A New Jersey Yankee in King Zulu's Court
"Come on, take me to the Mardi Gras, in the city of my dreams
You can legalize your lows, you can wear your summer clothes
In the New Orleans."
—Paul Simon
"I'm gonna wake up Mardi Gras morning down in New Orleans
I'm gonna act the fool all day long
I'm gonna dance with the Zulu Queen
And if I have to crawl across Texas on my hands and knees
I'm gonna wake up Mardi Gras morning down in New Orleans."
—Steve Conn
"And then I saw a hundred men, women and children in fine, fancy, splendid, ugly, coarse, ridiculous, grotesque, laughable costumes, and the truth flashed upon me: This is Mardi-Gras!"
—Mark Twain
Going To The Mardi Gras
I'd been up twenty-seven hours when my plane touched down at the New Orleans International Airport. The previous night I had played my third annual "Mardi Gras in L.A." party at a club in Santa Monica. The gig had been fun, but it's hard to get a Carnival vibe going in Los Angeles. The whole city seems to repel any attempt at genuine abandonment – unless it can be watered down, turned into a screenplay and marketed with a Pepsi tie-in.
God, I hate this town.
Anyway, as soon as that gig was over, and the club owner was successfully lobbied for cash and the band was paid, and the five-hundred-pound Yamaha electric grand piano was dumped into the back of my beige, oil-burning, 1984 piece-of-shit van, I headed to LAX with a smile on my face.
Five hours later, in spite of a rip-roaring case of extreme sleep deprivation, I got a chill of excitement as we passed over the swamps that lie outside of New Orleans. I'll never get tired of the sight of Interstate 10 up on stilts over the bayou. They can blast through mountains, they can dam up rivers, they can pave over every last field and meadow, but they can't stop the swamp. I stumbled off the plane, picked up my baggage, and bought a ticket for the shuttle-bus into town after the shuttle ticket lady rattled off a confusing, complex litany of parade routes and street closings that would make it difficult is not impossible to get where I was going. In my present state, she might as well have been giving an advanced lecture on quantum physics, for all I was able to follow what she was saying.
I had no hotel room. Some undisclosed employee at the club I would be playing at was supposed to be putting me up for the next three days. So I took a cab directly to the club. This particular monument to alcohol consumption and loud music was the Gazebo, where I had played a year before on my last trip to the Big Easy. It was located a stoned throw from the French Market on Decatur Street, between the Mississippi River and the southern edge of the French Quarter. In the 18th and 19th centuries, pirates and other disreputable seafaring types frequented this area. This particular morning, I didn't see any pirates, but I did see a lot of drunken, camera-and-go-cup-toting, black-socks-and-flip-flops-wearing tourists.
I would have preferred the pirates.
The owner, George, was a decent guy to work for except that like most people in New Orleans, he had mastered the art of genuinely not giving a shit. With this guy, everything could change without even a moment's notice, and usually did. For people who don't like surprises and cannot function without routine and safety and predictability, George would be a nightmare. For me, after playing music for a living for more than ten years, he was not a problem at all. One thing you learn on the road is that surprises and unexpected breaks in routine are the only things you can really count on. George, God bless him, didn't let me down.
"Hey George, is there a P.A. system for me to use tonight?"
"P.A. system? I don't have one of those. But we'll dig something up, everything will work out fine." I'd heard this one before.
"Uh, George, do I have a place to stay tonight?"
"Well, the guy you were supposed to stay with doesn't work here anymore. But we'll find you something, everything will work out fine."
"George – babe – do I, like, still have a gig?"
"Well, there's a band playing. But you can play during their breaks. I'll still pay you the same, everything will work out fine, see you at six!"
I had this enlightening conversation with the club owner at 11:30 in the morning. I'd been up for two days. I was faced with overwhelming uncertainty about whether I would ever actually get to sleep. I was 2000 miles from home and, it being Mardi Gras in New Orleans, I was the only sober person in town. Faced with these realities, I did the only sensible thing: I went down the street to the next bar and had a double shot of Jack Daniels and a Dixie Beer. After the whiskey found it's way to my brain and blessed my overtaxed central nervous system with sweet relief, I was able to discern that the establishment I was in was a French Quarter legend called Tujague's ("Best Brisket In New Orleans"). This seemed as good a place as any to begin a well-deserved bender, so I ordered another round, and chose the philosophical position that would most effectively get me through the rest of my trip:
Fuck it. Whatever.
Now that I'd caught my 24th wind and had managed to drink away most of that greasy, metallic feeling that follows a commercial aviation experience, I was able to truly appreciate what was going on around me. I was experiencing Mardi Gras for the first time. I stumbled out of the bar and found the streets of the French Quarter thronged with people. Happy, friendly, drunk, peaceful people. Nobody was uptight, nobody was shouting into a cell phone, nobody was in a hurry to get anywhere. It was wonderful. I wandered around in a blissful stupor for the next few hours. I caught beads, drank at several bars, ate boiled crawfish, had a really good oyster po-boy, bought jambalaya from an old Creole guy on the street, and abandoned all pretense towards moderation. I let the city swallow me whole.
Around six p.m. I found myself standing in a 24-hour bar called Harry's Corner, where the banner over the bar says, "Happy hour at 5 p.m. and 5 a.m." As I stood there talking to a stripper who had taken to the streets in her g-string and pasties – perfectly acceptable at this time of year – I suddenly realized that I was supposed to be at my gig. I bid a reluctant adieu to the peeler, executed a firm grip on my half-full go-cup of whiskey, and jogged as fast as I could (not very) the two blocks to the gig. I made it just in time.
All I remember about the rest of the night is that the first tune I played was "Tipitina" and the crowd seemed to like what I was doing, so I was relieved to find that I wasn't too drunk to play. At some point I struck up a conversation with one of the waitresses and begged her to let me sleep on her floor. Aside from these recollections, all is darkness.
I awoke the next morning face-up on a filthy, lumpy, water-stained MSO (mattress-shaped-object) on the waitresses' bedroom floor, nose to nose with a loudly purring, attention-starved feline. I had no idea where in the fuck I was. I blearily surveyed my surroundings and determined that I had landed in one of your typical boho-slacker-living-on-minimum-wage-and-tips type of pad. I was lying right next to the kitty litter box and a 40-year-old space heater that looked and sounded as if it would explode at any moment. The room was dark, hot and smelly – like most of the clubs I play. I got up, took a tepid shower, got dressed, and found a note from the waitress (Jennifer seemed to be her name) that explained where I was and how to get back to the club.
Clearly, this was a thinking chick. Good thing for me.
It was only noon, so I had time to bop around and check out the city. First I made a pilgrimage to the Central Grocery on Decatur, to get a muffuletta. They invented it, and there is absolutely no substitute. After fighting through throngs of drunken tourists and waiting an eternity in line, I finally got one of the greasy little fuckers in my hot little hands.
I headed on down to the river across the street, to get away from the crowd and savor my lunch in peace. I watched the magnificent Natchez slowly paddle down the muddy Mississippi and tried to imagine a hundred years ago when this riverboat was a working vessel and not a tourist excursion boat. Since I was a kid, steamboats and steam locomotives have had a powerful hold over me. It breaks my heart that they had their day long before I was born.
I spent the rest of the afternoon watching the river go by, and before I knew it, it was time to go to work. This being the night before Fat Tuesday, the party intensity was reaching a massive peak. I had to fight through the crowd to get to the piano. Tonight I was trading sets with the Lee Bates Band. I started rocking just as they arrived.
Lee Bates is nothing short of your basic black six-foot-tall, wide-as-a-linebacker, getting-old-but-still-plenty-dangerous, not-about-to-take-any-shit-from-anybody, was-already-doing-this-before-you-were-born-and-don't-you-forget-it R&B singer. The band was running a little late and Lee was having none of it. During the entire forty-five minutes of my set, he yelled at the band nonstop: "This is bullshit! I'm dockin' all you motherfuckers! All you motherfuckers are fired! This is bullshit!" etc. The band endured this in weary silence. Clearly it was part of their nightly ritual.
What a gig.
I wrapped up my set to tumultuous applause from the crowd that now was dancing (the drunkenness level had risen high enough to render a drummer unnecessary for shaking one's booty), and turned it over to the esteemed Mr. Bates and his orchestra. Their set consisted of the band playing 40 minutes, Lee coming on for 20 minutes and singing four songs while sitting on a stool, and then the band playing another 40 minutes before taking a break.
I felt a little sorry for the band – while they worked and got yelled at by their bandleader, I spent the duration of my break drinking and dancing with various attractive women (and I was getting paid to do this). For seven hours we traded sets. It's a good thing the band was there to trade off with, or I would have never made it.
Actually, I would have made it. I always make it. But it would have sucked.
After the gig, Jennifer the waitress and I hooked up with her boyfriend, and we hit the town with a burning desire to go somewhere the tourists would never find. We settled on the Dragon's Den, a dark, funky bar above a Thai restaurant. You go up a narrow, dark, twisting staircase and enter a crowded room where everyone's sitting on pillows on the floor at low tables and the walls and ceiling are red and there's red curtains hanging everywhere. An ultra-cool swamp-rockabilly trio was playing on a small stage, and the drinks were cheap. The whole scene made me very happy.
We stayed a couple of hours, then departed to aimlessly wander the streets west of the Quarter, among the shotgun shacks on the banks of the great muddy. We were drawn down a side street by what sounded like about a hundred people furiously banging on drums. Quickly we were swallowed by an undulating mass of humanity banging out the loud, tribal, perverted second-line drumbeat that had drawn us there from blocks away. The people not drumming were doing that Deadhead noodle-dance thing. Everyone was pressed together in a hot, sweaty mass. Normally, I would have found this sort of thing unpleasant, but tonight I enjoyed the tremendous exhilarating energy being transferred to me through the crowd. Eventually I was pushed towards the edge of a clearing where a young, beautiful, naked, post-modern hippie-chick was noodle-dancing for an admiring throng. The whole scene was just like being at a Grateful Dead concert except without the out-of-tune singing and guitar playing. Also, the drummers kept better time.
We made our way home in a dead heat with the dawn.
Entering Jennifer's room, we were faced with the task of waking up and kicking out Steve, her cross-dressing gay roommate. Steve was fully clad in a very fetching tight black dress and high heels combo, sleeping in Jennifer's bed because he had had a fight with his boyfriend, who was sleeping in the other half of the apartment. Kicking and screaming, Steve exited. I crawled over to the MSO, rolled up my long black cashmere coat for a pillow, and fell asleep while trying to ignore the lingering eau du catbox that was permeating my corner of the room.
