech for a client in the UAE.
Only 16 hours without a cigarette and we landed in O'Hare airport in Chicago . . . my first time in the Windy City. Having filled out my immigration form on the plane and spotted only 19 people in front of me in the passport queue I relaxed knowing that nicotine was only minutes away.
Wrong again.
Because I am resident in the United Arab Emirates and in the course of my business travel to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan and Iran, I was singled out for special treatment and asked to wait in front of all the other passengers who looked at me as though I was a cross between the Uni Bomber and a convicted paedophile.
Eventually a man with a an IQ lower than the number of bullets in his hand gun came and escorted me to a holding area for further questions. I was with an Italian who had also been singled out for "the treatment" and we discussed our fate in my rusty Italian mixed with his comedy English. Neither of us could muster "dumbf&ck, knee jerk, fascist, racist morons with a superiority complex" in the other's language but we were both thinking it. Oh yes, we were both thinking it.
I was interrogated by a Latino immigration official who wanted to know where exactly I was going, why, when, how, with whom, where I had come from, where I would go after Chicago and so on and so on. I retained my cool using the logic that my nicotine would come more quickly that way and having weighed up that the satisfaction that I would gain from letting rip would be outweighed by the beating, the jail time and the total denial of nicotine. To be fair, the thought of being in a holding cell with Mr. Big asking me to pick up the soap in seven different languages was also a deterrant - plus I wanted to ACTUALLY start my holiday.
Nice that America's closest allies in the so-called "war on terror" are the English. The authorities at Chicago airport certainly do not fall into the camp known as "anglophiles" . . .
Once eventually cleared of immigration (without a tracking device being injected into my brain - I think) the men with guns took me to the baggage carousel which I thought was rather courteous until I realised that the fun wasn't over when the guy wouldn't give me my passport until my bags were found and then took me off to the "special" section of the customs area.
Luckily the customs area was extremely efficient and well staffed with polite and speedy individuals committed to minimising the amount of hassle and inconvenience for travellers. . .not.
One hour later - queues and unpacking and repacking EVERY last button and sock in my bag while being watched over by Dumb & Dumber and their pyschobitch sister, I was released into the United States of America. The Land of the Free.
I smoked. Vigorously and with purpose. And then I smoked again.
I got into a cab with a nice man from Eritrea (an Arab African nation on the East coast of Africa underneath Sudan). I told him my story and he laughed gently in sympathy and understanding. Then he drove like a complete lunatic to the centre of Chicago while I shut my eyes and prayed to all known Gods to deliver me from Hassan Al Schumacher in one piece.
Got to my Hotel - the swanky W Hotel Lakeshore and remembered why i don't normally stay in "W" Hotels. Everyone in the hotel including staff were ultra cool super models wearing the latest fashions and talking a language so hip I felt like an illiterate mute when I came to ask where the elevators were. Note to self #2 - stay in a Marriott and feel like an ultra suave cool meister with amazing dress sense and poise.
I felt like death having hoovered lots of antibiotics and gone without sleep for about 20 hours so and considered going straight to bed. Instead I started to look at my travel plans for the next few days and check out what to do in Chicago. Blues is one of my big interests and Chicago is the launch pad of some of the greats including, of course, Buddy Guy. Three mouse clicks later and I was out of the door and heading to Buddy Guy's Blues Club on Wabash Avenue . . .
The club was great - the real deal with a cat called Clyde on stage with his band playing raw electric blues and snarling into the microphone wearing his trilby hat and a kind of zoot suit . . .and this bar allowed smoking - indeed there were dozens of the practisers of the Black Art of Nicotine consumption proudly puffing away, drinking beer and listening to live music. A combination which has now been banned from almost all other American cities and now of course, Britain.
The crowd was a mixture of afficionados - easily spotted as one can tell that in the real world they are seriously mal-adjusted and sport strange clothing - and the typical Americans. What was interesting to note is that all young American males - almost without exception - sport bad haircuts and all young American women fall into two camps. Anorexic twigs or hippopotami.... Five vegetable and fruit portions a day are evidently being mixed with nine pitchers of beer and a bucket of fried chicken with the inevitable results.
I lasted about an hour and a half until the combination of Guiness (yes - Guiness, poured badly but still recognisable), some of the medical profession's strongest antibiotics and no sleep for 24 hours or so rendered me a cabbage and I had to leave.
A nice Pakistani taxi driver picked me up and kept me amused as he swore voraciously at everyone and everything on the journey to my hotel. I got to my room and crashed out almost instantly, waking at 4.30 am to the noise of people in the corridor about to be sick, have unwise sex and a hangover - not necessarily in that order.
I returned to sleep and dreamt of cigarettes, the blues and beer . . .
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