All signage found February 6 – 24, 2009 in New Orleans, LA

Before attending their concert at the House of Blues on Saturday, I was about as familiar with Better Than Ezra as are most people of my age.  Prior to the show, my interaction the New Orleans-based power trio was pretty much limited to the presence of “Good” on the 1990s one-hit wonders playlist a friend and I created during college.

Before I go any further, let it be know that this not an indictment.  We queued up this “Remember the 90s?” playlist every chance we got, and I still find a good excuse to listen to it at least once a month.  And this is not part of some semi-ironic hipster-doofus creem dream, my friends.  If you catch me drinking a High Life while grooving on “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth (With Money In My Hand),” it is because I non-satirically enjoy both the Champagne of beers as well as Primitive Radio Gods’ most well know contribution to popular music.

While I don’t have much to say about the bands of varying musical inclination that showed up just long enough to drop these gems on the world before they went back to doing whatever it was they did before their heady, two-month amble around late night talk show stages and alternative radio stations, I’ll defend the brilliance of these chart-toppers until my last breath.  Give me “Save Tonight” or give me death.

But as far as seeking out any of these artists when they hit the road? C’mon.  “Good” is a fantastic song, but is it any better than “Pepper” or “Flagpole Sitta” or “Counting Blue Cars”?  No one can really say for sure.  So for me, that puts Better Than Ezra in about the same class as The Butthole Surfers, Harvey Danger, and Dishwalla: pretty much off my radar at almost all instances that I am not listening to their most well known songs during a leisurely game of caps or on the first leg of a road trip.

Even if I was the least bit curious, why would I want to ruin any of these masterpieces by doing something foolish like putting them in the context of a full album or live performance?  That’s a high risk, high reward endeavor I never planned to undertake.

But as I have learned pretty much everyday since I got down here, few things go as planned in Big Easy.  New Orleanians my age love Better Than Ezra.  I’m talking “I have their demo EP on bootleg cassette” love.  I’m talking “I’ve seen them about 13 times” love.  I’m talking “Fuck Endymion, let’s I’m going to the BTE show at House of Blues” love. (And, yes, I’m talking “I affectionately refer to the band by a moniker” love).

With that in mind, I joined a large group of natives at the House of Blues on Saturday for Better Than Ezra’s annual Mardi Gras swoop through the Crescent City.  And you know what?  The put on an awesome show for a raucous crowd in an incredible venue.  I still think they fit the classical definition of a “one-hit wonder,” but I realized that their one-hit was not just some sort of concession they were willing to offer in exchange for a moment in the sun.  As I found out over the course of the night, “Good”  was one of a long line of upbeat, accessible rockers that have kept the band going strong for over two decades, the only difference is that it was released as a single at the exact time it happened to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the moment.

Better Than Ezra came off as a group upon which MTV and popular radio stumbled, not the other way around.  Because unlike most of the other catchy tunes from the one-and-done groups I listened to in middle school, the song that sent this group into the stratosphere was pretty similar to the rest of their material, not a blatant attempt to make their sound more radio-ready.  I realize this is just a veiled way of saying that all their fucking songs sound exactly the same, but their consistency is admirable, even if it comes at the expense of diversity.

I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather listen to 12 different variations on “Good” – a specimen to say the least – than sift through 90 minutes of post-grunge schlock-rock in a dingy club waiting impatiently for the Screaming Trees to launch into a spirited rendition of “Nearly Lost You,” a song that was their only hit because it is the only thing in their entire cannon that is actually tolerable.  And I am sure some of the poor, uninitiated schmucks that got roped into a Blind Melon show during “No Rain” hysteria didn’t much care to watch Shannon Hoon warble around the stage in a heroin-induced stupor as wave after wave of heavy distortion and feedback rang their fucking bells when they expected a short set of mid-tempo toe-tappers performed by mandolin-wielding long-hairs and fat chicks in bumblebee costumes.

I will stop myself before this devolves into a missive on the relative artistic integrity and relative importance of every band to be featured on a Buzz Ballads compilation, because as I said before, taking too close a look at any of this is a zero sum game at best. I’ll just say this:  Better Than Ezra game me exactly what I hoped for but had plenty of reason not to expect all.  And it was good.

Happy Mardi Gras, everyone.

This afternoon, I was trying to fish out a tip for the barista at Rue De La Course when I found a relic from the previous evening crumpled in the back pocket on my jeans.  A quarter page, bi-fold pamphlet titled The Only Doorway was mixed in with the loose dollar bills and bar tab receipts one would normally expect to come across after a night out on the town.

When you think of a typical French Quarter souvenir, I’m not sure if literature extolling the virtues of receiving Jesus Christ as your personal God and savior makes the short list, but this type of shit is actually more common than you may think.

New Orleans is full of sin, and wherever you find sin you’ve bound to find a few people trying to offer salvation.  And when religious zealots descend on Bourbon Street, they are usually armed with megaphones and offensive placards reminding all the Democrats, drunks, rock ‘n’ rollers, adulteresses, potheads, homosexuals, lesbians, Masons, Shriners, Mormons, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Evolutionists, Catholics, Satanists, Abortionists, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, liberals, fornicators, prosperity preachers, atheists and “worldly lukewarm once saved-always saved Christians” that they are in imminent danger of eternal damnation.  Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess.

These obnoxious bigots start making a scene around the time Mardi Gras rolls in by harassing every poor soul that drifts into earshot and relish the opportunity to take the fight to any inebriated onlooker that dares to inquire what, exactly, they are trying to accomplish with their message of hate.  If you test any one of the shitbirds impeding your safe passage through Jackson Square, you learn pretty quickly that they’re not just throwing this nonsense around for effect and don’t take their intolerance with cream and sugar.  They devour and expel that poison neat with the rocks on the side.

So when I noticed a huge PVC cross off in the distance as my friends and I were leaving Pat O’s after putting in some heavy work at the Piano Bar, I braced myself for an explosive encounter.  I realize that an “Eat shit and die, you anti-Semite fuckstick” – no matter how artfully delivered – only fuels these sad, sad individuals’ fires and adds little to the philosophical discourse, but what can I say?  After a few Hurricanes, I usually don’t have the wherewithal (or desire) to stop myself from shouting the first bit of reactive gobbledygook that pops into my head.

I had an expletive-laden opening argument primed and ready but instead of crude signs and small-minded rednecks, I was greeted by thoughtful individuals speaking with 12 inch voices and respecting everyone’s right of way.  And even thought I was part of a pretty tough crowd – one which was both shitfaced and 70% Jewish – their message stuck it’s landing a lot more than expected considering it was coming from the New Testament.

See, instead of using a fucked up notion of spiritual superiority as a cloak for violent prejudice in the manner of most Bourbon Street evangelicals, these people just seemed like they might be on to something hip and wanted to spread the word.  Even though we were less than polite at times, their pleasant demeanor and cooler heads prevailed and the entire encounter made a lasting impression on me.

To be honest, though, I still don’t understand why The Bible, out of all the hundreds of thousands of works of literature produced in the annuls of human history, has developed such an incredibly fervent following.  Sure it’s a pretty cool story, but so are The Odyssey, Don Quijote, and The Lorax.  Even a nearly unreadable mess like Naked Lunch sheds some light on the human condition if you catch it right, so where are the barkers on the street spreading the gospel of doing bag after bag of heroin and staring at your toes for days on end?

I am guessing that this is where “faith” comes in, an idea that I have spent many years disparaging in the bitter, condescending manner favored by modern-day secular intellectuals such as myself.  But even though I wasn’t buying much of what those good folks were selling and still think religion is pretty asinine; their patient way of carrying water for the topic lead me to believe it shouldn’t be looked at with any more disdain then most of the bullshit I do in my free time.

After giving it plenty of thought, I can’t really think of any material difference between those kind missionaries dispersing fliers outside Big Daddy’s Female Impersonator Show and yours truly spending $12 to play Gaucho all the way through on the jukebox at Monkey Hill, except for the fact that the Jesus freaks were surely a lot more genial and probably had much purer intentions.

I guess it is in everyone’s best interest to find a few things that they love and are not afraid to share with the world.  For me, these things include an ironic jazz-rock band known by most people my age either as a punchline in a Judd Apatow flick or “that dude who did ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number.’”  For others, it may be a belief that your personal relationship with an unseen almighty being determines what happens after you shuffle off your mortal coil.

These are two very diseparate things for sure, but trying to objectively judge one as more valid than the other is really just a waste of time, time that would be much better spent partying with whatever it is that happens to get your rocks off.

I think that you can tell a lot about a city by the way it rings in the New Year.  Minneapolis, for example, is a fun enough time but not really anything to write home about.  Chicago, on the other hand, offers plenty to do but your options can be limited by the bitter cold winters and spotty public transportation system.  And then there is New York, which is more or less a crowded, expensive theme park.

While especially apparent on the last day of the year, I think the statements above hold true for their respective cities at all times.  So, after getting intimately familiar with New Orleans over the past 12 months, I cut my holiday family time short to make sure I could test my “New Year’s Eve as a microcosm” theory down in the Big Easy.

Now, New Year’s Eve is nothing if it is not another excuse for revelry.  And when it comes to revelry, if you give New Orleans an inch, in one magnificent swoop she will take a mile, your favorite watch and every clean pair of tube socks you’ve got in your top drawer.  Luckily, she will return them before you know they are even gone.  New Orleans is sneaky like that.

So it goes without saying I got an adult dose of this place’s capacity for debauchery on December 31, 2008.  Bourbon Street gets as wild on New Year’s Eve as it does during any night of Mardi Gras, and I took in a bird’s eye view of the entire mess from a private balcony which was attached to the sweet party room my friend rented out for the evening.  For better or worse, though, this party suite – complete with a full bar, pool tables, hors d’oeuvres, and thousands of plastic beads for us to throw at female party-goers that were willing to make out with each other – was attached to a strip club.

That’s right.  I can assure you that when most people saw the address on the invitation (“433 Bourbon Street, right above Babe’s Cabaret”) they assumed, like I did, that this was a private venue that just so happened to be above a gentleman’s club of ill repute; that the entrance to our enclave of festivity would be around the corner or at worst next to the one used by the cretins that would choose to spend New Year’s Eve getting lap dances; that we would be cordoned off from the minor league riff raff in the employ of one of the dozens of titty joints in the Quarter that doesn’t charge cover.

Not so.  In addition to all the amenities I mentioned above, there was a also private mezzanine for us to view the downstairs stage as well as a stripper pole smack dab in the middle of the main area that was frequented by whatever the tide dragged in at any particular point in the evening.  I was, indeed, on property that was owned and maintained by the proprietors of Babe’s Cabaret.

So, as I am sure you can guess, it was interesting party.  The drinks were thick as a brick all night, and at some point two enormous bottles of Jagermeister showed up on the bar, after which almost every cocktail ordered seemed to be spiked with that dark, syrupy goop.  Every now and again I would make my way to the balcony carrying an arm full of throws with the intent to corrupt Mormon co-eds in town for the Sugar Bowl and a belly full of whiskey.  And when I finally switched to beer at around 3:30AM, it was too late;  the damage had been done.

As I was puking in a bush in front of my apartment at 5 AM after jumping out a moving cab filled with lunatics headed for some after-after-after hours action at F&M, I reflected on my night of indulgence and vice.  I’m of the opinion that just being in possession of booze and being alive is reason enough to tie one on, so I’ve always been a little confused by the New Year’s Eve zeitgeist as a whole.  But seeing literally tens of thousands of people out on the streets of New Orleans giving in to their deepest temptations, even if only for a night, warmed my heart and gave me a fresh perspective on what this holiday may mean to some people.

With this new found outlook on New Year’s Eve and it’s time-honored traditions, as well as a buoyed appreciation for the elegant beauty of an earnestly indulged vice, I’m getting in on the fun by ending my decade long hiatus on making resolutions to offer this: I’m giving whatever will-power, restraint, and better judgment I have left after spending a year in New Orleans the next 12 months off.

Happy New Year everyone!

Good luck finding The Rusty Nail on your first attempt.  Seriously.  This place is less than a five minutes from my apartment and it took me at least ten tries over my first six months down here before I successfully made it there when I actually looking for it, as opposed to the few times I did actually stumble upon it during daylight hours when I was still learning how to navigate the narrow, pothole-littered streets of the Warehouse District and subsequently forgot it’s location by the next evening when I was looking to check out it’s capacity for partying.

It is literally located on the wrong side of a dead end street that is hidden under an overpass.  Its signage faces the opposite direction traffic would travel if the one way block on which it sits was not closed for road construction (which it has been at least as long as I’ve lived in New Orleans).

Even after unsuccessfully trying to get there almost a dozen of times, every few weeks I would give it another shot simply because the eyewitness account and testimonials I would hear about this place sounded like they were straight out of the goddamn Prose Edda.  At one point I was convinced the only way I was going to ever make through the door would be to die in an epic battle and be escorted in by Valkyries.

But I finally made it there during business hours in the early summer and, much like everything else I have experienced here in New Orleans, it was exactly as described: awesome.  Not only does it offer the $2 High Lifes and brilliant jukebox I’ve grown accustomed to finding in any tavern worth it’s salt, but one extra amenity comes standard.  The crowd on almost any night of the week is, without a doubt, the most attractive I have ever experienced anywhere in my life.

Any bar has its fair share of hot chicks walking around, but the women at The Rusty Nail are truly beautiful.  Obviously – as is a general rule with any sizable group of stunning members of the fairer sex – silicone, collagen and botox may be responsible for some of what you’ll see there.  But the majority of the female patrons posses a brand of classic, effortless beauty that is accentuated by an easy-going, approachable demeanor.  Even those that only qualify as “garden variety” in the rarefied air of the Nail are still nothing short of extremely above-average-looking.  Not to mention the fact that any girl is a few ticks more appealing when she is wearing a friendly smile, taking shots of whiskey, and dancing to Van Morrison.

Possibly more impressive, though, than a list of all the great things you will find at The Rusty Nail is a list of all the things that you most certainly will not, namely miscreants, shit-disturbers, posers, punks and, most importantly, douche bags.  In the totality of the many times I’ve been there, regardless of where on the spectrum of intoxication I happened to fall, I doubt I have encountered more than one or two dudes I would classify as a complete douche.  So unless this is one of those “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first 30 minutes, you are the sucker” situations Matt Damon describes in Rounders, The Rusty Nail is one of the only places I can think of that has successfully avoided the parasitically symbiotic relationship between hot chicks and douche bags.

I’m telling you, the experience of getting hammered and cutting a rug to some excellent music with a huge group of good-looking, genial twenty- and thirty-somethings is the type of thing that can make you think, if only for a few booze soaked hours, that there may be hope for humanity after all.  Everyone, even the people with a preternatural level of attractiveness that would excuse even the most boorish behavior, instinctually say “please” and “thank you” when ordering drink and “excuse me” or “sorry” if they happen to bump into you as they move through the crowd.  Call me old-fashioned, but that type of unforced, earnest consideration goes a long way in my book.

So imagine my delight when I found out The Rusty Nail was celebrating it’s 2nd Anniversary on a night when I not only had a few college friends in town, but was also looking for the proper venue to continue an all-nighter that a 6:30 AM flight back to Chicago for the holidays the next morning necessitated.  It was syzygy of the highest order, and who am I to argue with the cosmos?

The evening’s musical stylings were provided by The Touchables, and just a few minutes into their set one thing was pretty clear: any pair of drunken idiots could have been behind the mic that night entertaining the group of equally shitfaced bar patrons.  While the rhythm section and guitarist showed some serious chops, you’d be hard pressed to find even a shred of musical talent in either one of the co-lead singers.  Maybe that is why I like them so much.

They sure knew how to work the crowd and had an uncanny understanding that, with a few notable exceptions like Jack Straw in Chicago and Steeling Dan in Minneapolis, the majority of cover bands are mediocre at best and have to deal with a sort of law of diminishing returns that applies any time you’re replicating well known source material.

So, in their infinite wisdom, The Touchables threw hope for anything more than a baseline level of authenticity out the window and tried their damnedest to get every single person in the entire joint singing along through ear-to-ear grins while dancing like a bunch of jackasses on greenies (certainly a good thing in my book).

Mission accomplished, gentlemen.  I’ll take this pair of aquarium drinkers singing only the portions of “Shama Lama Ding Dong” and “Maggie May” that they can remember on stage at a bar like The Rusty Nail any day of the week.

I’ve always believed that if you make a habit of putting yourself in unusual situations, you can’t really get that upset when shit starts to get weird. And if you’re also prone to tipping the karmic scales with such flights of fancy as gratuitous alcohol consumption, light prescription drug abuse and unconventional party itineraries, you’re likely to find yourself on the business end of weird more often than not. With this in mind, I guess you could say I got exactly what I deserved when I decided to head into the French Quarter on a Monday evening last week.

Given the fact it was so early in the week, it didn’t surprise me when I encountered far fewer barkers in the middle of the street holding up signs advertising the drink specials or lack of cover featured at the trashy saloons that line the front of Bourbon Street than I was used to.  But even in this relatively serene setting, hip hop was still pulsing out of a fair share of dance clubs that were most certainly open for business.

I’ve heard “Lollipop” at least 350 times in the last year, but the song takes on a bizarrely fascinating and frightening sheen when it is accompanied by a tubby waitress sporting coke-bottle glasses and visible c-section scars gyrating on top of a bar in a haunting manner that is at once repulsive and mesmerizing.  That was the scene just beyond the threshold of a sparsely populated bar known as The Old Opera House, and even though I should be immune to the allure of Tha Carter III by now, the morbidly intriguing nature of what I was looking at gave me pause.

I realize that someone who just spent five minutes standing in a puddle of what was surely piss outside a shack that has surely been condemned buying cups of keg beer that is surely a few weeks old from a gentleman who is surely homeless is in no position to look down his nose at anything, but it was hard to ignore the unsettling shit that was going down in this little corner of the universe on that fateful evening, stuff that unfortunately went way beyond an unkempt beer wench shaking her fat ass to Lil’ Wayne.

The clientele at the Old Opera House was young. And I am not just talking about “Thursday Nights at The Boot” young. The few people spastically dancing to the blaring rap music spilling out on to Bourbon Street were Young with a capital “Y.” These kids were so obviously braced and baby-faced, I thought I took a wrong turn at Toulouse and ended up smack dab in the middle of an Ad Council commercial warning of the perils of underage drinking. You know, something to bookend a set of marijuana PSAs featuring grade schoolers pulling bong loads in their dad’s home office before finding themselves on the wrong side of the loaded gun he inexplicably keeps in the top drawer of his desk.

If you were to take a census of every single mope on the property – bartenders, waitresses and customers alike – I’d wager you’d have been hard pressed to find a genuine, government-issued ID that put anyone over the age of 16. And not only were these kids young, but judging by the way they were buzzing around the dance floor and indiscriminately groping each other, I have to assume they were under the influence of methamphetamine or some other kind of similarly cheap, equally powerful stimulant.

Now, I’m no stranger to the erratic behavior that comes as the result of the irresponsible application of drugs or alcohol to a social situation, but this shit was not funny, as evidenced by the occasional dry-heaves that interrupted the violent fits of laughter that exploded from my mouth any time I tried to form a sentence.

My brain was working overtime just trying to keep up, and I would have paid to see the look on my face when the only thing that was keeping my head from breaking into a million fucking pieces any time I even contemplated putting my frontal cortex to work to make some sense of my surroundings was the collective desire of everyone I was with to not have to pick little chunks of my exploded skull out of their drinks.

Strangely enough, given how harrowing as all this nonsense was (and I can assure you, it was some of the most harrowing nonsense known to man), it only took a few minutes in this seemingly alternate universe before I got past the various health code, liquor license, and moral decency violations at play and was able to take in the sublime grandeur of what, exactly, I was witnessing.

When I was as that young, a big night out consisted of sitting in a suburban basement taking shots of cheap brandy from a candle holder, eating fun-sized bags of Cheetos and watching Michael Jackson videos on VH1.  But, in the grand scheme of things, I guess that is really besides the point.  Kids these days are losing their innocence at an increasingly early age (especially down here in The Big Easy), and I’ve enabled enough substance abuse to recognize that if you can’t be part of the solution, you might as well kick back and enjoy being part of the problem.

I decided it was probably best not to make direct eye contact with anyone outside the group of people I arrived with, but I figured I was in the perfect place to finish off the warm, foamy beers I just purchased for a dollar each from a homeless man squatting in a poorly lit storefront and mow through the half-pack of heaters my friend had peeking out of his front shirt pocket.  And while I didn’t monetarily patronize an establishment that was so blatantly contributing to the delinquency of minors, sticking around to delight in the pure freak fest they were hosting wasn’t exactly a round rejection of their business practices.

They may not play any opera at The Old Opera House, but they sure know how to put on a show.  And shit got weird that night, but it was no one’s fault but my own.

Beer Shack, Bourbon St. - New Orleans, LA - December 15, 2008

]]> http://barryfest.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/let-it-sneaux/ Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:03:57 +0000 barryfest http://barryfest.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/let-it-sneaux/

After hitting the snooze bar three or four times, finally slumping out of bed for a stretch and a bend, and throwing open the drapes in my room, I was greeted with a highly unusual sight this morning.  It was snowing in New Orleans for the first time in four years.  And this was real snow, too, not just the “icy mix” bullshit that hits the north shore every year around this time.  This was the big, fat snow that sticks to foliage and car windshields.  It’s the stuff that gets caught in your hair and that you can catch on your tongue.

Many national news outlets were quick to report that the last time it snowed in New Orleans was the winter before the hurricane season that brought a certain storm that “rearranged” the Crescent City as well as the lives of many of it’s most faithful residents.  But as I noticed ever since I arrived down here, the cumbersome practice looking at life as a series of allegories and metaphors – as opposed to the more classic traditions of kicking back and drinking it in -  is quickly going out of style among locals.

Almost everyone down here can do the math, so that fact that the last dusting of snow was so infamously followed by a historically severe summer is not lost on anyone.  But the first snowfall of the season is the first snowfall of the season, even if it only comes along once or twice a decade.  Headaches about road conditions and traffic – and any momentary confusion about the difference between “correlation” and “causation”  – quickly melt away when you catch a glimpse of a snow-covered palm tree in all it’s bizarrely majestic glory.

And even though the rising afternoon temperature has left amost no trace of the rare splendor of this morning’s blizzard, I’ve still got the same grin on my face I’ve been wearing since the moment I woke up today.

My brother has lived in New York City for almost a year and a half now, and this has given us two or three occasions to engage in the Manhattan version of our favorite shared pastime: walking around a major metropolis without the trappings of a destination or an agenda.

The starting point of our trip is usually determined by where we want to catch lunch and we head out equipped with nothing more than a comfortable pair of shoes and a good sense of direction.  No cabs, no subway, just two dudes who haven’t seen each other for a while running wild on the public thoroughfares of a big city.

Maybe it is overstatement to say we have no destination at all, but the route we take to get wherever it is we are going  is as dynamic as a Leftover Lazos jam session during a thunderstorm on Simpson Street.  If we are confronted with a “Don’t Walk” sign, we’ll bust a right angle and start mowing down avenues instead of blocks; if we are flanked by a square, circle or plaza, we will make sure we cut through at the widest point and meander as much as possible; and if record shop or street performer catches one of our eyes, we’ll move in for a closer look.

But we are mostly on the prowl for some good watering holes.  Every dozen blocks or so we’ll stop somewhere to rest give our feet a rest, and, depending on the weather, either warm up or cool down by soaking ourselves in booze.  It is then, over a cold beer or some cheap scotch that our conversation hits it’s natural stride and starts to wander around like a free jazz record.

If a layman off the street were to drop in and survail our discussions at random, there’s as good a chance the two of us would come off like side 2 of Pangaea as there is that the third-party observer would have even the slightest idea about the type of shit we are getting into.  Sure, we might be earnestly discussing the current arc of our careers or soliciting relationship advice from each other at one moment; but before you know it we’re exchanging the Queen’s English equivalent of the type of indulgent “Skee-bop bop ba da bop!”s you’d expect from a heroin-addled trumpeter blowing away in a smoky basement to the delight of a bunch of spodiodi-slugging beatniks.

You get the point.  Anyways, I was back in New York for Thanksgiving weekend, and my brother cut his holiday in Brigantine, NJ short so we could meet up for a Saturday odyssey around town.  Our journey from a pizza joint near his new apartment in Yorkville was nearing it’s conclusion at the residence of my, uh, friend in Hell’s Kitchen when a neon sign at the corner of 48th and 9th got my attention.

In New Orleans, Abita Beer is more ubitiquious than sweltering humidity and cockroaches.  I’d be willing to bet a week of Revillion dinners that every single bar in the state, without exception, serves at least one of the many varieties crafted by this north shore brewery.

So when I saw the familiar purple glow of a fleur de leis in the window of a The Delta Grill, a creole/cajun restaurant in Clinton’s restaurant row, I knew we found our next hideout of the day.  We headed to the bar and staged an impromptu tasting of all the New Orleans beverages they had to offer as I regailed my brother and the bartender alike with stories of po’ boys at Parkway Tavern, Ramos Gin Fizzes at Monteleone, and concerts at The Maple Leaf.   Not only did I effectively travel 1,300 miles to drink the type of alcohol that, back in The Big Easy, is easier to locate than a recycling bin, but I was cracking eggs of  knowledge like I have lived in the Crescent City my whole life.

And even while sitting there with my brother in the midst of one of my favorite activities of all time (basically just sitting around with my brother), the taste of Abita Amber and the sight of Tipitina’s posters sent me into a moonage daydream about the world that was waiting for me when I returned home.

As Bob Dylan once said: “There are a lot of places I like, but I like New Orleans better.”  And after almost a year of drinking at bars that don’t close, eating food I’ve never seen before, and getting my mind blown on a daily basis by the excess of culture and personality you find around every turn down here, I finally feel comfortable calling this place “home.”

There we were, taking the gritty-as-shit alternate route to Louis Armstrong Airport – forgoing the interstate, with its road construction and rush hour induced bottleneck circa the Causeway Blvd. exit, in favor of the scenic drive through the blocks of shotgun houses and tire shops in Hollygrove and then past the endless row of seedy motels on Airline Highway – when I had my second favorable encounter with the nefarious group of “musicians” know as Coldplay.

The first time I listened to this band with a smile on my face was over three years ago in East Troy, Wisconsin.  A variety of factors, not one of which even remotely having to do with the band itself, led me to purchase a ticket to see England’s softest rockers at Alpine Valley Music Theater during the waning days of the summer before my senior year of college.  And through another set of circumstances, again completely unrelated to the group of hacks crooning sweet nothings into the cool August air, I was breaking out into fits of hysterical ecstasy towards the end of the first set.

See, when it comes to live music venues, Alpine Valley is something of Taj Mahal/Parthenon hybrid constructed smack dab in the middle of Valhalla.  At the point I decided to tithe to the musical undead né Coldplay, I was at the precipice of breaking a four-summer-long streak of enjoying at least one concert engagement at this mecca of primal musical enjoyment, a streak I felt needed to be preserved in spite of 2005’s uncharacteristically weak lineup.

So with a large group of good friends and an even larger stash of chocolates made on the Mayan Day of No Time, I headed north for what was sure to be a ferocious psilocybin trip cloaked under the ostensible cover of seeing a shitty band support their sub-par new album with a live show.

After chasing about twice the recommended human dosage with about eight or ten High Lifes, I couldn’t really concentrate on Rilo Kiley’s opening set or the first two-thirds of whatever the hell Chris Martin was trying to pull off on that fine evening.  But somewhere around the opening bars of “Don’t Panic,” I was confronted with a few moments of the hilarious lucidity that signals the beginning of the exhilarating death rattle of any boomer journey worth its salt.

It was hard to pass any negative judgment with that much dopamine surging through my veins, so I had no choice but to surrender to the flow and join my fellow concertgoers in an emotional singalong for the remainder of the show so graciously performed by this savage group of goldbricking ass clowns.

So imagine my horror when, on the way to the airport to catch a flight to New York City for the Thanksgiving weekend, the CD changer in my roommate’s Toyota Camry shuffled its deck and filled the car with what turned out to be the opening track of Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends; and I sat there immeasurably intrigued by what I was hearing.  By the good grace of Jah, I recognized what was going on just moments before I planned to turn to the driver and Pollyannishly ask “Hmm.  This is good.  Who is this?”

I may have narrowly avoided blowing my cover – which actually would have been extra damaging to my reputation, considering this time I was dead sober and the gentleman in the car with me was there the last time tColdplay infected my soul on that fateful Wisconsin evening three years ago – but that doesn’t change the fact that, once again, I was earnestly grooving out to one of the most destructive scourges of modern popular music.

In my defense, the album was produced by Brian Eno.   And in this instrumental opening there was no room for Chris Martin’s inane lyrical styling to stomp out Eno’s in-studio composition expertise, technical mastery he flaunted on work like Here Come The Warm Jets but that ultimately met it’s blissful match when he got behind the board for Talking Heads.

His new pairing with Coldplay stole a fair share of the headlines surrounding the new album, so it was impossible for me not to try and draw parallels between Viva La Vida and More Songs About Buildings and Food, Eno’s first work with David Byrne and Co., even as I was doing my best to allow the dribble emanating from the car stereo system to leave only footprints as it quickly passed in and out of my psyche.

Luckily, other than the unusually long album titles, there are few things in common between these disparate works.  But it is hard to deny that Viva La Vida feels more important that anything Coldplay has ever done in the same way that I would say More Songs seemed even more impressive when directly compared to the equally satisfying, yet more straight forward aesthetic of 77.

But Brian Eno is no miracle worker, and all in all I think Coldplay’s new joint sucks as hard as the rest of their catalog.  But the fact that More Songs turned out to be a stunning masterpiece didn’t make the world any more ready for the brain-twisting perfection of Fear of Music and Remain in Light, as such groundbreaking, innovative work has no real ancestors and too few progeny.

So saying that Viva La Vida is a piece of trash does nothing to disqualify Coldplay’s potential to release some really fascinating stuff if they stick with Eno, as he has a unique ability to snatch epic masterpieces from the ether with little warning, regardless of the track record (good or bad) of the group he is leading.

With this in mind, I sometimes wonder why I continue to hold a grudge.  I mean, if Lester Bangs was finally able to admit that he enjoyed a James Taylor record, surely I could bury my similar hatchet with those mopes in Coldplay, especially if their output is actually getting better, right?

And wouldn’t it be great if, unbeknown to anyone at the time, we were witnessing the next More Songs if only because if meant that we could be only a few months away from hearing the next Fear of Music and maybe just a few years removed from the next Remain in Light?

And so what if the modern day incarnations of some of the most stunning recordings in the history of mankind could potentially come from a group with Coldplay’s incredulously checkered past.  Right? Right?

Wrong.  I don’t know what my problem is, but I can’t bring myself to give those shitbirds any respect at all.  I just can’t.  Even before the infamous “You know how I know you’re gay?” scene from The 40 Year Old Virgin made “making fun of Coldplay” the new “enjoying Coldplay’s music”, my disdain for those cretins was palpable.

And although I have tried to be more open minded these days, I still do not have the capability to wipe clean any pre-existing slates I’ve held for musicians or groups thereof.  There is no escaping the fact that my prior feelings about Coldplay have unfortunately been grandfathered into my newfangled musical world view.

So while I would would warmly welcome any new album that could even hold the jock of Talking Heads in their prime, I just pray it doesn’t come from those limey bastards in Coldplay.  I think that would be worse than it not existing at all.

When you’re drunkenly balls deep in a plate of cheese fries at F&M’s on a Thursday night, it is easy to forget that there is a lot more to Louisiana than New Orleans.  This is the “Sportsman’s Paradise” for chrissakes, and I’ve been down here for almost a year and have not actually done anything even remotely “sporting.”

To remedy this, I spent the weekend at Fountainebleau State Park with a crew of brave souls willing to endure some good old fashioned outdoor living in what could easily be the coldest weather any of us will see all year.  Yeah, the winters are pretty mild in southeast Louisiana; but the fact that the mercury doesn’t dip too far below 40 degrees over a 12 month span doesn’t make those 40 degree gusts any toastier when they are whipping across your campsite.

But the trip was a blast, and when I wasn’t gathering firewood, complaining about non-Kosher hot dogs, smoking Natural American Spirits, slugging persey bottles of Charles Shaw, pounding packets of BC, dancing on top of a picnic table to Rilo Kiley, tossing hard-boiled eggs into Lake Pontchartrain, or freezing my dick off after passing out in a tent with no pillow or sleeping bag, I engaged in my new favorite pastime: hypothesizing about whether or not Chinese Democracy is going to be any good.

For me, the answer is simple.  Guns N’ Roses became my first “favorite” band back when I was introduced to their music when I was about 9 or 10.  Before that age – and my development of the meaningful preference that comes with maturity and experience – I just rocked out to whatever adult contemporary or classic rock my parents happened to be grooving on.  They kept a nice rotation of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac and The Cars surging through the living room Hi-Fi, so I am certainly not complaining, but it is hard to get too excited about anything (even the genius of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker) when you are consuming it in such a passive manner.

When I finally started my career as a music consumer in my own right around 1993, Use Your Illusion I & II were still wreaking havoc on the Billboard charts even though they had dropped almost two full years earlier, which is probably why I heard those two albums in their entirety before getting a true taste of the depth of Appetite for Destruction.  I am not going to act like I was oblivious to “Welcome to the Jungle” or “Sweet Child O’ Mine” back in the early 90s, but I can say with certainty that I heard “Dead Horse” before I even got a whiff of “Mr. Brownstone.”

My brother owed all the albums, having claimed them as his reward for making various middle school honor rolls.  At my age, I still think that I was asking for Starting Lineup figurines when I pulled all “A”s, but through him I eventually got intimately familiar with the entire Guns N’ Roses catalog.  Don’t get me wrong: it all made short work of my face when it came time to melt some shit.  But there was something about their later work that proved inescapable for a kid of my age and disposition.

And while my musical tastes have evolved over the years, this enchantment hasn’t faded.  As a 7th grader, I wrote a history paper explaining the imagery in the masterpiece “Civil War,” but just last fall my friends and I threw $25 in a jukebox at Whiskey River in New York City to hear “Estranged” four times in row, and I still go to YouTube and queue up the video for “Don’t Cry” at least once a month.

Maybe this is why I approached speculation that Chinese Democracy was full of the overproduced, self-indulgent arrangements found in the Use Your Illusion era with excitement.  Nothing against slash and burn rockers like “Out ta Get Me,” but is it that surprising that an album that has taken over 15 years to make would have more in common with an grandiose, overreaching follow up than a major label debut recorded in a few weeks on Skid Row between a lead guitarist’s heroin overdoses?  And how could that categorically be a bad thing?

My confidence in the new album hasn’t wavered since Jimmy Fallon excitedly introduced Axl and his latest group of hired guns at the 2002 MTV Music Video Awards, but one of my friends cast the most credible shred of doubt on the new project while we were cruising across the Causeway on Saturday afternoon.  “Maybe it’s taken 15 years not because it is going to be really good, but because it sucks,” he suggested.

You know what?  Maybe so.  He raises a valid point, as there is a good chance that Chinese Democracy will be a huge disappointment.  But I can assure you this: On Sunday, I’ll be making a trek to my nearest Best Buy and grabbing a shrink wrapped CD from the endcap display.  The prospect of driving to a store and purchasing “the new Guns N’ Roses album” the week that it comes out has haunted my dreams ever since I discovered the hidden, Charles Manson penned track on “The Spaghetti Incident?”

After 15 years, I am ready for it.  And, after 15 years, I trust it is ready for me.

The 2008-2009 NBA season is upon us, and for the first time in 10 years I will be intently watching “NBA Premier Week” on TNT.

See, my relationship with the NBA has been very rocky over the last decade or so.  I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago during the absolute apex of the Jordan years, and his departure and the subsequent decline of the Bulls franchise sent me on a downward spiral that was the equivalent of a spoiled teenager going off to college and suffocating under a pile of dirty laundry that develops a mind of it’s own and starts devouring DVD cases and half-opened packets of ranch dressing to feed it’s insatiable desire to expand beyond the corner of the dorm room.

As a 13 year old who spent his formative professional sport watching years following the greatest basketball player to ever put on a uniform win six titles and then leave the game as his team was being dismantled by an egomaniacal owner, I lacked the cognitive and emotional capacity to continue to support a losing, unglamorous franchise.  And my usual trump card – an allegiance to both Chicago and Boston sports teams springing from the fact that my dad spent the first 43 years of his life in Beantown and I was born at none other than Brigham and Women’s – did me no good as the Celtics were at the crest of a wave of misfortune that was eradicating their place as one of the most storied American sports franchises in the history of man.

Call me what you want, but I got out of the NBA quicker than Dick Fuld got out of his Lehman Brothers stock before he announced the company was filing for bankruptcy.  Both of the teams with which I had a history gave me no reason to switch on the television and Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant did not get me excited enough to become a fan of the league even as I was no longer a fan of a particular team.

But when I was working in Minneapolis, I always had cheap/free Timberwolves tickets at my disposal, so I made enough trips to the Target Center to keep me ancillary acquainted with the sport of basketball.  Now, at the time, attending these painful exhibitions sent my NBA fandom on the type of self-destructive bender that almost ended the damn thing once and for all.  But they also provided me with insight and experience that I would never have guessed would have played such a large role in my life: I was able to witness, in person, the absolute fucking beastness of Kevin Garnett.

So when the Celtics made some serious moves in an action packed 2007 off season, my interest was once again peaked.  I mean, KG lead a team of castoffs and miscreants playing in a half-full arena to 32 wins in the 2006-2007 season, so I was salivating when I heard he would be donning Celtic green along with Jesus Shuttlesworth and Paul Piece.

This was the first part of a weird syzygy that transpired last winter.  The last time I followed the NBA as faithfully as I followed the start of the 2007-2008 season, I was a middle-schooler with a bowl cut.  So when I made the move down to New Orleans, the young, explosive Hornets team had my full attention just as they were planning their coming out party.

Within a month of unpacking, I found myself in a luxury box at the New Orleans Arena, drinking Abita Ambers, eating red beans and rice and watching the Hornets dismantle the Dallas Mavericks in Jason Kidd’s first game back on his former squad.  They instantly stole my heart in a whirlwind of half-court alley-oops,  steals along the perimeter and 3-pointers from the corner.  And just like that, after almost completely walking away from the game, I was back in the fold.

Call me a fairweather fan, a bangwagon jumper or a disloyal carpetbagger.  You are right.  I am all of those things.  But at least for now, I’m back.  And it feels good to be back.

I’ve been a pretty big Girl Talk fan since this girl I knew in Minneapolis pulled a copy of Night Ripper out of her purse at a dinner party and handed it to me.  She claimed that her discovery of Girl Talk about 6 months prior to our encounter had changed her life, and as such she always carried around a few burned copies of his latest CD just in case she sensed an opening during a conversation that she could use as a springboard to spread the Gospel According to Greg Gillis.  She was something of a Girl Talk missionary, you could say.

On Friday night I caught his show at the House of Blues in the French Quarter.  It was great.  Much like at a Rebirth Brass Band show, words (and even pictures, really) do no justice, so here is some footage: