Strike Up The Band

Savannah

Having dragged myself away from the competing attractions of the college radio station and Richard Branson's new reality TV show, I went out in Athens the other night and found a decent looking place with a few bands on. As it filled up with a surprisingly healthy crowd of local scenesters a Pogues CD was playing which put me in the mood for a good night. First band on was called Marriage and it was apparently their last ever gig, for reasons I couldn't quite make out. Resisting the temptation to walk around the crowd making 'marriage break up' jokes I sat back and enjoyed a decent 45 minutes of slightly shouty rock. By the time the next band finally made it on things had started to get a bit hazy as all the cheap student beer started going to my head. In fact the only thing I remember about them is that the singer had ginger hair. Suffice to say I don't think I saw the new R.E.M, but I still had a fine time.

Before leaving the city I finally gave in to my curry craving and went to an all you can eat place for an early lunch. I only realised once inside that it was vegetarian Indian food, but I gamely went up and down and had three plateloads of the stuff I normally ignore on the menus back home. It all tasted great to me but then I've been without my regular fix of Rogan Josh for four months now so it would have had to have been truly rubbish for me to turn my nose up. I had three plateloads, two naans and four glasses of Coke, and settled in for the bus journey over here to Savannah.

After a pleasant journey through the cotton fields (the crop makes the fields look like they've been snowed on) the bus stopped for five minutes at a one-horse town in the middle of nowhere. One odd guy who'd been getting off at every stop and running around the bus got off again and then just disappeared. By the time everyone realised he hadn't got back on we were already most of the way here. The driver came on the intercom and said it wasn't the first time that sort of thing had happened, and that the village's local police would probably put the crazy guy up in a cell for the night. Apparently they don't charge for it, although he'd have a 24 hour wait for the next bus. At least his bags made it all the way.

Went out last night with a couple of guys to see a blues band at a bar in town which was pretty fun. Was woken up this morning by the sound of a marching band. Heading bleary-eyed down the street I found a whole bunch of people warming up for the Veterans' Day parade, so me and a girl from the hostel decided to sit and watch it all. It went on and on and on for more than an hour, with all sorts of bands, majorettes, scouts, firefighters, fraternity brothers, the local sci-fi society (a guy was marching dressed as a Klingon - no, really) and even occasionally some actual war veterans. It was fun, although quite a change from the sort of Remembrance Sunday service we have back home. They didn't even bother with a minute's silence at 11 o'clock, but then they did have people dressed as characters from Star Trek. And you don't see that at the Cenotaph.