Trouble Funk
You have to understand something about New Orleans. It’s not a Level place. The whole town is built on one gigantic uneven sponge. I’ve come to terms with that. I realize at this point that the only way I can really balance myself in this craggy town is to become unbalanced myself. This way the path becomes much more easy to navigate.
Last night was a terrible, terrible night. The Radiators at Tipitinas. I knew I was in deep vats of trouble when; a) I noticed I had been using my two week old beard as a hand napkin, and b) when someone’s puke splattered on my flip flops and I did nothing about it except look down and delight in the fact that my bare foot connection to my footwear had a new frictionless slide to it. Later I saw a 400 pound man vomit a pink river for a full 10 seconds. That tripped me out pretty hard.
Coming back home to the Dive Inn, I walked into a scene that I would have expected to see in some movie if ever movies were as good as real life. There were throngs of naked people in and out of the pool. There were human statues who had taken one too many acid hits. It was raining heavily and the lightning storm happening outside was coming in through the enormous skylight, bouncing around the room, and every so often I noticed another human statue being lit up. It was like something out of a 1950’s noir zombie movie. Luckily, I was armed with a hard rubber goose that I had acquired from the pool earilier. I had used it once already on a psychopathic freak (he actually had a baseball cap that had ‘Freak’ embroidered on it) who kept demanding to pay me money to jump in the pool and slap his girlfriends ass. He got the wrath of the goose for that one. I kept trying to pull myself away from the scene but the events that continued to unfold well into the morning hours had me paralyzed – like watching a car wreck that you can’t turn away from.
But enough about that. We don’t want to highlight only those dark moments. You’ll get the wrong impression and we can’t have that.
Wednesday night at the Ponderosa Stomp, Eddie Bo really broke the night wide open with an epic version of the Hook and Sling. Hands down the best single performance of the trip so far. If I can have half Mr. Bo’s energy when I’m his age, I will be a happy man. The Ponderosa Stomp blew the roof off this place called the “Rock N’ Bowl’, which as the name implies, is a place where one can bowl a few lanes or catch some super heavy funk. All Star bands one after another. The MC for the lower stage was this cat named Dolomite who was pimped out in silver sequence and took about 10 minutes to introduce each act. Dolomite had adjectives for days. As the night wore on and Dolomite had more and more to drink the introductions grew longer and longer. I last saw Dolomite passed out with his silver cane on the basement floor of the Rock N’ Bowl. It was a great evening.
After jump starting things again Thursday morning with Bloody Mary’s and my huge double omelet power at the Saint Charles Tavern, I was back in a place where I could actually see myself powering through another day. So far so good. My strategy at JazzFest thus far has been to follow the Japanese kids. They seem to know what’s really going on. I’ve been doing some power vinyl shopping in the last two days but I am nothing compared to these Japanese cats. They are surgical technicians. They come into the stores and grab whole sections by the handfuls. They carry duffle-bags and are on hyper-focused missions.
The predominant demographic at JazzFestival is some kinda freaked out baby boomer Viagra hippy who dances in little circles and looks lost aboard some kinda cosmic freak train. Chotchkies adorn fanciful homegrown halloween costumes and everyone seems OK with it. It’s really not my place to tell someone that their feather head-dress and pink spandex combo isn’t at all right. But everyone gets a free pass here. Remember the city is built on a sponge.