TUSooner
5/2/2009, 10:42 AM
OK, so I don't get out much, and I am not up nearly to speed with current music. But I made a rare trip to the Jazz Fest yesterday and had a blast. It was topped off by 80-something Tony Bennett and a razor sharp jazz quartet of piano, bass, drums & guitar, playing some of the best tunes of ever. The crowd - including a surprising lot of 20-somethings - was loving the guy, and he was loving 'em back. The guy's still got the chops and the style and the swing, and you forget how old he is after he starts belting out the standards. The crowd was screaming for an encore, but didn't get it, and that was the only moment not higher than the clouds. It was one of the best hours of music I have ever seen and heard.
It was a great ending to the best day I've had at Jazz Fest (not that I go that often). I took the day off, drank a Red Stripe on my patio, drove over to the courthouse downtown, got my bike out of the basement, and rode up Esplanade Ave into the neighborhood around the Fairgrounds. I locked my bike in the bike pen with a couple hundred other bikes, and started weaving my way through some of the dozen & more street parties. I had a gin & tonic at Liuzza's a famous old bar I'd never been to before. Up the street, some guys had put a month's rent on an old house that was two strong gusts of wind from being a ruin. They were selling PBR for $2 a can from an ice chest on the front step. I bought one and drank it on a wicker chair in the shade. I ate some of their potato chips.
By then I was suitably primed to to go into the Fairgrounds. I met up with a friend from Tulane. We had a couple more beers. Really, there are not a lot of places you can go where, in one afternoon, you can have
1- a snoot-full of drinks,
2- eat stuff like cracklins (something fat and soft for the alcohol to land on), crawfish struedel (like etouffee wrapped in pastry - the best thing I ate), a soft-shell crab poor-boy, pecan catfish meuniere, and an oyster pattie, which is a thick oyster stew in flaky pastry "cup", and
3- hear such completely different musicians as Doc Watson (still kicking at 86 years), Julian Marley, who laid on a jumping, swaying, grooving set of reggae, reggae, reggae, and a then legend like Tony Bennett.
And that's just the stuff that cynical-old-me-who-never-gets-out enjoyed. There were at least a hundred more dishes of food I wanted to try. The crowds were big, but not oppressive, and people were festive and friendly. The weather was warm, with just enough clouds coasting over to keep if from getting too hot. And the bike ride there and back put the perfect bookends on the whole deal. I wish I could afford to go back today. My 17yo daughter has a front-stage pass for Kings of Leon, and she's pretty stoked about it. Good for her.
It's days like yesterday that make you forget for awhile what a pathetically screwed up city this is. Almost sadder, it makes you see how great it CAN be but just isn't quite often enough.
It was a great ending to the best day I've had at Jazz Fest (not that I go that often). I took the day off, drank a Red Stripe on my patio, drove over to the courthouse downtown, got my bike out of the basement, and rode up Esplanade Ave into the neighborhood around the Fairgrounds. I locked my bike in the bike pen with a couple hundred other bikes, and started weaving my way through some of the dozen & more street parties. I had a gin & tonic at Liuzza's a famous old bar I'd never been to before. Up the street, some guys had put a month's rent on an old house that was two strong gusts of wind from being a ruin. They were selling PBR for $2 a can from an ice chest on the front step. I bought one and drank it on a wicker chair in the shade. I ate some of their potato chips.
By then I was suitably primed to to go into the Fairgrounds. I met up with a friend from Tulane. We had a couple more beers. Really, there are not a lot of places you can go where, in one afternoon, you can have
1- a snoot-full of drinks,
2- eat stuff like cracklins (something fat and soft for the alcohol to land on), crawfish struedel (like etouffee wrapped in pastry - the best thing I ate), a soft-shell crab poor-boy, pecan catfish meuniere, and an oyster pattie, which is a thick oyster stew in flaky pastry "cup", and
3- hear such completely different musicians as Doc Watson (still kicking at 86 years), Julian Marley, who laid on a jumping, swaying, grooving set of reggae, reggae, reggae, and a then legend like Tony Bennett.
And that's just the stuff that cynical-old-me-who-never-gets-out enjoyed. There were at least a hundred more dishes of food I wanted to try. The crowds were big, but not oppressive, and people were festive and friendly. The weather was warm, with just enough clouds coasting over to keep if from getting too hot. And the bike ride there and back put the perfect bookends on the whole deal. I wish I could afford to go back today. My 17yo daughter has a front-stage pass for Kings of Leon, and she's pretty stoked about it. Good for her.
It's days like yesterday that make you forget for awhile what a pathetically screwed up city this is. Almost sadder, it makes you see how great it CAN be but just isn't quite often enough.