Best Of New Orleans Blog

Our ongoing spotlight on new music in New Orleans this week illuminates a strangely unlit place: the dark, experimental rock of I, Octopus. The four-piece outfit gigs constantly, has been around for years and seems incapable of writing a bad song. Yet it remains among the more obscure groups in the city. Why? These inspired instrumental head trips wouldn’t seem such a steep hill to climb for a region weaned on jam bands, free jazz and circuitous zydeco. (more…)

Sometimes New Orleans doesn’t feel as southern as other cities, and I am not speaking in respect to the heat but more in regards to our tea isn’t quite as sweet, or “R”’s don’t drawl and I don’t see Vera Bradley bags on every shoulder of every lady. But this Friday’s event at Canal Place always reminds me of our location in the deep south as patrons of the Sippin’ in Seersucker event are dressed to the “T” in their breathable striped attire.

I personally think that men look like handsome gentleman in seersucker suits but a good friend of mine has been known to tell men that she thinks they look like great big giant babies. Regardless of your feeling on the fabric I recommend checking out this event and dressing the part of the southern lady or gentleman. Fashion coordinated parties are always the most fun. Tickets are $35 and entertainment will be provided by Topsy Chapman’s Tribute to Dinah Washington, The Preservation Hall Hot 4 Jazz Band, and The New Orleans BINGO! Show. This event supports the Ogden Museum and light food and summer cocktails will be served.

The cute Chaiken Clothing dress shown is available online on the Saks website. Guys need a suit? Perlis sells them for $250, and it is an investment that will last you for years (my father just replaced his after 25 years, and it was still in adequate shape). And trust me- most women will think you look great, there is just one girl in town that may approach you and tell you that you look like an infant child.

When someone tags you a “scumbag” for criticizing a local institution — and then instructs you to, in less-perfumed blogspeak, consume excrement and expire — it tends to give a guy pause. For example, is the mere disapproval of so many Jazz Fest selections enough to make me a bag filled with scum, or does it take stating that opinion? I would like to think that, at the very least, I am a contemplative scumbag, capable of introspection. In that vein, I’m accompanying my complaints with something more constructive: an ongoing collection of songs from lesser-known New Orleans artists who each deserve their own moment on the main stage. And I’m dedicating this new series to Bob, the pseudo-anonymous, single-named mudslinger who convinced me that brevity and bravado are not mutually exclusive concepts.

“Trebuchet,” Chef Menteur, The Answer’s In Forgetting

Not exactly a festival band — outside of Noizefest, perhaps — but a prime example of the kind of ripe fruit to be found in the city’s fringiest musical groves. A constant, steely guitar strum à la Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” gives way to rippling electronic echoes that expand exponentially, folding back on themselves, churning, swirling into starburst drums and slowly fading away into manmade machine noise.

William Moss, the pianist better known as Billy Ding, died last Sunday evening. Moss was walking between Vaughan’s Lounge and BJ’s Lounge, two downtown taverns where he often played music and visited with neighbors, when a truck turning onto Lesseps Street bizarrely sped up and drove onto the sidewalk, striking Moss and a friend. Moss died from internal injuries at the scene; his companion was hospitalized.

Moss, 42, was the longtime proprietor of French Quarter Bicycles on Dumaine Street (now closed), and a talented boogie-woogie pianist with a dedicated local following of friends and neighbors. He gigged frequently with his band the Hot Wings on Frenchmen Street and in the Bywater.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, May 12 at St. Louis Cathedral, followed by a second line through the French Quarter and refreshments at BJ’s Lounge on the corner of Lesseps and Burgundy Streets.

Is late night t.v. too late for you?  Just in case you missed it, Jindal on Leno:

After a sodden first weekend of Jazz Fest 2008, I have few memories that did not take place in a tent or huddled under the grandstand.

Still, the Saturday Ponderosa Stomp revue was memorable - of course for the standard soul awesomeness of soul shouter Tami Lynn and for the ten-minute version of “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell that he got through before the 6:30 pm shutdown - but more so for the reliable antics of the Texas singer Roy “Is he on something?” Head. In his 60s, Head’s set is still more acrobatic and lewd than anything Britney Spears can currently muster. One particularly shining moment involved Head straddling Stomp producer Ira Padnos’s wife Sam as she played a sax solo. The best, though, was his repeated near-molestation of piano player Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural. The third time Roy leapt onto the piano bench to throw his arms around Buckwheat and aggressively snuggle him, I leaned over to my frend and said, “I hope they knew each other before this.” (more…)

On Sunday, the rain cleared in time for great sets from Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and many other acts including, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint, Michael Doucet and BeauSoleil, Cassandra Wilson and Al Green. Working though his best known material (I’m Still in Love With You, Love and Happiness), Green looked sharp in a glittery turquoise vest and rained red roses on the front row at the Congo Square Stage.

Fest-goers were unphased by rain again on Sunday at the Fair Grounds. Crocs and shrimp boots were the footwear of choice, but the crowds made the best of it.

If you kept a blue tarp, they’re still useful at Jazz Fest.

Jon Cleary was able to finish his jazzy R&B set on the Acura Stage before rain started to fall. By the end of Dr. John’s set it was a torrential downpour. Some people headed for the tents. Those who went to the Ponderosa Stomp showcase in the Blues Tent were rewarded with some great New Orleans R&B from Tami Lynn and later the frenetic James Brown-style act of Roy Hood. Others fought the rain and stuck it out for Billy Joel’s greatest hits. Still others split the difference and finished the day in the Acura showroom tent. By the time Jazz Fest pulled the plug on all stages at 6:30 there were still plenty of people braving the elements at the Fair Grounds.

Another Jazz Fest, another round of easy target practice with Quint “Redfish in a Barrel” Davis. In today’s Times-Picayune “Lagniappe” insert, Davis, the festival’s chief producer, is quoted as saying, “We have a great national lineup. … We’re different than the other kid festivals … because we’re a festival for grownups.”

Ugh. Most people who still harbor misgivings about the fest’s puzzling inertia regarding national headliners — a sideways shuffle that’s led us from Al Green, Jimmy Buffett and Widespread Panic in the early 2000s to, um, Al Green, Jimmy Buffett and Widespread Panic in 2008 — stopped voicing them years ago, once it became clear that if Davis and Co. were indeed aware that new pop and rock music had been produced outside Louisiana since the year 1990, they probably didn’t care. Now we have Davis shooting blanks at, presumably, the Bonnaroo, Coachella, Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits festivals, all of which have national lineups that make Billy Joel look like the stale, ‘80s radio relic that of course he is. (more…)

The bad news is that the soul legend Bobby “Blue” Bland isn’t going to make it to the House of Blues Saturday night for their Juke Joint Jamboree show. The night will go on almost as bluesily, though - the openers, the James Cotton Blues Band, will perform as scheduled and the gutbucket New Orleans guitarist Little Freddie King will open. If you miss James Cotton at the Fairgrounds, catch him here - Cotton has blown his harp for everyone from Muddy Waters to Janis Joplin. The good news is that Peaches Records is reopening this weekend in the part of the old Tower Records space on North Peters Street that’s not taken up by the boutique Wish. That’s right - a large, mainstream independent record store in the Quarter. We say woo.

“Dude, you’ve got to here this stuff called Kuduro. It’s like Baile Funk, but from Angola. I dj’ed with this kid who played it and he just killed it!” I’m on the phone with Jay P, aka DJ Rusty Lazer. He’s in New York for work and we’re discussing the future of our weekly Saturday dance parties at the St. Roch Tavern. The evening started out late last year wih me playing my old soul forty fives, mostly obscure New Orleans stuff. There’s only so much of that, though, and I started getting bored. That’s when I asked Jay to hop on board. “Yeah,” he said, “That would be awesome. I just bought a mixing board that let me dj off of my ipod.” (more…)

Here’s a tax day special. Both last spring and this one, I was intrigued and a little perplexed by the lawn signs stuck in the neutral grounds on Esplanade and St. Claude Avenue advertising “Joe Blakk - Income Tax help.”The Joe Blakk I know of is an old-school bounce rapper who had a local hit in 1993 with the upbeat, positive-thinking track “It Ain’t Where Ya From.” Apparently, when he’s off the mic, Blakk is also a tax professional, slinging 1099’s as effortlessly as he does rhymes. I wish I had known this before I filed - paying Uncle Sam could have been way more crunk this year.Once his busy season is over, Blakk will celebrate by taking the Congo Square stage at Jazz Fest as part of the Throw Back Jamm on Sunday, April 27. Ya heard?

Vintage
4536 Magazine Street (upstairs)
Thursdays 6 p.m. - midnight

Friday classes optional. It was a kind of unwritten rule many of us lived by, back in my days as a happy little co-ed at LSU. Thursday was the big night to go out. Fraternity mixers, drink specials and live music at the bars, etc.

But out here in the real world — inasmuch as New Orleans can be considered the real world — Fridays are mandatory. Or maybe that doesn’t apply to everyone, because lately I’ve noticed that wherever I go, Thursday nights are happening. Restaurants are packed; bars are hopping. People are out. .

However, it takes more than a hip crowd, a hot meal or a drink special to get me out on a school night these days. Still, for the past two Thursdays, I’ve been bellying up to a new bar in town, one that is exclusively a Thursday night thing. It’s called Vintage (4523 Magazine St.), the beautiful, newly renovated space above Savvy Gourmet. (more…)

by Alejandro de los Rios

There it is.

If you haven’t heard by now, the Superdome is playing host to V-Day, the 10th Anniversary of the Vagina Monologues. I could go into detail about the events today or you can read all about it in this week’s cover story. But really, you should just go Downtown and see it for yourself. It is free, after all. And if giant vaginas aren’t your thing, there is the French Quarter Fest. Really, You have no excuse to be inside right now.

Unless it’s inside this: (more…)

Trumpet has released a You Tube video for their “Forever New Orleans” campaign that is sure to do its job encouraging tourism, but will also get any local kicking their heals and eager to go straight out to French Quarter Fest this weekend and enjoy the best food, music and art in the country!