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Interesting Weekend In West Memphis, Arkansas


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We played a Casino/Dog track place called Southland Gaming...It was very well...let's say a different ethnicity about 90% -10%:) It kinda felt like the movie 48 Hours where Nick Nolte goes into the very black club with Eddie Murphy!!! Everyone was nice but I don't think our band was right for the place as you might expect. Also the area was a bit on the seedy side. Good to be home. Hope everyone had a good 4th weekend.

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Ray, who is black, and I went into a bar downtown Augusta Ga in 1974. Ray was the only black. We weren't treated badly, but we did get some stares. As I look back, they might have thought we were a gay couple. (Not just the great friends we were.) Don't really know. Never able to rekindle that friendship since. (He lives in Denver and Now I live in one of the suburbs. I do see him from time to time. Great keyboard player.)

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I had a buddy who was african american, do admit we were followed a couple times by law enforcement. Seems they just wanted to see where we were going? His response was Yup put a black guy and white guy in a car, there has to be something bad going on or so people think. (shakes head)

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A good friend of mine with a similar car and a similar job living in a similar house in a similar neighborhood gets pulled over about 4 times as often as I do for nothing much more than to see "what's up? It looked like you were weaving a bit..."

 

Driving While Black...

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Ray' date=' who is black, and I went into a bar downtown Augusta Ga in 1974. Ray was the only black. We weren't treated badly, but we did get some stares. As I look back, they might have thought we were a gay couple. (Not just the great friends we were.) Don't really know. Never able to rekindle that friendship since. (He lives in Denver and Now I live in one of the suburbs. I do see him from time to time. Great keyboard player.) [/quote']

 

Well I hope stuff has changed in 40 years!

 

Reminds of me when I was living in Las Vegas in the late 80s. I was dating a black girl and we'd sometimes go to restaurants only to be told "it's going to be a 45 minute wait...." even though there'd be like 2 people in the place.

 

I'd get furious and start to raise a ruckus. She'd pull me aside and say "hey...let's just go somewhere else. That's just the way the world is."

 

Well, wasn't my world. Until then anyway.

 

Pretty sure Vegas has changed that attitude in the years since. But it was still a pretty segregated town with a very racist history even in those late days.

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A good friend of mine with a similar car and a similar job living in a similar house in a similar neighborhood gets pulled over about 4 times as often as I do for nothing much more than to see "what's up? It looked like you were weaving a bit..."

 

Driving While Black...

 

 

yup but look at the crime statistics by ethnicity. It's pretty easy to see why...Profiling WORKS for better or worse. The Israelis understand that and use it to their advantage and make no bones about it. Don't get me wrong, i'm not a racist I just go by statistics but then I'm very careful and aware of everything around me at all times, pack weapons everywhere I go. I'd rather be overly careful.

 

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20+ years ago I joined an all-black band that alternated weekends at a blues club in the hood of Jackson MS. At 31 I looked like Opie with a mullet and they looked liked the cast of Sanford and Son. The club was about 50/50 but occasionally the band would book into all-black clubs and I never had any trouble, same as with them in mostly white clubs. My family was not prejudiced- never ever heard a racial slur from them- but they still thought I had lost my mind.

 

In '93 we drove to Chicago to play the Blues Festival. Coming back an hour or so South of Chicago we stopped at a steakhouse but decided not to eat there on account of all the hate stares (had a wild-looking Jewish harp player with us too). I remember the bandleader saying "this is a redneck joint! I'm getting out of here!". It was the only time I ever heard him talk about racism.

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We played a Casino/Dog track place called Southland Gaming...It was very well...let's say a different ethnicity about 90% -10%:) It kinda felt like the movie 48 Hours where Nick Nolte goes into the very black club with Eddie Murphy!!! Everyone was nice but I don't think our band was right for the place as you might expect. Also the area was a bit on the seedy side. Good to be home. Hope everyone had a good 4th weekend.

 

 

 

I think know the exact place you are talking about, There was a hotel across the street from a Mexican joint where we always had dinner and the dog track was just up the street. Never went and checked the dog track out ,, typically we were at the end of a 12 hour ride on the Harley on our way to texas so it was grab some food crash out and get up and ride the next day. For sure its an interesting place prolly stayed there 20 times over the years.

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yup but look at the crime statistics by ethnicity. It's pretty easy to see why...Profiling WORKS for better or worse.
I'd have to see the statistics, because I'm pretty sure the crime rates for upper middle class minorities who live in nice neighborhoods and drive nice cars isn't any higher than it is for similar whites. So I'm not sure why they should have to put up being pulled over 5 times as often simply because of their ethnicity or why profiling those people based on their ethnicity "works"...
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I've had some very basic but always interesting gigs from just being the wrong band for the wrong crowd, which is all this is. Rock bands mixed in with pop acts, or being a rock band mixed in with a ton of hip-hop acts. It all just comes down to The Blues Brothers.

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Reminds me of the time in college that our top 40 band was hired to play a Debutant gig (high society). They hired us based on tapes and marketing at the time, but when we showed, they wanted us to play all Carolina Beach music (sort of 50's meets 60's "under the boardwalk" stuff).

We had NONE in our arsenal of songs.

As the crowd got drunker, the gig got worse.

 

One of those nights you like to forget. Oh, and on the fifth floor of a building without an elevator.

 

No quick escape!

 

D

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I haven't thought about this in years....but when I was in high school (circa 1985-86) my band was contacted by a guy who worked for a local radio station and was promoting a new battle of the bands; apparently he'd heard us at another BOTB a few months earlier and wanted us to play. It was going to be at the local convention center, and the event would be headlined with a performance by an up-and-coming national artist, so the promoter expected a pretty strong turnout. As a typical high school rock band, we jumped at the opportunity, no questions asked.

 

We get to the gig and discover that they did indeed have a good turnout for the event....probably 500+ people. And we're literally the only white folks in the place.

 

It turns out that this wasn't so much a battle of the bands, but a battle of local rappers, rapping over their own pre-recorded tracks. The headliner was an up-and-coming rapper named MC Chill. We were literally the only live band there.....and we were a bunch of high-school kids playing hair metal covers. We had no idea what to expect, and we were pretty nervous....but we said, "Hell....we're already here, and our gear is already set up. Screw it....let's just go out there and play."

 

It actually went pretty well. The crowd was mostly black kids in their teens and early twenties, and even though they weren't familiar with our material, they were still very energetic and supportive....jumping around and rocking out on air guitars and such, and cheering loudly after every song. I'm sure a lot of it was simply the novelty factor of white kids playing hard rock/metal at a rap concert....but afterward, we had tons of people coming up and telling us how much they enjoyed it. And apparently a lot of them meant it; out of the dozen or so "bands" that performed, we placed second.

 

I've played a number of "fish out of water" gigs over the years, and seen my share of gigs where the band was out of its element and totally wrong for the situation....but that one gig in high school was the only time I've ever experienced anything like *that*. Fortunately, nobody gave us any friction at all about it, and everyone ended up having a good time.

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