New Orleans Jazz Fest 1995

It all began for us on Tuesday, May 2^nd, 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 2^nd 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 7^th, 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.