There’s a lot of ways to become a musician. You could take out a bunch of student loans and go to some fancy shmancy university for it. You could be born into some travelling family of musicians with a whip-cracking father who beats it into you. You could snort piles of speed and sit in your garage listening to Rush records over and over again until you can play all the parts. Or you could hop trains around the country for a few years with a band of gutter-punk-cum-old-timey-musicians, playing on boxcars and street corners until your capable of knocking out the banjo part to “You are my sunshine” even when you’re full of whiskey and haven’t slept in two days.That’s (more or less) what Alynda Lee from local act Hurray for the Riff Raff did, spending ages 17-20 (or so) traveling around with The Dead Man Street Orchestra (www.myspace.com/streetorchestra), Read the rest of this entry »

Seven years ago, after moving here from Florida, I spent some weeks working at a fine-dining restaurant on Bourbon Street. I watched the place’s white-table-cloth-and-piano-jazz mood killed over-and-over by the constant stream of stumbling Yankee pukers passing outside the picture window, until finally they turned it into a sports bar called The Frat House. I went on to work at better, or at least more tolerable restaurants and bars in other more realistic parts of this city, and even managed to escape the Service Industry entirely for several years. But now as I plan my escape from New Orleans (surely I’ll return; I just need a break; god do I need a break) I find myself again tending bar on Bourbon Street.

“You need to hurry and squeeze in your three, three-hour training shifts this weekend,” said my new boss, a big burly older dude who seems mellower and more understanding than most who’ve been in charge of me. “That way you can be ready to work the big Ohio State vs. LSU game Monday.” So badly in need am I, that wading into a crowd of drunk football fans sounds absolutely desirable. Read the rest of this entry »

by Sam Winston

While the presidential primary race has gone through the roof in terms of coverage and over analysis, I thought I’d take a look ‘back’ to two of the web’s best videos (one sanctioned, the other not) from the campaigns thus far that just so happen to also belong to recent Iowa winners Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama.

“There’s no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard, only another fist.”

And “Obama Girl”. Brilliant or Terrifying?