The Barryfest Chronicles

All signage found February 6 – 24, 2009 in New Orleans, LA

Before attending their concert at the House of Blues on Saturday, I was about as familiar with Better Than Ezra as are most people of my age.  Prior to the show, my interaction the New Orleans-based power trio was pretty much limited to the presence of “Good” on the 1990s one-hit wonders playlist a friend and I created during college.

Before I go any further, let it be know that this not an indictment.  We queued up this “Remember the 90s?” playlist every chance we got, and I still find a good excuse to listen to it at least once a month.  And this is not part of some semi-ironic hipster-doofus creem dream, my friends.  If you catch me drinking a High Life while grooving on “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth (With Money In My Hand),” it is because I non-satirically enjoy both the Champagne of beers as well as Primitive Radio Gods’ most well know contribution to popular music.

While I don’t have much to say about the bands of varying musical inclination that showed up just long enough to drop these gems on the world before they went back to doing whatever it was they did before their heady, two-month amble around late night talk show stages and alternative radio stations, I’ll defend the brilliance of these chart-toppers until my last breath.  Give me “Save Tonight” or give me death.

But as far as seeking out any of these artists when they hit the road? C’mon.  “Good” is a fantastic song, but is it any better than “Pepper” or “Flagpole Sitta” or “Counting Blue Cars”?  No one can really say for sure.  So for me, that puts Better Than Ezra in about the same class as The Butthole Surfers, Harvey Danger, and Dishwalla: pretty much off my radar at almost all instances that I am not listening to their most well known songs during a leisurely game of caps or on the first leg of a road trip.

Even if I was the least bit curious, why would I want to ruin any of these masterpieces by doing something foolish like putting them in the context of a full album or live performance?  That’s a high risk, high reward endeavor I never planned to undertake.

But as I have learned pretty much everyday since I got down here, few things go as planned in Big Easy.  New Orleanians my age love Better Than Ezra.  I’m talking “I have their demo EP on bootleg cassette” love.  I’m talking “I’ve seen them about 13 times” love.  I’m talking “Fuck Endymion, let’s I’m going to the BTE show at House of Blues” love. (And, yes, I’m talking “I affectionately refer to the band by a moniker” love).

With that in mind, I joined a large group of natives at the House of Blues on Saturday for Better Than Ezra’s annual Mardi Gras swoop through the Crescent City.  And you know what?  The put on an awesome show for a raucous crowd in an incredible venue.  I still think they fit the classical definition of a “one-hit wonder,” but I realized that their one-hit was not just some sort of concession they were willing to offer in exchange for a moment in the sun.  As I found out over the course of the night, “Good”  was one of a long line of upbeat, accessible rockers that have kept the band going strong for over two decades, the only difference is that it was released as a single at the exact time it happened to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the moment.

Better Than Ezra came off as a group upon which MTV and popular radio stumbled, not the other way around.  Because unlike most of the other catchy tunes from the one-and-done groups I listened to in middle school, the song that sent this group into the stratosphere was pretty similar to the rest of their material, not a blatant attempt to make their sound more radio-ready.  I realize this is just a veiled way of saying that all their fucking songs sound exactly the same, but their consistency is admirable, even if it comes at the expense of diversity.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather listen to 12 different variations on “Good” – a specimen to say the least – than sift through 90 minutes of post-grunge schlock-rock in a dingy club waiting impatiently for the Screaming Trees to launch into a spirited rendition of “Nearly Lost You,” a song that was their only hit because it is the only thing in their entire cannon that is actually tolerable.  And I am sure some of the poor, uninitiated schmucks that got roped into a Blind Melon show during “No Rain” hysteria didn’t much care to watch Shannon Hoon warble around the stage in a heroin-induced stupor as wave after wave of heavy distortion and feedback rang their fucking bells when they expected a short set of mid-tempo toe-tappers performed by mandolin-wielding long-hairs and fat chicks in bumblebee costumes.

I will stop myself before this devolves into a missive on the relative artistic integrity and relative importance of every band to be featured on a Buzz Ballads compilation, because as I said before, taking too close a look at any of this is a zero sum game at best. I’ll just say this:  Better Than Ezra game me exactly what I hoped for but had plenty of reason not to expect all.  And it was good.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone.

This afternoon, I was trying to fish out a tip for the barista at Rue De La Course when I found a relic from the previous evening crumpled in the back pocket on my jeans.  A quarter page, bi-fold pamphlet titled The Only Doorway was mixed in with the loose dollar bills and bar tab receipts one would normally expect to come across after a night out on the town.

When you think of a typical French Quarter souvenir, I’m not sure if literature extolling the virtues of receiving Jesus Christ as your personal God and savior makes the short list, but this type of shit is actually more common than you may think.

New Orleans is full of sin, and wherever you find sin you’ve bound to find a few people trying to offer salvation.  And when religious zealots descend on Bourbon Street, they are usually armed with megaphones and offensive placards reminding all the Democrats, drunks, rock ‘n’ rollers, adulteresses, potheads, homosexuals, lesbians, Masons, Shriners, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Evolutionists, Catholics, Satanists, Abortionists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, liberals, fornicators, prosperity preachers, atheists and “worldly lukewarm once saved-always saved Christians” that they are in imminent danger of eternal damnation.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

These obnoxious bigots start making a scene around the time Mardi Gras rolls in by harassing every poor soul that drifts into earshot and relish the opportunity to take the fight to any inebriated onlooker that dares to inquire what, exactly, they are trying to accomplish with their message of hate.  If you test any one of the shitbirds impeding your safe passage through Jackson Square, you learn pretty quickly that they’re not just throwing this nonsense around for effect and don’t take their intolerance with cream and sugar.  They devour and expel that poison neat with the rocks on the side.

So when I noticed a huge PVC cross off in the distance as my friends and I were leaving Pat O’s after putting in some heavy work at the Piano Bar, I braced myself for an explosive encounter.  I realize that an “Eat shit and die, you anti-Semite fuckstick” – no matter how artfully delivered – only fuels these sad, sad individuals’ fires and adds little to the philosophical discourse, but what can I say?  After a few Hurricanes, I usually don’t have the wherewithal (or desire) to stop myself from shouting the first bit of reactive gobbledygook that pops into my head.

I had an expletive-laden opening argument primed and ready but instead of crude signs and small-minded rednecks, I was greeted by thoughtful individuals speaking with 12 inch voices and respecting everyone’s right of way.  And even thought I was part of a pretty tough crowd – one which was both shitfaced and 70% Jewish – their message stuck it’s landing a lot more than expected considering it was coming from the New Testament.

See, instead of using a fucked up notion of spiritual superiority as a cloak for violent prejudice in the manner of most Bourbon Street evangelicals, these people just seemed like they might be on to something hip and wanted to spread the word.  Even though we were less than polite at times, their pleasant demeanor and cooler heads prevailed and the entire encounter made a lasting impression on me.

To be honest, though, I still don’t understand why The Bible, out of all the hundreds of thousands of works of literature produced in the annuls of human history, has developed such an incredibly fervent following.  Sure it’s a pretty cool story, but so are The Odyssey, Don Quijote, and The Lorax.  Even a nearly unreadable mess like Naked Lunch sheds some light on the human condition if you catch it right, so where are the barkers on the street spreading the gospel of doing bag after bag of heroin and staring at your toes for days on end?

I am guessing that this is where “faith” comes in, an idea that I have spent many years disparaging in the bitter, condescending manner favored by modern-day secular intellectuals such as myself.  But even though I wasn’t buying much of what those good folks were selling and still think religion is pretty asinine; their patient way of carrying water for the topic lead me to believe it shouldn’t be looked at with any more disdain then most of the bullshit I do in my free time.

After giving it plenty of thought, I can’t really think of any material difference between those kind missionaries dispersing fliers outside Big Daddy’s Female Impersonator Show and yours truly spending $12 to play Gaucho all the way through on the jukebox at Monkey Hill, except for the fact that the Jesus freaks were surely a lot more genial and probably had much purer intentions.

I guess it is in everyone’s best interest to find a few things that they love and are not afraid to share with the world.  For me, these things include an ironic jazz-rock band known by most people my age either as a punchline in a Judd Apatow flick or “that dude who did ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.’”  For others, it may be a belief that your personal relationship with an unseen almighty being determines what happens after you shuffle off your mortal coil.

These are two very diseparate things for sure, but trying to objectively judge one as more valid than the other is really just a waste of time, time that would be much better spent partying with whatever it is that happens to get your rocks off.

I think that you can tell a lot about a city by the way it rings in the New Year.  Minneapolis, for example, is a fun enough time but not really anything to write home about.  Chicago, on the other hand, offers plenty to do but your options can be limited by the bitter cold winters and spotty public transportation system.  And then there is New York, which is more or less a crowded, expensive theme park.

While especially apparent on the last day of the year, I think the statements above hold true for their respective cities at all times.  So, after getting intimately familiar with New Orleans over the past 12 months, I cut my holiday family time short to make sure I could test my “New Year’s Eve as a microcosm” theory down in the Big Easy.

Now, New Year’s Eve is nothing if it is not another excuse for revelry.  And when it comes to revelry, if you give New Orleans an inch, in one magnificent swoop she will take a mile, your favorite watch and every clean pair of tube socks you’ve got in your top drawer.  Luckily, she will return them before you know they are even gone.  New Orleans is sneaky like that. Read the rest of this entry »

Dear Dan,

Across the street from my apartment, there is a decent sized, stand-alone building that formerly served as a Robért Fresh Market but is now completely boarded up and dying for occupation.  Other than the two days the ample parking lot served as base camp for the cast and crew filming Carmen Electra’s new movie, it just sits there, an apparent casualty of the disorganized jack-o-lantern spattering of property revitalization that has been trudging along since the storm of 2005.

Don’t get me wrong, there is amazing work going on all over the city; in every single neighborhood and on every single block.  But there are some shocking plots of land that, for one reason or another, have just been left behind.  This is one of them.

I think it would be a perfect place to open a Trader Joe’s.

I mean, you’ve got stores in Minnesota and those fucking rubes make you jump through hoops just to grab a sixer of microbrew with your groceries.  If you were to open in the greater New Orleans area, there would be no need for that loophole exploiting pay-for-your-groceries-at-one-register-then-walk-through-the-antechamber-to-the-booze-shop bullshit I had to go through at the St. Louis Park location up north. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve already had my fair share of “firsts” since I relocated down to the Big Easy.  Since January I have experienced my first Mardi Gras, my first bowl of turtle soup, my first Jazz Fest, my first crawfish boil and my first concert at Tipitina’s, just to name a few.  And there is a chance I will be experiencing another first as early as Saturday morning:  my first hurricane evacuation.

That bastard Gustav has already got 20 50 some bodies on him and is doing a dance around Jamaica at the moment.  While he is still about 5 days away from hitting US soil, the pained and protracted guessing game has already begun.

As the local weathermen poked holes in the NHC’s computer model of Fay less than a week ago, they were brazenly flippant, dripping with a wisdom and confidence that was oddly reassuring.  “That bitch over there?  Fuck her.  Trust me man, she ain’t shit.”

But Fay was sweeping in from the Atlantic, and those predictions were made after she had been bumping around on land for a few days.  This fucker, though, is a horse of a different color.  Any storm that looks like it will be parking in the Gulf of Mexico before it make another run at land gets more local attention sooner, but there is no news to report that does not involve hypothetical modeling and statistical doubt.

No more meteorologists defiantly holding middle fingers up at the weather map superimposed behind them as it shows tropical disturbances A-F shattering apart as they hit terra firma hundreds of miles to our north or east.  Instead, experts are now cautiously sharing their best guesses, reiterating in no uncertain terms how uncertain they are.

In reality, the chances of even having to evacuate are slim, and it would be irresponsible to make any definitive predictions about a storm system that is 1,200 miles away.  And I wish I could keep my cool like those life long New Orleanians, you know, the ones that used to evacuate to the French Quarter and stave off the hurricanes made famous by Mother Nature with the hurricanes made famous by Pat O’Brien.

But for a newbie like me – someone who didn’t spend their childhood hoping for the tropical storms of yore to blow in so classes at Newman would be canceled for a few days and is only familiar with the collective consciousness of post-Katrina New Orleans – with the uncertainty comes a greater level of stress, worry and anxiety as we play a waiting game.

We have to wait to see what happens as Gus gets the chance to regroup and recharge in the widest part of the Gulf, where the warm water runs deeper than it has in the history of the planet and acts like high octane jet fuel in the hands that ruthless son-of-a-bitch off in the distance.  We have to wait; knowing that there is not a single thing anyone can do to change his path or itinerary; hoping that he at least tips his hand soon enough so everyone that needs to react can react accordingly; and praying that if he really wants to test the mettle of a city just out of the blocks on the long road to recovery, that he isn’t out for blood.

Hmmm.  How do I explain the Rebirth Brass Band to someone who has never been to one of their performances?

Or, better still:  How do I explain the Rebirth Brass Band to someone who has never even been to New Orleans?

At the heart of it, to understand Rebirth is to understand the effect one of their live shows has on your face.  It’s pretty straight forward and extremely predictable:  That shit gets melted right off your fucking head.  You’ll probably shit your pants, too.  And orgasm harder than Rob Schneider at the mention of Denver’s no-huddle offense.

I have never been able to come up with a description of their music that I find satisfactory, and I have had a lot of chances to try.  Rebirth Brass Band are one the first things I mention when anyone asks me “How are you liking it down in New Orleans?”

Their mix of traditional brass band sounds, jazz elements like call and response and virtuoso solos, hip hop beats, and serious cow funk grooves is unlike anything I have ever heard in my life.  Everyone in the crowd – black, white, old, young – cuts a goddamn rug the entire time.  And whether it is an afternoon set at Satchmo Summerfest, a late night blowout at Tipitina’s, or a second line march down Frenchman Street during the Krewe De Vieux parade, they are always on their game.

Enough with failing to describe something like Rebirth with words.  Here is a little clip from last night’s show at Howlin’ Wolf: