It’s hard to believe another year is winding down. As usual we’re gearing up to publish our annual Louisiana Music Directory, which should hit the streets some time in November. If you’re listed in the “LMD,” you’ll get a free copy in the mail. If you’re a band or music or entertainment business and you’re not listed, log onto offbeat.com and get your free listing. You can purchase a copy of the latest LMD for $35, and the subscription price also includes free access to the updated online LMD.
We’re sending copies of the LMD to a conference and trade show in Hollywood, California for television and movie producers to provide a reference for folks looking for Louisiana talent. OffBeat regularly distributes the LMD at trade shows and distributes the LMD to music commissions throughout the state. For more info, log onto offbeat.com.
At this time of year, we’re also busy getting ready for OffBeat’s biggest event of the year, the Best of The Beat Music and Music Business Awards. Every year, we send out nominating ballots to musicians listed in the LMD (see why it’s important to be listed?). The top three candidates, from the nominations, are then put into a second online ballot that allows the public to also get involved in the selection process.
Nominating ballots should go out in early November. Online balloting will begin in December (subscribe to OffBeat’s Weekly Beat e-letter to get more info on when you can vote for your favorite band for the coveted “Best of The Beat” award).
The date for this year’s Best of The Beat Music Awards is Friday, January 21, 2005. The awards will once again be held at Generations Hall, 310 Andrew Higgins Drive, from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. Tickets are only $20 and include the awards presentation (meet and greet some of your favorite performers!), performances from 14 of Louisiana’s coolest bands and a buffet of food from 20 plus local restaurants. Buy your tickets now at offbeat.com.
JAZZ FEST STILL NOT SETTLED
At press time, the contract between the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation, and the producers Festival Productions New Orleans (FPI) and AEG Live, had not been signed. However, FPI reps tell OffBeat that the deadline for bands to apply to play the 2005 Jazz Fest is still November 1, so, the Fest will proceed as usual.
It will be interesting to see if there are any significant changes in the Festival’s layout, design and in the booking practices. Will this year’s “shake-up” make a real improvement to the Jazz Fest offerings? At this point, just about everyone’s in the dark, including the FPI staff.
Recent articles in the Times-Picayune speculated on the futures of both the New Orleans Fair Grounds—which has recently been sold to Churchill Downs—and City Park, our under-funded and relatively underutilized 1500-acre park, at least for festivals and concerts.
Wouldn’t it be great if things really got shaken up by moving the Jazz Fest to City Park? Think how pleasant it would be to be able to walk through the grass, sit near the lagoons and under shade trees and still be able to experience the Jazz Fest, instead of the heat and dust of the Fair Grounds. Just something to think about…
CULTURAL ECONOMY SEMINAR
There’s a lot of talk about developing Louisiana’s “cultural economy”—like this is a new thing? My big Mojo Mouth has been yapping about promoting our music and music industry since 1985, almost 20 years. Tired of being one of the few ideologues who’s actually putting my livelihood on the line to try to shoehorn the development of our musical heritage into the consciousness of the mainstream business community, I’m pleased to see that Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and the Louisiana Office of Culture, Recreation and Tourism are stepping up to the plate to get more input from everyone in the community. Thus the first annual “Cultural Economy Initiative” on December 9 and 10 at the New Orleans Convention Center. Attendance at the two-day conference is $50; registrations is available at www.crt.state.la.us/culturaleconomy/. Be there and be heard.
NOTEWORTHY
Timothea Beckerman, the “Siren To Wail,” will once again hold her annual benefit concert to support Hepatitis C awareness and treatment. The concert is on Saturday, November 20 at Tipitina’s. Tickets are $25 and performers will include Timmy herself with her Blue Soul Revue, Allen Toussaint, the Dixie Cups, Frankie Ford, Sunpie Barnes, the Iguanas, Davell Crawford, Big Sam’s Funky Nation, Irene Sage, Bamboula 2000, Trombone Shorty, David Torkanowsky and many more. The concert will also include the inimitable Bobby Rush, who was the smash hit of OffBeat’s 2004 Best of The Beat Awards. For tickets go to tipitinas.com.
There will also be a second-line march for Hepatitis Awareness on November 19 beginning at 2 p.m. at 2401 Esplanade in the parking lot of the Musicians Union office.
Even in New Orleans, a city known for iconic cultural figures, Sister Gertrude Morgan remains a unique artist and musician. Born Gertrude Williams in 1900 and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana, she did not begin painting until later in life. Her colorful folk art depicts excerpts from the Bible on any type of media that she could lay her hands on, from random pieces of wood to foam take-out trays to her dining room table—even to cardboard toilet paper rolls!
In conjunction with a retrospective of Sister Gertrude Morgan’s work opening at the New Orleans Museum of Art in November, Preservation Hall Recordings re-released Let’s Make A Record, a rare collection of solo performances by Sister Gertrude Morgan.
Recorded in the early ’70s, Let’s Make A Record captures Sister Gertrude Morgan singing, preaching and playing tambourine as she did every day in her home, “The Everlasting Gospel Mission,” located in the Ninth Ward, or on the streets of the French Quarter.
Ben Ratliff in The New York Times wrote “…the immediacy in this obdurate little bruiser of a record, just vocals, tambourine and her favorite word—power, makes the point that an artist’s charisma always keeps her fresh, as if nobody has ever discovered her before.”
The “Art of Her Ministry” will be presented at the New Orleans Museum of Art on Tuesday, November 16 and will run through January 16, 2005. The exhibit made a visit to the New York American Folk Art Museum garnering praise from New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman who wrote “you don’t have to be religious to appreciate the inborn eloquence… You only have to accept that painting, when it comes from the heart and is so clearly genuine, can lift the soul.” For more information on The Art of Sister Gertrude Morgan exhibit call (504) 488-2631.
TWISTED
Twangorama (ace guitars Phil DeGruy, Cranston Clements and Jimmy Robinson with Paul Clement on bass and Mark Whitaker on percussion) institutes its annual “Seriously Twisted Guitar Thursdays” in November and December at Carrollton Station. Every week the group features a guest artist, who this year will include Tommy Malone, Theresa Andersson, Bonerama Horns,the Johnny Sketch String Quartet, Spencer Bohren, Annie Clements and Anders Osborne. Go to twangorama.com for the complete lineup and schedule. Who said New Orleans isn’t a guitar town?
