At 11 a.m., the Noisician Coalition left the Bingo! Parlour and started its parade around the Voodoo mall. All the instruments are homemade – a tree of mixing bowls of varying sizes, inverted crawfish boilers, a portable Theramin, and a host of wind instruments amplified by megaphones. Sure, musically it’s pounding and a megaphone’s siren tends to be the lead instrument, but the mutant creativity and punk theatricality makes it a must-see, and it would be so much better three or so hours later in the day.
The Bad Off in the Preservation Hall Tent: The Bad Off are a pure distillation of rock ‘n’ roll – all personality, swagger, energy and power. And no songwriter’s going to tell Erik Corriveaux how songs should be structured.
One Man Machine in the Bingo! Parlour: Bernard Pearce commits. As a vocalist, he’s in full-throat whether he’s singing or bellowing, and his art is similarly dedicated. He and an expanded lineup that included a gong player and producer Mark Bingham on banjo played heady, metal riffs, spoken word-ish improv music, and when he wanted to dial back, he played a chill piece that was exactly that. Still, the extreme presentation makes you wonder how much control he has of his art – a concern heightened by the realization that I’ve heard a lot of experimental, improvised music sound like this before. It’s no less legitimate each time someone picks up these concepts, but paradoxically, there’s little personal about this supposedly personal sound.
Sons of William on the Voodoo Stage: The Houma-based brother-plus-girl bass player band brought dad Billy Stark along to play keyboards, which was charming in its way, but if you want to swim in the pop marketplace pool, there’s no point just dipping your toes. This isn’t a sound that slowly finds a following; it’s a sound that blows up out of seemingly nowhere. Time to work on how to be big time onstage and in business, or do something else.
Big Blue Marble on the Playstation/Billboard.com Stage: Sons of William’s Joe Stark has a better chance of writing a hit for the Jonas Brothers, but if he wants a different sort of success, he could learn a lot from Big Blue Marble’s Dave Fera. Fera’s songs can be serious, too, but there’s a lot of creative life in his songs – wit, idiosyncrasy, subtlety and language at play.
The Dirtbombs on the Playstation/Billboard.com Stage: Garage bands are still fun for about a half-hour before the limited musical palate begins to wear.
Moving off of the Halloween weekend has cut down on the number of costumes this year. By mid-afternoon, I’d only seen a sexy fairy, a sexy cowgirl and a sexy referee.
To Voodoo’s credit, all the reconfigurations of stages has been for the better. The Bingo! Parlour’s more attractive from the outside and its wider stage is much more theatrical. The WWOZ Stage last year was grimly aimed at an open pasture that always looked empty, no matter how many people were there. Now it faces the central mall with a shallower, wider, more accessible stage. The Preservation Hall Stage was similarly changed so that it is bigger, and the stage is on the long wall to improve visibility.
The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra cancelled because Voodoo hadn’t acquired a piano for the set, so the Dynamites started early.
Joss Stone on the Playstation/Billboard.com Stage: She’s likable and a good singer, but why is she here now? Is Joss Stone really that popular?
Nice to see the Bingo! Show pack the Bingo! Parlour. I guess when you have your own tent, people want to know why. It was also a bit of a surprise to see Clint Maedgen with his spiked hair slicked down – his look since he’s become the clarinet player with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
During Bingo!, I could hear Wyclef Jean talking about Obama in the distance. I’m told he wore it out. I walked by the Preservation Hall Tent while the 101 Runners had a different way to get political. They performed the new Mardi Indian standard, “Handa Wanda Obama.”
Erykah Badu on the Playstation/Billboard.com Stage: The set felt like one long song – really, one long musical extension of Badu’s mind, and it felt like it could end in five minutes or go on for five interesting hours. Not surprisingly, she also took note of Barack Obama’s candidacy, talking about one of the debates. “I saw a black man running for president. Not just a black man, a human being for change.”
TV on the Radio on the Voodoo Stage: TV on the Radio was hard and beautiful, though the soundman didn’t do anybody a favor by not pushing Tunde Adebimpe’s vocals further forward. He carries so much of their melody, and with him slightly muted, the rhythm and David Andrew Sitek’s swarm of bees guitar sound took over. It became clear very quickly that the crowd for the band was largely there out of curiosity and not because people actually knew their music. No cheers of recognition for new songs, no one singing along or mouthing words.
Stone Temple Pilots on the Voodoo Stage: Just before they walked onstage, the PA played Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times.” Since there was no between-set music all day – no space between sets – it’s tempting to see that as a prescient comment on the band’s past starting with “In the days of my youth.” Then again, they were late going on, so maybe it was just the soundman’s awkwardly appropriate attempt to kill time for the tardy band, which had another bit of piano music as they walked onstage. As you’d expect, Stone Temple Pilots played a greatest hits show starting with “Conversation’s Dead.” Putting the setlist aside, though, the band felt out of date. Scott Weiland’s rock star presentation seemed more ’70s, down to his absurdly serious explanation of the symbiotic relationship between a band and its audience in a concert. He did speak to New Orleans and the band’s history with Voodoo, saying, “We played here once before and it was beautiful. Then there was a storm. Now it’s much more beautiful to play for you.” Unfortunately, drummer Eric Kretz was replaced for the gig by Army of Anyone drummer Ray Luzier because Kretz’ father died last week. With Luzier on drums, the tempos dragged a little, but noticeably, and by mid-set, the crowd started drifting away.
King Britt’s tribute to Sister Gertrude Morgan at the WWOZ/SoCo Stage: It was unfortunate that this set was opposite Stone Temple Pilots because the provocative set only had a handful of fans – far fewer than it deserved. The one-time DJ for Digable Planets remixed Sister Gertrude Morgan’s Let’s Make a Record in 2005, and for the occasion, he manipulated her voice and turntables with live keyboards, guitar, drums and tuba by Preservation Hall’s Ben Jaffe. This set, like TV on the Radio’s, sounded like modern music – live, technological, but still rooted in personality and musical conversation. During “Power,” during which Morgan talks about different types of power including nuclear power, Britt mixed in an excerpt from Barack Obama’s Nomination Acceptance speech articulating his military vision. Britt started with “We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country.” Britt let a good chunk of the speech run, concluding with “And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.” At that point, the audience applauded not the song but Obama.
