The office phone rings and I answer it:

Me: “Good morning, OffBeat.”

Caller: “Hi, my name is Rich Allison, and I’m here with a group from out of town, and this is our first time to Jazz Fest. I have a copy of the ‘Jazz Fest Bible’ and it looks like it has everything we need in it!”

M: “Wow, that’s great. Are you staying at a local hotel?”

Rich: “Yes we are, but since you’re ‘the Bible,’ everything’s supposed to be in the magazine, right?”

M: “Well, we try to be as complete as possible.”

R: “Well, where do you buy tickets for the Jazz Fest?”

M: “Oh, you can buy them at the gate.”

R: “No, we don’t want to do that; we want to get our tickets ahead of time so we can just walk in.”

M: “There’s usually not too big of a crowd buying tickets at the Fest. A lot of people buy their tickets in advance. You should be able to get them really quickly.”

First Jazz Fest? Really??

R: “Well, since you have ‘the Bible’ [heavy emphasis on these two words], shouldn’t you let people know where they can buy tickets? No one in this hotel knows anything about where we can buy tickets; we asked everyone!”

M: “Hmmm. Let me find out.” [feeling very stupid and inadequate, because—I don’t know! I look online and find out that the tickets are still being sold at the New Orleans Arena]…”The tickets are still on sale at the New Orleans Arena Box Office.”

R: “How much are the tickets?”

M: [Scrambling around on the web again] “They are $48 if you pay cash and $49.50 if you pay with a credit card.”

R: “I’d think ‘the Bible’ [heavy on the emphasis, again] should have had this information.”

M: “I agree, we should have, but I guess we’re so used to people knowing about the Jazz Fest that we forget that there are a lot of new people who are coming for the first time.”

Mr. Allison and I went on to have a very nice conversation. I found out that he’s from Carbondale, IL and will head back to the Chicago area on the “City of New Orleans” AMTRAK train, with his party. The others are from the Tampa Bay area, seven in all. He was thrilled to find out he was talking to the “editor-in-chief” who learned a lot about making OffBeat a real “bible” and certainly a more informative item than it currently is. They are so excited to be here for their very first Jazz Fest.

Our staff and writers are so immersed in New Orleans that many times we just forget what it’s like to come to the city to experience Jazz Fest for the first time, how wonderful it all is, but how much there is to learn about little details like buying freaking tickets (for God’s sake!).  If you’re gonna call yourself a Bible, then you’d better be one, dammit! Lesson learned!

I told Mr. Allison to keep an eye out for a heavyset woman on a scooter with short flaming red hair tooling around the Fest going from stage to stage, so we could meet. Maybe I can make it up to him by telling him he can get some great softshell crabs.  Now those are hard to come by in Chicago!

Hello to all of our subscribers and friends worldwide who are in town for the Fest. Come by and say hey, and love dat Fest!