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Times Picayune
Voodoo festival charms music lovers in City Park
"I like it because it's a younger, edgier crowd," she said. Edgier and at least as off-the-wall. Kelly Israel took his usual spot under the Spanish moss-draped live oaks and in front of the hyper-alternative Mortuary Haunted House/Noomoon Stage with his 1981 Cadillac Fleetwood hearse.
The vehicle glittered with matchbox cars, Casio watches, jewelry, pins, stained glass, coins, marbles and any other items that would make it sparkle. Its hood was adorned with 24 rusted fleur-de-lis along each side, each attached to two bullets and a button with a letter on it, lined up to spell out "Katrina changed everything."
Noomoon founder Dan Sheridan tries to carry on the anti-establishment theme of Voodoo by promoting local underground and street music acts with T-shirts, videos and the stage he sponsors. He calls Noomoon "a multimedia conglometron hell-bent on the destruction of the mundane."
As a family of brown pelicans returned to Bayou St. John for the winter and yet another festival-goer parked illegally on the banks of the bayou, dusk began to fall in Faubourg St. John, the neighborhood that lies between Voodoo's City Park venue and Jazzfest's Fair Grounds location. As it fell, Bill Abbott stood on his front porch with his dog and smoked a pipe. He's a Jazzfest fan who has never been to Voodoo.
"They're a very young bunch of white kids, basically" he said of the Voodoo-goers filling a street that gets this crowded at only one other time of the year. "Jazzfest is something the neighborhood has adapted to over the years. This is relatively new. Like anything new, you have to learn to adapt to it."
Abbott said he was ready to adapt, saying he might even give Voodoo a chance next year. Then he thought about the black-tie "Voodoo on the Bayou" event to be held later in the evening at the Pitot House down the street, a neighborhood fundraiser at an 18th century mansion that was once home to the first American mayor of New Orleans. "Now, that could be some interesting chemistry," Abbott said, laughing.
Hollow Tree Studios
December, 2007
New Orleans is still the birth canal of tomorrow's sound. One aspect of the fun of being a music fan is tracking the trends. In practically every genre, things change and novelty is pursued. It's this continuing flux that adds elements of surprise and keeps the ancient art form fascinating.
New Orleans, once the birthplace of Jazz, is still a crucible of novelty for music--not to mention a handful of other cultural forms. The city is less a global crossroads than it was in the early 20th century. Nowadays it is more a national crossroads, a waystation for the various transient and fringe communities that do the hard work of keeping the United States weird. Even since the Storm, NOLA is a part time home for neo-carnies, pseudo-hoboes, professional vice enthusiasts, musicians and every other type of folk artist that this great nation spawns.
Each year at the New Orleans Voodoo Music Festival, while bigger names grace bigger stages, the Noomoon Tribe hosts a side stage chock full of local music acts. The names of the bands tend to change, but those who watch from year to year will notice that many of the same painted faces return over the course of time. It's possible that one or two of these dedicated artists may rise to higher levels in the music scene, but for many this is as good as it gets--a moment pushing the limits of their art on stage before a crowd that may not be large, but is most definitely appreciative.
There are many diamonds-in-the-rough in the mud of the flooded city. They pour their guts into what they do, and they always will, because it's New Orleans, shadow of America, the place where our culture is made every day, even if the fact is not always recognized.
OFFBEAT.COM
Voodoo Music Experience
October 26-28, 2007 City Park By Cree McCree
Happiness is seeing the Happy Talk Band bust “My Suicide” just past noon in the Bingo! Parlour, where they turned wrist-slashing into an arena rocker.
-Best stage decor: The salvaged metal Bywater sign that backdropped the NooMoon stage.
-Best participatory sport: Marching around the festival grounds while making a joyful noise with the gloriously ragtag Ratty Scurvics Band.
HOW DO YOU VOODOO?
Ratty Scurvics Singularity (Saturday, 5 p.m., Le Carnival, Dungeon): Ratty Scurvics may be a one-man band, but this demented organ grinder runs with a sideshow cast of thousands (well, dozens)—all of them decked in mad rags by the Mojo behind the scenes, Howlpop’s Mo Lappin. Last year it was red-pantied hula hoopers and the Ratty Scurvics Marching Band, a 24-piece menagerie clad in deconstructed evening wear infested with red metallic spiders. This year, Mo’s conjuring a Ratty “bone circus”: “bright yet dead yet alive yet jaded yet hopeful yet.”
Good Guys (Sunday, 4 p.m., Le Carnival): Metal and lounge are strange bedfellows, but New Orleans’ Good Guys make it work. Their songs are full of obscure twists and sudden mood changes, so the jazz-inspired opening of “Work Release” gives way to densely distorted guitars before shifting to a smooth piano breakdown. Countless bands have done that before. The Good Guys’ trick? They make it power pop.
