When Clint Maedgen contemplates the differences between Baton Rouge, where he founded the avant-garde rock band Liquidrone in 1992, and New Orleans, where he leads the avant-garde “living room” band Bingo!, he rhapsodizes: “New Orleans is just…a hypnotic mistress. She’s the most interesting city on the planet. The Last Bohemia.
“I’m looking at life and I don’t understand it anymore than I ever did. Bingo! is fun: [imitating carnival barker] ‘Come on down, honey, put yourself a party dress on and win a prize! Does anybody wanna be a winner?’ Bingo! is a magical chemistry.”
Performing on Thursday evenings at the French Quarter café Fiorella’s, Bingo! is comprised of Maedgen, violinist Brinn Nelson, bassist Steve Culotta [of Egg Yolk Jubilee] and alternating drummers Mike Andrepont [of Morning 40 Federation] and Andy Harris [of the Charm City Brokers]. Besides the music, there are also short films and spirited rounds of bingo.
The genesis of this project was a pump organ and 850 used bingo cards. As Maedgen explains: “I got a pump organ a long time ago and it’s lived at different people’s houses and I’ve written a lot of material on it. I was always hesitant to really put out that music because typically, the things I write on it are pretty intimate. In Liquidrone, it’s pretty easy to hide behind the wall of electricity. Bingo! is something entirely different—I’ve got it right under my lapel, it’s real close to my heart. These tunes are all heartbreakers to me.
“And then I found the bingo cards—that’s really what happened. I went into an antiques store and there were all these bingo cards—probably 850 bingo cards. Oh boy! Golly! ‘How much would you guys like for these bingo cards?’ The lady was like, ‘Honey, look, we’ve been selling ’em for a dollar apiece. They’ve been here for two months and I’m so goddamned tired of looking at ’em—you can take the whole thing and I’ll give it you for 20 bucks!”
After wallpapering the kitchen of his Ninth Ward home (the former residence of Lee Harvey Oswald) with bingo cards, Clint had a hefty surplus left and dreamt up the band called Bingo! (the follow-up to Liquidrone’s phenomenal Factory album is in production: “I want this to be a very powerful album—the one that’s gonna make our mark”). A live Bingo! album, produced by J.K. Romero, was recorded at Snug Harbor and the CDs were attached to the extra bingo cards. Maedgen is employed as a bicycle delivery man for Fiorella’s and his jaunts through the French Quarter inspired much of the music.
“I want to record the carriages going down the street [imitates sound of carriage wheels]. Everybody’s got their list of things that they really want to do—I want to go down to the Natchez and play the calliope so bad. I would love to do that! I’ve been hypnotized by that sound. There’s something so Santa Sangre about that. You know, the Alejandro Jodorowsky film [about a mystic armless circus aerialist]. There’s a little bit of that in Liquidrone and anything I do. That movie pretty much blew me out of the water, and continues to.
“The calliope just rips down. You go down St. Louis Street and it’ll pop you in the face as you’re coming up Chartres, man. You just know this is the city to live in. I just love it! I would love to play that calliope and record it. I think it’s the greatest instrument in the French Quarter.
“The second best instrument in the French Quarter is the firetruck. You know what it is? It’s Johnny Griffin just walking up to that mike and just ripping your head off. Ain’t nobody gonna solo over the firetruck! It’s not just volume—it’s overtones bouncing off the bricks and everything else. And it’s a different solo depending on where you’re at. Everybody’s gonna hear it!
“I like the tapdancers in the Quarter, too. I sure love hearing Miss Doreen [Ketchens] crank it out down there in the Square. She’s such a good player! And she’ll hold a note for about four or five minutes!
“I write all the goddamn time. I can’t help but write. I think it’s really medicinal. I’ll write songs on that window shade right there. I write on guitar, I write on piano, I like to write as I’m going down the street on my bicycle. I like to write as I’m going down Bourbon, and Razoo’s like gonk-gonk-gonk-gonk-gonk and some zydeco thing’s kicking up and you got what Big Daddy’s putting out, too, and something just explodes out of that. Like ‘Women Named Kitten’ off the Bingo! album—that was just a song that jumped out at me, wrapped me around the throat.
“I feel like I’ve got the coolest job [delivering food]. There’s nothing like it. At night, you’re just in the mouth of the animal—it’s 1:45 a.m. and you’re sweating. You’ve had a rough night, man. Nobody’s tipping you nothing. And you’ve got to deliver two orders of tiramisu to a stripper and you walk into Big Daddy’s and she just sees you—the woman who ordered the food—from 30 feet away. And she’s up on that pole spinning and she sees you and slides down. It’s beautiful. It’s fun making people happy and food is just a direct circuit to that.”
The spiritual father to most of the modern young Ninth Ward hipsters is former Ninth Ward resident Tom Waits. Clint considers Waits “a big part of anything that I do. I had a wonderful experience. My wife Jeanne and I had gone to Paris to see Tom Waits at the end of the Mule Variations tour. We went and saw him at the Grand Rex Theatre. It was magnificent.
“The show starts and eventually, he was sitting at the piano. Everybody was just screaming, squealing—they couldn’t hardly stand it and I’m no different. We were on the fourth row. It was just a dream.
“And finally, he was like [imitating Waits] ‘For Christ’s sake—where y’all been all this time?’ And somebody says: ‘Finland!’ ‘Atlanta!’ ‘Germany!’ And there was a pause. I went: ‘NINTH WARD!’ He stopped and looked right at me. I was 40 feet away from him and he kissed two fingers and went [imitating Waits again]: ‘You too, pal.’ And he played ‘Tango ’Til They’re Sore.’ ‘Just get me to New Orleans and paint shadows on the pews.’ And then we went out into the streets and drank $3 bottles of wine and ate bread and tomatoes and hung out in the 18e District and just had a dream, man. We had ourselves a night!”
WES FEST
Wes Thompson, the late proprietor of the reggae-fied Club Oasis, will be honored with four days of righteous sounds, commencing on August 21 at Café Negril, and continuing the following two evenings at Club Caribbean (2441 Bayou Road) with music by Zion, toasters Uzi and Troublesum, Bamboula 2000, Irie Dawtas, the Revealers and Early Brooks, Jr., and concluding on August 24 at Roots & Branches (43474 Airport Road in Hammond) with an outdoor festival, offering free admission to all Rastas. Eric B., known and loved from Kingston to the Seventh Ward as “Rasta Don,” is the strategist behind “Wes Fest.” For further details, dial 944-8505.
MY FRIENDS ALL DRIVE PORSCHES…
One recent sweltering summer morning, Trent Reznor and his dog cruised past me down Magazine Street in a black Mercedes convertible. That same sweltering day, late in the afternoon, Allen Toussaint drove by in a black Mercedes convertible as I was walking across Elysian Fields. I don’t know what you call this but I’ve heard that there’s no word for “coincidence” in Japanese. Maybe the message is that the songwriters are the ones who make the real money in the music business.
B.F.O.T.B.
In my capacity as an artist, I have designed many posters for many musicians, ranging from Professor Longhair (at various Gator Balls in the ’70s) to King Sunny Ade (appearing at a Quint Davis-produced gig at the lamented Dream Palace in the ’80s) to O.L.D. (reinventing redneckism at sundry sordid trailer parks in the ’90s). I prefer clients who let my imagination run wild so when a new band came calling and told me they were known as Butt Fuckin’ On The Bayou, I was—to say the very least—inspired. I immediately concocted a poster with the silhouettes of a Cajun couple (you can tell they’re Cajuns because the gent is wearing white rubber shrimp boots) in flagrante delicto, closely observed by an alligator. The posters were printed and a few nights later, my wife and I were sipping cocktails at the Bridge Lounge when we overhead a girl with a cell phone telling her friend, in lurid detail, all about the poster, unaware that I created the thing. It is always rewarding to hear others analyze your art, especially young girls.
Alas, the band contacted me and informed me that they were changing their name. Some of the members didn’t want to expose their mothers to such crudity. Their mothers?! How can you play rock music and worry about your mother? But the customer’s always right so I did another poster, for the group now dubbed 3 In A Tree, depicting two nude women and a snake cohabiting in an oak. Sorry, that was still too nasty. Now the band is called Whiskey Dollar and I have to go back to the drawing board. Being an artist can be hell! Meanwhile, Whiskey Dollar will be driving men (and women) to drink every Monday during Happy Hour at the Circle Bar.
