Well, whaddyaknow. Nashunal news. Worst rainfall in historic times befalls the Music City over the weekend. Flooded the place. Maybe I put a jinx on it. But here's the interesting thing, itself worthy of one last annotation: it's been put to music already!
More about that in a minute. Here, yesterday, is the very evacuated, very wet, and very east end of "Lower Broadway" in Nashville's downtown tourist-district mentioned in last posts. Cumberland River in background ... and foreground! To your right a couple of blocks up would be Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, and, further up a couple of more, the equally iconic Ryman Auditorium, spared any damage (I gather) to its refurbished but still-humble self. Across the river, however, its come-lately counterpart and new official home of the Grand Ole Opry, the mawkish Opryland Complex--including convention center, hotels, and amusement park (true Spamalot, if you will)--reportedly suffered the most flooding. Poetic justice there, maybe.
As for "Camelot" on the other side of town--Vanderbilt, Parthenon, etc.--it's not only high-brow, but also very high-ground. No damage that I could locate amongst the online news reports. For there's really quite a steep drop from the western "headlands" to the bottom-land around the river (you'll notice that at one point on the video I came across). It's Tennessee, after all. Hillbilly country. In a good way and all due respect.
However, while surfing the internet for news I ran across a YouTube piece that must be shared, because so much in the Music-City spirit. For if there's a tragedy in your life--usually of the boy-girl-heartbreak kind--simply write a sad and twangy song about getting drunk about it. You can think of examples immediately, I'm sure. My archetypal favorite: "There's a Tear in My Beer from Cryin' over You." But then there's the punnish "She's Actin' Single; I'm Drinkin' Doubles (for My Troubles)." Or the lyrical "Pop a Top ... Again." Oops ... a whole 'nother post, never to be written.
Anyway, a fellow identified as Michael Deppish put this video together (in apparently no time at all), chronicling the great Nashville flood of 1-2 May 2010, along with an instrumental piece (though not really Nashville-sound at all) entitled "Windows" by a band called The Album Leaf. Very much worth the watch and the listen. (Notice at 1:17 that the cops are barricading Broadway's lower reaches behind them and down off in the distance.) Here it is.
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