wihtout a trace...

So, 25 years ago I first came to the United States. It was to attend the Country Music Fanfair event in Nashville, a place perversely romanticised in my head by Robert Altman’s film of the same name, Of course, it was nothing like that.
I was looking for Geraldine Chaplin, but only found a reporter from Time magazine who was staying at the Grand Ol’ Opry Hotel which had rivers running through it. I was billeted at an out of town Days Inn which still seemed impossibly romantic, and, well, frankly, American.
My tenuous purpose for being there free and gratis was chaperoning a bunch of listeners to Radio Forth’s Barrie Country on an annual pilgrimage to the source of all things C & W.
Nashville was their Lourdes, and the sub postmistress from Fife, registered epileptic boy in his early 20’s and at least 3 visually impaired punters sought salvation through the country nation.
They craved Conway Twitty City and I desperately sought Jason Ringenberger & His Scorchers, but made do with Rodney Crowell playing for free in the city’s pedestrianised central square.
A quarter of a century later and I am watching Trace Adkins and a mightily impressive band rip up Universal Studios using what looks and sounds like a full festival sound and lighting rig.
Adkins is the latest big name turn to light up the theme park’s entertainments schedule, with MC Hammer and Pat Benatar among the recent old school attractions to get the nostalgic nods from the cognoscenti. Actually nobody seemed to care too much for Hammer’s panto routine, but thought old Pat was holding up well, giving it her well known best shot.
Trace is of a similar vintage but far more current, enjoying crossover Top 20 hits in the Billboard singles chart as well as enormously successful albums, including 2 best of compilations.
Live the music sounds like rock-lite, designed for the masses swilling Bud, Miller or Coors low calorie excuses for beer. But hell, this is a man who has been sentenced to jail (for drink driving) but never had to do the time. A 48-year-old Lousiana man who was shot flush in the chest by his second wife and lived to tell the tale. Whose drinking has got him in to tight scrapes and less than jolly japes. Yet he still sets the ladies’ hearts aflutter, and whisper it, maybe some of the men’s too.
The speakers in Monster Square are like sniper’s rifles, picking off their targets from long range.
Marie Duipuise, a French Canadian single mom relocated to Florida with her 9-year-old son Daniel, is very keen and knows the words to every song.
Her companions, John and Juan, the latter being from Panama City, are equally enthusiastic. They are charming middle aged men who look like they have line danced in the past, and make La Cage Aux Folle look like a gritty prison drama.
Trace is moving on to films now, and last year made the final of American Celebrity Apprentice. He lost out to that great British export Piers Morgan. The US equivalent of Alan Sugar? Donald Trump.
Yup. Trace Adkins – he ain’t Steve Earle but he does not appear to be Randy Travis either.

share a little time

So, Jeff Davies is showing me pictures of his family.
Lovely wife, daughter aged 20, son coming up 17, and there may have been a dog. We have never met.
All snapped smiling on the front drive of their pretty house in Central Orlando.
It has lost half its value in the past 12 months, but Jeff is obliged to show me all of this.
Obliged because his manager at West Lake Resort has determined that family is a great sales tool, and as a front line salesman he is expected to exploit his own.
We have never met, but he is showing me these pictures and giving me the back story, what his children are studying and what they aspire to be.
And Jeff tells me that he used to be a chiropractor, but time-share apparently pays better and the hours are not so long.
We have never met, and will never meet again. We do not want to own a 2 or 3 bedroomed condominium in this lakeside development, for one week a year. Or indeed every other year. We do not want to own it, or pay just $300 extra to swap it for a similar property in any of the other major tourist resorts where West Lake’s partners have identical condo.
While paying spiralling maintenance charges to keep the lawns of all these time-share properties immaculately manicured, without a blade out of place.
We do not want this. We do want tickets for the Florida theme parks at a fraction of the cost if you were to buy from any one of the hundreds of kiosks hustling a deal.
That is the sole reason for being one of the few white families in a throng of Afro American folks contemplating this tiny slice of the American dream.
We do not want the peanut butter cookies fresh out of the oven in the ‘show condo’.
They are safe in the oven gloved hands of a lady from Honduras, and are the new ‘making bread’ or ‘brewing coffee’. They smell like home. Just not our home.
But Jeff can’t let us go just yet. We have to meet his manager, a charming lady from Peru. We swap memories of the great Teofilio Cubillas, who was the real slayer of Scottish dreams at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.
We were told she came to the United States, and started out cleaning peoples’ homes.
Now she sells extra part time accommodation to those who feel such a thing is necessary.
After all, for those 51 weeks of the year you are not there, rest assured your cash is keeping the place in the style to which you are barely accustomed.
Her children are keen football fans, having gone to Germany in 2006 and booked up for South Arica next year. Sadly Peru have been as absent from the tournament for as long as the unfortunate Scots.
Equally unfortunately was the fact that we did not want anything else she was selling.
We left with what we wanted, passes for the parks, the ultimate time-share experience for those with a bellyful of reality.
Jeff joked our intransigence ensured that he could hit the golf course early. Where he could daydream about still being called doctor and making the nasty back pain go away. But clearly he didn’t want that, oh no.
Next, the wonderful world of fast lines and synthetic Mardi Gras, complete with an exotic man from Panama and his partner John.
Hasta la vista, as they say down that way.

long haul

So, the United States does have a favourable policy in respect of senior citizens, despite not giving John McCain a sniff of the Oval Office in the Presidential Election.
The cabin crew of the United flight to Washington from Heathrow must have had an average age of 58, and that was with a spritely thing in her mid 30’s on board.
Transferring through Washington Dulles, cardboard cut out Obama proclaimed there was hope, and just round the corner there were t-shirts on sale shouting “Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain and Palin”. Only in America. The reactionary regressing the intellectually repressed. Result.
En route to Florida from DC the trolley dollies were mature gay men, elegantly wafting tasteful cologne as they whizzed up and down the aisle with similarly ageless in flight delights.
Sat behind us was one Barry Pryor, who appeared to be giving a demonstration of the airline’s new policy of allowing cell phones to be used during the taxi process.
“Yeah man, you would not believe what happened when I walked into the rest rooms at the airport this morning,” roared Barry to his unknown acquantance. “I found this fucking titanium bracelet, man, with five freakin’ huge diamonds set in it,” he said with all the authority of the buyer at Tiffany’s.
Barry looked like Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy on a good day or Lenny from Strange Days on a bad one. He had a black and green ring through each ear lobe, and seemed a generous type.
“I could sell this thing and buy you a freakin’ car,” he enthused to his next caller. That this could have been a family heirloom or prized anniversary gift which happened on the floor of Minneapolis airport’s toilet did not trouble Barry. To be fair to him he was nice to children, or specifically my 6 year old youngest one who kept asking him why there were so many lakes in the Orlando area as he looked out over Central Florida on the approach to an interesting landing in 40mph cross winds.
Barry and his booty disappeared in the direction of the shuttle bus. I did not see his morals.
On to the Clarion Hotel on Universal Boulevard, marching to the beat of holidaying college bands from the northern states soaking up the sunshine for spring break.
For the past two years visitor numbers have been down, and there is a hint of desperation in the air over the theme parks.
Universal is making a major investment in a Harry Potter attraction, with cranes towering over the ramparts of Hogwart’s behind the ‘work in progress’ hoardings.
This year’s principal new arrival is the Simpsons Ride. If Americans don’t get irony, then the marvellously elaborate schtick putting this in the context of Krustyland, a theme park within a theme park will go over many heads this summer.
Due to open this spring but still clearly under construction is the other big investment, Hollywood Ripe Ride Rocket.
There are many offers for cheap packages to spend days at both Universal and Disney.
More tired than some of the park’s more senior attractions are taking a time-share tour, listening to a sales pitch for 3 hours in exchange for half price tickets.
If theme park crowds are falling, it is a safe bet that the queue to own a week every other year in one of these glorified holiday camps is not getting any longer either.
Tales from this bizarre JG Ballard scenario will continue on this channel….