RIVERSIDE SELLOUT WEEK Jazz Fest

March 6th, 2011

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, formally.

I’ve never been to one.

The thought of it just makes me tired.

Let me get this straight-

Dave Matthews

John Mellencamp

Bruce Stingsteen

Bon Jovi

Arcade Fire

The Decemberists?

Am I a simpleton for being one of the many who whine, “This ain’t Jazz!”?

Really? You couldn’t get the reunited Return to Forever to Headline?

Don’t get me wrong- there are a lot of acts I would love to see, like Leo Nocentelli’s “Rare Gathering” show. I would have killed to see Joni Mitchell in 1995. You don’t typically catch Sonny Rollins at the Maple Leaf.

It would take a feat like digging up Joni Mitchell and knocking the crust off of her to get me to brave the Arcade Fire crowd and Porta-Johns. The wonderful thing about living in New Orleans is that you can get to this food and much of the music (the music that matters, anyway) any night of the week. Those people who travel in- they’re not so used to the rich cuisine served by the vendors- back tot he Porta-John problem.

Have you ever looked at a Program for the Newport Jazz Festival? Montreal?

Portland,Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit? Cleveland?

Cleveland’s Cuyahoga Community College Jazzfest brought me the Mingus Epitaph Orchestra a few years ago. Everyone was very well-dressed. There was no mucking around in the mud with college dropouts who are still hung over from Woodstock II listening to freaking Hoobastank.

New Orleans should be the Queen Mother of Jazz festivals, and I love Jazz, but really, I need to be talked into this one on of these days. And shouldn’t it be held in Armstrong Park?

Then again, Carnival in New Orleans isn’t quite like Rio or Vienna, is it?

It’s kind of the high-fat, sugary, American version

also

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Welcome to Riverside SELLOUT Week!

I make statements in my “About/Mission/Whatever” page to the effect of: “I hope to show things not common to the typical New Orleans websites”. This is because I want to portray my personal relationship with the place, which doesn’t always involve the things for which the city is known. I couldn’t care less that New Orleans has a football team, much less what they’ve won. My favorite stuff here lives between the bricks. It runs away from light. It grows toward the sun. It died 100 years ago. It is Eternal. I love New Orleanians because they seem to be the only ones around who know better than to disturb ancient, sacred things- systems as well tangibles. There seems to be a flawed concept in (very recent) modern thought that says, “if things aren’t perfect, any change is good change”.

It ain’t necessarily so.

I make each post with this as my primary philosophy. At least I did. I now have a new philosophy that goes something like, “Hey, what can I do to get tagged by search engines?”

This week we will take a look at popular things about which I don’t give a rat’s ass, but people seem to look for them. So feel free to Re-tweet, Re- er, Tumbl or share and Like on Facebook. I will owe you big-time.