I’ve always jokingly typed “Jazz(zzz)fest.” But as my girlfriend commented while reading this year’s line-up, “Dave Matthews and Nelly? They should just go ahead and call it DouchebagFest.” Or Clear Channel’s DouchebagFest. Give me free tickets and I will wipe myself with them. Or I’ll give them to Keith Moore—a.k.a. Deacon Johnson, the noise-addicted son of New Orleans R&B artist Deacon John—to be used in a garbage art installation at Moore’s upcoming Noizefest.

I first met Moore at a birthday party I played, where, without knowing the party’s guest of honor, Moore set up a T-shirt booth, blew an airhorn over our music and commandeered my mic several times to announce his upcoming “Ambient Wars Two! A sonic catfight between Beatgrrl and Miss Mass Destruction!” In my dedicated pursuit of yellow journalism, after deciding I would write about Deacon Johnson, I took a job working for him, painting apartments. Instead of whistling while we worked, as we rolled the ceilings, evil techno music and Moore’s echo-drenched voice boomed from a trashed and graffiti sprayed jambox, “I will give you AIDS!” On the floor beside the jambox, a separate shortwave radio repeated a glitchy saw-tooth loop, and a wave machine generated an over-driven wshhhhhhhhhhh.

From age 15, Moore has done roadie and sound tech work for his famous father. “Actually I still sometimes work as his valet, soundman and roadie,” Moore says. “My father really is my main source of inspiration.” Still, in 1986 Moore escaped to New York because, “Everyone in New Orleans expected me to follow in my dad’s footsteps. Everyone was always asking ‘So, do you play music too?’ and I was like yeah, but… New York gave me a chance to go be someone else besides ‘Deacon John’s son.’” In 1988, in and around New York’s Tompkins Square Park riots, Moore found himself participating in the “homesteading” movement (some call it “squatting”) because, “I just couldn’t afford to live in New York any other way, so I had to take over abandoned buildings with small groups of people.” During this time Moore also helped produce a wild concert series in Tompkins Square, and invented the Jambox Pyramid. “Technology’s planned obsolescence has made for a lot of good garbage!” celebrates Moore, an avid collector of valuable trash. Any radio he finds is quickly painted up, then hooked into a giant noisemaking pile of garbage. “Each Jambox Pyramid is a continually evolving canvas,” Moore explains, “meant to show the visual side of music.”

With his invention and new clever stage name, Deacon Johnson, Moore returned to New Orleans in 1999 to do a Barrister’s Gallery opening. He decided to stay and went on to produce 2002’s Industrial Strength show at Big Top gallery (where Deacon John played acoustic guitar), and also participate in NOMA’s Underexposed photography show. “Underexposed is mostly like old men’s quaint pictures of birds, and my portraits, things like that,” explains local photographer Jonathan Traviesa. “And Keith shows up in full toxic waste gear and a gas mask, with flashing lights and this horrible digital image he took of 9/11 chaos.”

More recently, in December 2004, ballots at the Dragon’s Den’s bar coronated Deacon Johnson King of Ambient Noise. Then this past February outside the Den’s picture window, sat a knee-high pile of computer parts topped with a ten-pound sledgehammer: a scary invitation to Ambient Wars II, which would determine the queen. Broken jamboxes blaring static littered the Den’s precarious stairway, and every corner of the dark main room was stuffed with broken electronics, pill bottles, blacklights, candles, 9/11 photos and anti-corporate slogans. Giant sheets of foil and photos were taped across the floor and dusted with shards of broken mirror, so that the 40 or so humans in attendance all walked around crunching glass as Moore bellowed into the microphone, “People want to know where Deathhouse is? It’s at each and every one of your addresses! Because you are all going to die!”

And what did it all mean? “I believe that we are dealing with the repercussions of a society that has turned its back on nature,” explains Moore. “I also want to prove that synthetic, digitized techno music is valid, viable and fun.” Though cool enough, neither Moore’s statement nor his installations felt particularly original. But as Moore continued dragging more and more junk up into the Den, it became clear that Deacon Johnson is intensely committed to the grand New Orleans tradition of working way too hard toward an incredibly high production value, without much traditional reward.

Also, while it’s not uncommon to hear those who call their noise “music” bragging about the abrasiveness of their art—when actually, by now, noise has become more than accepted—Moore must also be given credit for actually disturbing people. Ambient Wars II (which crowned Beatgrrl Queen of Ambient Noise) actually got Moore banned from the Dragon’s Den. “I showed up around noon that day to help Keith load in,” recalls eternally mellow Den booking agent Tark Putman. “First he unloaded all these computer monitors and stuff and set them on the sidewalk. By the time the show started at 10:30 we were still bringing stuff up. But I forgot about the junk out on the sidewalk, and halfway through the night one of the chefs comes up screaming at me in Thai, because downstairs these two big jock meatheads were outside golfing computer parts at his car with a sledgehammer—unloading Keith’s van I somehow never saw the sledgehammers.” Putnam goes on to recall yelling at Moore, “‘I hate getting uptight about anything.’ I definitely appreciate what Keith is doing, and if it was my joint we’d light off dynamite inside, whatever. But I took all the junk from out front, scooped up all the glass, threw it all in a garbage can and told Keith, ‘This is garbage! Leave it here!’ And the next thing I know the pile has been moved upstairs onto the stage. With
the sledgehammers.”

Moore is now producing Noizefest in reaction to Jazz Fest’s “Jazz and blues whores and crappy jam bands.” But more importantly, Noizefest is a benefit for Charity Hospital, an institution that not long ago saved Moore’s life from simultaneous cases of pneumonia and meningitis. “This town needs that emergency room, man,” Moore states. “Especially the musicians.” You yourself might need Charity to fix your ears after this Noizefest line-up: Rob Cambre (N.O.’s noise guitar elder statesman), Manchild (original techno), DJ Lady Fingaz (turntablist), Ray Bong (toy instruments and nitrous oxide), Denise Bonis (dark, atmospheric soul-singer and violinist), PotPie (sinewave studies) Siamese Cocks (more sinewave studies), Mikronaut (Robotussin and dub reggae influenced four-track manipulations), Kid Calculator (laptop collages), One-Man-Machine (deconstructed Negro spirituals and Sun Ra covers), Sickniks (guitar and digital noise), Dead Boy and the Elephantmen, Chuck Reily (singer of Fire, computer artist), Miss Mass Destruction (DJ), Proppa Bear (DJ), The Hussy (hot DJ), In the Skin of the Buffalo (noise band), Brice Nice, Steve O (DJ), Ridiculous (loops and samples), DJ Beatgrrl (N.O.’s queen of ambient noise), Michael Aaron (guitarist), MC Shellshocker (female MC with real-time laptop vocal trickery), King Louie One-Man-Band, Quintron (who will not be playing dance music) and Ratty Scurvics (who knows?). Deacon Johnson himself will also perform and promises “interactive noise sessions with full audience participation.”

Noizefest takes place at Planet of the Dreamers, 600 Desire Street from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on both Saturday, April 30, and Sunday, May 1. Bring in apiece of electronic garbage and get $3 off the admission price.