New Orleans Brass Bands S/D

So I noticed online somewhere that the Stooges Brass Band apparently played Philly recently with indie-rock media darlings Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.

HA!

NY Times article on UK writer Nik Cohn and his involvement with New Orleans rap pre- and post-Katrina

This guy blogged about the Stooges in Philly in October (and others did as well) and elsewhere I saw a reference to this great show further north at M.I.T. that supposedly took place on 10/30:

Bayou Bash Concert featuring The Wild Magnolias, 7pm (doors at 6:30pm) at Kresge Auditorium. Bayou Bash’s main event!! This concert will be a huge gathering of New Orleans musicians including Big Chief Bo Dollis & The Wild Magnolias, the famous Mardi Gras Indians, who will perform with other Jazz standouts including: Marva Wright, Davell Crawford, Rockin' Dopsie, Jr, Bob French and the Lil Stooges Brass Band.

Davell Crawford is amazing btw (great organ player and sings like Stevie), and he's been having random gigs all over the place.

Jordan:

I've read about Davell in Offbeat but have never heard him...

His grandfather wrote Iko Iko (under the name Jacomo, and of course he hasn't seen a dime from it)!

Hot 8 and the Stooges are sort of the generation after Rebirth, and the style is a little bit different. The tempos are slower in general and the beat is more broken up. Things I love about this album:

"Jisten to Me" - the sounds like a street tune to me, and probably best highlights how Dinneral (the snare drummer) isn't afraid to throw in the craziest, out-of-nowhere shit and make it work.

"I Got You" - most of the bands are playing this tune now, the bassline is funky as shit. The 50 Cent quote in the trombone solo (not even a quote really, he sticks with it for 16 bars) is nice. I'm pretty sure it's Joe, the trombone player who got shot and killed by the police last year.

"Skeet Skeet" - this is the hit, and I loved hearing it blasting out of cars in New Orleans. There are no solos, it's like three minutes long, I love the 5th Ward Weebie verse, and whole end sequence going from the "shorty" chant to riff to the shout chorus is fire.

"Sexual Healing" - the drumming on this ridiculous, it's great how they keep the original beat on the song while turning it into something totally New Orleans and unique. They've played it at all the club shows I've been at and it's usually the last, craziest song of the night. It made me realize how well-constructed the original Gaye tune is, and I like the accapella bridges (although it's even better when everyone in the club knows the words).

"Rastafunk" - this is one of the tunes that was recorded a few years back when Shamar and Herb (now in Rebirth) were in the band, and then the newer horn players went back and overdubbed parts as well, so it's a wall of brass.

"Get Up" - this is my favorite joint on the album, listen to this one first. The groove and the bassline are so ridiculous I sometimes have to listen to it three times in a row, and the rapping is on it too. I don't think I've heard them play it live but it seems like it would be the ultimate second-line tune.

I think the best SOUNDING brass band records are Hot Venom and D-Boy. It took H8 ten years to come out with this one, but hopefully they'll do another record soon (I know they were planning on going in the studio before the hurricane hit).

I am still waiting to hear back from Hot 8 regarding getting any local dates.

I'll post here later about the Stooges opening for Galactic earlier tonight. I'm reviewing it, so I gotta write that first.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,16373,1644513,00.html

http://static.flickr.com/15/68062290_ab398a6b86.jpg?v=0

I guess Hot 8 are not near the internet these days. Their website has not been updated, and my follow-up e-mails to the various e-mail addresses listed on the site have been ignored. I wonder if any of the contacts I gave them will be booking them in the DC and Baltimore area? I have a phone # that I had put off dialing, maybe I will spend the bucks and do so.

Published: Thursday, November 24, 2005
"...At any rate, with 2005's catastrophic hurricane season finally safely past, it seemed as good a time as ever to check in on some of those most affected: the evacuees in the temporarily Houston-based New Birth Brass Band.

Outwardly, they are doing great. Every Wednesday evening, they play to a marvelously enthusiastic midweek crowd at Under the Volcano, and they also have standing Friday- and Sunday-night gigs at St. Pete's Dancing Marlin and a Sunday-afternoon affair at Dan Electro's. At the Volcano gig last week, despite the absence of their trombone player, they were simply smokin'. Trumpet and sax interwove over tuba boo-yahs amid the polyrhythmic rumble and clatter of bass drums, snare drums and hissing tiny cymbals -- this stuff is a syringe full of pure China white heroin for you beat junkies out there.

And like Volcano owner Pete Mitchell says, nobody can sit still at these shows. Sure, half the room (there were about 100 people in there on a midweek night) might not be dancing outright, but they're either tapping their feet or nodding their heads. And dancing is what this band is all about. The New Birth feeds off the crowd, and the crowd feeds off the New Birth. People holler encouragement and sing along. Guys dance with girls, girls dance in packs, guys dance alone, blacks and whites and evacuees and locals dance together -- and the people who sit boogie on the way to the bathroom when they go take a leak. I'm a pretty inhibited guy and no kinda dancer, but at one point I found myself cutting a rug with a girl I had just met when all I intended to do was go get a beer. The vibe is terrifically hellafied: Where there is the New Birth Brass Band, there is also the infectious joy of New Orleans.

I talked to three twentysomething women -- Volcano regulars who had never heard of the band before stumbling into one of their sets a month or so ago -- who have become staunch converts to the New Birth cause. "There should be more people here," says account executive Laurie Chidlow. "There are lots of Houstonians who love New Orleans, and if they knew this was going on, I think they would be here."

"Laurie told us about it, and this is our first time here, and we are very impressed," adds financial analyst Susie Hale. "We are gonna be here every Wednesday from now on, definitely."

"They are so New Orleans!" says Chidlow. "And not the creepy New Orleans -- not the 'Let's go to Pat O'Brien's and pay $9 for a drink' New Orleans," adds their friend Katie Edwards. "This is like you're on the street and a band plays and you're dancing in the street."

And Edwards, Hale and Chidlow all hope the New Birth is here to stay. Hell, all of us would love that; right now New Orleans is a culture without a city, and in many ways Houston is still a city without a culture.

All of us, that is, except for the members of the New Birth and the New Orleans natives at the show. I caught up with New Birth bass drummer and bandleader Tanio Hingle between sets and asked him what he missed the most about his hometown. "I just miss it -- just the whole nine yards, just bein' in our neighborhood playin' music -- bein' able to step out the door and just start playin' music…Seein' everybody -- family. I miss my family -- I got some people who ended up in Atlanta. My mother, grandmother and a bunch of others are up there. That's one of the hardest parts: not bein' around my family, because I am a family man."

Plans in works for `musicians' village' in New Orleans
12/6/2005, 4:45 p.m. CT
By JANET McCONNAUGHEY
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Singer Harry Connick Jr. and saxophone player Branford Marsalis are working with Habitat for Humanity to create a "village" for New Orleans musicians who lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina.

More than $2 million has been raised for the project dreamed up by Connick and Marsalis — a neighborhood built around a music center where musicians can teach and perform, Jim Pate, executive director of New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity, said Monday.

The first $1 million came from benefit concerts in New York three weeks after the storm, said Quint Davis, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival producer who helped arrange the concerts.

"The money being used to build these homes for New Orleans musicians was raised by New Orleans musicians. Our pact with them was to help New Orleans' musical community," Davis said during a Tuesday news conference.

In a telephone interview Monday, Connick said he and Marsalis — both honorary chairs for the national Habitat's hurricane rebuilding program — returned to their hometown several weeks after the storm and were trying to think of ways to help.

"I had been kind of coming up blank. The problem is so massive, it's hard to know where to begin," Connick said. "As we talked, we both realized we should really stick to what we know, which is music."

Connick said four or five of the 16 musicians in his own band lost their homes. "There's a ton of musicians who have no place to go," he said.

Pate said the organization hasn't decided on a location, but is looking at three older, predominantly black neighborhoods in New Orleans. He said Tuesday that the project will need $7.5 million to $15 million, and would include a music center named for Ellis Marsalis, the jazz pianist and educator. Marsalis has taught hundreds of high-school and college musicians over the years and is the father of the musical family that includes Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo and Jason.

"Ellis has been kind of a rock for music in this city," Mayor C. Ray Nagin said.

Branford Marsalis said the project is a thank-you to the musicians "who made it possible for people like me and my brother Wynton and Harry Connick Jr. to get out and spread the word."

Habitat cannot reserve houses for a specific group, and non-musicians would also live in the musicians' village, Pate said. However, musicians who lost their houses and have little or no insurance — and will provide labor for a Habitat house — will be asked if they'd like to live there.

"We'd hope some of our musician partner families could do some of their sweat equity by doing performances or concerts for some of our volunteers who are coming from all over the world," Pate said.

It's a fantastic idea, said Banu Gibson, who sings '20s and '30s jazz.

"So many musicians have moved out of town, and a lot of the good ones, too, which is really depressing," she said.

Gibson is back in her own house, but two of the seven musicians in her band lost homes they had bought in the last couple of years. "All the money they raised to put down as a house payment, $25,000 to $35,000, is gone," she said.

Bassist Peter "Chuck" Badie, 80, would love to see the dream become reality, and to live in a Habitat home.

"I'd be tickled to death," said Badie, who's staying at a jazz enthusiast's home after floods destroyed his house in the Lower Ninth Ward. "A village for musicians would be the finest thing. But build it where?"

The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity covers Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and is in the "embryonic" stages of adding Plaquemines Parish. Pate said it hopes to build 250 to 500 houses in the four parishes, and possibly as many as 200 in the musicians' village.

"We desperately need them back, because they are the soul of our community, or much of the soul of our community," he said.

(btw, I YSI'd a Stooges tune from last year's tour, before the keyboard/drumset lineup on this thread)

Death of an American City
The New York Times | Editorial

Sunday 11 December 2005

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.

We said this wouldn't happen. President Bush said it wouldn't happen. He stood in Jackson Square and said, "There is no way to imagine America without New Orleans." But it has been over three months since Hurricane Katrina struck and the city is in complete shambles.

There are many unanswered questions that will take years to work out, but one is make-or-break and needs to be dealt with immediately. It all boils down to the levee system. People will clear garbage, live in tents, work their fingers to the bone to reclaim homes and lives, but not if they don't believe they will be protected by more than patches to the same old system that failed during the deadly storm. Homeowners, businesses and insurance companies all need a commitment before they will stake their futures on the city.

At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words "pending in Congress" are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a Major American City

"We'll not just rebuild, we'll build higher and better," President Bush said that night in September. Our feeling, strongly, is that he was right and should keep to his word. We in New York remember well what it was like for the country to rally around our city in a desperate hour. New York survived and has flourished. New Orleans can too.

Of course, New Orleans's local and state officials must do their part as well, and demonstrate the political and practical will to rebuild the city efficiently and responsibly. They must, as quickly as possible, produce a comprehensive plan for putting New Orleans back together. Which schools will be rebuilt and which will be absorbed? Which neighborhoods will be shored up? Where will the roads go? What about electricity and water lines? So far, local and state officials have been derelict at producing anything that comes close to a coherent plan. That is unacceptable.

The city must rise to the occasion. But it will not have that opportunity without the levees, and only the office of the president is strong enough to goad Congress to take swift action. Only his voice is loud enough to call people home and convince them that commitments will be met.

Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.

If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.

Our nation would then look like a feeble giant indeed. But whether we admit it or not, this is our choice to make. We decide whether New Orleans lives or dies.

-------

On a slightly brighter note, some of these pictures of the Rebirth show on Thanksgiving for second-liner refugees are amazing:

http://www.chriscarson.com/html/photo_of_the_day_archives/archives/2005_11_24_01.htm

http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/current/news_feat2.php

December 13, 2005 Gambit Weekly

West of the Sixth Ward
The Treme Brass Band fled the flood. They ended up in the desert.

Compiled by Katy Reckdahl

Two months ago, six men arrived in Arizona with no instruments. They came to play music.
Members of the Treme Brass Band gathered in Phoenix a few weeks after the hurricane. Still, the place doesn't feel like home, says bandleader Benny Jones Sr.

"When I see the cactus, I think of the Western movies and the cowboys that we used to watch on TV," he says. "It feels pretty odd to me."

Jones was staying in Dallas when he received a phone call from the head of an Arizona-based group, the Jazz Refugee Project. The man had gotten Jones' name and number from a bandmate who had evacuated to Phoenix.

The Refugee Project promised six months of housing and gigs. Jones found the idea appealing, but implementation might be tough, he said. "I told the man, 'My band is scattered out like a checkerboard.'" But after two days, Jones had reached three guys. Two days later, a few more. Within a week, he had an entire band -- but no instruments.

Of the group that moved to Phoenix, only Eddieboh Paris escaped with a horn -- his trombone. "That's because the other guys had to think about themselves, not their instruments," says Paris, who evacuated early, on Sunday. Most of his bandmates didn't leave. Three -- bass drummer Anthony Bennett and saxophonists Elliott "Stackman" Callier and Frederick "Shep" Sheppard -- spent the storm in their homes, then left by boat and chopper. Tuba player Jeffrey Hills weathered the hurricane in the Lafitte housing project, then walked across town in chest-deep water with his two small children on his shoulders. (Longtime Treme bass drummer and singer "Uncle" Lionel Batiste also sat out the storm in the Lafitte and evacuated a few days later by bus. He opted to return to New Orleans rather than travel to Phoenix.)

In late September, the Jazz Refugee Project dispatched a van that started in Mississippi and wound its way through Texas, picking up musicians. It was 120 degrees and sunny when they arrived in Phoenix. "Oh, Lord, it was hot," says bass drummer Bennett. "I was wearing shorts and flip-flops, and it felt like the flip-flops were melting off my feet."

At first, the Refugee Project supplied loaner horns. Soon, donated horns came via overnight delivery from members of the Jack Brass Band in Minneapolis, the Tipitina's Foundation and national charitable organizations.

The band has now settled into a routine, playing a few gigs a week and traveling around town in a Refugee Project van. But it's taken a few adjustments. The 2 a.m. bar-closing time has prompted at least one bandmember to carry a flask. The band plays a significant number of gigs in Phoenix's retirement communities, where the band is less apt to perform contemporary numbers like "Gimme My Money Back."

Treme's presence has also bolstered the city's traditional-jazz community. "There are 47 venues in Phoenix that play jazz, but it's mostly modern -- bebop and fusion," says Phoenix clarinetist Joe Hopkins, vice president of the Arizona Jazz Society. "Yet the Treme band has made inroads into clubs and with people who've never listened to this music. I think that's significant."

How long Treme will remain in Phoenix is still unclear. But on Tuesday, Nov. 22, the CBS' The Early Show, as part of its "Week of Wishes," featured Minnesotan Pat Lindgren saying that she'd seen Treme play at Donna's Bar & Grill. Her wish was to see them perform again in New Orleans. In response, the program marshaled weighty resources: temporary housing for band members in the French Quarter courtesy of Hibernia Bank, $60,000 worth of home furnishings from Sam's Club, and -- from the Jazz Foundation of America -- employment playing jazz in Louisiana schools, some new instruments, and first-month's rent and security deposits.

In Phoenix, band members sat and watched, speechless. Jones, certainly, plans to return home as soon as FEMA gives him a trailer. Trombonist Eddie King also plans to go back. But others aren't sure. They talk about the sputtering New Orleans economy, hard-to-find housing, and gigs that pay half as much as Phoenix gigs. Saxophonist Sheppard says that he misses friends but has no other reason to return to what he calls "The Big Raggedy."

Not surprising, says New Orleans cultural advocate Morgan Clevenger. "Most musicians that I know, they love New Orleans and they want to come back. But if you don't have the necessary quality of life, they're not coming back."

Final decisions have yet to be made. In the meantime, music is the perfect distraction. "Often I sit around thinking about how my homeowner's insurance has not come through or wondering what my children are doing," says Bennett. "The only time I get any peace is when I'm playing music."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm not surprised that Uncle Lionel didn't go with them, I honestly can't picture him outside of New Orleans. He IS New Orleans.

http://www.gumbopages.com/looka/
"Bad news. I got an email from Mary Katherine yesterday ... Stevenson Palfi, the New Orleans-based documentary filmmaker best known for his amazing film "Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together" (featuring performances from Tuts Washington, Allen Toussaint, and Professor Longhair two days before his death), took his own life a few days ago. He had lost his home, his office and almost all of his possessions, presumably including several years worth of work he had done on an unfinished in-depth biography of Allen Toussaint."

I'm finally leaving for New Orleans tomorrow. I'm starting to freak out a little bit about what it's going to be like. Stupid hurricane.

Also this week, Keith "Wolf" Anderson rejoined the band here. He had been in Detroit and I think I heard he got busted up there for public urination of all things.

Tuba Phil and some other guys from the Rebirth were at this week's Volcano show, and the whole joint went crazy when they tore into "Hush Your Mouth." Glen David's rewrite of Levert's "Casanova" was also damn cool, and having Wolf in the band has led to some serious 'bone battles. (Incidentally, I think Glen David's as much a potential breakout star as Kermit is... the guy is an incredible showman.)

I don't know what this has to do with anything, but it's pretty funny. Kenny Terry was walking around after the show sporting a Rand McNally map of NO -- he is the guy on the cover in the red jacket and white marching band cap blowing his horn in the Quarter.

I'm glad New Birth is doing good.

Adam, are you moving back? Good luck, dude.

I'm also getting married in N.O. sometime within the next year!

The Nation magazine has several articles on serious New Orleans stuff:

Here's an excerpt from Ari Kelman's "In the Shadow of Disaster":

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060102/kelman
"Craig Colten, a Louisiana State University geographer, agrees. He insists low-lying parts of the city shouldn't be rebuilt. His proposal is extremely controversial, with displaced residents understandably invoking their "right of return" and with most members of the reconstruction committees reluctant to reintegrate wetlands into the city after Mayor Nagin got burned for suggesting that the Ninth Ward might not be rebuilt. But Colten still believes that part of the backswamp should ooze into selected low-lying areas. An equitable method, he believes, would be to "take land from many neighborhoods--Lakefront, Ninth Ward, Gentilly--and relocate rich, poor, middle class to denser settlement on higher ground." Colten's "new New Orleans," then, would resemble the old New Orleans--from an era before wetlands vanished. It would also touch off battles over whose neighborhoods should be abandoned."

OffBeat Magazine [offbeat@offbeat.com]

"L. J. Goldstein, New Orleans attorney, photographer and founder of the infamous Krewe de Jieux, has organized a Honakkah Second Line on Thursday December 22 beginning at 6 p.m. at Spanish Plaza (Riverwalk) proceeding to Jackson Square. The Reunion Klezmer Band will perform, the first time the New Orleans Klezmer Allstars and former clarinetist Ben Schenk have played together since Schenk left the band."

http://s38.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2WX72H6TOE43V34S22C0V2F6NC

GONE...BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Hurricane Katrina has taken more from us than our homes, neighborhoods and businesses. We’re profoundly sorry to report that these wonderful members of our music community have passed on within the last week.

Brian O’Neill
1955-2005
Composer, arranger, vocalist, pianist and Bonerama trombonist, Brian O’Neill passed away suddenly after suffering an apparent heart attack while on a solo gig in New Orleans O’Neill was noted for his work with Wayne Cochran and the CC Riders in the ’70s as well as being a mainstay of the popular New Orleans R&B vocalist Luther Kent’s band “Trick Bag” for the past 25 years. As a freelance trombonist O’Neill was one of the most frequently-called trombonists in New Orleans. O’Neill penned the most recent “Bone Up” from the Bonerama’s Live From New York. O’Neill appeared in countless sit-ins with the Bonerama horns including appearances with Gov’t Mule and the Radiators. Fellow Bonerama trombonist Mark Mullins recalls, “I met Brian on a gig at a Mardi Gras parade 21 years ago and after the first song I realized that is what I wanted to sound like. To have him in the Bonerama band was just a constant inspiration on both a personal and musical level. There was so much he had not had a chance to say yet.”

Stevenson Palfi
1952-2005
The director of Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together, a documentary that presented New Orleans legends Allen Toussaint, Tuts Washington and Professor Longhair playing together in the studio, was found dead of a gunshot wound in in New Orleans. Palfi had lost much in the wake of Hurricane Katrina; his Mid-City home was severely flooded, and reportedly was very depressed over the loss of his home and life's work. Palfi was staying with his ex- wife at the time. Reportedly he left a suicide note. Palfi is survived by his daughter, Nell.
“His seminal work was non-pareil as a rare, timely and brilliant piece of documentary film-making. Henry Roeland Byrd, a.k.a. Professor Longhair, died during the filming of this work. Stevenson had the foresight to capture the entire second line celebration of Fess’ life and death.” said Justin Zitler, attorney for SongByrd Inc., the Professor Longhair estate. Informed of Palfi’s death, Allen Toussaint said, “My friend Stevenson Palfi’s life’s work was immortalizing others and in so doing, he has immortalized himself. His work will outlast all of us.”

Stevenson Palfi will be honored with a tribute this year at OffBeat's Best of The Beat Awards on January 21 at the House of Blues.

The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund is
proud to sponsor the Social Aid & Pleasure Club All-
Star Second Line on Sunday January 15, 2006. For
the first time ever, a coalition of 27 Social Aid &
Pleasure Clubs will march together through the
streets of New Orleans to call attention to their
needs and role in renewing the city. The Second Line
begins at the Backstreet Cultural Museum at 1116 St.
Claude Avenue in Treme at 11:30 a.m. and ends
uptown at Washington Avenue and South Saratoga
at about 4 p.m.

My band will be going down around Mardi Gras, and just before that playing a concert for NOLA relocatees in Chicago.

By GARY RIVLIN
Published: January 11, 2006
NEW ORLEANS, Jan. 10 - The commission devising a blueprint to reconstruct the city will propose on Wednesday . . . the creation of a new jazz district downtown. . . . The jazz district would be in the old Storyville section, north of the French Quarter, an idea championed by the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, a member of the commission and the co-chairman of its culture committee."

The New Orleans Area Habitat for Humanity covers Jefferson, Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and is in the "embryonic" stages of adding Plaquemines Parish. Pate said it hopes to build 250 to 500 houses in the four parishes, and possibly as many as 200 in the musicians' village."

Is this the "musician's village"?

Here's an excerpt from the L.A. Times re Wynton's project:

"To accelerate the process, Nagin's commission is asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to release updated floodplain maps which effectively could make the decision for many homeowners by raising home insurance rates and setting other new financial barriers to redevelopment.

A subcommittee is proposing a new jazz district near the French Quarter at the former location of Storyville, a fabled district of musicians and houses of ill-repute at the turn of the last century.

It later fell into disrepair and was demolished. The idea to re-create a cleaned-up version of Storyville, which gave rise to musical legends including Jelly Roll Morton, is being championed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning jazz virtuoso Wynton Marsalis."

Cleaned up and recreated early 20th century bordellos in WyntonMarsalis-land! Ugh. Putting Wynton on the committee may help kill New Orleans music rather then help it.

Btw, I'm going to be down for four days during the last weekend of Mardi Gras, for a gig at Donna's and just to check things out.