Just to add to Ms. Fensterstock’s assessment of the Happy Talk Band show at the Bingo Tent, it was one of the better shows I’ve seen. Everyone looked exhausted, drunk, crazed, or some combination thereof. Several musicians’ bags under their eyes had bags under their eyes. Yet they powered through singer/songwriter Luke Allen’s songs with a desperate intensity most befitting of the subjects of said songs. At a certain point I looked at guitarist Alex McMurray who had one of those looks on his faces and said to fellow OZ programmer the Boudin Cowboy, “Look out for McMurray. He’s either going to do the most amazing solo or bash some dude with his guitar.” Lo and behold McMurray 10 minutes later played his guitar with a ferocity of someone smashing the skulls of his worst enemy. And then there were the shirtless bearded guys in front wearing masks on the back of their heads drinking tall boy cans of Heineken dancing and singing to every word. Happy Talk Band groupies! Like most things in the Bingo Tent, it was in technicolor and then when you walked to the other stages they were in black and white. The whole show reminded me of the Royal Fingerbowl Jazzfest sets in the late 90s/early 00s when they started at 11:15 AM on the Sprint Stage and hadn’t slept the night before and you never knew what was going to happen. As the poem I am going to write about this set will go:

Confusion almost reigns
Nobody’s slept
Nobody’s sober
It’s 12:45 PM and
the fun
is just beginning

In front of a packed audience at Voodoo, Lil Wayne said,

“I’ve got 3 things to say. One, I believe in God? Do you?”

Crowd goes wild.

“Second: This is all about you. I’m nothing without you, my fans. So give it up for yourselves.”

Crowd goes crazy.

“Third, I’m registered to vote!”

Crowd goes beserk.

“Now, for this next song, all you over here (gestures right) say ‘Fuck bitches!.’ All you over here say, ‘Get money!’”

Crowd starts repeating chant except for me who has fallen over laughing.

Ah New Orleans the sacred and the profane.

Alison F. has mentioned Andre Williams in a previous entry, but I also must put in a plug for the Black Godfather. Andre Williams is not my hero, but he’s my anti hero. He does not stand for truth, justice, and the American Way. He stands for wild music, wild lives, and sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Even if he had just done his early singles in Detroit including Bacon Fat and Jailbait (“15, 16, 17 is still Jailbait!”), he would be a star in my book. If he had only written “Mustang Sally” (which he sold the rights to in order to supply – oops, can’t put hearsay in this blog) “Funky Judge”, and “Shake A Tailfeather,” he’d still be the MAN. But when he came back from homelessness and crack addiction in Chicago (now that’s cold!) to put out “Silky”, (maybe the best rock ‘n’ roll record ever) and then the country record “Red Dirt,” “The Black Godfather,” “Bait and Switch,” and “Live in Amsterdam,” his legendary status was cast in gold. But that’s not all. Louise on WWOZ started playing Silky and got in contact with him and he started coming down here. One of his best friends, Bill Lynn, lives on Franklin, so that was even more of a good reason. We started hanging out with a couple other folks from back then and I learned more about rock ‘n’ roll and rhythm and blues and what it takes to be in that world from him than I ever did from reading about Stone Temple Pilots or Fall Out Boy in Rolling Stone. He is a wise man and a survivor, and he has been through it all from Berry Gordy to Ike Turner to the Cramps to Jon Spencer. Now, when you see him, he will be elegant and charming and dirty dirty dirty. As he says, “There’s just something about me that oozes sex.’” So much so that one new years eve at Rosy’s, my date almost went off with him and it would have been ok by me. His new record with the New Orleans Hellhounds (The Morning 40 Federation with Mr. Quintron and Clint Maegden - it’s a match made on St. Claude Avenue) has the usual dedications to slutty women, slutty men, questionable controlled substances, and other fun subjects. I love the man, and I speak for those of us in the know when I say, “ALL HAIL THE BLACK GODFATHER!”

Make sure you check out the King Britt Tribute to Sister Gertrude Morgan. Sister Gertrude was one of those great New Orleans characters that make this town unlike any. She was a street preacher, painter, and musicians who, after a vision of The Holy Ghost in the late 50s, took to wearing a white wedding dress to be the bride of Jesus. Her music is gutbucket spirituals with requisite tambourine. King Britt has taken some of her original tapes and remixed them with live instruments and effects that recall some of the remix projects that Moby has done or the Tangle Eye project that engineer Steve Reynolds and producer Scott Billington put out on Rounder where they remixed Alan Lomax field recordings. King Britt’s additions give it a modern touch, but don’t mess with the deep soul of Morgan’s religious lyrics or music. And when he does it onstage, there’ll be both computers and live instruments. This project headlines the WWOZ/Soco tent 9:15 on Friday.

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 »