MYTH AND IGNORANCE

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE: MARCH 26
Anyone who has tapped along to Country & Western music on the car radio knows Nashville. It is a small town on a flat dusty plain, maybe a dozen streets, battered black Ford pick-ups, a bunch of saloons, a couple of theaters, a few last-decade recording studios manned by over-weight white men who keep their pants up with red suspenders. We have been there, all of us, in our imaginations. A cowboy songster hopeful drops off the Greyhound bus with his guitar and heads for the Grand Ole Opry.
Or has Hollywood has been at it again - deluding us.
I am complicit with Hollywood through laziness.
Nashville is a big modern American city set in green rolling wooded hills and embraced by twelve-lane Interstate expressways.
The red brick buildings of Vanderbilt University dominate the high street. Glass and steel office blocks tower. The Grand Ole Opry is a minor also-ran.
I had imagined Vanderbilt as East Coast Ivy League. And I hadn't expected to ride ten miles from the city center to find a hotel room under $80. I will be out of here tomorrow.