It all began for us on Tuesday, May 2nd, 1995. Mitch, Arnie and I planned to drive to New Orleans for the 1995 Jazz Fest. We were huge fans of the New Orleans Radiators, who would be playing almost every night in some capacity while we were down there. But we are also huge music fans…and if you are a fan of music then a trip to Jazz Fest is a must.
Mitch and I were living in
Madison, WI at the time and Arnie lived in Minneapolis. Arnie drove down to Madison on that Tuesday
and then we all jumped into Mick’s new green Honda Civic for the trip down to
the Big Easy. It is about a 1,000 mile
drive from Madison to New Orleans and we took off Tuesday night. I had recently been busted for a DWI and did
not have a license so my driving was limited.
They let me drive a few times, but only when we were in the middle of
nowhere like southern Illinois or Mississippi.
Instead of driving I was the navigator and before long Mitch had
nicknamed me ‘Maps’.
We arrived in New Orleans on
Wednesday afternoon and headed to our friend Kathy’s place where she lived with
her daughter Karamia. I had stayed there
before and Kathy is a sweet person and an awesome host. She never hesitated to let 5 or 10 of us
crash in her various rooms or floor space and there was always room for one
more. Arnie and I had actually met there
a couple years earlier when we were in New Orleans to see the Radiators for New
Year’s Eve.
Wednesday night we went out
to the Muddy Waters bar on Oak Street in the Carrollton District to see a blues show (possibly Kenny Neal and Tinsley
Ellis). It is impossible to remember which nights we
ended up where for the after-party or remember all the crazy details (all the New Orleans memories over the years start to blend together), but at least one night we ended up at Snake
‘n Jakes, at least one night at the Maple Leaf, and one night we just sat on
Kathy’s front porch drinking till dawn while our friend Tommy The Freak tried
to kick his shoes onto Kathy’s roof.
Thursday was the first of a
4-day weekend going to the New Orleans racetrack every day for the Fest. For those of you who do not know about it,
the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is an enormous annual festival
held the last weekend in April (Fri/Sat/Sun) and the first weekend in May
(Thu/Fri/Sat/Sun) from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. each day. There are at least a dozen stages, hundreds
of bands and countless awesome local food stands. The music is mostly local New Orleans bands
but includes bigger national acts as well.
So there was Fest during the day, and then there were shows at the
seemingly infinite bars and clubs around town where all the bands would play at
night. In addition to that, the various
record stores would have in-store appearances by bands as well.
Here was a typical 24 hours
in New Orleans during Jazz Fest: wake up
at 11 am and head to the fairgrounds where you would eat, drink and watch music
until 7 pm. Then head to wherever ‘home’
was and nap for 3 hours. Get up at 10 pm
and head out to whatever night show you were seeing, oftentimes the Radiators
at Tipitinas that started at approximately 11:11 pm. Watch that concert till 2 or 3 am and then
head to the after-party until 6 am. Go
home, sleep until 11 am and then start over.
I had started going to the 2nd weekend of Fest a year or two
before and continue going to this day, although not every year anymore due to my married-with-children status, and
never for a week…usually just a couple nights.
On Thursday the three of us
got to the fairgrounds and I would be lying to you if I said I remembered what
exactly what we saw, but looking at the lineup that day I imagine it included
some or all of the following bands or acts:
James Taylor, Kenny Neal, Nocentelli w/special guest Zigaboo Modeliste,
Charles Neville & Diversity, and Walter Payton. I bought a 1995 Jazz Fest tee-shirt for $10,
but upon hindsight I wish I had bought the 1995 Jazz Fest poster with Louis Armstrong on it.
The unsigned edition originally sold for $45. My tee-shirt is long gone, but that poster
now sells for $1,770 if you can find it.
We got back to Kathy’s around
7 p.m. and that is when shit started to get crazy. A couple years earlier Mitch and I had
immediately bonded when we met and became best friends, and this night would go
down as one of the cornerstones in our relationship. Mitch had brought down 3 sugar cubes laced
with acid that he got from his buddy Donnie in Madison. The Radiators were playing that night at
Tipitinas and we were excited to dose and see our favorite band at the coolest
bar in the country.
Arnie was hungry and wanted
to go out and grub first with Kathy and a pack of Canadians that were also
staying at the house. I wanted to take a
shower before heading out, but Mitch was anxious to get going as soon as
possible. We made a deal and decided to
try an experiment…Mitch would take his acid hit right away…I would take a
shower and then take my hit exactly one hour after Mitch…and Arnie would go out
to eat and then take his hit exactly one hour after me. We would all be on the same acid but one hour
apart so that we could take mental notes…compare and contrast our trips.
Mitch ate his sugar cube,
cracked a beer and hung out on the porch while I went in to get ready for the
night. I came out an hour later and Mick
was already becoming a giggling puddle.
He had dropped his beer on the concrete porch and was unsure what to do
next. He was slowly pacing around,
staring at the broken glass and the widening pool of beer. He kept staring at it, worried and hesitating
but giggling. His complete inability to
figure out how to proceed in this situation was hilarious but I decided to help
him out anyways. After sweeping up the
glass and beer I ate my sugar cube to try and catch up to Mitch. He kept looking around, staring at
stuff…asking me if I saw what he saw.
No, not yet…I was only 3 minutes
into the trip. Judging by Mitch’s
extreme goofiness I realized this was high-powered acid and I was nervously
excited.
After a while Mitch and I got
in his car to head to Tipitinas. Arnie
was still out and he would meet us down there later. Before we could go to Tips though, Freak
asked us to give him and a guy named Hal a ride to Jimmy’s Music Club to see
the Funky Meters. Hal was a friend of Freak’s from California who carried an
8-string proto-type guitar/bass thing around with him everywhere he went…the
entire week…he never left home without the big silly thing. We had met him earlier in the day at Fest and
he quickly proved to be slightly amusing, but somewhat of a pain in the
ass. He was convinced that if he carried
that weird guitar with him long enough somebody would eventually invite him
onstage to play with them. As far as I know
that never happened. Mitch quickly
nick-named him the ‘Octoprotozoid’.
Mitch was now two hours into
the trip and probably should not have been driving, but I did not have a
license so I took my usual spot in the shotgun seat with map in hand. I was an hour into the trip, right where Mitch
had been an hour ago on the porch…unsure of myself, giggling, nervous, the acid
beginning to kick in strong. With Freak
giving directions in the backseat and me trying my best to follow our progress
on the map, we wound all around town while Mitch and I laughed uncontrollably
in the front seat getting higher by the second.
At one point, through tears
of laughter, Mitch pointed through the windshield and asked: “What do all those lights look like to you?”
Mitch was expecting me to give the usual trippy response and confirm
what he was seeing…that everything was melting and full of trails. I paused for awhile, staring nervously out
into the great melting sea of lights, sound, people, cars and trails…unsure
about Mitch’s driving, my directions, our ability to function in the world,
unsure about anything and finally I
answered with: “Cops.” We turned our heads
towards each other and burst out into an enormous round of fresh laughter and
tears. When we had calmed down for a
second we looked in the back seat. Freak
and Octoprotozoid were sitting there with terrified looks on their faces, hands
against the front seat bracing for an impending crash, wondering if they should
get the hell out of the car immediately while they were still alive.
Eventually Mitch and I
succeeded in dropping them off safely though and we made our way to
Tipitinas. The Radiators were amazing
that night, more awesome than usual with the acid turning the place into a
giant steaming pot of human flesh and sweat and laughter as the music became a
living entity, a river of sound carrying us on our journey. I remember at one point we were upstairs
looking down at the sea of dancing bodies and Mitch had a huge grin on his
face, eyes half-closed. It was at this
point that he “figured it out that night”…that we were all the bucket of fish, which is a central theme in
Radiators music and the title of an album they had just released 6 months
earlier. When we got home Mitch got a
tattoo of a giant fish rising up on his calf to commemorate this night and this
trip.
Time had become a hard
concept to follow, but at set-break we went outside to see if we could find
Arnie and see where he was in his
trip. There was poor Arnie…tripping his
gourd off just like us and looking a little worried. It was really
strong acid. Mitch remarked that we
could go backstage if we wanted…that Reggie had invited him. Arnie’s eyes got really big for second, and
then he said matter-of-factly: “I’m not
going back there.” We all agreed…the
three of us we in NO shape to go backstage and try and be somewhat normal,
civil adults and carry on adult conversations.
I had tried that once in San Francisco at a New Year’s Eve show while
tripping on mushrooms. When I got
introduced to one of the band member’s wife, she had a giant bush growing out
of her hair that confused me greatly. I
had to get out of there as soon as possible.
After very little sleep we
got up the next day and headed back to the Fairgrounds. Again, I cannot tell you exactly what we saw,
but based on the list of bands these are some of the acts that we probably saw
over the next 3 days at Jazz Fest: Buckwheat Zydeco, Al Green, Funky
Meters, Koko Taylor, Ernie K-Doe w/Jessie Hill, Rebirth Brass Band, Kermit
Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers, Wild Magnolias, Joni Mitchell, Little
Feat, Subdudes, Dixie Cups, Charmaine Neville & Friends, Ivan Neville,
Walter "Wolfman" Washington & the Roadmasters, B.B. King,
Clarence Gatemouth Brown, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Anders Osborne…and of course,
as always, the Radiators to close out the Fest on Sunday evening.
It was a
monumental blast being in music-lovers heaven all week, but it was time to wrap
it up with one last show Sunday night, May 7th, before heading back
home Monday morning. After the Radiators
finished their Fest-closing set we went back to Kathy’s and then out to the
House of Blues in the French Quarter to see Los Lobos. It was a great show but we were all incredibly
tired…and sore. The one thing about a
week of Jazz Fest is the enormous amount of walking and dancing your feet have
to endure…many, many miles and hours on our feet. Mitch wore his black Rolling Stones hi-tops
the entire week and by the time we got out of the Lobos show he simply could
not walk anymore. He tried at first, but
with every step he let out an “Ow.” Step
“Ow”, step “Ow”, step “Ow”. He gave up
and Arnie and I literally had to carry him the several blocks from the bar to
his car.
After a few
hours of sleep Mitch and I got up very early to leave for home. It was still dark and we had to get out of
there before the giant rain storm that was just beginning to come down turned
into a flood. That historic storm later
came to be known as the ‘May 1995 Louisiana Flood’, dumping 24 inches of rain,
causing 6 fatalities and over $3.1 billion dollars in damage. As the rain came down Mitch and I packed with
a sense of urgency. Suddenly, we looked
at each other and said: “Where’s Arnie?”
He was not in his room, the bathroom, kitchen…nowhere to be found and we
had to leave. We searched the whole
house and eventually came upon Kathy’s door…was he in there?? We slowly opened the
door and sure enough, there was Arnie laying there with a big grin on his
face. We told him to get up, the ark is
leaving town.
We got out of
there just in time, as the rain pounded New Orleans and the surrounding
areas. There has never been a comparable
recorded flood in New Orleans history caused by rain alone. As we raced north ahead of the worst of the
storm, we wondered about our hostess with the mostess. We found out later that the flood waters went
all the way up to the top step of Kathy’s porch but did not get into her house. It was a fantastic week of music and
friends…typical for a New Orleans Jazz Fest and one that would be imitated year
after year, but never repeated…this one was special.
