20th Century is definitely over

Abusive murderer and music producer Phil Spector was responsible for a lot of things you might remember from then. One of those things might be the now dominant culturally subconscious idea that it's all downhill from wherever you are. 

“I get a little angry when people say it’s bad music,” Spector said of his music while talking to Wolfe for the piece. “It has limited chord changes, and people are always saying the words are banal and why doesn’t anybody write lyrics like Cole Porter anymore, but we don’t have presidents like Lincoln anymore either.”

We need to kill the term "culture bearer"

I cringe every time I see it used. A "culture bearer" is not some separate class of person.  We're all culture bearers. All of us here participating in society together, whether we like it or not, are creating a culture together. Right now it's not a particularly healthy culture. In part this is because of our failure to understand what is happening and to whom. What's happening in Treme is a crime. But it's not just something happening to "culture bearers." It's happening to all of us.

Like the second lines that pass through the neighborhood, those who used to call Tremé home say the culture has become transient. Leaving it with no sense of community.

“All the juice, or the oxygen rather, has been sucked out of the room,” says Al Jackson, owner of the Tremé Petit Jazz Museum. “The culture, oxygen, the children, the raison d’etre that we once woke up in the morning and lived for. It’s gone.”

Jazz Vocalist John Boutté says the community was effervescent. You could hear kids playing and laughing, you’d see people talking on the steps and everyone said hello.
Today, Boutté believes he’ll never see that part of Tremé again.

“The folks aren’t there anymore and unless you bring those people back, you’ll never have that part of Tremé again,” Boutté said.

What's happened to Treme is a crime of capitalism. It is the same crime that is happening to every neighborhood to some degree. It is the same crime that is happening to most cities.  Land is hoarded by real estate speculators. Housing prices and rents are artificially inflated. Wages and benefits are stagnant for most working class people so they can no longer keep up with the escalating cost of living. People take on second jobs or part time jobs or jobs where schedules are unpredictable so their time for leisure (or "creative labor" if you prefer the more commodified term) is limited. 

Meanwhile, the aforesaid real estate speculation encourages the city to crack down on institutions and mores that might disrupt profits such as substandard lawn maintenance, corner bars, and outdoor musical performance. So not only is time for creative leisure reduced but so are the physical spaces where it formerly flourished are also taken away. Those that remain are under increasingly intrusive police surveillance which further intrudes on our social space to think and act creatively.  These are sinister processes meant to commodify basic human freedom.  Everyone has the right to be creative. Everyone has the right to spend their leisure time appreciating or conversing with, the fruits of that creativity. It is our collective creative leisure, the act of creating but also just enjoying what others create that generates authentic "creative culture." 

Despite what the oligarchs who control the extractive tourism economy would have us believe, that isn't something they can put that in a bottle and sell in a shop. They can't manufacture it at New Orleans & Co. no matter how much public money the city dumps into their hands. "Culture bearer" is a term they encourage, though, because it conjures a specific product they're already primed to profit from. It isolates a bland branded and frozen version of New Orleans Culture and limits it to something they can control.

We all bear the culture. It is ours to share, to replicate, to elaborate on, and, most crucially, to evolve. But we can't do that when the marketers, hoteliers, land speculators and the homeowners association product who is currently our mayor conspire to steal what we've already created and deny our right to continue as before.  That's what's happened to Treme. And it's going to keep happening until we recognize that a threat against a "culture bearer" is a threat against us all.  A good way to start is to dispense with using that term at all anymore. 

Times change, or do they?

Councilwoman Cantrell January 2014

New Orleans City Council canceled today's Housing and Human Needs committee meeting. * That didn't stop a massive crowd, led by a wailing brass band and Glen David Andrews, from blasting inside City Hall. District B councilwoman LaToya Cantrell second lined with the group into City Council chambers, where she handed them the mic and held an open forum.

Mayor Cantrell's Safety and Permits Department 2019

City Planning Staff says they are proposing a citywide prohibition to outdoor live entertainment to bring it in line with the determination of Safety and Permits, but it is not a "significant policy change".

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) August 13, 2019

  


Actually we should be clear just how insulting they are being about this.

New Orleans' Department of Safety and Permits has taken the position that outdoor live music and entertainment is not allowed in conjunction with ANY business in the city without a special event permit, though existing businesses with outdoor live music may be grandfathered in.

The department has determined this because one of the use standards of live entertainment says doors and windows must be closed during performances. There are no doors and windows to close outdoors, therefore no live entertainment can be held without a special event permit.

Yeah but this is the same authoritarian mayor who shrieked "that's illegal!" rather than answer legitimate questions about why the public wasn't informed about her virtual speed traps this spring so none of this should surprise anybody.  In fact we thought she got far too much credit in 2014 for making sure she was on TV giving the mic to the protesters when 1) the ordinance in question had already been withdrawn and 2) Cantrell didn't take a public position on it even then.  There has never been a time when she wasn't just a total fraud.

*No that Advocate link doesn't work. The Daily Georges crew promised they would resolve their archiving issues within a week of the papers officially merging. That hasn't happened.

Quality of life enforcement

Not really sure what the situation is with the bookstore. People are mad at them for calling the cops at all.  Maybe they shouldn't do that. But there should be some reasonable expectation that they can operate without having their entrance obstructed. Maybe they have unreasonable expectations about what is and isn't an obstruction. I really don't know what the scene was like.

One thing is for sure, though. Once NOPD shows up, they need to try harder not to shove any autistic kids to the ground and arrest them. 

Moses said Grant, who is in his early 20s, is a "floater," who plays trumpet with various bands on the corner and is well-known there: “New Orleans musicians, they practically raised this little boy.” Grant is known to be disabled, Moses said, “as we say in the city, ‘slow,'" but that he was "never irate. ... I can’t see him being aggressive."

Moses said she counted 15 police cars responding to the incident — 13 marked and two unmarked, both NOPD and Louisiana state troopers — and has video of them.

“You would think they had weapons of mass destruction the way the police were responding,” she added.

Too bad there was no kindly white homeowner nearby to offer up their lawn as an alternative performance space so this whole situation could have been avoided. 

The Year Of Enforcement

"We have to shake this image of being the Big Easy where you can do anything you want in New Orleans" -- LaToya Cantrell

That isn't all she says in this unhinged rambling video about traffic cameras, bicycle regulations and the "year of enforcement." (By the way, I thought LaToya wanted 2015 to be the Year Of Enforcement.  She really does have a thing for policing people.) LaToya has no tolerance whatsoever for nuance, subtlety or the notion of  discretion in law enforcement.  "We can't pick and choose!" about when and where to drop the hammer, she says. If you are driving even one mile over the speed limit, "That's illegal!" End of discussion. There is only force and it must be applied at maximum to everyone. LaToya pounds the table as she declares, "Cyclists will be ticketed!" 

She sounds an awful lot here like her father-in-law Magistrate Judge Harry Cantrell who has been repeatedly criticized for setting excessive bail in defiance of federal court orders meant to shut down what has amounted to a "debtor's prison."  Judge Cantrell is about as empathetic as LaToya.

Cantrell routinely refuses to set bail below $2,500, regardless of the facts of a case or a defendant’s ability to pay, the suit claims. In most cases, the judge forces defendants to seek the services of a commercial bail bondsman, which in Orleans Parish charge a non-refundable 12-percent or 13-percent fee on the total bond amount.

“We don’t go any lower than $2,500 in this court,” Cantrell told one defendant’s attorney. “This court never goes any lower than $2,500,” he said in another case. “I don’t got any lower than $2,500 on my bonds,” he said in yet another. In one instance, he told a lawyer he was going to set bond at $2,500, regardless of what information the lawyer provided.

The bail is the bail.  You can't pick and choose, right?  The law is the law and it has got to be enforced.  If you tried to slow down in the school zone but only made it down to 25 mph  instead of 24 by the time the camera saw you, well it's nice that you tried but also that's too bad. We have to enforce it. If you are playing music in the street for a crowd during a music festival, well that's nice but also "That's illegal!" LaToya's cops are gonna come and shut you down. Here's Kevin Allman on why that's a problem.

Was the street band in violation of some ordinance? Maybe. But doesn't the city have something, anything better to do than to attempt to shut down the next generation of musicians who are trying to make a buck — and making a lot of people happy in the process?

New Orleans' music culture isn't restricted to symphony halls, nightclubs or festivals sponsored by Acura and Shell. It's more organic than that, or it should be. And it's a bad look for a city that pays lip service to "culture bearers" to shut down actual culture bearers outside a multi-million dollar festival where Pitbull and Katy Perry are pulling down huge salaries.

The #CityOfYes official twitter put out some nonsense about how the police acted appropriately by eventually allowing the band to continue playing in somebody's yard because this is how you make "balance" happen or something.   But in reality all that was accomplished was pointless intimidation supposedly on behalf of a neighbor's complaint. Here's Jarvis DeBerry on why that's absurd.

Seriously, the solution that was worked out Friday night is as absurd as the decision of those unnamed residents to complain and is as absurd as the decision from the police to intervene and make the music stop. If the neighbors were bothered by the noise, then how would they be any less bothered by the noise after the band moved from a position in front of the yard to a position in the yard itself? And if they were bothered by something other than the noise, well, then, the police should have just told them to mind their business and that the band was fine.

NOPD shutting down live music in New Orleans, especially during Jazzfest, is always going to draw attention. But this goes beyond the typical NolierThanThou concern olympics over the fate of "culture bearers" whatever they are. The larger issue here is the city's increasingly authoritarian administration and law enforcement regime being brought to bear on its poorer and more vulnerable populations for what often appears to be the mere convenience of officials looking for the easiest and/or most revenue friendly cop-out solution to the problems of municipal governance.  LaToya explicitly says the problem is this "image of being the Big Easy" where people can do what they want to do. So the solution is we have to stop people from doing things.... unless they can afford to pay. Thus the Year of Enforcement also promises to be the Year of Collections. 

Uh oh is Irvin coming back?

Looks like that festival Irvin Mayfield left the country to go play is running into some weather related problems or something.

The organisers of the Soweto International Jazz Festival have cancelled the second day activities of the inaugural musical event.

“We regret to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances, today’s planned festival activities and evening concert are cancelled.”

The programme for the second day of the festival was supposed to be themed under the ‘Power of Women’ and include workshops from 10am to 4pm.

The evening concert was scheduled to feature the likes of American R&B singer Deborah Cox, Jamaica’s Kreesha Turner, New Orleans artist Yette Summer, Zamajobe Sithole, Lady Zamar and more.

All media interviews with artists were cancelled.

The festival got off to a slow start on Thursday with performances beginning several hours later than the set times. The event was moved inside the Soweto Theatre venue due to the cold weather.

There festival is supposed to be a four-day event that sees artists of different genres from around the world perform and entertain music lovers across the board.

Saturday and Sunday line-ups include performances from Charlie Wilson, Neville Brothers, Marion Meadows, Third World and Spyro Gyro, Irvin Mayfield, Gordon Chambers, Ernie Smith and Micasa among many others.

I'm trying to find out more about this Soweto International Jazz Festival. I think this is the first one although it is described here as "iconic" which is a little confusing. Most of the press I can lazily google up suggests, at the very least, that it is relatively new.  This article talks about its aspirations. 

"We want young people to see themselves represented. We want people who can afford to buy a ticket and to support local vendors to generate revenue in Soweto,” said Baynes, adding that there would be significant free tickets and discounted tickets for Soweto residents.

But the festival is aimed at the entire city – the entire planet, in fact. International Night will also feature a multigenre line-up, among them Grammy winners, including Deborah Cox, Third World, Bob James, Spyro Gyra, The Neville Brothers and, in his first performance in South Africa, R&B legend Charlie Wilson.

His first ever performance in South Africa, the legendary @ImCharlieWilson, alongside the dynamic local gospel artist @khayamthethwa will be gracing our stage this year! A tribute to Hugh Masekela and Nelson Mandela’s 100th birthday.

"We love jazz, but the economic reality of a purely jazz line-up is limited in scope. We are attempting to duplicate the New Orleans Jazz Fest, Newport Jazz Fest or Montreal Jazz Fest models,” said Baynes.

After attending an event at the Soweto Theatre last year, his plan to host a jazz fest became an imperative. His ultimate goal is “to have Pan-African, American and European music fans descending on Soweto”.

If they're trying to duplicate Jazzfest, they're going to have to be a little bit tougher about the weather.  How bad could the cold have been?  This is sweater weather, right?

Also it is difficult to discern how much of the program was actually cancelled. Some stories say "the second day," was cancelled. Some say last night was. And others suggest the whole thing is off.  According to the festival's Twitter account (33 followers) part of the slate is going to be replaced with a "jam session."

So.. if you happen to be in Soweto this evening, maybe stop by the theater to check in on Irvin. Dress warmly!

Rock and roll is a folk art form now

I don't remember where I read that recently but it sounds true. Anyway I'm glad they still make it.

"We're worried about all of it"

Solid crowd of concerned #NOLA citizens at tonight's info/action meeting re: the city's proposed security plan. pic.twitter.com/7jxwrYi4Mp

— MaCCNO (@musicculture504) February 10, 2017

Tonight I sat in on the MaCCNO community meeting in Treme to hear people's concerns about the mayor's recently unveiled $40 million "security plan" focusing primarily on the French Quarter but also affecting nightlife throughout the city.   I wrote a bit about the plan a few weeks ago.  We also talked about it on the most recent Hunkerdowncast.

The meeting was at Candlelight Lounge. There were probably between 50 and 75 people present. Among them were tour guides, bartenders, street performers, musicians, along with concerned citizens and neighbors. The mayor's office sent a representative to listen. I believe Councilman Williams sent someone also.  I took some notes. I didn't write down everything so these aren't entirely comprehensive but it's a pretty ok outline of what went on.

• MaCCNO's concerns begin with the "vagueness" of the sort-of 3 AM curfew and street sweeping activity. The worry is that it can serve as a pretext for aggressive harassment by police and/or arrest based on little or no cause outside of racial profiling.


• In a similar vein, MaCCNO expressed concern about stepped up surveillance. Cameras installed outside (or possibly inside) every bar and plugged into a network under police custody is intimidating enough on its own. Add to that the suggestion of (not clearly defined as yet) FBI cooperation in context of the current national political climate and there are even darker implications.


• MaCCNO's third major point was that the plan appeared to consist of hobby horse beefs the city has held for ages against street performers, tarot card readers, etc. lumped in opportunistically. It seems like they're using the "language of fear" (MaCCNO's words) to push through some long controversial agenda items. I had the same impression a few weeks ago. I said at the time the plan looks like what would happen if Jackie Clarkson wrote the Patriot Act.

The MaCCNO hosts had a few more things to say. After that, the floor opened to comment.  A lot of it either repeated or elaborated on what I've already noted above. Here is what I jotted down of that.

• Tour guides and tarot readers confirmed that they feel they've been targeted unfairly. Some noted that intimidation has already increased against them from the various and confusing security entities who patrol the Quarter. Some reported being asked to show permits even though permits are not required for street performers. On one occasion a Port Authority officer threatened to arrest a performer for wearing a mask. (Might have gotten the idea from the fallout over this recent protest incident but who knows.) A big part of the problem is it isn't clear which security force has the power to do what to whom under which laws. Nor is it likely the security personnel themselves understand this. The situation is ripe for abuse and intimidation generally.  MaCCNO's website has a form where you can report such incidents if you witness them.


• It was suggested that the 3AM closure rule is related to NOPD's continuing manpower issues. "There aren't enough officers to cover third shift," were the words I heard.  Sounds a bit dubious to me. But it's plausible the city believes it even if it isn't true.  A lot of dumb policy gets made because of lazy thinking about how many police are actually needed. But that's a wider scope debate.


• Another little understood aspect of the 3 AM rule is that it is intended to apply citywide. This could mean a camera on (or in) every neighborhood bar in the city.  So the centralized surveillance network could be pointed at your house. When Mitch Landrieu unveiled this plan, he bragged that, "Everything you do on Bourbon Street will be seen." What if that also means everything in your yard?

The final note was about next steps. The "plan" such as it is, isn't actually something that gets passed or rejected in one motion.  There are aspects of it that would require city ordinances and others that are implemented as budgetary choices through the mayor's office. So it isn't clear when or in what form public feedback occurs. City Council contact info was posted at the meeting. Everyone is free to offer their input that way at any time, of course. In any case, all of this is certain to factor into the municipal elections this fall.

MaCCNO representatives stressed the importance of maintaining solidarity across the various concerned parties. There are parts of the plan that affect bar owners and patrons, other parts affect artists and musicians, and still others concern those most vulnerable to police intimidation and harassment. Taken together that's a rather robust coalition. So it's important not to peel any one concern off. "Which part of the plan are we most worried about?" MaCCNO's Ethan Ellestad concluded, "We're worried about all of it."

A Half-Fast closer walk

In the years that we've lived near the parade route, there's scarcely been a Mardi Gras morning where we haven't greeted Pete Fountain and his Half-Fast Walking Club out on St. Charles Avenue.





It's certainly been a favorite of Menckles' since she moved in. Often I'll still be unshowered and on a first cup of coffee by the time they arrive. But she always rushes to be up and in costume to see them.



I think she likes to flirt with the old men.  It's how she always ends up with the good stuff.





I'm sure we'll rush out to see them again next year. But it won't be the same without Pete. 

Pete Fountain, the iconic traditional jazz clarinetist whose sweet sound and merry spirit personified New Orleans for millions of fans, died early Saturday after a decade of declining health. He was 86.

For more than half a century, Fountain loomed large over the cultural landscape of New Orleans, from music to Mardi Gras to Bourbon Street.

His lush, swinging clarinet tone was instantly identifiable with his hometown. His recordings of “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” and “Basin Street Blues” are widely considered to be among the quintessential versions. Three of his dozens of albums sold more than a half-million copies apiece.

I didn't get a picture every year. But here are some of Pete taken on recent Fat Tuesdays.

2008



2009



2010



2011



2012



These are doubloons from this year's march.  The 2016 theme, "Orange you glad it's Mardi Gras" is just a coincidence and probably doesn't haven anything to do with Trump.



Anyway, this is from that Keith Spera obit linked above.  

As a member of the Basin Street Six, his reputation as an especially hot clarinetist grew. In 1957, celebrity bandleader Lawrence Welk offered Fountain a spot in his big band. So Fountain packed up his family and moved to Los Angeles.

Every Sunday evening, ABC-TV beamed “The Lawrence Welk Show” in black-and-white to millions of living rooms. As the featured soloist, Fountain was soon one of the most famous jazz musicians in the country. Initially, he sported a receding hairline, a prominent chinstrap of a goatee, and thick-framed glasses. Welk’s people convinced him to don a toupee, ditch the glasses and tone down the goatee.

The straight-laced Welk didn’t much care for Fountain’s drinking, but couldn’t deny the mischievous young clarinetist’s talent. Even while suffering a hangover, Fountain proudly noted years later, he rose to the challenge whenever Welk called for a solo.

"He kept me sober -- damn near killed me," Fountain joked. "Every time they make rules to a guy from New Orleans, he'll break it. Instead of going to the bar and just getting a drink, I'd get a double."

RIP

  

Golden Crown

This Tuesday, we learned that Bo Dollis had passed.  That's him on the scooter in the above photo, Mardi Gras Day 2008.

WWLTV:

NEW ORLEANS - Big Chief Theodore "Bo" Dollis, who led the Wild Magnolia tribe of Mardi Gras Indians in performances around the world, has died. He was 71.

His death was announced by the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame and confirmed by his son.
Dollis masked as a Mardi Gras Indian for more than five decades.

Though he had no formal musical training, Dollis and The Wild Magnolias recorded several albums, spreading the music of the Mardi Gras Indians worldwide and featuring Dollis' distinctive voice.

He is best known to many for his signature vocals on Wild Magnolia songs including "Handa Wanda" and "New Suit." Their song "Smoke My Peace Pipe (Smoke It Right)," climbed onto the Billboard singles chart. In 1974, they released the album that introduced the recorded version of "Handa Wanda," which is now a familiar Carnival anthem.

A few things about "Carnival anthems."  If you're from New Orleans.. meaning, if you spent the especially nostalgic portion of your childhood here.. they're more accurately Carnival carols, almost a sacred kind of music tied to a holiday season.   There's a more or less standard playlist that most people can rattle off in a few minutes. The most famous recordings of these songs were all made roughly between the 1940s and 70s. The earlier ones are rock n' roll songs, the later ones are classic funk.  Each has its own distinctive quality.  None of these is more distinctive than Bo Dollis's voice.

This is from the Advocate:

A musical pioneer, Dollis expanded the reach of the Mardi Gras Indian sound by recording traditional chants and blending them with funk and rhythm-and-blues music. The Wild Magnolias performed at the first New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1970.

With Dollis as lead vocalist, the Wild Magnolias recorded several albums, including “The Wild Magnolias” in 1974 and “They Call Us Wild” in 1975.

“Bo Dollis created the soundtrack to Mardi Gras with the Mardi Gras Indian sound,” Big Chief Juan Pardo of the Gold Comanche tribe said.

Dollis may be best known for his raw vocals, exemplified in the Mardi Gras classic “Handa Wanda,” which opens with Dollis’ powerful shout.

 


This is from NOLA.com music writer Keith Spera

In the pantheon of New Orleans music's great voices, Bo Dollis' remarkable rasp, equal parts gravel and joy, ranks near the top. It is just as unmistakable, if the stylistic opposite, of Aaron Neville's delicate, fluttering falsetto.

Stanton Moore, the Galactic drummer, once observed that Dollis' voice, like those of Robert Plant and James Brown, is "rooted to the center of the earth. It's the most soulful, powerful shout that I've ever heard. It's heartbreaking and triumphant at the same time."

Before Dollis, Indian chants were already bubbling up into popular music.  Some of the titles  NOLA.com's Allison Fensterstock cites here are among the Carnival carol cannon themselves. 

By the middle of the 20^th century, the chants sung by Mardi Gras Indians in the streets of New Orleans had begun to work their way onto wax. In the mid-1950s, folklorist Samuel Charters had collected field recordings of Indians in New Orleans, later released on the Smithsonian Folkways label. In the '50s and early '60s, Danny Barker, James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and the Dixie Cups had released swinging jazz and rhythm and blues arrangements of Indian tunes like "Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing" and "Iko Iko." Earlier than all of that, Jelly Roll Morton had demonstrated Indian melodies on the piano for Alan Lomax, during Lomax's landmark, marathon Library of Congress interview sessions.

Indian tunes were making their way into popular music – though, outside of Charters' recordings captured in the field, none of them were performed by actual masking Indians. In 1970, Wild Magnolias Big Chief Bo Dollis, who died Tuesday (Jan. 20), changed that. He did so with the help of his longtime friend Monk Boudreaux — Big Chief of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians — and a young Quint Davis.

After those Wild Magnolias records were made, Dollis's shout was forever entwined with the image of the Mardi Gras Indian in the public imagination... so much of that image being shrouded in mystery.

Until very recently Indian culture existed somewhat on the fringes of what was considered the mainstream Carnival experience. It's only really within the last decade that it's become something you'd expect most tourists to even know about much less seek out in the neighborhoods. Even locally, it was often relegated to a back page curiosity. (Its less than comfortable relationship with the police has improved only somewhat.)

Still, over the course of roughly a generation, this unique and rich folk tradition has steadily come to be more widely understood and celebrated locally.   Dollis's music was indispensable in transmitting the essence of that culture to a wider public.   

""He was the modern musical face of the Mardi Gras Indian culture that broke through to the outside world," (Quint) Davis said. His voice "came out of his personality. Bo wasn't an angry Indian. He was a joyous Indian. Bo had this joy about the whole culture. He had this joy about the fact that he was leading it, and he could sing it. That infused what he was singing."

We've been lucky enough to catch the Wild Magnolias on Mardi Gras Day pretty often over the years. Their home base is right around the corner from where we are.  They used to come out of the H&R Bar on Dryades Street.  It burned down in 2001. Here's an old picture I took of the still standing facade in 2005.



They're still on the same block, though.  Here's another picture from way back in 2005.  That's Bo standing outside of the Sportsman's Corner. I remember pointing him out to Daisy.  It was, I think, only her second Mardi Gras that year.  "Who's Bo Dollars?" I remember her asking.



The corner of Second and Dryades is a nexus of activity on Mardi Gras morning.





In 2008, I got about 30 seconds of Bo leading a round of Indian Red.  Sorry about the grainy video. It was way back in the aughts and the technology was bad.




Anyway, you can see his health was already not so great by that point. He had taken to using a scooter to get around when out with the group. The most recent photo I have of that is from 2009.



That same year, Menckles had knitted these purple green and gold beer coozies that fit around your neck. It was a pattern she made up on her own and it took her a long time to figure out how she wanted them to work.  We only had two of them.  But for some reason she kind of spontaneously decided to give hers to Bo... just as a decorative thing to hang from his handlebar.  I'm sure he thought she was nuts, but he accepted it.

By some coincidence, Bo Dollis is featured on this year's Jazzfest poster. Fittingly enough, the man himself was a poster image for an entire genre of folk art and music.

Probably not allowed by the new zoning ordinance

The birth of Rock N Roll, basically

An Italian-American and New Orleans native, Matassa's father John emigrated from Sicily in 1910. In 1924, Matassa opened a small grocery store at the corner of Dauphine and St. Philip Streets, which remains a fixture in the French Quarter. Young Cosimo grew up working in the grocery store and after graduating from McDonogh 15 and Warren Easton High School, he enrolled in Tulane University's chemistry program, but dropped out after about two years.

"When I finally realized what a chemist was, I decided not to be one," he once said, according to the LEH profile. Since he was ineligible to be drafted into the military for physical reasons, his father gave him a choice: go back to school or start working.

He started working, but not in the grocery business. In addition to the market, John Matassa and his partner also ran J&M Amusement Services, placing jukeboxes in bars and restaurants. Cosimo began selling used records from the jukeboxes, and after noting the interest from customers in buying records, in 1945, he bought recording equipment and converted a room in the back of the family's J&M Appliance Store & Record Shop into a "studio."

The room was only 15-by-16 feet in size, with a control room "as big as my four fingers," joked Matassa in a story to mark his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the early years, Matassa recorded direct to disc until he could afford a tape-recording system. At first the equipment was used by amateurs to make personal recordings or demos. Soon, the dearth of recording studios in town led professional musicians and record producers to J&M.

Later the studio moved to a slightly larger space on Gov. Nichols Street.  Here's some of what Matassa recorded.

The list of other songs recorded by Matassa at his studio is another testament to his importance in music history. In addition to dozens of Domino's hits, the seminal recordings "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," "Mardi Gras in New Orleans," "Tipitina," "I Hear You Knocking," and "Long Tall Sally" were all recorded by Matassa. Three recordings identified by some as the first rock 'n' roll records were also his work: Domino's "The Fat Man," Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight" and Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti." Other local and national R&B hits recorded by Matassa included Aaron Neville's "Tell It Like It Is," Frankie Ford's "Sea Cruise," K-Doe's "Mother-In-Law" and Robert Parker's "Barefootin'" as well as Art Neville and the Hawketts' "Mardi Gras Mambo," Clarence "Frogman" Henry's "Ain't Got No Home," Al Johnson's "Carnival Time," Shirley and Lee's "Let the Good Times Roll" and many other landmark 1960s recordings by Irma Thomas, Lee Dorsey, Benny Spellman and Chris Kenner.

Cosimo Matassa passed away today. He was 88.   Please read the rest of that WWLTV article. What stands out the most is Matassa's humility.

"I don't want to come across with false modesty, but I always want people to remember that I didn't play. The musicians played. It was my studio and I did what I could to concoct what I could," he told WWL-TV anchor Eric Paulsen in a 2007 interview. "A record is a performance frozen in time, so I was looking for good performances and trying to put performers on record, and happily the guys out in the studio performed."

More from Gambit

"All through my career, the one thing I tried to do was be transparent. I heard them in the nightclubs, and just wanted to stay true to the original, to get what they did on record. I didn't try to shape it — I just did my damnedest not to mess it up." 

More like those to come, no doubt.  Here's one more from The Advocate. 

In Matassa’s opinion, Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight,” recorded at Matassa’s studio in 1947, was the first rock ’n’ roll record. “It was the first one that had a wider appeal than just a straight R&B record,” Matassa said told The Advocate in 2001. “It was more like a shouting, big-band blues kind of thing than what we now think of as R&B or rock ’n roll, but it had all of the elements.”

Count the days that we have wasted from the start

Here are some notable anniversaries that passed during the month of June.  I meant to mention them sooner but I've had a busy month.

Happy 10th anniversary to Antigravity Magazine.

If you're of a certain age, you might remember a time when the only "music scene" in New Orleans anyone ever wrote about seriously consisted of 1) The sorts of acts old white people RVed in from Wisconsin and bought Jazzfest tickets to go see. And 2) That's about it.

And if you're a bit younger or maybe just recently arrived to New Orleans you'll know that not a whole lot has changed.  But also now there's Antigravity.  Here's a list of blurbs from some of their contributors over the years.  This quote is from Leigh.

While much of New Orleans and its visitors has been stunned by the spotlight on more traditional local culture, such an environment has allowed Antigravity to stealthily arrive and thrive in this town for ten years now, raising a raucous— sometimes downright unruly—yet always relevant voice on what has been deemed “alternative” culture. That Antigravity is predominantly a free paper first and foremost in a time seeing the rise of virtual media makes it all the more precious as a cultural touchstone, a small, potent remnant of DIY zinedom available in many locations around town.

"Alternative culture" doesn't accurately describe Antigravity's beat, though.  Those words imply a kind of pretentious affected otherness that, frankly, sounds more to me like the imagined New Orleans experience that Jazzfest visitors are looking for when they buy their vacation packages.

But there's no phony exoticism  in AG.  It's just a music magazine. But it's a magazine about New Orleans music rather than about New Orleans Music^TM. And  that, in this increasingly tourism obsessed city and media market, is what makes it seem like an "alternative" publication.

Happy 20th anniversary to a great rock album.

I drone on and on about how great GBV is so I'll try to avoid that here. Although I will borrow a great quote from David Giffels's book about  the rust belt that Leigh highlights in her Antigravity blurb. 

“Rock and roll needs a void, and we had that, in abundance. We had empty garages and basements and warehouses, and great stretches of empty time, and—most important—no one paying attention.”

GBV is very much a product of the declining post-industrial midwest Giffels is writing about.  The mythology and appeal of the band; middle aged school teacher creates a sort of alternate universe of rock history in his basement with his drinking buddies;  is tied to the idea of, not so much escaping that scene, but  persevering and making it your own even if there is "no one paying attention."

Leigh is right to connect that ethos with the antediluvian New Orleans that spawned Antigravity back in 2004. Were the New Orleans and Ohio of that time, "parallel lines on a slow decline"? It's a hard thing to see from here.  There's a contrast between that time and the seemingly "vibrant" New New Orleans you might read about today. Much of the New NOLA  is an illusion of course, but sorting that out is beyond the scope of this post.  For those of us who came of age in the slowly fading New Orleans of 90s and early 00s, there's some resonance in this music.  At least for me there is. 

Bee Thousand is actually the second GBV record I bought. it's also my second favorite but that's not important right now. The consensus of the critics is that it's the important one.  I got it at Paradise Records in Baton Rouge back in Nineteen Something And Five.

Here's a faux-listicle that actually breaks down the record quite well.

And here is the whole thing on YouTube.





And finally, Happy 20th Anniversary to this 1994 World Cup USA T-Shirt I wasn't sure I still had.  It's not exactly wearable but neither is my 20 year old car (Happy Birthday to that too!) and I keep that around for some reason. There's no rational reason to expect the US to move past Belgium on Tuesday.  But worrying about that sure beats arguing over Jimmy Graham's contract this week. 

Kicking you off the internet

It's all theirs now.  Most of you losers do not count.  Unless you can afford to pay enough to count.

YouTube is preparing to radically change their site, adding a subscription service that is intended to help them compete in the streaming music industry. The Google GOOGL +0.45%-owned video site has already signed new licensing deals with all of the major labels, but many independents are refusing to take part. Apparently, not only are smaller, indie labels not being offered the same deals as the majors, but the contracts that Google is putting in front of them are less than fair.

Net neutrality is just a part of this but it's all of one piece.  The internet is not for regular people anymore. It belongs to big media and they are going to monetize it. There are efforts to beat some of this back but... really, come on.

And now I may die

This past Sunday night I got to see The Breeders play the second to last date on their Last Splash XX tour at One Eyed Jack's. Because I am a person of certain age who has certain tastes in popular music, this was kind of big deal for me.  It was a big deal for a lot of other people too, apparently. The show sold out easily.

I can't decide if this says something about The Changing Nature Of Life In New Orleans or if this is what happens to every moderately successful group making its triumphant 20th anniversary nostalgia tour of its most successful album but I can say that twenty... or even ten years ago.. this band might not have even played New Orleans let alone draw this big of a crowd.  It wasn't easy to see from where I was.  I held my phone aloft and took a photo just so I could be sure I was there.



The show was great, though. The tour is supporting the 20 year re-release of the classic Last Splash and so the meat of the show is that album played straight through in its entirety. That was augmented by Safari as an opener and then a couple of encores consisting mostly of songs off of the Pod album including this cover of Happiness Is A Warm Gun.

The crowd was ok. I could have done with a little more room to move, especially when a fight broke out about five feet away from me while the band was playing, I shit you not, "I Just Wanna Get Along." But otherwise, it was a fun night. 

This may sound weird since Kim Deal is such an icon but I actually think she's a little underrated as a musician. Below is a documentary about the Deal sisters from the early 2000s sometime, I think when they were about to put out Title TK.  I really enjoy these interviews shot in the most casual of circumstances with the Deals knocking around their slightly messy East LA apartment. Asked to talk about their approach to music, they end up talking mostly about their OCD ticks.  It's charming and utterly unpretentious.  It also reveals something kind of intimate and genuine about Kim's talent.







Anyway, I'm glad I got to see this act when I did.  Among other things, it means that, stretching back to last September and going on into the coming February, I will have seen Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo, The Breeders, and Neutral Milk Hotel play in New Orleans. Because it is currently 1994.  Or that plus twenty years.. or... what year is it?

Your musical mayor

For a while now, I've been partial to the theory that Mayor Landrieu's plan for post-office was to sit on a tourism advisory commission; either with some group that exists now or, more likely, some yet to be created "public-private" partnership. There's plenty time to dream something up.

But there's always the outside chance he'll go into show business.

In a surprise grand finale, Mayor Mitch Landrieu took the stage, accompanied by the Tony award winner Michael Cerveris, to sing the Epilogue from the musical Les Miserable. Landrieu held his own in a short solo, before being joined by the Delgado Community College Choir, the Gay Men's Choir and the Symphony Chorus of New Orleans.

I'm not saying Mitch is going to end up headlining on Broadway (North or South) or anything.   Maybe something on the minor festival circuit.  He can do a little singing or dancing in between Bag of Donuts sets. Some examples of his talents below.









I shot a few minutes of video at the District B Community Budget meeting which also featured some dancing of a different sort by the mayor. But the quality is too poor to share here.

"That’s all we want: Fix the part they broke"

John Barry explains the SLFPA-E's lawsuit in this Lens op-ed.

Our case is based on the fact that we are forced to maintain and possibly build more elaborate flood protection defenses because of land loss. The industry’s failure to comply with permits — its failure to do what they voluntarily agreed to do and to obey the law in exchange for taking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the state — has destroyed land.

That land loss means there’s no buffer to block storm surge, and that sends more water pounding against our levees. As the saying goes, the levees protect the people, and the land protects the levees.

The land is disappearing so fast that by 2100, if nothing is done New Orleans will be basically an island. The levees will be beach-front property. Much of the rest of the Louisiana coast will simply cease to exist.

Louisiana law also embodies a concept going back to the Romans called “servitude of drain.” This prohibits one party from increasing the natural flow of water from its property onto another’s. The destruction of land is sending more storm surge pounding against our levees.

We believe the oil and gas industry violated the law, and these violations have endangered the people we are responsible to protect.

Our suit does not ask that the industry restore the entire coast. But they must restore the part of the coast they destroyed. They must fix the part of the problem which they created. That’s all we want: Fix the part they broke.

 There's much more.  Read and share with your closest 500 friends. 

By the way, "Servitude of Drain" was probably the best Pantera album.  Pity, Gambit didn't ask Phil Anselmo about it in this interview.

Yeah kinda.. or maybe it's just because of August

Been feeling lately an awful lot like Doogie in this video... which, incidentally, should be receiving more local attention than a stupid Direct TV commercial featuring other cities' quarterbacks.

Loud enough?

Owen Courreges uses his outside voice on these proponents of citywide noise ordinance guidelines.

Because these folks are not only fascists but cowards, they also cancelled their plan press conference when it came to light that protests would erupt.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they wanted to spare their overly-sensitive ears from having to hear the voices of people uttering divergent opinions.

However, they are not without allies, and therein lies the problem.  While the pro-music forces are a ragtag and motley crew of political neophytes, the operation of music foes is organized, well-funded, and well-connected.  You can even check out their website bearing the slogan “Hear the Music, Stop the Noise.”  One imagines some Madison Avenue whiz-kid coming up with that one.  “Gee, these people are like some old lady in a tenement who beats her cane on the ceiling whenever she hears anything above a whisper.  How do I shine up this particular piece of fecal matter?”

The Governors

Check out the photo. If you didn't know who these people were and I told you they were a post-punk Blondie rip-off planning a reunion show you'd totally believe that, wouldn't you? Sadly, it's nothing so exciting... or is it?

Former Louisiana governors' Kathleen Blanco, Edwin Edwards, Murphy "Mike" Foster and Buddy Roemer are slated to be on a panel discussing the last four decades of government. The LSU Public Administration Institute and the Public Administration Institute Student Association will host PAISA Day in The Rotunda of the Business Education Complex.

The governors will tackle the following topic: "The Evolution of State and Local Government: A discussion about the last 40 years."

So far as I understand, this is a one-off show.  Unless Jimmy's ever gets its permits in order and then we'll see. 

Note: This is the first time in years I've posted anything having to do with Kathleen Blanco. I thought it was strange that there was no established "Kathleen Blanco" tag for this blog.  But then I remembered they're all filed under "Meemaw".

I blame the planners

If the professional masters of the urban universe would spend less time telling us where we can and cannot put a bar or a music venue, we wouldn't be saddled with the problem of rapidly gentrifying "entertainment districts" and so would have less of this problem.

The changes in the music scene on Frenchmen are becoming obvious, as the eccentric, laid-back atmosphere of the city’s traditional entertainment industry is being influenced by younger entrepreneurs. To be sure, some of the nature of the city’s indigenous club music may get lost in the process, and the bohemian vibe of St. Claude may also be a thing of the past before too long. The homogenization of American culture is an inexorable historic inevitability, and New Orleans is apparently no longer immune to it.

Instead we've chosen to go the "Boutique City" route where everything is carefully staged, and planned, and.. of course.. ultimately more expensive. 

Update: Faith in humanity restored.

As the owners of Jimmy’s Music Club continue to seek the reopening of their landmark Willow Street venue, they are employing an unusual legal strategy to get around the temporary ban on new alcohol licenses in the Carrollton area.

 Instead of asking the City Council to grant them an exception to the moratorium, they are asking the city’s alcohol commissioners to rule that the latest iteration of that moratorium is illegal altogether and thus inapplicable to Jimmy’s.