Please click here for all Voodoo Music Experience 2008 posts.

 The countdown to the tenth annual Voodoo Music Experience has begun, and to rev up the excitement, they’ve opened up the vaults that contain a decade’s worth of performance footage. Selections from the creme de la creme of the over 700 acts that Voodoo has hosted over the years are available for viewing here. So relive your favorite show from last year (like the fan movie of Rage Against The Machine above - not an official Voodoo video), revisit the cathartic post-Katrina fest of ‘05 (footage of C. Ray riling up the crowd is available), or go waaay back and check out performances you probably completely forgot about, like a pre-diet Missy Elliott in ‘01 or Dr. John’s haunting rendition of “Indian Red,” from ‘99. Really, like you don’t already spend a bunch of time watching Internet videos at work.

Tickets to the tenth annual Voodoo Music Experience went on special pre-sale today. From 8am till 8pm Eastern time, the three-day pass to the fest - October 24-26, 2008 - will be only $100, so go snap ‘em up. Starting Monday, the three-day passes go up to $115 (okay, so it’s not so much of a deal, but you’ll feel thrifty) and the schmancy $450 Loa passes, which get you all kinds of VIP seating and premium food and drink concessions, will be available. View the lineup for Voodoo X here. 

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 »

Please click here for all Voodoo Music Fest posts.