Since we are coming up to the time of year when Booker died I thought I’d mark it now. IMHO Booker is one of those geniuses on par with “Gatemouth” Brown in the sense that they were so versatile encompassing so many different styles and so authentically. Both were “characters” but of course were very different in…
“Oh, my God!” Ignatius stared at what he saw. Once in high school someone had shown him a pornographic photograph, and he had collapsed against a water cooler, injuring his ear. This photograph was far superior. A nude woman was sitting on the edge of a desk next to a globe of the world. The…
“I no longer pretend to understand the world.” She is shaking her head yet still smiling her sweet menacing smile. “The world I knew has come crashing down around my ears. The things we hold dear are reviled and spat upon.” She nods toward Prytania Street. “It’s an interesting age you will live in—though I…
Unaware that he was being trailed, Ignatius pushed his cart against the traffic down St. Charles toward the Quarter. He had stayed up so late the night before working on his lecture for the kickoff rally that he hadn’t been able to move from his yellowed sheets until almost noon, and then it had only…
Dear Reader, Nature has sometimes made a fool; but a coxcomb is always of man’s own making. — Addison As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from…
“Irene!” Santa said angrily. “You all the time thinking of that boy, and with all the trouble he’s giving you. You better wake up, babe. If you had any sense, you woulda had that boy locked away at Charity Hospital a long time ago. They’d turn a hose on him. They’d stick a letrit socket…
New Orleans is a city where cultural tradition matters. In New Orleans there is a balance between innovation and tradition. Improvisation never comes out of nothing. It is always rooted in history . . . in New Orleans. So this is an environment where people sort of backslide into the future. — Bruce Boyd Raeburn…
“Be sure to stress the importance of this historic conclave,” Ignatius said. “We shall want no fly-by-nights in this core group.” “There may be a few costumes. That’s what’s so wonderful about New Orleans. You can masquerade and Mardi Gras all year round if you want to. Really, sometimes the Quarter is like one big…
“Good. Now listen to me. I must come to lecture to you people so that you will be set upon the correct path. I have a rather extensive knowledge of political organization.” “Marvelous. And you must wear that fantastic costume. I can assure you that you’ll get everyone’s undivided attention,” the young man shrieked, covering…
From offBeat and Keith Spera. Mr. Matassa helped facilitate the role of New Orleans in the birth of rock ‘n’ roll. He opened his first studio, J&M Recording, in 1945 in the back of his family’s record and appliance store at the corner of North Rampart and Dumaine streets in the French Quarter. Its pedigree is…
manwithoutqualities 