Post by redstick13 on Apr 26, 2009 16:20:14 GMT -5
NEW ORLEANS — Veterans, lathered in SPF 30, clutching a daily lineup with scribbled priorities and lugging nothing heavier than a folding camp chair, can always spot the newbies. They're the ones with sunburned limbs, stiff footwear and iPods.
The common ground? Mile-wide smiles, ringing eardrums and grease-stained T-shirts.
Both groups were in abundance at this weekend's 40th New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which wraps up Sunday night before cranking up again for a closing blowout Thursday through May 3.
The happy hordes were treated to a glut of music Saturday, which closed with James Taylor at one end of the Fair Grounds, Wilco at the other, and an eclectic mix in between, from blues lion Johnny Winter and Brazilian Carnival troupe Ilé Aiyé to Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers.
Organizers and regulars swear it's not just the bounteous music, pouring simultaneously from 12 stages, that makes Jazz Fest such a perennial success. It's the communal harmony — old friends reuniting, new bonds forging, sweaty throngs dancing in a giddy trance. (OK, but never underestimate the drawing power of a fried catfish po-boy).
•Macy Brock of Chattanooga, Tenn., a first-timer, was also eating her first heap of crawfish Saturday with the guidance of a sympathetic local, Jeff Smythe.
"Just grab it by the tail and twist," he instructed. "There's not much there. Juice mostly."
She was game.
"I'm down with eating anything," she said. "It's more of a coincidence that I haven't eaten crawfish before. They're good. The juice is mustardy. The heads don't scare me."
She might be back for more "if someone cracks them for me," she said.
•Nobody knows better than Clancy "Blues Boy" Lewis how much Jazz Fest has grown since its 1970 inception at Congo Square. He arrived 20 minutes late for a performance in the grandstand after wandering the field.
"I got lost, man," he told the audience. "I was walking all around."
Lewis, who started playing blues after he constructed an amplifier from a radio as a teen, is among several players this year who appeared at Jazz Fest's 1970 launch. His memory of that event?
"It was small!" he said. And easy to find.
•Singer Judith Owen, playing piano, was accompanied by a drummer, tuba player and, on bass, her husband Harry Shearer, the actor, comedian and musician whom she introduced as "my helper in my life, my little elf, my love."
He walked directly to the mike with an NBA news flash: "Hornets, 95, Nuggets, 93. Final."
Owen interjected humorous asides into her lively set, ribbing the audience after a poor clap-along, "If I can't get two and four (rhythm) here, I might as well be in Nebraska."
Introducing Shine, a song about yearning to be noticed among brighter lights, Owen said, "This is about all of us — not me, I'm a big ham."
She referred to the theme of Tinseltown desperation in Train Out of Hollywood and said, "Thank God we don't find that here."
•Artists old and young showed clout Saturday. Chicago alt-rock band Wilco drew a teeming mass, and so did clarinetist Pete Fountain, 78, playing Dixieland jazz to a tent overflowing with admirers of all ages. Jazz Fest director/producer Quint Davis toasted folk icon Pete Seeger, who turns 90 on May 3, and dubbed him the "grandfather" of Jazz Fest for his role in founding the groundbreaking Newport Folk Festival in 1959. And a sea of fans flocked to the Congo Stage for Erykah Badu's hip-hop soul. Sporting an enormous and unsculpted Afro and a short sequined dress, she delivered a jazzy Other Side of the Game as hundreds of female acolytes sang along.
•Wynton Marsalis, performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, may have summed up the festival vibe with his description of Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta, from his Portraits of Ellington CD.
Characterizing the groove, he said, "It has a lot of sexiness and wild unruliness. … It's Afro-bayou-boogaloo-funk."
The common ground? Mile-wide smiles, ringing eardrums and grease-stained T-shirts.
Both groups were in abundance at this weekend's 40th New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, which wraps up Sunday night before cranking up again for a closing blowout Thursday through May 3.
The happy hordes were treated to a glut of music Saturday, which closed with James Taylor at one end of the Fair Grounds, Wilco at the other, and an eclectic mix in between, from blues lion Johnny Winter and Brazilian Carnival troupe Ilé Aiyé to Dwayne Dopsie and the Zydeco Hellraisers.
Organizers and regulars swear it's not just the bounteous music, pouring simultaneously from 12 stages, that makes Jazz Fest such a perennial success. It's the communal harmony — old friends reuniting, new bonds forging, sweaty throngs dancing in a giddy trance. (OK, but never underestimate the drawing power of a fried catfish po-boy).
•Macy Brock of Chattanooga, Tenn., a first-timer, was also eating her first heap of crawfish Saturday with the guidance of a sympathetic local, Jeff Smythe.
"Just grab it by the tail and twist," he instructed. "There's not much there. Juice mostly."
She was game.
"I'm down with eating anything," she said. "It's more of a coincidence that I haven't eaten crawfish before. They're good. The juice is mustardy. The heads don't scare me."
She might be back for more "if someone cracks them for me," she said.
•Nobody knows better than Clancy "Blues Boy" Lewis how much Jazz Fest has grown since its 1970 inception at Congo Square. He arrived 20 minutes late for a performance in the grandstand after wandering the field.
"I got lost, man," he told the audience. "I was walking all around."
Lewis, who started playing blues after he constructed an amplifier from a radio as a teen, is among several players this year who appeared at Jazz Fest's 1970 launch. His memory of that event?
"It was small!" he said. And easy to find.
•Singer Judith Owen, playing piano, was accompanied by a drummer, tuba player and, on bass, her husband Harry Shearer, the actor, comedian and musician whom she introduced as "my helper in my life, my little elf, my love."
He walked directly to the mike with an NBA news flash: "Hornets, 95, Nuggets, 93. Final."
Owen interjected humorous asides into her lively set, ribbing the audience after a poor clap-along, "If I can't get two and four (rhythm) here, I might as well be in Nebraska."
Introducing Shine, a song about yearning to be noticed among brighter lights, Owen said, "This is about all of us — not me, I'm a big ham."
She referred to the theme of Tinseltown desperation in Train Out of Hollywood and said, "Thank God we don't find that here."
•Artists old and young showed clout Saturday. Chicago alt-rock band Wilco drew a teeming mass, and so did clarinetist Pete Fountain, 78, playing Dixieland jazz to a tent overflowing with admirers of all ages. Jazz Fest director/producer Quint Davis toasted folk icon Pete Seeger, who turns 90 on May 3, and dubbed him the "grandfather" of Jazz Fest for his role in founding the groundbreaking Newport Folk Festival in 1959. And a sea of fans flocked to the Congo Stage for Erykah Badu's hip-hop soul. Sporting an enormous and unsculpted Afro and a short sequined dress, she delivered a jazzy Other Side of the Game as hundreds of female acolytes sang along.
•Wynton Marsalis, performing with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, may have summed up the festival vibe with his description of Thanks for the Beautiful Land on the Delta, from his Portraits of Ellington CD.
Characterizing the groove, he said, "It has a lot of sexiness and wild unruliness. … It's Afro-bayou-boogaloo-funk."