Super Obama!

See more Obama Action Figures.

Our New President Loves Wilco and That is the Coolest Thing Ever

The Spell Has Not Yet Broken

We Sure Did

Great t-shirt

From Threadless T-Shirts

You can vote however you like.

I'm No Good At All

It's been months since my last post... But this is the most blog-worthy thing I've seen in a long time so I decided to come out of my unintentional hiatus and show it to you:

The official music video for Surprise Me Mr. Davis' "I'm No Good At All".
Featuring Nathan Moore (guitar & vocals), Brad Barr (guitar & vocals), Marc Friedman (bass), and Andrew Barr (drums).

Edited by the multi-talented Nathan Moore.
Produced by Shine A Light Productions.

Visit www.myspace.com/surprisememrdavis for tour dates and more info.

Geauxbama!

Great new t-shirt design from my good friends at Dirty Coast.

Lettuce Funk Your Face Off

When my good friend Pete Costello uses words like "flat out on fire," "Heavyweight Champions of Funk" and "BEST BAND IN THE GENRE" - at 10:08 am, mind you - I heed the call. After a day of loving my mother and sister and nieces and eating a sequence of bagels, lox, brownies and hot dogs while enjoying a supposed Tom Hanks marathon on TBS today, I took a detour back to Brooklyn via the Bowery Ballroom to see Lettuce. What I encountered was nine guys on stage in an unbreakable groove lock with each other. Boundless energy from the stage made it seem like it was a Saturday night in Detroit in 1972 - or at a raging funk party on Mars in the year 2054. The horns cut through the sea of sexy sounds from the band with a punchy staccato that's so clean and crisp it makes your hair stand up on its ends. Adam Deitch (omg, adam deitch...) is like the hip hop version of Stanton Moore and they've got him up on risers so you can just marvel at his skill to create mindblowing beats before your eyes.

From the looks of it, this is the end of their little jaunt (for which they apparently had zero rehearsal time beforehand and still sound tighter than anyone I've heard in a long while). But they'll be out and about during the summer and their new album RAGE! is available now - I found it here on HomeGrown.

Get a little dose of Lettuce right now over here: www.myspace.com/lettucefunk.

Hi, I'm a mac.

I am no longer a PC and I have to tell you it feels great. So, I threw down around three grand for this new baby and I do love it. They were nice enough to throw in a new printer/scanner/copier from which I expect to have lots of fun digging up old photos. Here's an old gem of me and my sisters from way back when...

The River JazzFest

The river runs through it... JazzFest that is. Yesterday was another incredibly rainy day but that didn't damper the spirit of JazzFest one bit. The sun started to finally peek through the clouds during Irma Thomas's set yesterday afternoon. And Al Green sang us love songs to send us on our way into the nighttime...


The nighttime, which started with an amazing meal at Upperline, took us from Tipitina's where Rebirth Brass Band opened up for Leo Nocentelli's Rare Funk Gathering. Leo is the original source of "super space funk" if you asked me.

As the night got fuzzy, it was time for a trip back downtown to the Howlin' Wolf where there was some major howlin' going on... from Skerik's horn. Not sure what this incarnation was called but we had Marco & Joe with Skerik and Eric Krasno blasting away in a Bustle-esque fashion. This is a band to write home about! So... I'm writing home about it...

Today was the beginning of the "daze between" which I just love. The noise settles down and the brain starts repairing itself. We made the pilgrimage uptown to get Domilise's poboys. People, if you have not hunted this place down yet, you are missing out on the best poboys in town. While uptown we went to visit our friends at the Dirty Coast store to buy some t-shirts. And now for a little down time before checking out the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars tonight at DBA!

Billy Joel... from under a human held tarp.

Torrential downpours at JazzFest today! But the music is still playing so ya gotta work it out, riight?! We found shelter during Billy Joel's set under a giant tarp held up by people. It was kinda awesome. That piano man sang us some songs and there were still thousands of soaking wet people all in the mood for a melody!

Fairgrounds, Day One.

Soft shelled crab po'boy, strawberry lemonade, crawfish beignets, fried eggplant in crawfish sauce, Cajun duck po'boy, fried green tomatoes, cochon delait, crawfish bread, crawfish strudel, white chocolate bread pudding... oh my. And there was music also. Day one happened. Here's some pics from the glorious fairgrounds.

NOLA Awaits

Hello blogosphere. It's been one month since my last confession.

I thought I'd fire up ye olde blog here again as I am once again making the pilgrimage down to the Big Easy for 10 days of N'awlins goodness. I'm printing out my grids, checkin' out the nighttime happenings, and my stomach is growling for po'boys and crawfish monica. Tonight after checking in to our house in the Bywater, I think a visit over to DBA for some Anders Osborne is in order. I've got my sights set on Saturday afternoon at 5pm on the Fairgrounds as we patiently wait (while nibbling on some crawfish bread) for Billy Joel to take the stage.

Happy JazzFest! I'll be in touch! Holla!!

There are ghosts in Berlin...

... and we met one of them. While we were attempting to club hop on our off night in Berlin, there were about ten of us that settled in at this one place for a couple of drinks. There are two actual people in this picture - Lacey and Sarah - and one not-so-actual person. Maybe two. He looks like he's just walking by, holding a drink perhaps. Take a look and you decide.

There's the city of Berlin as it exists today and then there's the city that once was, that is felt all over. The new on top of the old, life replacing death. But who's to say the spirits aren't still there, existing on some level (apparently a level picked up by my digital camera) among the living?

Still Filtering Out the Everglades

Here's a few from Langerado last weekend:


Brett Dennen:

Gator! Ah! (He was in a cage, don't worry):


Obligatory D Shot:


Everglades Sky:


Tommy Hamilton - an American Baby:


The Wood Brothers:


Ben Folds:


Matisyahu:


R.E.M. from afar:


The Band of Changes:


Ani DiFranco:



Le Wheel de Ferris:


All in all, quite a bit of hassle for not the big musical payoff (i.e. 7+ hours of straight live Phish), but a good time was had by all. Next stop on the D-Train: Amsterdam...

No wonder there were so many Jewish kids on Phish tour.

From HU research: Revelation at Sinai was 'mind-blowing':

Writing in the British scholarly journal Time and Mind, Prof. Benny Shanon claims that Moses and the children of Israel were likely under the influence of natural psychedelics found in the Sinai Desert when cataclysmic events like the receiving of the Ten Commandments took place.

Kind of an interesting theory! I'm sure there are many of us that have "seen the truth" during an... episode. Read the entire article.