My sister who has turned me on to some of the most amazing music over the course of many years has been in NOLA for some business and this years Jazz Fest. Here is her first update…

Fri.:

• Harry Hypolite, blues guy from Lafayette, LA Gotta love a guy who wears a powder blue suit that looks like it’s made out of seat belts.
• Susan Cowsill, surprisingly, I liked her. Sort of Lucinda Williams-ish.
• C. C. Adcock, reining guitar god from Lafayette. Jody, you’d dig his looks.
• Sonny Landreth, reining slide guitar god from Lafayette. Everyone needs some Sonny.
• Sean Ardoin and Zydekool, he’s about 200 pounds fatter than the last time i saw him at surf club, but he still plays the funky stuff.
• The Black Crowes, honey, they were too hot to handle.
• Ozomatli, everyone needs to go out and see this band the next time they play anywhere. From East LA, a Latino hip-hop/salsa/funk conglomeration.
• Wilco — they surprised me, too, by not being dead-on boring. Apparently, they’re putting together an album with woody guthrie lyrics to music they wrote.
• Zap Mama — really FUN! band led by three rump-shakin’ african booty mamas, with rapper/turntablist backing. Pretty cool when 15,000 people are shaking their asses down to the ground to an africanized version of “Get Down on It.”

Sat.:

• Rockie Charles and the Stax of Love. A blues/R&B guy who sounds just like Al Green, and was wearing white tails and a purple satin bow tie at 11am. Smooth voice and good grooves.
• Brian Stoltz. Guitarist for the meters. I wasn’t wowed.
• Country Fried. Local alt.country band — a little too country, but they were hotties, Jod, K, Lorna, and Liz.
• Big Sam’s Funky Nation. Big Sam is a 20-something trombone player (backed by sax, bass, guit, and drums) who also happens to be about 325, and can move like michael jackson. funk-ti-fied!
• Charles Teony of Recife, Brazil. This band KICKED ASS. A mostly percussion-based band, with a very tribal sound – snare, bass drum (played by a stick wielding maniac), electric bass, trombone and a singer who put Mick jagger to shame. I must go out and buy all their Cds immediately.
• Fishbone. the sound was not good for their set, so they kind of disappointed. They also didn’t make a lot of friends by spending half of one “song’repeating the word shit over and over and over. Not very family friendly viewing.
• Eric Lindell. A california blue-eyed soul/rocker who made it here in NOLA and has now gone back to cali. I expect him to start touring nationally and be a big deal because he’s scruffy/alternative/rootsy and has the most amazing voice and good songwriting talents and excellent guitar chops. Can you tell i love him?
• Lil’Brian and the Zydeco travelers. Houston zydeco, never comes to DC and we’re veyr much the poorer for it, because this is the truly funky nouveau stuff.
• Luciano. A jamaican reggae superstar. Amazing. Especially with the massive spliff ingested during the performance.
• The Original Meters reunion. These guys are the heartbeat of NOLA funk — they kicked out the grooves to about 20,000 people. Even the white folks looked black.
• The Roots. Yeah, baby! Gotta love a hip hop band that does a cover of electric light orchestra AND ozzy osbourne. They were smokin’.

Sun.

• Brotherhood of Groove. NOLA funk band, but too jam-bandish for me.
• Balfa Toujours. I stuck it out and danced some ca-john shit.
• Jon Cleary & the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. Jon cleary can do no wrong. Period. He played keyboards,
  with david torkanowsky on b-3 and piano (that bit’s for lorna) and also played lead guitar. This man can funk out.
• Tiempo Libre. A salsa band that was mighty mighty good.
• The Iguanas. Came out of their slumber, psyched up for Jazzfest, i guess. A big, dancing crowd at Fais do Do stage.
• Cyril Neville & The Uptown Allstars. Cyril’s one of the funkier Neville brothers. no white people allowed.
• Charles Teony of Recife, Brazil. Had to go see him again – one of the rare acts that got to play two days in a row.
• Victor Manuelle. A salsa superstar from Puerto Rico. He had all the ladies in a dither. Fun to see lots of salsa dancing in the grass.
• Smokie Norful. Can i get a witness? A midget gospel singer who had me believing that the lord had divinely intervened to provide me with crawfish bread right when i had the munchies.
• Brian Wilson. is a freak. This original Beach Boy got booked on the Acura stage, which can hold an audience of like 36,000. i think there were half that many or less…his harmonies sounded great, and he did a lot of the beach boys oldies, but i found it a bit
  boring, especially when we could go see…
• Juanes, a Columbian heartthrob/superstar with long flowing Fabio locks who made 10,000 women swoon to the ground. He actually sounded pretty good, but not as bumpin as…
• Nelly, cause it was gettin’ so hot in here that i had to take all my clothes off. You’ve never seen so many scared 50-something white people in your life. While 15,000-plus kids — black and white — and homies bounced to da beat of Nelly, there was a white flight back to Brian Wilson (at same time) and to…
• Beausoleil, which played some of that cajun shit, but also some OK, nice stuff, but not enough to keep me there, so i headed over to end with…
• Harmonica tribute to Little walter, with Charlie Musselwhite, James Cotton, Kelly bell, Jerry Portnoy, Johnny Sansone, and j monqu’d.

Phew! Then i came home and napped for an hour and then went to see…

• The Campbell brothers, sacred steel — stood about 2 feet away from these lap steel maestros while they raised the roof on the sucka, praising hallelujah hallelujah to Jeeeeeeeeesus, and then stuck around for…
• Ivan Neville’s Dumpstaphunk, which had not one, but two bass guitarists, so you KNOW that was some DEEP funk, and a trombonist from Bonerama (nod to Jim).

Finally threw in the towel about 2am.

I wish I could of joined her this year… I will get there one of these days.