Our Man in New Orleans

Vancouver Jazzfest

2009-06-28T18:33:00.001-07:00

So I'm holed up here at 7th and Oak in Vancouver, a neighborhood known as Fairview Slopes. I know I'm in Vancouver because, even though the weather is a bit chilly (believe me, I appreciate it. It was 103F the day I left New Orleans) every second person I pass on the street is wearing shorts, hiking boots, a North Face fleece vest and some variety of expensive, designer baseball cap. I'm doing the Vancouver thing, getting up in the morning and hiking up the hill to Broadway for coffee at Starbucks, reading the paper, like that. It's nice, you know?

It's funny because I used to live in this neighborhood in the 1970s, when it was a radically different place. Nowdays it's all ticky-tacky but very expensive condos, many of them leaking due to poor design and construction. Back then it was filled with beautiful but run-down Victorian and Queen Anne period houses inhabited by slackers like me. In 1971 I lived in a three bedroom house at 2328 Willow Street with my girlfriend and two other people. The rent was $150 a month and my share was $25. We made our own beer in the basement crawl-space and shared a communal can of tobacco. My total monthly nut; rent, food, beer, smokes, was about $70.

All that's gone now. In the mid seventies real estate developers went through this and other Vancouver neighborhoods like the Four Horesemen of the Apocalypse, flattening hundreds of beautiful period houses and replacing them with expensive (though often poorly designed and cheaply constructed) condos. The irony is that in the long run (though, of course, they had no interest in the long run) there would have been more money to be made renoing the existing housing stock than in flooding the market with cheapo construction. The architectural rape of Vancouver is one of the great untold stories of the 70s and 80s.

Because of my long history in the city, playing the Vancouver Festival is much more than just another gig to me. I've played it every year since 1997, both as a "local guy" and an out-of-towner, and Ken Pickering and the folks at the Coastal Jazz and Blues Society have been very supportive of me all that time. Unlike the New Orleans festival, whose artist passes are only good on the day of performance, CJBS hands out passes good for the whole festival, giving me the opportunity to catch a lot of music I'd otherwise be unable to afford. And the opportunity to play with and socialize with my many friends and colleagues in the Vancouver jazz community is a treasure beyond price.

My gig on Staturday was with singer Colleen Savage, whom I have now known for...good lord, 33 years. We first met as students in Vancouver Community College's fledgling Jazz and Commercial Music program in 1976. When I recorded my first CD as a leader, 2002's "One Up, Two Back," Colleen guested on two tunes, Jobim's "Djindi" and a great arrangement of "Time After Time" that Colleen has in her book. We played that same arrangement at the gig Saturday night, at the tempo I should have recorded it at back in 2002. It's hard to record slow stuff slow enough, you know? It really takes nerves of steel. I chickened out on that session seven years ago, and counted it in too fast. Last Saturday Colleen nailed it dead solid perfect.

Speaking of hard, Colleen's book is hard. I'd forgotten just how hard it is. It would be a real mistake to go on a Colleen Savage gig expecting just another My-Funny-Valentine-chick-singer kind of job. She's got a lot of tricky arrangements and obscure, oddball tunes in there, stuff like Eartha Kitt's "I Wanna Be Evil" and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames' "Yeh Yeh." A tune like "It Could Happen To You," which most singers take at a medium swing, Colleen does in it's original form, as a sloooooow ballad. Gigi Gryce's "Music In The Air," with it's constantly cycling key centers, is taken at a blistering tempo.

This is the third year I've played the Capilano Suspension Bridge stage with her, and I talked to several people afterwards who'd been in attendence every year. Despite the rain and cool weather we had an excellent house and Colleen had them eating out of her hand by the end. I doubt anyone there would have guessed that she was just getting over a terrible cold she'd brought back from California.

My own gig on July 1st at the Railspur Alley Stage is with what I've been referring to as the "mystery rhythm section," because I haven't met them yet. Actually I do know bassist Jen Hodge fairly well, but I've never played with her. I'll be meeting up with drummer Mike Ardagh and pianist Cat Toren on the day of the gig.

I've had some very, very good experiences playing with fresh rhythm sections in Vancouver over the last few years. In 2006 Cory Weeds offered me a date at the Cellar and the band I was using in Vancouver at the time (Tony Foster on B-3, Joe Poole on drums, and Jon Roper on guitar) was unavailable. I considered calling up the "usual suspects" then remembered that Morgan Childs, a young drummer I'd worked with once on a casual big band date, had been playing regularly in a trio with pianist Amanda Tosoff. Along with bassist Josh Cole they made up the rhythm section on that Cellar gig, and it was one of the most fun experiences I had playing jazz that year. I'm hoping for a similar experience with Jen's bunch.

When you have long working associations with certain players, as I do in Vancouver, it's very tempting to stay within the comfort zone of people you've worked with a lot. But it can also be great fun (and pay tremenduos musical dividends) to take a shot and work with some of the many terrific young musicians this city continues to produce in such abundance.

Saddle Up (Again).

2009-06-21T17:19:00.000-07:00

Seems like we just got back from Tulsa but it's already time to hit the road again. I'll be in Vancouver, Canada for two gigs at their jazzfest; June 27th with my good friend vocalist Colleen Savage at the Capilano Suspension Bridge, and July 1st fronting a new (for me) local rhythm section of Cat Toren (piano) Jen Hodge (bass) and Mike Ardagh (drums) at the Railspur Alley Stage on Granville Island.

I'll also be out at the South Delta Jazz Festival in Whiterock July 9th for a concert (with Jarrod burough's on guitar, my old Vancouver runnin podnuh Stan Taylor on drums, and my New Orleans crony Rob Kohler on bass) and clinic/lecture.

http://www.southdeltajazzfestival.com/faculty09.html

Man it is so hot and humid here right now. I've been riding my bike back and forth to my office at Tulane, and it was so bad yesterday that the condensation on the inside of my watch crystal caused the watch to stop. I think it's rusted shut in there.

All in all, a good time to get out of town for a while. I'll try and do a little blogging from the Vancouver fest, always one of my favorite playing opportunities. If you're in town and make either of those gigs, hollah at me.

Meyer the Hatter.

2009-06-04T15:51:00.000-07:00

It should come as no surprise to anyone that, in a place like New Orleans, the sun is not your friend. After years of living in Vancouver, Canada, where a warm sunny day is such a rarity that a kind of mass hysteria grips the city when one occurs, compelling tens of thousands of Vancouverites to skip work in a mass stampede to the beach, to the bike path, to rollerblade, here I deal with an embarrassment of riches. The sun, much of the year, is so brutal that locals use umbrellas as much for protection against sunlight as against rain, and only non-natives (like most of my students at Tulane) are crazy enough to actually lay out in it. And if you're walking any distance out in the open, you're nuts not to wear a hat.

I own quite a few of them already (when I was a kid I loved hats of all kinds, and had a whole box of them); my current stash includes two felt fedoras ( Biltmores, in brown and grey), a pricey straw panama with a black band (the kind favored by the recently deceased pianist and raconteur Jack Velker), a cheap straw fedora with a band that says "Vancouver Sun Golf Tournament" that I bought for two bucks at a thrift shop in Vancouver, a "one size fits all" vent-air fedora (another thrift shop purchase, this time in Vicksburg, Mississippi), and a stingy-brim job I got for $4.98 at Walgreens drugstore on Tchoupitoulas last year that's actually made of paper, even though it looks like straw, and that never fails to get me complements from middle-aged African-American sports at second lines. I also recently aquired a straw version of the British "flat cap," which Mr. Arthur, our local truck-vendor fruit and vegetable man, refers to as my "Dago" hat. But since I'm going on the road for a few weeks worth of gigs this summer, and none of these hats are what you'd call "suitcase ready" (and hat boxes on the plane are a real pain in the ass) I decided today that I needed to pay a visit to Meyer the Hatter for something more portable.

Meyer the Hatter is a long, narrow store on St. Charles Avenue, just off Canal and right across from the streetcar stop in front of the Pearl Oyster Bar, that sells nothing but hats. It's sign advertises "quality headgear since 1894." When I was in there last winter the place was full of derbies (some of them green, for St. Patrick's Day) felt fedoras, porkpies, and dark colored Kangols, as well as the odd stovepipe and topper. Today it's filled with straw boaters, panamas, fedoras , various and sundry Palm-beachers and summer hats and of course the white, eight-point black visored caps that bandsmen wear in brass-band jazz ensembles. But I don't see what I'm looking for, a lightweight cotton version of the British flat cap, known in New Orleans as a "bebop cap."

A chubby little guy with a goatee, wearing, incredibly, a peaked-brim cap with earflaps, ala Ignatious Reilly in John Kennedy Toole's "A Confederacy of Dunces," skates up to me and says, "How ya dooin cap. Ma heptcha?" A major y'at for sure. God I love this place.

(For the uninitiated, a "y'at" is a working class, white New Orleanian. Their manner of speech is surprisingly un-southern, containing a lot of dese-dem-and-dose-isms. Think Archie Bunker with southern diction. The term "y'at" comes from the once-ubiquitous greeting "where y'at?" and he was asking me "how are you? May I help you?" The expression "cap" (short for "captain") is roughly equivalent to "buddy" or "pal," and is another form of address that one doesn't hear as often as even just a few years ago. Sadly, the homogenizing effects of mass American culture are spreading even here).

But I digress. Clerk: "Ma heptcha?" Me:"Y'all got any a those bebop caps in the store, in maybe a white or a powder blue?" Clerk:"Ohyesindeedy bruh, y'all follow me through heah, watch yah step" (he proceeds to lead me through a narrow opening between mountainous hat trees to a tiny, secluded oasis of hat drawers) "it's a little tight up in dis piece an dat's fuh sho." And after 15 or so minutes of this kind of back and forth, in which we discuss jazzfest ("too expensive for me bruh. I pay $50 to hear music, I want a chair, know what I'm sayin?") the absolute joy and perfection of life in New Orleans ("although I could use a bit less a da flyin bullets, an dats fuh sho") and his total commitment to my continued sartorial well being ("I gotcha covered like dew on da ground, baby"), I walk out of there in a spiffy new white Kangol be-bop cap.

And by god looky here, right under the brim. Meyer's has a website:
http://www.meyerthehatter.com/meyer/

Oblique New Orleans Encounter #971.

2009-05-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

I take my bike to Tulane about two or three days a week, as Darlene and I split one car between us and she works way out on Veterans Highway in Metairie. It's about a five mile ride from Saint Philip Street to my office, through all kinds of interesting and diverse neighborhoods. Things start out quasi-ghetto in the 6th Ward, then go a little more upscale as I pass Bayou St. John. There's a bike path on the neutral ground on Jefferson Davis Parkway and I stay on that from Toulous St., past the Boulevard Club just before Canal Street, and all the way past Tulane Avenue and over the freeway as far as the Washington Avenue canal. Then I cut behind the wreckage of the Blue Plate Mayonaise factory and straight down Audubon Street, across South Claiborne and onto the Tulane campus.

Back behind the Blue Plate factory is a scruffy little neighborhood that's only about half re-populated since Katrina. There's a couple of bars that are still wrecked (Leroy's Place and the Gert-town Lounge) and a bunch of churches. There's an old guy I see everytime I pass by, looks like he's 90 if he's a day, sitting on his porch. There's a trailer in his yard so I suspect he's still living in that and just sits up on his porch in an attempt at some sort of pre-Katrina normalcy. I'm such a familiar sight, grinding slowly by on my $50 Walmart bike, his dog doesn't even bark at me anymore.

Me: "Good morning sir."

Him: "Oh you don't hafta call me 'sir,' young fella."

Me:" Well, you know how it is. I was raised to respect my elders."

Him: "Well looka here, youngblood," (at this point I'm off my bike and it's become an official conversation)"just be glad you have elders. At my age, everbody older than me is dead."
Hard to argue with that.

A few blocks later, a woman I'd never met before called me 'baby.' "Good morning baby," she hollered.

Of course she was about 60 and standing in front of the House Of Refuge Ministries, but still, it was nice, you know?

Getting ready to go on the road this summer for a bit, and I'm really going to miss this kind of stuff while I'm Gone.

Germaine Bazzle.

2009-05-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

The debate continues, always, where is jazz going, who is the "future of jazz"? Is it Dave Douglas? Does the music need to incorporate more contemporary pop influences? Hip hop beats? Croation throat singing?

Those of us over 50 (or even 40) have heard it all before, and some of us (like me) are bored gormless with the whole discussion. I like what I like (and my tastes are actually pretty broad) and being an old guy means absolutely not giving a rat's ass about whether one's likes and dislikes are 'cool.' And of course the slant that often gets left out of discussions about whether playing the same music now that you were playing 40 years ago is 'valid' is that, in many cases (Ellington springs to mind) you're doing it a lot better now.

Case in point: Germaine Bazzle, who gets better every time I see her. Last night at Snug Harbor Bazzle, joined by the stellar talents of Larry Sieberth (piano), Simon Lott (drums) and Neil 'dig my sharp new haircut' Caine (bass), rolled out a program of standards very similar in content and execution to every one I've seen her present over the years, but she does it so well that any trifling over the fact that it's the 'music of the last century' seems like pointless nitpicking.

Bazzle is a jazz singer in the true meaning of that word. Her sense of swing is innate, and she is constantly engaged in the internal dialogue that is part of any small jazz band, an equal participant, not a 'singer' supported by 'accompanists.' Her choice of tempos (excruciatingly ballad-slow for "I Thought About You," burning-up for "Surrey with the Fringe On Top," dead-center-in-the-pocket for "What A Difference a Day Makes") was spot on, placing each tune exactly where it needed to be for maximum swing-osity groove from all participants. Tempos are hard; it takes years of experience to know where to put them. Bazzle knows.

Then there's scat singing. My usual position on this is that a little goes a long way; unless you actually are Sarah Vaughn or Ella Fitzgerald, just sing the song already. But Bazzle is just that good that I actually welcome chorus after chorus of finely honed, harmonically inventive scat from her, she's one of the most original practicioners of the art since hugely underrated Basie tromonist and singer Richard Boone. Her musicianly facility may well be a product of her own schooled background (Bazzle played bass on Bourbon Street for years with saxophonist Alvin "Red" Tyler, and currently teaches piano and vocal diction at Xavier Prep). Bazzle in no way limits herself to the 'shooby dooby doo' school of scat singing, instead deploying instrumental imitation (trombone, bass; at one point duetting with her 'singer' self and her inner trombonist) and a wide variety of pops and tongue-clicks that at one point (on the out-vamp to "Surrey") had drummer Simon Lott gasping in amazement at their polyrhythmic complexity. Bazzle has the ability to keep surprising even herself, often emitting delighted little yips and cackles in the midst of her improvisations. And she has that quality of sly innuendo, so common among 'Creole of Color" ladies of a certain age, that creates the illusion that the knowing wink, the breathy chuckle, and the implied double entendre in the lyric are all meant just for you.

In my experience the ultimate litmus test for singers is the regard they are held in by their fellow musicians, and in this regard Bazzle is absolutely 'one of the cats.' I've never heard a musician say anything but good things about the experience of working with her, and Sieberth, Caine, and Lott clearly considered it an honor and a privilege to share the bandstand with her. Everyone was getting stretched up there, and Bazzle was absolutely fearless about taking risks and challenging them and herself. Musicians love that.

Bazzle is greatly underrecorded (her only solo CD, "Standing Ovation," was released in 1992) and almost never performs outside of the city of New Orleans. But if you want to see someone totally inside of what they do, someone who's been doing it a long time and has honed her focus to a fine pinpoint conception, come here and catch her. There are days when I think Ms. Bazzle is the best jazz singer in America, and last night at Snug Harbor, she was.

Wrap it!

2009-05-05T09:59:00.000-07:00

The subject line referrence, for those not familiar with mid-80s Canadian rock band esoterica (a large demographic I'm sure) is to the title of Doug and the Slugs second album. The cats in Doug's band were all old compadres of mine from bar and strip-joint gig days, and after the Slugs became a big deal I'd often cross paths with them on the road. Recently I've reconnected with some of these folks, and it's interesting to remember how we'd gripe, 20 odd (very odd) years ago, about the road "making old men out of us" in light of the fact that we really are, now, old men.

But, I digress, and I haven't even got started. "Wrap it" also in this case refers to the end of the academic year, and what a wild ride it's been. The photo above is of me trying to look noble while Tim Warfield hands me my ass on "Tenor Madness" at this year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Tim was in town for our "Jazz at the Rat" series (where we bring in guest artists to do a clinic and then play with the students at the Rathskeller Bar in the student center) and it seemed like a no brainer to have him come out to Jazzfest and play a couple of tunes with the Tulane Jazz Orchestra. We featured him on "The Blues Weaver," a Sammy Nestico chart, and Thad Jones' flagwaver "Don't Git Sassy." When it became apparent that we needed an extra five minutes on the program I grabbed my horn (because I never go anywhere without my horn) and told the rhythm section to play a Bb blues. I took a few choruses, thought I'd aquitted my self pretty well, then stood aside as Tim proceded to take everything I'd played, turn it inside out and upside down, and make it into something much, much better. He's such a nice cat you don't even mind when he cuts you to ribbons.

The Jazz at the Rat program has been such a terrific thing for the students. The Lagniappe people (Tom Moody and Trina Beck) have expressed a desire to continue funding the project next year, and we've already come up with a partial list of people we'd like to bring in. The "embedded professional" nature of the program really kicks things up a notch for the students; they get an idea what it feels like to share the stand with some really top flight players. Then when the faculty band plays the gig, we flip the script and do the "embedded student" thing, so individual students get to experience the vibe of being in amongst professionals.

Because of some scheduling mishaps we wound up with four of these Rat things in the month of April, which, along with Jazzfest and it's attendent spinoff gigs plus student term-end concerts and recitals conspired to create a 'perfect storm' of balls-to-the-wall activity for everyone. In the last two weeks of April I was out every single night, either playing or attending someone else's gig; the last week I had a concert with my combo and big band on Tuesday, the Rat gig Wednesday night, Jazzfest Thursday morning (the bus picked us up at 9:30a.m.) a Jessse Mcbride's Jazz Allstars concert that night (Jesse, Tim Warfield again, Antoine Drye on trumpet, Rex Gregory on alto, James Westphall on vibes, Jason Marsalis on drums, Jasen Khalil Weaver on bass, and special guest 13 year old drummer Eric Calhoun) then, to top it off, I had another gig, with Rob Kohler's trio, at 8:30 the next morning.

But I'm not complaining. I worked long and hard to get myself to a place where I could be this busy and aside from occasionally feeling like the company on the bandstand is mighty fast, I have no complaints. I've got some marking to do, an exam to invigilate, and a couple of makeup lessons. Then I intend to take at least one...maybe two days off, before starting preproduction on a CD I'm making with bassist Rob Kohler in June, then up to Vancouver to play a couple of gigs at their Jazzfest, then back to New Orleans to record a new record with the Professors of Pleasure. Then it'll be time for school to start again.

Fredrick Sanders Clinic and Performance.

2009-04-20T14:54:00.000-07:00

I'm personally looking forward to this one because, aside from a houseparty and a couple of nights at Sweet Lorraine's last year, I haven't really had any opportunities to play with Fred since he left his teaching post at Tulane. And I really, really miss playing with him.

There's a slight wrinkle in the schedule this time: the Sanders clinic will be at 4:00 Tuesday April 21st in the bandroom (260 Dixon Annex) at Tulane. The performance will be the following night: Wednesday April 22nd, at 8:00p.m. in the Rathskeller Bar in the Tulane Student Center. Both events are free and open to the public.

Stefon Harris Clinic and Performance.

2009-04-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Just a quick reminder that our guest tomorrow night (April 15th) at the Jazz at the Rat series on the Tulane campus will be vibraphonist and percussionist Stefon Harris.Mr. Harris will also conduct a clinic in the Tulane Music Department band room in the Dixon Annex.

Clinic at 4:00p.m. Gig at 8:00p.m.

Both events are free and open to the public.

Harold Battiste.

2009-03-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

The "Jazz at the Rat" series, co-curated by the Lagniappe organization and the Tulane Jazz Performance Studies Department, continues to serve up opportunities for students to interact with major figures in the music. April 1st at 8:00p.m., Harorld Battiste will be appearing with various combinations of students and faculty at the Rathskellar Bar in the Lavin-Bernik Center for Student Life on the Tulane campus.

Mr. Battiste may not be well known to the general public, but his credentials in the music business go back more than fifty years. In the 1950s he was a member in good standing of the first wave of New Orleans 'modern' jazz icons Ellis Marsalis, Alvin Batiste, James Black, Alvin "Red" Tyler, Nat Perrilliat and many others. During his thirty year tenure in Los Angeles he worked as an arranger-composer (Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," Barbara George's "I Know") as well as arranging and producing for Lee Dorsey and Dr. John. He started (and continues to run) New Orleans first black-owned artist run record company AFO (All For One) recordings. For 15 years he was musical director of Sonny and Cher's television show, earning six gold records along the way.

Upon his return to New Orleans in 1989 he was instrumental, along with colleague Ellis Marsalis, in creating the University of New Orleans Jazz Education program as it currently exists under the stewardship of director Steve Masakowski.

His influence as a jazz educator continues with the release of "The Silverbook," his compendium of compositions by New Orleans modern jazz masters. In addition to being an invaluable source of compositions that have become New Orleans modern jazz standards with which every practising modernist in the city worth his salt must be familiar (James Black's "Dee Wee," "Monkey Puzzle" and "Magnolia Triangle," Nat Perrilliat's "Little Joy," and Battiste's own "Nevermore," Opus 43," and "Beautiful Old Ladies"), it is also a comprehensive method for the study of jazz performance practise. As Battiste writes in the forward :

"The Silverbook concept is based on a process which started around 1946 when the Jazz learning process for a group of young New Orleans boys conciously began. Of course there was no forethought that they were developing a 'learning process' but fortunately, by documenting their activities and keeping track of the music they studied, I have been able to see "the process" in retrospect."

Those "young New Orleans boys" included Alvin Batiste, Edward Blackwell, Ellis Marsalis and of course Battiste himself who, in what I've come to recognize as a typical set of New Orleans-style social coincidences, is not only friend and mentor to my colleague, jazz pianist Jesse McBride, but is also an old and dear friend of my neighbor Miss Vera, and thus has ceased to be a distant and intimidating figure in music history and instead has become "Harold," a very nice cat who lives just a few blocks around the corner from me.

April 1st, 8:00p.m., Rat Bar, Tulane campus.

Harold Battiste, New Date.

2009-03-16T13:44:00.001-07:00

We have a new date for the Harold Battiste/Jazz at the Rat concert. Mr. Battiste will be appearing at the Rat on April 1st at 8:00p.m., not March 18th as previously announced.

the Dean's Breakfast.

2009-03-12T18:21:00.001-07:00

One of those oddball gigs that show up on my calendar is this one, the Dean's Breakfast. It's a coffee and donut thing thrown the first friday of every month at Cudd Hall on the Tulane campus by the Lagniappe people, in this case the straw boss is Tom Moody, who snapped this picture of the trio. Left to right we're John Doheny, Rob Kohler (whose gig it is, so I guess we're the Rob Kohler trio) and yes that is indeed the Cadillac of Jazz Guitar, Steve Masakowski, on the right. We've had kind of a revolving cast of chord guys on the gig since it began last September, including Jesse Mcbride and Mike Pellera from NOCCA. Rob's brother Lee even drove in from Florida for a couple. It's looks like Steve's got the chair for the next few and we're very happy about that. People kept swimming up close and whispering "hey. That's Steve Masakowski!" and we'd say "aw, you know, we tried to get somebody good, but..."

Lagniappe is also underwriting the Jazz at the Rat series, a terrific opportunity for students at Tulane to listen to and in some cases play with some very heavy guest artists. Big up to the Lagniappe folks.

The really weird thing about the Dean's Breakfast gig is, the downbeat is at 9:45. In the morning. Amazingly, there are apparently two 9:45s in the same day. Who'd a thunk it?

Keep'n It Real.

2009-03-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Today was the annual parade for the Keep'n It Real Social and Pleasure Club, a young club (established 2004) with a route that passes right through my neighborhood, down Orleans Avenue from Bayou St. John, left on North Broad. Where they go after that I couldn't tell you, I usually let them go around St. Bernard Avenue. No matter how much fun following a parade is, it's good to keep in mind you have to walk the same distance back.

This year, as last, the band was the Hot 8, a 'new school' brass band specializing in funk oriented repertoire like "Miss My Homies," "Jisten To Me," and "You Can Run But You Can't Hide From The Truth." But this year, like last year, when the band approached the intersection of North Broad and Dumaine, they suddenly stopped and struck up the old spritual, "That Old Rugged Cross." This is the intersection where, a little over two years ago, Hot 8 snare drummer and Rabouin High School band director Dinerral "Dick" Shavers was shot dead in a stupid and tragic bit of violence.

I've often spoken of how much I love New Orleans and my life here, but there are times, and this is one of them, when the place will cause your poor heart to break. The deep and powerful humanity of the place contains this tragic element as part of it's fabric; you can't have one without the other and if you try, like many tourists and part-time residents, to just take the good without the bad, you are both setting yourself up for disillusionment and denying yourself the full experience of life here. If you really love New Orleans, you must love, understand and accept all of it.

On my good days, I feel like I've got this down. On bad ones, all I want to do is cry. But then, after a while, the band (as did the Hot 8 on this day) strikes up "Over In The Glory Land," and blasts it out all the way to Esplanade Avenue, and we all reaffirm to ourselves that life is fleeting, we're only here for a short while, so we might as well cut some decent steps on our way to the boneyard.

Profs of Pleasure at the Rat...

2009-03-02T13:43:00.001-08:00

...or, more properly, the Rathskellar Bar in the Lavin-Bernick Center For University Life, but that's kind of a mouthful.

A little backstory on the Profs. When we all came back after Katrina, a number of applied music instructors (basically, the folks who teach private lessons) elected, for various reasons, to not return to the city, or not return to Tulane to teach. The chair of the department at the time, Barbara Jazwinski, asked if I could recommend replacements. While it would seem that this ran the risk of opening the door for rampant cronyism on my part (and to a certain extent it did; hey, you tend to hire people you've worked with in other contexts) it was also a wonderful opportunity to bring fresh ideas and attitudes into the department. The freshest of these turned out to pianist Frederick Sanders who, in his year here, was instrumental in cementing the idea that Tulane could and would have a jazz performance studies department that took a back seat to no one. Through long brainstorming sessions Fred and I developed the concepts that guide the department today; that jazz is a hands-on skill that should be taught by players active in the jazz-performance community, and that this connectivity in turn could and would be a means to stream the most gifted and hardworking of our students into the professional world. That's the way it happened for all of us (although admittedly, in most cases, in a non-academic environment) and we saw this as a way to pay the gift of our mentorship under master player-teachers forward.

Alas, Fred's family commitments dictated his stepping down after just one year, but his replacement, Jesse McBride, turned out to be first rate. Fredrick recommended two people to replace him, and by coincidence I'd just seen Jesse play a few weeks before at Snug Harbor, with Wess "Warmdaddy" Anderson. Shortly after that, I played a casual with him at Commanders Palace and we wound up talking about jazz, and jazz education, for over an hour after the gig was finished. The great thing about Jesse is that he just lives to "pass it on," and he doesn't really care how. It could be in an academic context like Tulane (or Dillard, where he also teaches), in the informal areas of the jam session or the after-hours hang, or in one of the two versions of the Next Generation (the ever-evolving institution comprised of up and coming students, a tradition started by the great Harold Battiste at UNO and taken over by Jesse upon Harold's retirement) that he currently has performing Tuesdays and Thursdays at Snug Harbor and Donna's Bar and Grill respectively. By any means necessary, Jesse is going to hand off the baton.

But I digress. At some point in late 2006 it occured to me that since we had all these great players working on campus it would be kicks to form a band, so we did. We played a few little gigs around campus, opened for Irvin Mayfield at Macallister Auditoreum, recorded a CD, and eventually, took it on the road up to Vancouver, Canada, to play the jazz festival up there in June of last year. The band we'll be taking into the Rat this wednesday March 4th will consist of Jesse Mcbride on piano, longtime Tulane bass instructor Jim Markway on electric and acoustic bass, new drum instructor Geoff Clapp, my office mate and partner-in-crime in the jazz studies department John Dobry on guitar, and yours truly on tenor saxophone.

8:00p.m. March 4th

The Rathskellar Bar in the Lavin-Bernick Center on the Tulane campus.

Admission is free.

Because It's Carnival Time.

2009-02-20T12:32:00.000-08:00

The subject line referrence is to the Al "Carnival Time" Johnson hit of the same name, the destination sign on the Freret Street bus as I passed it on the way home from a parade yesterday, and the reason for my abscence from bloggerdom for the next week or so. It's just not possible to get much of anything done around here at the height of Carnival Season.

Incidentally, the pic is of the same Zulu poster that my tax preparer recently gifted Darlene and I with. Mr. Jimmy is a member in good standing of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and has offered to sponsor me as a member. A pretty attractive proposition I'd say, especially considering that the President of the United States social secretary, Desiree Glapion-Rogers, is a former Zulu Queen. And for you history-dweeb types, yes that's the same Glapions as the late, great, widow Glapion, otherwise known as Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau.

Y'all Be Ready, Y'all Be Right.

2009-02-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the second in our series of workshops featuring guest jazz artists at the Rat, otherwise known as the Rathskeller Bar in the Lavin-Bernick Center for Student Life on the Tulane campus. Tonight's guest is drummer Adonis Rose.

Jesse Mcbride is curating this series, and he's been running it like a kind of student/faculty jam session with guest artist. The last event featured trumpeter Clyde Kerr Jr. with several student groups playing a mix of standards and Clyde's own compositions. It was a freewheeling affair, and the only ground rules were "know the music (no charts on the stand)" and "be ready."

The last set consisted of Clyde on trumpet, me on tenor, faculty members Jesse Mcbride on piano and Geoff Clapp on drums, and a student bass player who shall remain anonymous. We didn't play anything particularly hard, but during a medium up version of "Blue n Boogie" I could tell Mr. Bass was having a bit of trouble finding the pocket. Geoff Clapp can be a little rambunctious at times, but really, he was just swinging hard and shouting encouragement. New Orleans musicians like to exhort and shout on the stand, and you hear a lot of "uh huh" and "yeah you right!" At least you do if you're playing well. I like it.

Mr. Bass helped me drag some of the equipment back to the music building after the gig and allowed as to how he wasn't used to playing with drummers who were that agressive. " I'm used to guys who just play ting ting ting ta-ting," he said.

I countered with a few tales of my own public bandstand-humiliations, many of them much worse and some of them quite recent. Cause that's just the way it is in jazz; every once in a while you get your ass handed to you, and at my time of life it's increasingly getting handed to me by people half my age or younger. But what are you gonna do? The only proper response is to head back to the shed.

I told Mr. Bass, "Just wait till you see what Adonis has up his sleeve. Y'all better come correct."

Clinics (with Nicholas Payton) and Concerts.

2009-01-27T13:09:00.000-08:00

Big doings in the Tulane Music Department. A bunch of us 'jazz insurgents' have been scheming and plotting to bring more jazz to the department and the Tulane campus in general, and this year some of those efforts are paying off. Beginning Wednesday February 4th, our jazz piano instructor, Jesse McBride, will be curating a music series Wednesday nights at the Rat, the bar in the basement of the Student Union building on the Tulane University campus. The schedule is as follows:

February 4th: Clyde Kerr Jr.

February 18th: Adonis Rose

March 4th: John Doheny and the Professors of Pleasure

March 18th: Harold Battiste

April 15th: Stefon Harris

April 22nd: Fredrick Sanders

April 29th: Tim Warfield

Downbeat is at 8:00p.m. and admission is absolutely free. That's a helluva price to catch some very heavy cats. Trumpeter Clyde Kerr Jr. has been a mover and shaker on the scene in New Orleans since the 70s, both as a session player (just about everything that had brass on it in the 70s, from the Meters to the Nevilles to Allan Toussaint, Clyde played on) and as a straight-ahead jazz player (I'm particularly fond of his work on Alvin "Red" Tyler's Rounder release from the early 90s, "Heritage"). As an educator he's taught some of the cream of the crop of contemporary New Orleans trumpet players, most notably Nicholas Payton and Marlon Jordan.

Drummer Adonis Rose has recorded and performed with Wynton Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Harry Connick Junior, Nicholas Payton, Gerald Levert, Chaka Kahn, and Public Enemy.

The Professors of Pleasure are Tulane University's flagship faculty band, and feature Jesse McBride, piano, Jim Markway bass, John Dobry guitar, Geoff Clapp drums and yours truly on tenor and alto saxophone.

Harold Battiste has worn many, many hats during his long and industrious career, from pianist, composer and saxophonist,to record label owner (AFO records, New Orleans first black-owned co-operative record label) record producer (Sam Cooke, Dr. John, Sonny and Cher) musical director (Sonny and Cher again, in both their touring band and their long running hit television show) and jazz educator (University of New Orleans). He has also been mentor and "life coach" to many, many young New Orleans musicians (including our own Jesse McBride) and has recently assembled and published a treasure trove of New Orleans modern jazz compositions by masters such as Ellis Marsalis, James Black, Nat Perrilliat, Alvin Batiste and Melvin Lastie under the rubric "The Silverbook."

Vibraphonist Stefon Harris has recorded with Wynton Marsalis, Cassandra Wilson, Charlie Hunter, Joe Henderson, Steve Coleman, Joshua Redman, Kurt Elling, Greg Osby and many, many others, as well as releasing six albums under his own name. His latest on the Blue Note label, "African Tarantella," features Steve Turre, Derrick Hodge and Terreon Gully.

Pianist Fredrick Sanders is originally from Dallas, and has played with Roy Hargrove, Dr. John, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. He has released two CDs as leader ("East of Vilbig" and "Soul Trinity") and played on the Professors of Pleasure's first release, earning him the title "Professor of Pleasure Emeritus."

Saxophonist Tim Warfield is a veteran of the Nicholas Payton and Marlon Jordon bands, and was featured on the 1991 Island/Antilles release "Tough Young Tenors." Warfield’s first recording, "A Cool Blue," was selected as one of the top ten recordings of the year in a 1995 New York Times critic’s poll, as was his 1998 recording Gentle Warrior (featuring Cyrus Chestnut, Tarus Mateen, Clarence Penn, Terell Stafford, and Nicholas Payton), proclaiming him possibly the most powerful tenor saxophonist of his generation. In 1999, he was awarded “Talent Deserving Wider Recognition” in DownBeat Magazine’s 49th Annual Jazz Critic’s poll

And...

On February 4th and 5th, from 3:30 to 5:00p.m., the Tulane Jazz Performance Studies department will present Nicholas Payton conducting clinics. The clinics are absolutely free and are open to the general public, and will be held in the music dept. bandroom on the Tulane campus, which is room 260 in the Dixon Annex. If you are a young jazz musician in the New Orleans area you cannot afford to miss these events. There's just no rationale for it, unless you've got a gig or something.

Be there, or be square.

Walk In Jerusalem, Just Like John.

2009-01-11T15:35:00.000-08:00

Every conversation I have about Obama's upcoming inaguration always seems, at least among musicians, to end with something like, "and you know the music's gonna be killin." That is doubtless true, and won't it be wonderful to be spared the deathless prose of say, Hank Williams Junior ( "John N Sarah tell ya just what they think. And they’re not gonna blink. And they’re gonna fix this country. Cause they’re just like you n’ ole Hank.") in favor of Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. But I can't help but cringe at the prospect of "America's Pastor," the odious, crypto-nazi Rick Warren, reading a prayer at the ceremonies.

It's all in the name of 'bipartisanism' I guess, 'reaching across the aisle' and 'listening' to everybody's point of view. Except a lot of people, myself included, think that when your point of view includes equating homosexuality with pathology and child abuse and abortion with genocide, you should be relegated to expressing those opinions from atop a soap box in a public park, not at the inauguration of the first African American president of the United States.

I can't help think what a grand gesture it would be, had not some mutant shot him dead down in the 9th ward a little over ten years ago, if New Orleans gospel genius Raymond Myles could deliver a speech, and maybe favor us with a tune. Something like the version of "Walk In Jerusalem" that he used to set the walls on fire with at places like the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, with his group the Raymond Anthony Myles Singers (the RAMS) dressed in his regal finery, the kind of threads that made Little Richard look like a small-town Episcopalian minister. Raymond who was so flamboyantly, unabashedly gay and yet he plied his trade in the supposedly 'socially conservative' precincts of the African-American church community, Raymond who was a Christian to the core and yet was so open and accepting of all his fellow souls on the road to enlightenment (unlike certain Jesus jumper honky lardbags who shall go unnamed) and who subscribed to that phrase I have personally heard often in the smallest and humblest of storefront churches in Black America, "you come in your own way, brother."

Come in your own way. Imagine that. Not "do it my way or suffer eternal damnation." Not (as in the smiley-faced, Ned-Flanderish fascism of the Rick Warrens of this world, oops I guess that just slipped out) "don't you dare love the wrong people or use your genitalia in a non-Rick-Warren-approved way (oops. did it again) or you're going to Aitch Eee double-hockey-sticks."

I'll be tuning in to the inauguration on the TeeVee, and I'll be 'kvelling' (as our Jewish brothers and sisters say) over the new president like everybody else, but when a certain boorish, pasty-faced motorscooter comes on (and you know who I mean) I'll be hitting the mute button. And I'll be putting on Mr. Raymond's CD "Heaven is the Place" http://www.louisianamusicfactory.com/showoneprod.asp?ProductID=550
and when the Maestro says "I wanna dance !" that is just what I'm going to do.

Ya heard me?!

The 12 Yats of Christmas.

2008-12-19T21:34:00.000-08:00

I'm currently freezing my butt off in northern climes, but I'll be back home in New Orleans on December 22nd, just in time for Christmas. Here's a link to a seasonal favorite.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7rUoX5_VGI&feature=related

There's an awful lot of New Orleanians who can't get home for Christmas, and my heart goes out to them. As Benny Grunch himself is wont to say this time of year, this goes out to all displaced New Orleans people, everywhere. Merry Christmas, from ya mom 'n' nem.

Yeah You Rite!

2008-12-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

A variety of New Orleans dialects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpFDNTo4DNg

Colleen Savage in New Orleans.

2008-12-06T14:50:00.000-08:00

When I was in the middle of recording my first CD as a leader, back in 2001, I was simultaneously working a two week gig with singer Colleen Savage in the lounge at the Pan Pacific Hotel in Vancouver. There are times onstage that are special, and there are times on stage that are utterly banal. And then there are times when you are playing music and look into another performers face, and you are both engulfed in a kind of luminosity. We had some nights like that at the Pan Pacific, Colleen and I, and we also realized that we had first met 25 years ago that month. Having her come to the studio and contribute two tunes ("Djindi" and "Time After Time") seemed like a good way to commemorate the occasion.

Fast-forward seven years. Colleen and I have now been friends for 32 years, and she was here in New Orleans last Tuesday to put in a stellar performance with my 'A' student band at Tulane's Dixon Theater.

Life is good.

Obama.

2008-11-16T14:27:00.000-08:00

Well, that's a relief. There were a few points there where it actually looked like McCrankypants and Alaska's answer to Eva Perron were going to be moving into the Whitehouse. Instead it looks like Smart is back in style in American politics.

Despite the ongoing Katrina diaspora New Orleans remains a majority-black (and majority democrat) city. Even white voters in Orleans Parish voted in a clear majority for Obama, which makes me feel a whole lot better about living here. Outside of our little blue bubble here though, white folks in Louisiana went McCain/Palin by a margin of about nine to one.

For African-Americans in New Orleans it would be hard to overstate the joy and enthusiasm that greeted the Obama victory. I have a couple of Obama t-shirts that I wear occasionally, and my reception in places like, say, the Tulane Health Clinic (where virtually the entire nursing staff is black) has been pretty warm lately. Not that black folks in New Orleans are ever anything less than friendly and welcoming (to me, anyway) but we're talking hugs and kisses from total strangers here. When Darlene and I ducked into the Brooks Brothers store in Canal Place the other day, the saleslady just about squeezed the life out of me.

For some reason I wound up doing a spate of convention gigs right around election time, many with African-American musicians, and while the mood was upbeat and joyous, there was also an aspect of letting ourselves truly feel, for the first time in eight years, how angry we are with the Bush administration and what they've done to this country. The general consensus seems to be that Some Motherfuckers need to be in jail. None of this "move on and let the nation heal" crap like after Watergate. Republicans like to talk about "accountability" and "rule of law." It'd be nice to see some of that applied to them.

As usual in America, race is the Elephant in the Room that nobody wants to talk about (well, nobody white anyway). But in todays Times-Picayune, there's a very interesting and germain article by Alex Mikulich, who's Research Fellow on Race and Poverty at Loyola and author of "Interrupting White Privilege: Catholic Theologians Break the Silence."

White people reap disproportionate benefits while people of color bear disproportionate burdens in every sphere of life, including wealth, health, education, criminal justice and employment.

In her study of hiring in several cities, the sociologist Devah Pager reveals that white applicants with a criminal record were just as likely to receive a callback as a black applicant without any criminal history. Despite the fact that white applicants revealed evidence of a felony drug conviction, employers seemed to view this applicant as no more risky than a young black man with no criminal record. The stereotype of black people as criminals persists in the conciousness of white Americans, irrespective of white citizens' self-stated lack of prejudice.

It's the old "I'm not racist, but..." routine.

On the political level this plays out in the numerous instances of IOKIYAR syndrome (It's OK If You're A Republican). Barack Obama's marginal associations with William Ayers and Rev. Wright are big news, but John Mccain's much closer association with domestic terrorist and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy, and Sarah Palin's husband's membership in the radical-seperatist Alaska Independence Party appear to be viewed quite differently by white republicans. Ms. Palin's gaudy family history is another example. If the Obama's had had a pregnant-out-of-wedlock teenaged daughter about to get married to a mouthy thug in warmup duds and chin whiskers, don't you think we'd be hearing an awful lot about 'dysfunctional black families' right about now?

The next four years are going to be a bumpy ride, one that will make the Clinton era look like high tea at Claridges. There is a substantial constituency of white people in this country who are absolutely infuriated by the thought of a black man in the Whitehouse.

But, on the bright side, I'm no longer embarrassed to be an American. And the music at the Inaugural Ball is going to be killin'.

Young Men Olympian Parade Pics.

2008-10-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's the pics from the YMO 124th anniversary parade a couple of weeks ago. Normally my wife Darlene supplies me with photos of these events, but when we arrived we discovered she only had three shots left on the roll, so author and musicologist Ned Sublette kindly e-mailed me a batch of his.

I Love This Town.

2008-10-04T08:30:00.000-07:00

I walked out of a rehearsal last night at Tulane (with my "A" student combo) into a free concert by the Funky Meters.

The Funky Meters ain't the real Meters. Like the Beatles (John, Paul George and Ringo) if it ain't Art, Zig, George and Leo, it ain't the Meters. But the Funky Meters do have two original members (organist Art Neville and bassist George Porter Jr.) a drummer with a much different but nontheless deeply valid take on the funk canon than Zig ( Russell Batiste) and a revolving cast of guitar players (the chair is currently filled by Art's son Ian, who also plays with Aaron Neville's son Ivan in Dumpstafunk).

I walked out of the music building and Art was singing "Fiyo on the Bayou."

I love this town.

Coming soon: pics from last Sunday's Young Men Olympia Social and Pleasure Club 124th Anniversary Parade, as soon as I get them back from the drug store.

The Spanish Tinge Redux

2008-09-20T13:13:00.000-07:00

I've held forth here previously about the Latin American influences in New Orleans culture. Jelly Roll Morton's assertion that without "tinges of Spanish" in the music, one will never achieve "the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz" is one that has been unpacked by a scholar or two (most adroitly, in my opinion, by Lawrence Gushee). To musicians, these influences are readily apparent. If one interprets Morton's use of the term "Spanish" to mean "Afro-Cuban" (and again Gushee and others, myself among them, argue strongly that this is the case) then New Orleans music, from early jazz to R&B to Funk to Hip Hop, is littered with the phraseology and rhythmic organizing principles associated with 'Latin' music. Some of the most spirited between-sets discussions I've had with other musicians on gigs have been about the similarities between 'second line' grooves and Afro-Cuban clave figures. Drummers in particular like to hold forth on this subject; I remember a particularly spirited discussion with Julian Garcia in front of Sweet Lorraine's club, where the leader had to practically drag us back inside for the second set.

This stuff gets short shrift in the tourist brochures, where it's all about the French. The French Quarter, the French influence on cuisine and dance, the rapidly disappearing French speaking population (even though that population is 'rapidly disappearing' from rural Acadia; French as a spoken language has been gone from the city of New Orleans since the beginning of the 20th century, and in any case the two populations are quite dissimilar. Rural 'Cajun' French is a product of Acadiana. Urban New Orleans French came from France and St. Domingue). But the Spanish period of New Orleans' history (roughly 1762 to the Louisiana Purchase of 1803) is of tremendous importance culturally.

I bring this up because I'm in the process of teaching (in a TIDES course at Tulane) a new book by Ned Sublette called "The World That Made New Orleans." Sublette, a writer of great depth who nonetheless manages to have broad popular appeal, draws some rather nifty connections between the complex layering of cultures that made the city, then and now, such a unique place. His central thesis is that these layerings were all in place by the time the Americans took the helm. He's quick to point out the seminal role the Spanish Period played in the musical development of the city:

Brief though it was, the Spanish period in New Orleans was crucial to the creation of Afro-Louisianan culture, and constitutes a singular moment in African American history. During the years when the Spanish governor of Louisiana reported to the Spanish captain general of Cuba, the rules in New Orleans regarding slaves were much like those in Havana. There was a large population of free people of color. Slaves were treated badly, but enslaved people had some liberties-most important, they had the right to purchase their freedom. That was more than black New Orleanians had before, and more than enslaved people in the United States would have.

In Cuba, where such a regime lasted through the entire experience of slavery, there is every indication that this greater degree of freedom within slavery was good for music. The big city of Havana...took music in from all over, including Louisiana, but radiated it out even more powefully. As New Orleans grew, it would do the same, inhaling and exhaling music, up through the days of jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and the town's latter day lingua franca, funk.

The phrase 'melting pot' is not really appropriate for this process, as it implies a sameness of result. Amalgam works a bit better; I personally like 'layering' of culture. Louisiana had basically three colonial eras in quick succession; French, Spanish, and Anglo-American, and each of these eras had it's own slave regime, with new laws and customs, allowing black New Orleans to develop in a different way with each successive political paradigm. In addition, all three regimes were in the habit of importing slaves directly from certain specific regions of Africa. These "fresh off the boat" Africans arrived in successive waves, Bambara, Bakongo etc. and created their own cosmopolitan layering effect within the larger Creolized culture of the city. The result of these processes is immediately apparent in the city today. It is utterly unlike anywhere else in the United States. My favorite descriptive of the city (I've forgotten where I first heard this) is that it is "a cross between Port Au Prince, Haiti and Patterson, New Jersey."

Sublette, again:

On sabath evening," wrote a visitor to New Orleans in 1819, " the African slaves meet on the green, by the swamp, and rock the city with their Congo dances."

Most of the United States was quiet on Sunday. In many parts of the rural, mostly Protestant nation, dancing was frowned on. But the mostly French-speaking, mostly Catholic, black-majority port city of New Orleans, proudly unassimilated into the English-speaking country that had annexed it, was rocking.

Jump forward 128 years to Roy Brown's "Good Rockin' Tonight." If I had to name the first rock and roll record, I would first say that there is no such thing, then I would pick "Good Rockin' Tonight." It was recorded at Cosimo Matassa's rudimentary studio on the edge of New Orlean's French Quarter: a microphone and a disc cutter, in the back room of a record store at Rampart and Dumaine.

Cosimo's place was catty-cornered from the legendary "green by the swamp," known in the old days as 'Place Congo,' or Congo Square.

The distance between rocking the city in 1819 and "Good Rockin' Tonight" in 1947 was about a block.

Preach it, brother.

The Nanny State.

2008-09-05T12:22:00.000-07:00

One of the most consistantly irritating tropes pointed our way post-Katrina has been the notion that the botched response to the Federal Flood was not an example of abysmally bad governance, but a symptom of the "culture of entitlement." In this paradigm (which seems to exist, as far as I can tell, only in the fever swamps of the neo-conservative mind) a large "underclass" of welfare recipients, accustomed through the generations to a life of leisure on the dole and deprived by the "nanny state" of the will towards self-sufficiency, simply sat on their behinds before and after Katrina and waited for "the government" to do everything, down to and including wipe their asses.

Now, there's a few things about this scenario that don't make sense, starting with the fact that "welfare," as we knew it in the past, simply no longer exists in this country since the welfare reforms of the Clinton administration in the 90s. It's very difficult to qualify to receive assistance and almost impossible to stay on it for more than two years, even if you have small children. So the idea that, say, public housing is somehow a repository of welfare bums lying around suckling at the public teat doesn't really fly. Most people in the projects, at least as they existed pre-Katrina, worked various types of minimum wage (and in the case of some service industry positions, sub-minimum wage) jobs. Viewed this way, public housing could been seen as a taxpayer subsidized labor pool for certain types of industry, mostly service and tourist oriented. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining the post-Katrina labor shortage in those areas, since 'the projects' have yet to re-open.

But on a purely anectdotal level, I got a nice little lesson in how this stuff works today as I rode my bike over to Tulane to check on my office for the first time since Gustav. Passing through the areas off Orleans Avenue in Mid-City, people were hard at work clearing brush and dealing with downed trees. In fact, when Darlene and I got back late yesterday afternoon to our pad on St. Philip, our neighbors who stayed had almost completely cleared the street and storm drains of debris. As I pedaled past Palmyra and Jeff Davis, I saw some local guys had jerry-rigged a winch with a rope and a Buick sedan, and were hauling a downed tree out of the road.

Further on towards Tulane, I saw the only really substantial damage on my route. A bar called Leroy's Place, at the corner of Audubon Court and Olive street, had suffered a total collapse of it's streetside wall, filling the road with brightly painted aquamarine blue bricks. But the place had never re-opened after Katrina and had been listing pretty badly of late. I wasn't too surprised to see it topple.

As I got closer to the university, the neighborhoods became more affluent and there was more crap on the street. Trees, brush, a couple of downed power lines. I saw a soccer mom type in a huge SUV drive into a street blocked by a downed tree and just stop, as if confused. After about three minutes, she backed out of the block and drove away.

Compared to the ghetto neighborhoods the streets were quite empty. It finally occurred to me (after I realized these more affluent neighborhoods had power) that everyone was inside enjoying the air-conditioning.

And waiting for someone else, 'the government,' or maybe just the hired minions the wealthy pay to do these things, to come and clean up the mess for them.