I wasn’t getting along with Keith Moore in the months before he was shot Uptown, so it’s strange that I would be dubbed his official biographer in the afterlife. But I had helped him put on his Noizefest the year before, had written many articles about his strange but important endeavors, and in the process Keith made sure that I knew enough (more than enough) to talk about him when he was gone — he did this to me on purpose. So when this dude Charles Anderson, who founded United for Peace in New Orleans came to me wanting to know who Keith was and why he was important, I told him everything Keith would have wanted me to (along with some opinions Keith would have fought me on, but I made sure to let Charles know Keith wouldn’t have agreed, and why). Read the rest of this entry »

These past four years, I’ve taught a class where elementary-aged public school kids learn to program beats on drum machines and pen original lyrics, plus write hilariously mean reviews of albums by New Orleans artists, which Gambit Weekly has been kind enough to publish. This teaching job’s part time nature has allowed me to, in my abundant spare time, chase my dream of becoming a professional author and freelance journalist. But this week I dumped both vocations; after seven years as a New Orleans bohemian, I finally caved and took a full-time job as assistant editor of a Metairie-based trade magazine that details the coin-operated game industry: pinball machines, video poker, crane games, etc. Read the rest of this entry »

This year, Ash Wednesday happened to fall on my 34^th birthday, which was the only reason I agreed to play at Balcony Music Club (ex-El Matador) on what is traditionally and officially the most un-fun day of the year. The other three Bywater/Marigny bands and the scruffy 60-person crowd they conjured (miraculous for Ash Wednesday) are often called “Circus People,” though I’ve yet to see most of them do any tricks, outside of playing open chords on acoustic guitars. Others call this genre of person, “hobohemians”. If they begged for money (which they don’t; they play music for free drinks and beer money) they’d be called “gutterpunks”. A hilarious friend of mine refers to this clique Read the rest of this entry »

To hear original rap songs by my young ‘Music Writing’ students, watch videos of their live performances, and to read their hilariously mean album reviews of local artists (as published in Gambit Weekly) visit myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass.

This week, my brilliant 2^nd graders at Behrman Elementary on the West Bank completed their second song of the semester (the first being their Christmas rap, which you can read about HERE). Or, almost finished it… My fault, definitely. As I’ve stated before, these kids are the best, most with-it I’ve yet taught. Many New Orleans kids I’ve worked with, even if the activity is fun, they initially project skepticism, doubt and stubbornness. I have to fight them, drag them kicking and whining toward the fun. But these Behrman kids, when we’re sitting in the cafeteria before class completing homework, they ask me “what we doin in rap class today?” and by the time we line up to walk to my room, their new verses are already half written. So different. Truly amazing.

This new song is called “Our New Year”. Because the Christmas song went so well, every time I’ve since asked them to choose a new song topic, they’ve listed the next holiday: “A Mardi Gras song!” they cheer now. Read the rest of this entry »

To any Southerner, last Krewe De Vieux Saturday felt insanely cold. Inhuman. 60-degrees at least. Later someone told me 29-degrees. My god, where am I?

I felt cold on the inside as well, this being the first Mardi Gras event I’d ever attended solo, without Mizzy, my girlfriend of six-and-a-half years. We broke up finally, this New Year’s Eve. I’m unready for Mardi Gras like this. But assuming I would live, I forced myself onto my bike. Everything would be OK, I hoped. I would surely crash into some friends to distract from my woes. Pedaling past Marky Park from Bywater down to Mimi’s in the Marigny, I definitely noticed I’d forgotten my gloves, but a pint of $7.92 whiskey from Schiro’s would help combat the air, and everything else. Read the rest of this entry »

Each semester, after my students and I have written some rap songs (myspace.com/mrmichaelsclass), the second half of my ‘Music Writing’ class entails teaching them to write album reviews. Their writing is generally hilarious and mean — the kids mostly dismiss anything not fed to them via Clear Channel — but the reviews also boast some perfect snappy, laconic insights, descriptions and assertions that only kids could conjure. In a batch of reviews published by Gambit magazine in September of 2006, the kids critiqued a demo album by The BadOff, a modern yet almost imperceptibly retro, heavy guitar-rock band from New Orleans:

“They sound a hot mess to me. Their instrumentation sounds like biker boys driving down the road. I like the beat. Why? Because you can use it to make other songs. I don’t like that the beat is louder than the singer. Why? Because I would like to hear the singer’s words. The singer sounds like someone in a graveyard singing about a dead loved one. He sings like he knows how to sing, and he sings songs that you can dance to a lot. He sings like he’s been a singer for a while.”

Only now have The Bad Off finished the recordings my students mildly dogged. Their album Lady Day will be available for the first time this Sunday night, at One Eyed Jacks. Read the rest of this entry »

(Scroll down the blog a piece for ‘Bourbon Street pt.1: The Big Game’)

Following my first real shift bartending on Bourbon Street, I got canned.

Over the weekend, my new boss had rushed me through three, three-hour training sessions (pay: $20 a shift, no tips) to ready me for the surely-lucrative Ohio State vs LSU game on Monday. At the end of those long short-shifts filling beer bongs for crosseyed-drunk Ohio State meatheads — then waiting for hours into the night for my managers to cut me checks for $20 for gas money tomorrow — I then declared to my new boss, “I am ready to make some money Monday!”

“No way man,” my amnesiac boss responded. “I got bartenders been working here all year waiting for this shift. You gotta stick around here a while and earn the good shifts.”

Crappy. But not strange. Who can you really trust on Bourbon Street? This particular bar is famous for Jaeger bombs, yet uses fake Jaeger in a green plastic bottle branded with a variation on the Jaeger logo. But because I wanted to bartend Bourbon through Mardi Gras — to save up and move away from New Orleans for a while — I flowed with their b.s. Let the bad times roll. 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 »

On Christmas, we allow our goat to come inside the house. To Chauncey (Gardener, that is, named for Peter Sellers’ butler character in Being There, and because Chauncey is literally our gardener), Christmas means colored paper moving through the complex factory of his rumen guts. After we’ve torn open presents, he trots in on his little black high-heels and eats the wrapping, shreds it across the hardwood floors until the living-room bespeaks a much more abundant celebration than actually occurred.

We don’t live on a farm, but rather, in the Bywater, back by the Naval Base. Especially near train tracks, it is legal to have a goat in the city (you’ve probably seen sweet Evangeline in her diamond collar on Kerelec St, herding her Marigny dog pack). Not that we bothered to check the laws before purchasing Chauncey from a West Bank goat farm; no one in Bywater would ever bother us over such a thing. Maybe that’ll change after they build that cruise ship terminal back here… Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, my after-school ‘Music Writing’ students rocked their big Xmas presentation in the large, reverberating performance auditorium of Behrman Elementary on the West Bank. Compared to Orleans Parish schools, Behrman is great; the kids almost all meet their grade level expectations. I was recently moved to Behrman after mold shut down my former school, Craig Elementary in the Treme. Though I loved the Craig kids, too many of them, regardless of age, read and wrote at a kindergarten or pre-K level. Which is definitely parents’ fault. Kids should be semi-literate before entering kindergarten.

Anyway, with only one week to prepare, my Behrman ‘Music Writing’ students programmed the beats, wrote the lyrics and worked-out melodies for a wholly original Xmas song – which we hadn’t even time to title. Per usual, after I’d helped the kids pen the chorus, they were so excited to have something of their own to sing all together, that the remaining elements fell quickly into place. Sarajena, age 11, suggested a slowish Jamaican dancehall beat for said chorus:

Sometimes it snows for Xmas / down here in New Orleans/

But even though / it doesn’t always snow / we still know /

what Xmas means.

It’s about laughing and singing / and jingle-bells ringing

And presents unwrapped in our dreams /

It’s about giving and getting / and never forgetting

What Xmas means!

The aforementioned Sarajeni is sort of a genius, which she sort of knows – I’m very smart / and I’m into art, she rapped my first day at Behrman. Though she shares few words, barely meets my eye when we do speak, and rarely smiles (giving her a false aura of defiance that sometimes psyches me out) Sarajeni always participates in class. When I hopped over to her table to pump her up about performing for 50 or 60 parents (mostly moms), Sarajeni claimed no nervousness — logical, since today she would blend-in with the background singers, having not written her own solo rap. “I am not a rapper,” Sarajeni had already told me, eyes down. Read the rest of this entry »