Category Archives: Scene Report

Live music reviews

Stompers Alison and Lefty’s New Orleans Bounce Showcase steals the show at SXSW

Big Freddia
Big Freddia
Jon Pareles in the NY Times “Spilling Beyond a Festival’s Main Courses

Still, one of the best events at the (SXSW) festival was one of the most basic: a showcase of New Orleans bounce, the raunchy, local hip-hop style that developed in the 1990s but is only now escaping its hometown. The beat is fast, syncopated and relentless, and bounce fans know exactly what it’s for: shaking rumps at high speed. Katey Red, a tall transsexual in a black sequined dress and high heels, rattled off rhymes about sex and prostitution. No subtlety was necessary.

Pareles also reviewed the Bounce Showcase on his bog. SXSW: Do the Monkey on a Stick – NY Times Blog

“Let Me See that Sissy Bounce.” Big Freddia interview in the Austin Chronicle.

Scene Report: The Jack Johnson Memorial Dance at the VFW in Starks

I had just purchased six piping-hot, 8-inch rice-and-porkers at the Sausage Link on old U.S. 90 in Sulphur, Looziana, when I glanced down at the newspaper rack by the exit door and spied a surprisingly familiar sight in this almost-alien swampland. Had I drunk too much beer at the Kaw-Liga bar down the road, where … Continue reading Scene Report: The Jack Johnson Memorial Dance at the VFW in Starks

Scene Report: The RBT Band at Mo’s Chalet in Metairie

Metairie is a place often disparaged by those “not from here.” It is especially disparaged by those not from here who seek to cloak themselves and where they came from in all things New Orleans. By disparaging our hinterlands, they strive to make themselves all the more genuinely New Orleans. Ironically, these self-appointed New Orleans … Continue reading Scene Report: The RBT Band at Mo’s Chalet in Metairie

Scene Report: Midnight Streetcar in Chalmette

The scene: An historic crossroads in Chalmette, where St. Bernard Highway meets Paris Road, under the unearthly, Mordor-like glow of the Chalmette Refinery, in a parish where so many ghosts still tiptoe on the fringes of our consciousness: French land barons. West African slaves. Canary Island fishermen. Creole dandies. Kaintuck riflemen. Bloodied British invaders. Sicilian … Continue reading Scene Report: Midnight Streetcar in Chalmette

Scene Report: Eddie Bond at the Memphis Music & Heritage Festival

On Saturday night, exactly 54 years after he headlined the St. Francis County Fair in Forrest City, Arkansas, alongside Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Floyd Cramer, Sun rockabilly Eddie Bond took the stage at the Center for Southern Folklore‘s Memphis Music & Heritage Festival. At the fifth annual Ponderosa Stomp, Bond was backed by Deke … Continue reading Scene Report: Eddie Bond at the Memphis Music & Heritage Festival