Coming very soon – Neville’s affectionate revisiting of the doo-wop music he grew up with. If you appreciate doo-wop then you’ll love Zappa’s self-penned tribute to doo-wop though of course it being Zappa it has a bit of gentle naughtiness. Aaron, Don and Keef, the latter turned me onto the Neville Brothers in ’81. Read…
The amazing talent and character that is Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown. See the excerpt on Gatemouth from Keith Spera’s lovely book. Eric Clapton became an unabashed Brown booster on November 22, 1994, the second of Clapton’s three consecutive nights at the New Orleans House of Blues. During his encore, Clapton invited Brown to sit in. After warming…
Here is the very excellent Keith Spera reporting on an event I’d have given my right/left (you name it) to have been able to attend. Keith by the way has written one of the most elegant, affectionate (warts and all) and informative books around featuring a chapter on Fats. Music journalism at its unpretentious best: a…
New Orleans-based Wayne Curtis is one of the most knowledgable and most eloquent writers on all things boozy and especially the trend towards slow cocktails. Though he writes on much more besides it is through his The Atlantic column that I know his work and made a point of meeting him when he was in Vancouver…
Review from Reason As I later became interested in political theory, the relationship between the cultural individualism of jazz and the political individualism of libertarianism seemed so natural to me that, with all the innocence of youth, I frequently expressed surprise upon discovering that few of my libertarian friends shared my interest in this form…
Here’s an excellent article in The Economist by Jon Fasman. (H/T to Brett Martin for this). One can get a good sense of how just much work is involved in making these suits via the character played by Clarke Peters in Treme. Here he is talking about the role. Brett MartinClarke PetersDonald Harrisonjon fasmanMardi GrasMardi Gras Indiansnew orleansTreme
Christmas musicJazzLouis Armstrongnew orleans
Fodor’s used to be (maybe still is) the benchmark of uncritical stuffiness but Alexis Korman does a fine job of not falling into that smug mindset. BeignetCajunCajun cuisinefoodnew orleans
Stacey Plaisance for AP The elaborate meals, which stem from the old French tradition of eating a lavish meal after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, have become a popular draw for visitors to New Orleans during the holiday season. Christmascreolefoodnew orleansRéveillon
A nice and useful article. For practiced chefs like her and Barnard, the pop-up is a way to experiment, or probe the idea of opening a restaurant without diving into debt. For those who attend, it fills an empty niche. And it gives the legions of New Orleans’ strange somewhere to go. “It’s the opportunity…
manwithoutqualities 