So… Arizona. It’s nice, I guess. I went there for a meeting for three days. Sunny, dry, done.

Back to Memphis a night early to kick of “Memphis in May”… and a weekend with the ‘rents. Let the good times roll. In their inaugural visit to the Mid-South, Jennifer and I hosted my parents to a barbeque flavored rock and roll theme weekend. If you know my parents, you’d say, “makes sense.” We kicked off with a Memphis Red Birds game, sitting behind home plate (not difficult in AAA baseball), and then started to rock on Friday morning. Graceland, home of the king, was a much better experience than I had imagined. I basically knew nothing about the guy, thought he was a Las Vegas piece of crap, and wouldn’t you know it… I was wrong. Way wrong. Am I a fan of Elvis now? You bet. It also helps to follow up Graceland by a tour of Sun Studios… you know, that little place on Union Ave in Memphis that recorded rock and roll… for the first time… ever. Waiiiiiiit a second fella, how can you declare the “first recording of rock and roll ever”? Well, here’s how. Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats, that included Ike Turner, drove from Mississippi to Memphis to record some songs. The guitarist Willie Kizart had his amplifier, which was not of sturdy construction in the late 1940’s, break its speaker mounting and it had fallen into the case. Once they got to Sun Studios, they propped the speaker up in the case with newspaper, and when Sam Philips, the founder of Sun Studios heard it, he said “Record it.” Thus “Rocket 88,” the first song with a distorted electric guitar, hit vinyl shortly thereafter. (Now, if you want to make a point that there are plenty of “rock and roll” songs that don’t include distorted guitar, and therefore you dispute my claim… then I encourage you to not).

Let the weekend continue… right into some of today’s rock and roll at the Beale Street Music Festival. Three days, four stages, 100+ bands, and all around ridiculousness. That first evening we saw Cage The Elephant (not very good live), Cake (excellent live, as always), and MGMT (turns out they are from Memphis, and turns out not that great live… only having two songs doesn’t help either). It was the next night though, which really rocked when the four of us along with the newest duo into the circle, Bill and Jessica Ganus, headed up close to the front of the stage to see Mumford & Sons. The rest of Memphis got the memo as well, and a solid 40,000 people were there by the time they started. Let it be known: Mumford & Sons can put on a f*%#^@ concert. Below is a video of a new song that they had recorded only a week prior in Nashville. As we know, “This song is off our new album,” is basically a crowd killer at any concert… but, as you’ll see from the video, not so much with M&S. And they played four new songs, all to this level of energy and response from the crowd. Yeah… worth it.

We rounded out the weekend with a tour of the Gibson Guitar Factory (R&R theme), and of course with some barbeque at Rendezvous. First family visit to Memphis: success.

Fast forward 4 days… second family visit to Memphis: GO! The pregnant Kristen (holy crap, Kristen is going to have a baby) and Keith arrived on none other than Cinco de Mayo. What does that mean? You guessed it, Kristen was the designated driver! The next morning, the tacos from the night before gave Keith and I a headache… not sure why. Anyway… I won’t go into much detail, but we were once again at Graceland for a second Friday in a row, and in Sun Studios again. Good times? You bet. This time though, we took out the concert and added in the Memphis Zoo. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… the Memphis Zoo is excellent. Highlights for this zoo trip: a hyperactive dik dik, and a masturbating monkey… now it’s a party! Also, there was a massive flood... it didn't do anything except sink Arkansas, so everything turned out just fine for us.