Well, The New Orleans Saints just won the NFC South Division Championships, which means they’re on their way to Florida to play in the Superbowl on February 7th.  Now I’m not much of a sports fan, and until the last month or so it had to be explained to me that “Football” was the game with the egg-shaped ball and the helmets, not the one with the small ball and the stick.  But I do get caught up in the sociological symptoms and effects of major sports events, and this one is major.  The Saints have never come close to this before.  As my friend Ned Sublette just said:

“The importance of the Saints… is that they are the only thing everyone in New Orleans can agree on.  Nothing, but nothing, else.”

I’m spending a huge amount of time in New Orleans lately, and the city is going crazy over this.  If (when?) The Saints win the Superbowl, it will bring the city to its knees, in a good way.  They can sure use it.

As part of the citywide Saints fever, there has been an incredible explosion of locally created music supporting the team.  You can listen to a streaming radio playlist of much of this music at The Times Picayune site here.  My favorite of all of these songs so far is “Wit Da Saints” by a group of musicians from the Habitat For Humanity Musicians Village, who call themselves The Village Block Party.  You can hear the song on the tube here, or buy it at Amazon here.

Go Saints!

The Earl of Edgecombe has a new mixtape out. This one is all about New Orleans. Here’s the full tracklist:

1. Intro
2. The Death of Bounce - The Showboys vs. Wynton Marsalis
3. Blackbird Xtra Special - The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
4. Chocko Mo Marrero Clap - Danny Barker feat. MC Thick / Skip / Juvenile
5. Buck Jump Booker Time - Gregory D & DJ Mannie Fresh feat. James Booker
6. Sexual Healing (Hot Like an Oven Mix) - The Hot 8 Brass Band
7. Slow Motion Walk With Thee - Juvenile feat. Soulja Slim / Ray Nagin

You can also download this from here, where you will also find a nice flyer. The Earl loves feedback, so leave your comments below!

Over Christmas Davis Rogan was in NY, and we spent an afternoon in my studio playing some music. My friend Tony Jarvis joined us with his tenor sax and bass clarinet, and this track was one of the results. It’s been sitting on my drive 98% finished for months now, so this afternoon I decided to put the finishing touches on it and send it out into the world to fend for itself.

I’ve been interested in this song for many years. It’s one of the most covered tunes of all time, and it’s resilience and malleability never cease to amaze me. You can find an extensive collection of mp3s of many versions here, and a long discussion about the history of the song here.

Davis is a pianist and provocateur from New Orleans who was previously covered here, and who has a myspace here. Tony is a great musician, friend, and neighbor, who currently is playing in the house band at The Box, among other things.

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In other news, I’m currently music supervising David Simon’s new show for HBO, Treme, which is eating me alive — in a good way. But I have plans to start posting more here at The Ten Thousand Things soon. We shall see…

The journalists celebrating a good story in their local bar at the end of episode 51 of The Wire are listening to none other than Davis Rogan, the formidable pianist, composer, bandleader, DJ, raconteur, and provocateur from New Orleans.

I had the privilege of seeing his band play down there last year, and they tore up the venue, which happened to be a tent in a parking lot next to Ernie K-Doe’s Mother-in-Law Lounge. As the show progressed, the enthusiastic but admittedly small audience apologetically and politely departed to do some other important things, until I was the only one left, slowly sipping a Dixie and self-consciously bobbing my head in time to the music. Completely unperturbed, Davis and his band continued to complete their set, resulting in one of the live performance highlights of recent memory: my own private recital of I Quit, Davis’ rude masterpiece of anti-corporate R&B irreverence.

While you might initially be drawn to Davis’ music because of his hysterical stories and fierce attitude, you’ll end up sticking around for more because it turns out he’s a great pianist and songwriter with a real talent for dragging New Orleans musical heritage through the keyhole into the future.

The song we used in 51 was Do Me That Way, which like I Quit comes from Davis’ self-released album The Once and Future DJ. Other standout tracks are Hurricane and Godzilla v. MLK. The album was completed moments before Katrina hit, and the masters were actually lost because of the storm. Read that story here.

You can also read about Davis getting fired from WWOZ for playing hip-hop here. The artist has a Myspace here, where you can hear several more songs. You can buy The Once and Future DJ here.

I heard a lot of amazing music last week at Jazzfest in New Orleans (I wish I could post something from Elder Edward Babb & the Madison Bumble Bees, but alas they have no recordings), but one of the most fun shows was 007 at The Saturn Bar on Sunday night. 007 begin with the highly improbable premise that four middle-aged white guys can play authentic Jamaican rocksteady, and through a slavish devotion to detail and a laser-beam focus on the soul of the music, they hit the ball out of the park. Massive chops and great voices don’t hurt their cause either.

The Tide is High was written by John Holt and originally recorded by his band The Paragons in 1967. It is one of the definitive core rocksteady works, which in 1980 became a planetary hit for Blondie. 007’s CD Studied Rudeness is chock-full of danceable tunes, all covers, drawn mostly from the canon but also including some rocksteady versions of other songs - Summer Breeze works surprisingly well here, and I had to resort to Google to determine that Bank Robber was in fact written by Mick Jones in the ’80s, not Toots Hibbert in the ’60s. You can pick up a copy of Studied Rudeness at the band’s site here, where you can also here more of their tunes. They also have a myspace page here. 007 are best appreciated live, and they are playing in New Orleans all the time.

This is one of my favorite Waits songs and was already almost unbearably poignant and nostalgic last week; today, I defy you to listen and not get a lump in your throat. It comes from Small Change, Waits’ 1976 outing which you can find here.

While I don’t exactly wish I was in New Orleans tonight, I do have a bit of that feeling that I should be there. People with emotional ties to New York who weren’t here on September 11th 2001 said the same thing. New Orleans is one of the very few American cities I have ever wanted to live in. Some of the best and worst times of my life happened there. She owns a piece of me.

For an interesting insider perspective on current events in New Orleans, including eyewitness reports of police looting (only in N’awlins!), check out The Interdictor.

The Dirty Dozen Brass Band have been at the forefront of the Brass Band revival in New Orleans over the last twenty-five years, but The Treme Brass Band are the real heart of the scene, and Uncle Lionel Batiste beats his bass drum at the heart of the heart, along with Kirk Joseph on sousaphone and Benny Jones on snare. The Treme are best seen and heard in the street at a second line parade, or at Donna’s Bar and Grill on Rampart, but the 1996 CD that this is the title track from is the next best thing. It also includes a fantastic version of The Old Rugged Cross, which was the inspiration for my own cover version on the CD Shadow Economy in 2000.

The image here is of Uncle Lionel’s bass drum; my sister Genevieve Leyh painted it for him in 1999. There’s a profile of Uncle Lionel here, and the record company page for this CD is here. You can buy Gimme My Money Back here.