Fan-funded New Orleans-based Threadhead Records is hosting a poll to help determine their next project. You do not have to register to vote. You just click on the link and can vote once per IP address per day through 10/18.
My favorites include: Midnite Disturbers (the all-star brass band, which has included Stanton Moore, Kevin O'Day, Skerik, Ben Ellman, Big Sam, Mark Mullins, Shamarr Allen, Troy Andrews, Kirk Joseph, Matt Perrine)
Tin Men feat. Alex McMurray, Matt Perrine (again) & Washboard Chaz
One vote per IP address, per day. At the end of the week, the top 10 suggestions will be put up for a final vote. Final poll will be open for another week and at the end of that time, THR will choose a project from the top 3 most popular suggestions to pursue. Note: There is no guarantee that any project suggested will materialize into a THR project but THR will seriously investigate the possibility.
Who should we pursue for our next project?
AfricanZydeco Revue
RamaFest: Twangorama and Bonerama collaboration
David Torkanowsky
Kora Konnection
Anders Osborne (?), Johnny Sansone and John Fohl
VOW
Germaine Bazzle
groovesect and the soul project (soulsect)
Threadhead Records All-Stars
A childrens CD recording the music clinic kids
All That
Midnite Disturbers
Paul Sanchez and the Rolling Road Show
Threadhead Records artists do the History of New Orleans music
Royal Fingerbowl coalesced around the Frenchmen Street music scene in 1995 to showcase McMurray as a Tom Waits/Leon Redbone/"Ice Cream Man"-era David Lee Roth composite singing evocative tales of down-and-out life in New Orleans. Barely a year later, having rarely performed outside Orleans Parish, the band signed with TVT Records, the New York label that broke Nine Inch Nails.
The trio -- McMurray, drummer Kevin O'Day and bassist Andy Wolf -- released its TVT debut, "Happy Birthday, Sabo!," in August 1997. By the time "Greyhound Afternoons" came out three years later, Nuccio occupied the drum chair; Perrine would soon take over on bass.
The Spiders. L-R: Chick Carbo, Joe Maxon,Oliver Howard, Chuck Carbo, Matthew West
New Orleans funk fans and collectors are probably most familiar with Chuck Carbo from the one-off 45 sides he made for and with Eddie Bo in 1969 that have appeared on several compilations; but, as seriously funky as it was, that record really didn't provide a great showcase for someone who is considered by many, including me, to be one of the city's best and most under-appreciated R&B vocalists. Although Carbo's career spanned over five decades, he put his talent on the side for many years to support his family with day jobs and did not have much of a solo singing career until late in his life. I have had this post simmering since Chuck's death at 82 this past July. My perpetual state of project overload often keeps me from getting to HOTG posting in a timely manner; but, things do eventually come around for those who wait. If you're still with me, let's take a listen to some Chuck Carbo cuts with good grooves as well as vocals, and give some props to another great one who's now gone.
Monday's main attraction was sexy cartoon lady Miss Pussycat, the hands behind VBS's puppet “soap-opera” Trixie and the Tree Trunks, and her organ-taming, jam-skating life-partner Quintron. Two nights before, Pussycat opened an art show at Live With Animals in Williamsburg; Monday was the official release party for Too Thirsty 4 Love, Quintron's month-old, 11-song bogland bonanza that features him on the cover with fangs, a python, and a grinning older woman in a see-through top. He and Andrew W.K. are apparently old pals—this was the New Orleans couple's first local headlining performance in years—and neither one gave a shit that tomorrow the rest of us had to work. “Do you realize how many people around the world would give anything to be in Manhattan?” screamed Andrew, who these days uses shampoo and wears a wedding ring. “Let's enjoy this moment!”
When Katrina swamped his Lower 9th Ward neighborhood and 80 percent of his hometown with floodwater, Domino lost his home, three pianos, dozens of gold and platinum records and other memorabilia. So, when the 80-year-old singer took the stage at a popular New Orleans club for the first time after the 2005 storm, fans cheered and cried as he bopped the upbeat strains of "I'm Walkin"' and crooned "Ain't That a Shame," along with a host of other hits. Footage from that appearance in May 2007, his first and last since Katrina, is the basis of a new documentary, "Fats Domino: Walkin' Back to New Orleans," that will air on public broadcasting stations over the next few years.
Bonerama is a brass band of a completely different sort. They carry no trumpets or saxophones, but they do feature trombones, sousaphones, one electric guitar and drums. They not only have updated the sound, but they have redefined it. On Saturday, their version of "When The Levee Breaks" was done as if Led Zeppelin arranged it. Since the festival was at the edge of Bayou St. John in New Orleans (an area that experienced flooding after Hurricane Katrina), the presentation was completely surreal.
Immediately following Bonerama on the WWOZ Stage was Ivan Neville and Dumpstaphunk. Yes, he's one of those Nevilles. His band, moreover, is quite simply the best jazz/funk/rock fusion outfit to emerge from New Orleans since the Meters. Taking the stage at dusk, the band delivered a blistering set which included "Stinky," "Livin' In A World Gone Mad" and "Turn This Thing Around."
"Rachel getting married . . . ," Donald Harrison Jr. muses before the friends and family assembled at a fictional wedding. The setting is director Jonathan Demme's latest critically acclaimed work, starring Anne Hathaway; Harrison's opening line is the film's title.
Harrison's character, a jazz musician and close friend of the bride's father who is a music industry executive, isn't a stretch. Yet Harrison inhabits it with the same arresting blend of charisma and humility that he brings to the various roles he plays in his native New Orleans. They include jazz saxophonist and bandleader, with a new album, "The Chosen"; mentor to young players through a weekly nonprofit workshop; and Big Chief of Congo Nation, extending the Mardi Gras Indian tradition he inherited from his late father.
It's good to know a po'boy preservation society exists. These dedicated folks organized the second annual Po'Boy Preservation Festival, happening this Sunday on five blocks of Oak Street in New Orleans. We were at last year's inaugural fest, and this year the same po'boy fanaticism is expected—panelists on the sandwich's history, a taste-test from local vendors, and even some love for the po'boy's Italian cousin, the muffuletta.
"Whose idea was this? Nobody knows. Nobody cares. Nothing makes sense here. And that's probably why I like it. And that was all I could think about when I realized that Wednesday was St. Joseph's Day and that meant the Mardi Gras Indians were going to come out into the streets and I grabbed a jacket and a go-cup and went out to find them."
"In a town filled with great drummers and renowned across the globe for percussive innovation beginning with the great trad jazz drummer Warren "Baby" Dodds, O'Day stands out as the go-to guy for gigs of any variety. He is regarded among his peers as a drummer's drummer with a passion that never wanes and a sympathetic ear that defines musical telepathy."
"If you heard this group without knowing anything about them, you likely would not immediately suspect that Professor Longhair, Smokey Johnson, or Allen Toussaint, to shorten severely a long list of local influencers, were lurking in their collective woodshed, and, in the latter’s case, in the control room. Once I figured that one out, I started to dig them for what they had to offer rather than what my expectations were."
WWOZ.orgis listener-supported, volunteer-operated, Katrina-resilient miracle of FM radio that plays funk, jazz, blues, roots, Latin, soul, zydeco, R&B, and everything in between.
"Mayfield said it's important to look at what has gone right since the storm. For one, at almost any school in the city _ no matter how dilapidated _ the students are playing music, he said. He says music is still in every part of the city, from the clubs, to the streets to the universities, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be part of the city's library system."
"Not since Garcia and Grisman's Not for Kids Only (1993) has there been a kids collection likes this. Funky Kidz is a project that manages to capture a spirit that most children's music is sorely lacking – genuine funk."
When was the last time you worked on Bourbon Street?
At Storyville the Friday night before Hurricane Katrina.
What a way to end it.
Ain't that something?
Would you go back to Bourbon Street?
Surviving is surviving. But you know what? I love Bourbon Street. If it wasn't for Bourbon Street, I wouldn't be where I'm at now. You meet a lot of people from all over the world. After Katrina, they were good to the musicians of New Orleans, everywhere we went.
