STOP!!!  Now answer me these questions three:

What Is Your Name: Sir Dance-A-Lot

What Is Your Quest:  To go to Nashville and find great places to listen to music and dance

What Is The Average Wind Speed Of An Unladen Swallow: European Swallow - 10 meters per second. African Swallow - I don’t know. BWAAAAAAaaaaaa!!!!

You laugh now but if you think Monty Python situations don’t happen in real life, think again:

(For further information on unladen swallows see: http://style.org/unladenswallow/   For further information on how to deal with killer bunnies, see your local armory)

Ok it’s time to tell you my Top 4 places to dance in Nashville.  Whether or not you dance is irrelevant because the live music at these places are fantastic! This may change upon a return visit, but after spending a week here, I’ve narrowed down the list for those of you who love dancing, great live music, awesome venues, and skirts that twirl like the umbrellas in your Mai Tai.  

When you come to Nashville, it’s a must that you come to the Broadway strip, also known as Nash-Vegas.  At night this place turns into a quarter mile stretch of neon lights, cowboy boots, street singers and live music that makes it seem like Vegas’s drunk and inbred cousin.  Though it may not have the glitz and glamour of it’s desert counterpart and is more like the dysfunctional genetic hybrid of father/daughter mating you’d expect a Southern state to pump out, I’d choose this strip of wonder over Vegas 1,000 to 1 any day.  

This town crawls with musical talent and it’s incredibly difficult to see a bad show here. Why even Michael Jackson comes back from the dead now and again with his pal Elvis to play the occasional street show.  

Even better is that with all the live music, there are very few places that charge covers.  You can hop back and forth all night long listening to great music till your ears bleed and you start telling people bull shit stories about how that’s no different than the seven times you summited Everest.  Uphill both ways.

So here it is ladies and gentleman.  My current Top 4 live music venues to dance to in Nashville.  

My 4th Place trophy goes to BB Kings

I say 4th simply because I was tired and was with only one swing dancer when I went there. However this place has a massive dance floor and an awesome venue with two bars and a seating capacity of over 500 people.  With the great music I don’t know how a weekly dance venue hasn’t been placed here.

Only down side is there is a cover so if you’re looking for free this ain’t the place for you.  But you know with a name like BB Kings on the door, they’re gonna make sure the music they play is awesome.  

My favorite memory of this place was of an older man who was like a Santa Claus in tropical clothing dancing with his wife.  They didn’t know much, but they were a hoot.  During a dance he turned his gaze to my friend and I and started doing six shooter shots at us from an invisible belt holster like he was John Travolta trying to Stay Alive by putting down the competition.  When we finally came out and danced, he hung up his spurs realizing we actually knew what we were doing.  Bang, bang, my baby shot me down, and don’t no one pull six shooters on baby.

3rd Place goes to: Dancing at the Parthenon

If you’re looking to score favor with the gods, this is the place to go.  Being that I’m hitchhiking, I came because I really wanted to win points with Zeus for the fact that I don’t want to get a lighting bolt Fed Ex’d up my ass while out in the middle of nowhere.  Word of caution: be sure to follow the divinely inspired rules or else you may face a fate worse than a plague of locust.

Apparently Apollo’s got something against ollie’s, so it looks like the X Games won’t be coming to Nashville this year.  

Though the dance is not technically inside this to scale replica of Greece’s Parthenon, they kept it out so that they wouldn’t have to add No Lindy Flips, Swing Outs, Ass Grinding Or Brass Horn Sections to the list of don’ts and inadvertently piss off the deities and risk another Nashville flood.

Fucking Poseidon.  

This dance venue sits right next to the Parthenon in a large outdoor venue with a cement slab that they lightly cover in sand to add a degree of slipperiness that I found quite helpful.

The dance happens every Saturday throughout the Summer, so your timing is limited.  However, it is a live band every time and best of all…It’s FREE!!!  Can’t beat free.  The dancers range from a lot of beginners to a limited amount of intermediate and advanced, but even if you don’t dance, it’s a hopping place and a lot of fun.  

Despite the range of skill level I had just as much fun socializing with the locals.  I even got to a flirt with a lovely lady who looked and dressed like a well known femme fatale from a hit tv series you may have heard of called Mad Men. ‘-)

Lucky me.  Even more lucky since she’s taken me out for a few delicious meals.  How sweet people can be.  

Here’s a quick tip for all of you who decide to come here: DON’T forget to bring water or else you’ll feel like you’ve been licking a shag carpet from noon till dawn at the end of the night.  

All in all I had a great time here.  Only once did I have a problem when a beginner came up to me mid dance and stole the girl I was with asking “can I have my dance partner back please?”  He grabbed her, hauled her off and hogged her all to himself the rest of the night.  I wanted to go punch him in the face.

Everyone dances with everyone in swing jack ass!  Now hang your head in shame. 

Oh well, for every one of those, you get a lot of fun dancers who aren’t socially retarded.  After the dance is done, you can measure your sweatiness by whether or not you leave a slime trail like a slug as you walk back to the car.  Something about heat, humidity and the lack a AC.  

If this worries you, do not fear.  If you’re lucky the sprinklers will be on and you can inject yourself with 1000 cc’s of inner child and go running through them just like my host Christine and I did

Like sweet manna from Heaven if it had been pureed and turned into a liquid was that sprinkler water to us after hours of hot dancing.  Was it worth it?  Hell yes!  It’s amazingly refreshing and your car’s wonderful aroma will fare far better with water than with sweat funk.

And there you have it ladies and gentlemen.  My Top 3 and 4 picks.  Tune in tomorrow for my Top 2 picks for places to dance and listen to awesome music in Nashville. I’m off to have dinner with strangers.