You know a phenomenon has gone mainstream when it’s written up in Vanity Fair, the coffee-table bible of trends and tastes from high to low. And so it goes with “sissy rap,” which was the subject of an award-winning Gambit cover story by Alison Fensterstock in 2008 — and is now immortalized in VF under the headline “New Orleans Sissy Bounce: Rap Goes Drag.” The article, by Brett Berk, begins:

You do not need to spend much time in New Orleans to realize that it occupies a unique position within the pantheon of American cities. As different from similar-sized towns like Pittsburgh as a coyote is from a mound of cottage cheese, the Big Easy is wholly it’s own scrappy, disheveled self (and I mean that as a compliment).

Berk goes on to profile the biggest New Orleans sissy rappers, including Katey Red (who tells him “It’s not sissy bounce. It’s Bounce music. It’s just sissies doing it”), Sissy Nobby, Big Freedia and Vockah Redu.

Whatever you (or Katey) want to call it, this seems to be the season of the sissy. Vockah is also on the cover of this month’s Antigravity magazine, and a clutch of New Orleans rappers (sissy and otherwise) will be appearing at the New Orleans Bounce Showcase at South by Southwest Mar. 20. Then, on April 22, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art will present Where They At: New Orleans Bounce and Hip-Hop in Words and Pictures, an exhibit curated by Fensterstock and Aubrey Edwards, which will go on for most of the summer and have a satellite exhibition at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

In the meantime, don’t miss the Vanity Fair story, which reveals something truly interesting: Katey Red is starting her own marching band, which we hope is rehearsed and ready for next Mardi Gras.

Drew Pierson of the Shreveport Times brings us this story, which is… which is… Well, maybe we should just let Pierson go ahead and explain it:

The Bossier Parish sheriff’s office is launching a program called “Operation Exodus,” a policing plan for an end-of-the-world scenario involving a mostly white group of ex-police volunteers and a .50-caliber machine gun, inspired in part from the Book of Exodus in the Bible.

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“The buck stops with Larry Deen,” said Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen. “The liability stops with Larry Deen. I am the chief law enforcement officer in this parish, and it is incumbent upon me protect all of the people in it.”

Curious, I went to the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Web site to learn more about Larry Deen, and was fortunate enough to find an actual video of a training session for Operation Exodus. The video of the training exercise can be found here, but here are a couple of screencaps:

So what are these fellows doing, exactly? It sounds fairly … well, militia-y. But it’s not. Back to Pierson’s story:

These volunteers will be armed by the sheriff’s office, using, among other things, shotguns, riot shields and batons. The members are mostly white men. Five are black. Women involved will only be used in “support roles,” Deen said, which indicated non-combat activity. One of their first official training sessions was Feb. 20 when they learned basic hand-to-hand combat techniques.

Deen said he was not creating a militia.

Sheriff’s office deputies stressed the program would not cost much. Because weapons, such as a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on something the sheriff’s office calls “the war wagon,” already have been purchased, the cost associated with the program would only be training and uniforms volunteers must wear, costing about $4,500 total.

Okay. Now you know — if you’re up in Shreveport and you see a bunch of citizen volunteers in paramilitary uniforms and riot gear, along with a .50 caliber machine gun, you’ll know it’s not a militia. It’s just … this paramilitary, hand-to-hand combat, machine-gun equipped non-militia thing.

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New Orleans is as big a bicycle city as they come in the United States. Thanks to it being almost completely flat, you can make it from A to B anywhere in the city on a bike in about 20 minutes. But New Orleans ain’t got NOTHING on Amsterdam. They have dedicated bike lanes throughout the city as well as lights for bikers. For each resident, there’s an equal number of bikes.

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Funny, then, that out of the million-plus bikes I came across in my three days there, the one above was one of them. I dunno, maybe it’s because 60% of the Netherlands is under sea level and they can relate. Maybe it’s because if you trade coffeeshops for jazz pubs, the two cities are almost identical (cept for the whole Nordic thing, which the women there pull off exceedingly well and is all but non-existent down here). Regardless, it was nice to see a slice of home while abroad.

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Oh, and then there was this bike, which defies all explanation (count the number of seats):

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Matt Gone, former New Orleans resident (and worker at Coop’s Place in the Quarter) is profiled today on the cover of Portland, Ore.’s Willamette Week. Gone, who is tattooed over 98 percent of his body, will have his corpus featured prominently in the Portland Art Museum’s new exhibit, Marking Portland: The Art of Tattoo. From the interview:

Why’d you decide to come to Portland?

This was the place to go with a facial tattoo.

Huh?

Friends, portrayal in the media, gut feeling. This would be the place that has face tattoos, ’cause my boss wouldn’t let me get them in New Orleans. I thought Portland would be the place I’d have more success in getting a new job and having some kind of life with facial tattoos. My employer supports them; he doesn’t care.

I know facial tattoos are probably an impediment to career advancement at Whitney Bank, but … Coop’s? Really?

The Washington Post reports what it calls a “rare and historic moment” in the jazz world:

Except in their living room back home in New Orleans, there have been only a few times when the entire Marsalis family has gathered in one spot to make music together. On Monday, Ellis Marsalis — the father and guiding spirit of America’s first family of jazz — and his four music-playing sons will appear at the Kennedy Center for their first joint appearance in Washington.

The elder Marsalis will be presented a Lifetime Achievement Award at the fifth annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. Then he’ll get to work. Still very much an active musician at 74, Marsalis will share the stage with sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason, along with special appearances by Billy Taylor and Harry Connick Jr. A fifth Marsalis son, Ellis Marsalis III, will read two poems he’s written for the occasion.

What a great event … just wish it was here, at the Mahalia Jackson Theatre.

And they’re not the only hometown folks who’ll be at the festival:

There will be free public performances there this weekend by the ReBirth Brass Band, Trombone Shorty, Buckwheat Zydeco, trumpeters Terence Blanchard and Nicholas Payton and blues queen Irma Thomas, among other New Orleans favorites. But the event with the brightest star power will be Monday’s Marsalis family reunion at the Kennedy Center. (The concert is sold out.)

As it should be. Good luck, all.

And now it’s off to Australia!

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I was just on my way out the door when I heard the oh-so-familiar sound of Wolf Blitzer taking to Ray Nagin on CNN. For those of you that missed it, Blizter said (repeatedly) that he was impressed with the city’s handling of the NBA All-Star game last year and that New Orleans is “coming back, slowly but surely”. Not news for us in the Big Easy, but surely it can’t hurt for a national media outlet to emphasize this.

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Nagin, for his part, talked about how he was assured by President Barack Obama (It sounds sweeter the more you say it. President Barack Obama.) that New Orleans will be rebuilt and that he will follow through on the “broken promises” of the Bush Administration (that was also noted on the new White House Web site). Read the rest of this entry »

Over the years, whenever I’ve urged friends to attend “concerts” by Los Angeles-via-St. Bernard Parish performer, Imagine “the” Band, I’ve always prefaced with, “Maybe the third time you see it you don’t laugh as hard, but the first time, it blasts your mind.” This January 14^th however (days before driving back home to New Orleans after two weeks of near-fruitless job hunting in Austin) I caught Imagine “the” Band (aka E.P., aka Eric Pierson, aka Egos Personos) for about the 12^th time in my life, at Beauty Bar in Austin, and I admit to laughing as if I’d never seen his shtick before.

Opening the show were Focus Group, a good instrumental indy-rock band with electronics, trombone, and more heart, spirit and fire than many of the Austin bands I’ve seen these past two weeks. This show’s closers, Frantic Clam, also rocked, though both bands still lacked some essential fire or edge. Even the best Austin rock bands I’ve seen (and most have been technically “good,” if not interesting) suffer the same near-blandness. I think the problem – which is probably not a problem for most rock fans – is that Austin’s bands seem to lack any Black music influence. Not that every band has to have roots in Motown or hip-hop, but aside from Austin’s T-Bird and the Breaks, I’ve heard nothing but pure white sounds on 6^th Street. I thought indy-rockers at least dug Prince.

After Focus Group came E.P., who’s been repping this Imagine “the” Band concept for, amazingly, over 10 years now. When I long ago interviewed E.P. for OffBeat (before he lost both his St Bernard home and his marriage to Katrina and so left for L.A.) he explained that he’d had all these great, funny songs written, but couldn’t find a backing band. So he donned a wetsuit and a headset and just starting performing his songs alone, a capella, while interacting with an imaginary band. At one point in the Beauty Bar show, E.P. struggled on the ground with a playful bandmate who was getting too rough: “Hey man! Lay off!” E.P. shouted, half-nelsoning himself, “I thought we worked this out in the bus back in Philly!” Then “they” got back up and busted into “Knife Fight.”

The fun, smiling crowd at Beauty Bar (trendy haircuts and tight clothes be damned, Austin people are super nice, like in New Orleans) reacted in the universally typical way: seeing E.P. up there jumping around sweating in his wetsuit alone, half the attendees crowd around. Within 15 seconds most walk away, unable to understand the long silences that make up E.P.’s “bandmates” “solos.” Ten minutes in though, everyone’s back at the stage-front laughing and bobbing along to a beat that isn’t there.

“This next song is called ‘Track 13’!” E.P. announces, then directs the soundman to turn up the tracks in his headphones (spoiler alert: the in-jack on E.P.’s headphones is tucked into his underwear; nor did I spot a soundman at Beauty Bar). E.P. crouches, ready to rock, then… “Wait, soundman. I said ‘Track 13’” E.P. crouches, waits. “Oh man you know what?” he slaps his forehead, “Soundman I’m sorry, it’s called ‘Track 13’ but it’s actually number nine on the CD. Sorry dude.”

Do yourself a favor and check E.P.’s myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/egospersonos

It may be a cold, rainy Monday night in London but people all over the city are excited about what is to happen tomorrow in Washington DC.  Well, maybe not people ALL over the city - but definitely three taxi drivers, two advertising execs, a United flight attendant and two guys at a sporting goods shop in Fulham.  There is an energy around London that I can, with relative certainty, say was not here when Bush took office.

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The Lexi Theatre (up the street from where I am staying this week) is broadcasting inauguration coverage live from 8pm tomorrow night.  Tickets have been sold-out since Saturday.  The advertising agency my friends work for is tuning into the festivities first thing tomorrow and will keep their business television on Obamamania all day (plus providing snacks and doilies in red, white and blue). Craigslist London boasts of the American Expat Meet-Up group and their inauguration party for over 4,000 people.  Madame Tussauds is unveiling their wax figure of Obama tomorrow and Democrats Abroad’s Inaugural Ball at the Royal Lancaster Hotel is sold out.

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Whatever your politics, one thing is clear: in one small corner of the world, an ocean away from the United States, there are a helluva lot of people holding out hope that the change Americans have voted in is going to make the world a better place.

There are not a ton of jobs here in Austin (where I’m contemplating moving after eight amazing but tough years in New Orleans) but there are twice as many jobs as back home. I want to be a reporter. Not a music reporter; I don’t want to treat music like that. I want to report on unfamiliar things, scramble to become a quick expert on any given topic. So after several days of attending concerts here in Austin, drinking and laughing and pretty much in every way acting the same as I do at home, I started-in Monday, compiling a list of Austin publications, and editors’ email addresses.

On my second day I was called in to interview for the Lifestyles editor position at a paper 45 miles outside Austin: the type of rural area in which my wife and our pygmy goat Chauncey very much want to live. We visualize a small farm-ish place that will accommodate at least one more goat and a horse. This idyll must also be less than an hour’s drive from Austin’s concentration of famous music venues. My wife — who has a great arts job in New Orleans, and loves the Bywater’s village lifestyle — has already conceded, “I will trade the village for a horse and a baby.” Most girls would, I’d think.

Read the rest of this entry »