Saturday, May 7, 2011

New Orleans Jazz Fest, May 7 in New Orleans

The original plan was that we were going to go to New Orleans to see a Greg Dulli show but that changed into meeting up with Carla's music friends to go to Jazz Fest.  Seemed like a great idea.  I've never been to New Orleans and it looked like a great festival with a great line-up.  We started making plans then all her friends (but one, who we never met up with) dropped out but we went ahead with it anyway since it would at least be a trip for us.  We still planned to do Jazz Fest of course but we had to change plans when it became best for us to fly in on Friday.  It was cheaper and easier but we missed Wilco at the fest on Thursday then Arcade Fire on Friday (when they performed with Cyndi Lauper, who we passed on the street in downtown on Saturday morning but that wasn’t part of our concert).  So the trip changed from a destination for a concert festival to pretty much just a few days over a weekend in New Orleans and stopping in at a concert festival.  We had a great time in the city and might have been fine with doing something else rather than going to the festival but we felt some obligation since that was part of the original plan.  Overall for three days it was a good line-up but spread out, for each individual day, there wasn’t an overwhelming amount of bands we knew beforehand, especially on Saturday, so we were pretty much left with the Strokes as headliners. We got there in the afternoon and checked out the other stages, sometimes just to get out of the oppressive, Southern sun, but there was a great range in depth of music out there: gospel, blues, soul, and actually some jazz.  There were probably a lot of local acts but I didn’t research to see.  It would have been a great music festival just to wander without a plan and soak up some unfamiliar sounds.  About the only musical genre that wasn’t completely represented was rock, and that was held up by the headliners.  The park was also full of food and art and performances and booths selling stuff and lots of things to walk around and see.  A lot of local flavor, but you get that anywhere in that city, maybe more than than other place I’ve been to in the world.  We didn’t see Lauryn Hill at Coachella since we thought we would see her here but she was up against the Strokes, which was the act we were there to see in particular.  The Strokes put on the same show they’ve put on every other time, which isn’t to say that it was bad, and the music was as amazing as it always is and has been, but they’re really not much to watch, and a bit out of place on a big stage in the middle of a swelteringly hot field, but apparently by now they’ve earned the status of big-festival-headliners.  As a band at something billed as a “jazz fest” they seemed out of place, and local musicheads probably protested their inclusion, but it certainly brought in a fair share of people, though I have no idea if it sold out or who much the Strokes contributed to that or if anyone complained that the place had too many Strokes fans.  There were a lot of kids there and it’s hard to say if they would have done it if it wasn’t for seeing a (relatively) young rock band.  It kinda sucks that they’d have to go to a big music festival in a field to see just that band (especially a band that’s much better indoors, out of the light, and playing to somewhere less than 60,000 people) but hopefully they were old enough to see them the first time back in the day.  We left before the Strokes had finished to beat the crowd (which was shipped in and out in quickly-overflowing buses) and that was before 8.  The sun was still up!  Not very rock n’ roll but there were probably curfews and all sorts of city ordinances and it was probably difficult enough to have a music festival in a park within the city anyway, but it gave us time back in the city that night.  I’d like to go back to Jazz Fest just to wander and take in as much music as possible, without aim or expectation.  Going for a headliner is fine but there’s more to that event than music you already know.  And I’d certainly go back to New Orleans.  The rest of the weekend was great, maybe the best trip I’ve ever had, though the details of that aren’t really the province of this blog.  But if you go to Jazz Fest, get a lobster po’ boy.  The sandwich was recommended to us but we didn’t have a chance to try it.  Maybe reason to go back again.

"Gratisfaction"
"Under Cover of Darkness"
"The Modern Age"
"I Can't Win"
"Life Is Simple in the Moonlight"
"Hard To Explain"
"Reptilia"
"Taken for a Fool"
"You're So Right"
"You Only Live Once"
"Juicebox"
"Is This It"
"New York City Cops"
"Someday"
"What Ever Happened?"
"Last Nite"
"Automatic Stop"

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