Interview with Reggie Scanlan of The Radiators (Part 1)
The Radiators celebrated the anniversary with the release of Wild & Free, two CDs of mostly live material that they call “Fishhead Music.” Wild & Free dates back as far as their formative year of 1978 and also includes new songs written for the release. Bassist Reggie Scanlan spoke with me about the group, the new release, Fishhead Music, Hurricane Katrina, and the inimitable world of New Orleans music. Here’s part 1 of the interview:
I went to Jazz Festival last year and came back wanting to immerse myself in the music of southern Louisiana. The diversity and depth are such that it’s impossible to say that there is a such thing as one Louisiana Sound or a NOLA Sound.
It’s all delineated. People want to put in a bucket and it’s not like that.
Antoinette K-Doe's funeral proved why we live and die in New Orleans 
Last Saturday, Antoinette K-Doe was laid to rest, dearly departed, dearly beloved.
Outside St. James Methodist Church on Ursulines, the choking smell of the horse-drawn hearse driver's cigar wafted over the hundreds of faces, New Orleans faces, black and white faces, young and old faces, crazy good faces all.
The old folks all looked like museum prints waiting to be shot in black-and-white and silver-framed, their faces etched with lines like rivers of joy, rivers of sorrow, rivers of life. The younger folks were dressed weird and their faces beamed in anticipation of a classic New Orleans street throwdown.
One day, they will have lines, too, to tell their stories.
A car parked under the overpass bore the bumper sticker that says, "New Orleans: We Put the Fun in Funeral."
HBO's 'Treme' christened with an impromptu barbecue by Kermit Ruffins
If you approached Tuesday's shooting location from Treme Street, it appeared that the scene involved smoky special effects - white billows floated down the street away from the lights, camera, action.
Upon closer inspection, though, the smoke meant that it was just another workday for Kermit Ruffins.
The ebullient trumpeter was acting in a scene for the pilot episode of "Treme," a prospective series for HBO now shooting around town, and he had wheeled his trademark barbecue grill to the set.
As the filming work went on in a pink home at mid-block, cast and crew fed from Ruffins' giant black cooker, hitched to the back of his giant black pick-up truck.
The impromptu street barbecue - an expected treat for attendees at a typ ical Ruffins music gig - was a surprise start-of-shooting bonus for "Treme," which, if picked up by HBO, will air next year and tell the post-K recovery story through the eyes of local musicians and cooks.
Keep-N-It Real Social Aid and Pleasure Club's Annual Second Line Paradebrought the purple heavenly haze to downtown New Orleans this past Sunday. And true to their name, their second line became the reality and that trainwreck on Poydras and Perdido, the illusion - at least for the four hours they paraded.
Celeb iPods to help New Orleans music
What tunes make your favorite celebrity get up and dance?Win their iPod to find out! Music rising, is raising money to help rebuild the New Orleans music scene by auctioning off celebrity iPods.
New iPod auctions will launch each week. check out www.tonic.com/musicrising to see who's coming up, and then bid away.
New Orleans musician Glen David Andrews rebounds, opens "Gate"
Two years ago, trombonist Glen David Andrews could scarcely look up as he described his months "in exile" in Houston and the Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer he shared with relatives after Hurricane Katrina ravaged his hometown.
"I feel ground down," he said then. But at last year's New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, he bounded from the stage, gazed up and gleefully announced, "It's my time."
It may well be. Andrews' renewal is evident on his new album, "Walking Through Heaven's Gate" (Threadhead Records), which was released February 24. The songs on the collection, mostly hymns, reveal the same fire Andrews brings to street parades and bandstands throughout New Orleans, and they open a window into an important piece of the history that defines Andrews and his close clan of powerhouse musicians -- the church roots of their music.
French Quarter Festival reveals what's new for 2009
The sun had burnt the morning fog from Jackson Square revealing glorious blue skies this morning, but there was no burning news reveled at the French Quarter Festival press conference.
With a few tweaks, it will be business as usual at the 26th annual event that takes place April 17 through 19. Not necessarily a bad thing, since the festival, which began in 1984 as a way to invigorate the Vieux Carre, is said to have drawn 435,000 visitors to New Orleans oldest neighborhood last year.
Festival executive director Marci Schramm thanked Walter "Wolfman" Washington for providing the morning's musical accompaniment -- a bluesy version of "Caravan." She pointed out that it was tad early for most musicians. Washington quietly concurred.
Louisiana Spring and Summer Festivals 2009
New Orleans’ Affordable, Authentic Festivals Get You Grooving and Grubbing This Spring and SummerNSP: The House of Dance & Feathers release
The newest Neighborhood Story Project book has been two years in the making, and is staking its claim as the first time a Mardi Gras Indians have collaborated on a book about their community. Building off the success of the best-selling Coming Out the Door for the Ninth Ward, NSP co-director Rachel Breunlin has worked with Ronald W. Lewis to tell the story of his museum, the House of Dance & Feathers.
The book, The House of Dance & Feathers: A Museum by Ronald W. Lewis, is a full color tour of the museum and the history and meaning of New Orleans African American street cultures, from Mardi Gras Indians, to Second Lines, to Bone Gangs. It was made possible through the support of the University of New Orleans, and a Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities grant.
50 great moments in jazz: Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers
Jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton ... as much a composer as an improviser. Photograph: Corbis
Ferdinand Joseph Lamothe, better known as Jelly Roll Morton, may have been a jazz legend (such a legend to himself, in fact, that he even claimed to have invented jazz) but he also kept his career options open. Born in 1890 in New Orleans to a Creole family and raised on ragtime, guitar, and classical piano, Morton was a professional entertainer by his early teens, but he also turned his hand to pool sharking, gambling, boxing promotion, tailoring, and occasional pimping in the city's Storyville red-light district.
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