June 2007 (PDF) - Antigravity Magazine

vol.4 no.8 june ‘07
your new orleans music and culture alternative
DJ Jubilee:
King of Bounce,
now and forever
ALSO: ALEX MCMURRAY I WILCO
REVIEWS OF DAN DEACON, BJORK
ARAJAY, OZOMATLI AND MORE!
www.antigravitymagazine.com
FREE!

PHOTO BY MANTARAY PHOTOGRAPHY

vol.4 no.8 june ‘07
your table of contents
ON THE COVER:
DJ Jubilee_page 14
The King of Bounce talks to Ballzack about his history, the
possibility of collaborating with Manny Fresh, and a threemillion-dollar
contract
COLUMNS:
ANTI-News_page 4
Some of the news that’s fit to print
Alex McMurray talks sea
chanties, the Tin Men, bringing
back Royal Fingerbowl and, of
course, curmudgeons_page 10
The Goods_page 5
Kerry Fitts and her salvaged-material art
Live New Orleans_page 6
Songe find solace in INXS and talks Iraq, non-rock bands
winning best rock band awards, and more
Note From La Vista_page 7
Another look at the La. to L.A. disconnect
Saint Nick_page 8
The Saints’ new punter, the N.O. Blaze, WR Robert
Meachem and calling out those who incite unrest
Sound Advice_page 9
Can a band make a lot of money by having their music
in a commercial?
REVIEWS:
Feature Review: Wilco_page 17
Look! Up in the Sky Blue Sky!
Books_page 18
Mississippi Sissy
Comics_page 19
Hack/Slash: Ongoing #1
Films_page 20
The Valet, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Music_page 21
Albums by: Dan Deacon, Ozomatli, Je Suis France, Sea
and Cake, Bjork, Bill Callahan, Grinderman, Arajay
EVENTS:
Listings_page 23
Suggested events
COMICS:
Illustrations_page 26
Qomix, How To Be Happy, The K Chronicles,
The Perry Bible Fellowship, Load

STAFF INTRO letter from your editor
Publisher/Editor-in-Chief:
Leo McGovern
leo@antigravitymagazine.com
Associate Editor:
Patrick Strange
patrick@antigravitymagazine.com
Senior Writer:
Dan Fox
fox@antigravitymagazine.com
Contributing Writers:
Henry Alpert
halpert@yahoo.com
Andrew Bizer
andrew@bizerlaw.com
Liz Countryman
liz@antigravitymagazine.com
Marty Garner
martygarner@antigravitymagazine.com
Lisa Haviland
haves34@hotmail.com
Dakota M
sil3ntstatic@yahoo.com
Mike Rodgers
mikerodgers@antigravitymagazine.com
Nicholas Simmons
simmons@antigravitymagazine.com
Jason Songe
jasonsonge@antigravitymagazine.com
J.W. Spitalny
jw@antigravitymagazine.com
Mallory Whitfield
mallory@antigravitymagazine.com
Alan J. Williams
alan@thesimon.com
Cover Photographer:
Dan Fox
fox@antigravitymagazine.com
Intern:
Andrea Narcisse
andrea@antigravitymagazine.com
Ad Sales:
Amy Ordogne
amy@antigravitymagazine.com
985-630-4590
We like stuff! Send it to:
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New Orleans, La. 70119
ANTIGRAVITY is a free publication
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ANTIGRAVITY, INC.
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antigravitymagazine
Here we are at the end of Spring, the beginning
of Summer and, for ANTIGRAVITY, a
new year. It’s hard to believe that three years
ago we were sweating in the French Quarter,
Uptown and Mid-City, lugging around copies
of our first issue in a red wagon. Times have
changed since then, but not too much—we’re
still sweating, but that red wagon left with the
flood and we use plain ol’ elbow grease to get
those copies where they need to go. It’s all worth it, especially after
“that thing that happened in 2005” and all the support we’ve had since
then. Over the third year of AG, some things happened to me that
I never thought could: I was married and I became a character in a
comic strip. Getting married didn’t have anything to do with AG, but
I don’t think I would’ve been as good a candidate for After The Deluge
(smithmag.net/afterthedeluge; the above picture of me is by A.D. artist
Josh Neufeld) without it. Thanks to everyone who’s supported the
magazine over the past three years—you’ve helped me fulfill a life-long
dream. I’d also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge all the
people who help keep this ship afloat, and all those who have pitched
COLUMN
anti-news and views
NOTABLE UPCOMING SHOWS
7/29: My Brightest Diamond, Rasputina, House Of Blues
8/01: Tokyo Police Club, Republic
10/28: Voodoo Music Experience, City Park
NEW ORLEANS BOOKFAIR DATE SET
The 2007 edition of the New Orleans Bookfair is set for Saturday,
November 10th, and while it doesn’t yet have a venue the Bookfair
promises to be the same neat collection of underground and
alternative artists and bookmakers it always is.
NO MORE MUSIC AT THE CIRCLE BAR
D. Lefty Parker, manager and booking agent at the Circle Bar for over
two years, has resigned. The club’s New York owners seem to have
decided to not only carry on without Lefty but without a presence in
the music scene—the club will close in July for renovations and when
it reopens will feature no live music. Where the regular Circle Bar
shows will diffuse to remains to be seen, but one thing’s for certain—
it’s the end of an era.
MORE NOTES ON NOTES FROM LA VISTA
From Jessica Carpenter, on columnist Patrick Strange’s May edition of
“Notes From La Vista:”
It made me remember my first impressions of L.A. - how the
sunlight is like an Edward Hopper paining overexposing everything.
The amount of new money here is overwhelming, but not as
overwhelming as the amount of “artificiality” everywhere. There
aren’t a lot of signs of history in this town. Architecture is torn down
and made new. Even Downtown’s original art deco buildings will be
forfeited to the park and the entertainment complex they’re installing
now. It’s taken me a long time to weed through the artificial people
and places here and get comfortable. Supposedly 7,000 actors and
musicians move to Los Angeles every day. I’m not sure how many
move out. Maybe it’s the level of “recycled everything” here, the lack
of history in the surroundings, and the constant revolving of residents
that make it so uncomfortable. Unlike a place of instant warmth like
New Orleans or Brooklyn or even Manhattan, although vast and
tough, have neighborhoods that feel welcoming and comforting.
Your comparison of New Orleans and Los Angeles is really
interesting for this reason—because New Orleans and its historical
beauty is a place of Old Money, as if St. Charles Avenue could be Bel
Air Drive 100 years from now, repopulated with a reborn culture -
but that will never happen here, because this town doesn’t value itself
or its history like New Orleans, unfortunately.
CRAIGSLIST POST OF THE MONTH: WHOLE FOODS GUY
Because we enjoy performing public service, please peruse this post
taken from Missed Connections on neworleans.craigslist.org on May
18th:
“You want to talk about missed connections? I have about 10 or more
in over the past three years. Generally, I owe a debt of gratitude to
all our current writers, as well as everyone who’s contributed in the
past. I’d specifically like to thank Jay Jones (former film writer), who
helped start our film review section, and Noah Bonaparte (former
Senior Editor), without whom this magazine wouldn’t have made
its first anniversary, much less its third. Currently, I’d like to thank
Associate Editor Patrick Strange, who’s been pitching in over the past
few months from sunny Los Angeles but will be returning to our
fair city soon (probably just in time to evacuate). Last, but not least,
I’d like to thank our advertisers, some of whom simply keep us alive
from month to month: we couldn’t do it without you. Special thanks
to Shannah and Katey from Twisted Hair Salon—you guys are super.
Folks, we’ve got big things planned for our fourth year of publishing,
so keep an eye out—we’re not aiming to disappoint. In the meantime,
check out this issue’s extended interviews with a couple of local
stalwarts from their respective scenes, Alex McMurray and DJ Jubilee.
And don’t forget to stop by One Eyed Jacks on Friday, June 15th for
our 3rd anniversary show, featuring the White Bitch and Big Baby
alongside former cover artists One Man Machine and Metronome the
City. As always, we’ll see you out! —Publisher, Leo McGovern
a day, (which actually makes me picky compared to volume). The number
of attractive women who come through our store is astronomical. The
one thing that everyone has to do at Whole Foods is check out, so I
interact with anywhere from 100 - 200 people or more a day.
Unfortunately for me, I have a code of ethics that prevents me from
exchanging info with a customer unless that customer suggests it first.
I don’t chance harassing customers by getting too personal. That’s just
irresponsible, unethical, bad for business, and downright awkward. I
flirt constantly and see that flirting returned, but unfortunately most,
but not all girls want a guy to make the first move. Sorry, ladies; I can’t
do that on the clock.
So, girls, if you see an attractive cashier beaming with wit and
charm and wonder why he just hasn’t made that move it’s because
he can’t. If you are an active, adventurous, college-educated woman
with a healthy social life who craves excitement, takes care of her
appearance is between the ages of 21 and 35 and you happen to come
through my line or walk up to me while I’m working the bagging area
then mention craig’s list to me, I’ll give you a high five. I like people
willing to take risks, and this may be your only chance since I am
leaving Whole Foods after the summer to begin my new career.”
POCKET FULL OF BLACK KRYPTONITE
File this in the “Who thought this was a good idea” department:
Master P is the star of Black Supaman, a direct-to-DVD movie due on
August 7th and features P as, well, a black Superman who prowls New
Orleans circa 2069. Black Supaman co-stars Tony Cox, Chris Kennedy
and Michael Blackson. For more info, go to blacksupaman.com.
TV’S JUST NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE
In what might be the most striking blow to AG editor Leo McGovern’s
television-watching schedule since The Simpsons started to suck
somewhere around 2002, the 2007 version of major network upfronts
resulted in the official cancellations of both Studio 60 On The Sunset
Strip and Veronica Mars. The axing of Studio 60 wasn’t unexpected,
as news of the shows’ sets being dismantled made its way through
the internet weeks before NBC announced its Fall schedule, but
Veronica’s was slightly surprising because the CW leaked word that
it was pleased with the final two episodes of the show’s third season.
NBC is burning off the last few episodes of Studio 60 over the first
couple Thursdays of June, and Veronica Mars’ last episodes aired on
May 22nd.
04_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

COLUMN
fashion
THE GOODS
SALVAGED FROM THE STORM
by miss malaprop mallory@antigravitymagazine.com
My favorite types of artists are those who repurpose salvaged materials in their work.
To me, turning one person’s trash into another person’s recycled masterpiece
often demands a lot more creativity than using new, store-bought materials. The
use of salvaged goods also seems to inspire artists to produce a wider range of products
than many who work with more conventional materials. There are quite a few local artists
who have this same philosophy and utilize recycled components whenever possible. Artist
Kerry Fitts spoke with me recently about what keeps her inspired to recycle.
Kerry creates a wide variety of items using repurposed vintage or newer materials.
When she needs a part and can’t find it used (a snap or button for instance), she searches
out fair trade or organic components. Kerry’s favorite things to make are her shotgun
houses, which are assembled from found objects and debris and created to honor the
unique architecture and homes of New Orleans. These creations got their start when
Kerry wanted a way to utilize the bits of wood and metal she would find on walks around
the bayou. She also greatly enjoys working with salvaged textiles to create purses and one
of a kind cuff bracelets (which are my personal favorite among Kerry’s creations).
Kerry told me that she has always been “a bit of a do-it-yourselfer and avid recycler.” During
high school she made jewelry out of bits and pieces she scoured from thrift stores. After returning
to New Orleans for graduate school, she
got more serious about her creations and
in 2001 began selling her jewelry at the
Bywater Art Market. She eventually got
bored of making jewelry, and around the
same time she started getting requests
from friends and family for the salvage art
shotgun houses she had been making. She
began to sell the art houses as well as her
textile creations in place of jewelry.
Kerry was greatly influenced by
some other local artists early in her
journey as a professional crafter. She
met Alice Redman, of Alice Art, and
Carol Thibodeaux, who creates folk art
gourds, through art shows at Fair Grinds
Coffeehouse. Both women had already
been in the business of making and
selling their art for many years, and they
gave Kerry a ton of helpful advice about
doing local art markets and how to build
a clientele in a simple, low-tech way.
These artists helped point Kerry in the
right direction for shows and venues that
would be right for her work. She heeded
their advice and it has paid off—Kerry’s
work has been featured in both the
national DIY publication Readymade as
well as New Orleans Homes and Lifestyles
Magazine. She also sells her work through
the New Orleans Botanical Gardens gift
shop, where 40% of the proceeds go
towards saving and restoring City Park.
Kerry says that Hurricane Katrina
forced her to get a website and marketing
materials. Kerry and her partner, artist
Heather Mattingly, lost their newly
purchased studio in the storm, including
paintings and materials. And just like other area artists, she found that her pre-Katrina
clientele had all but disappeared. She decided to put a positive spin on the situation and
worked on expanding her business online. Kerry set up a website (www.beulahbythebayou.
com), a blog (http://thriftinginoblivion.blogspot.com), and two Etsy shops, each selling
different products (http://bayousalvage.etsy.com carries the fabric cuffs and some folk art
and http://rustchic.etsy.com has pretty much everything else Kerry makes). As she told me,
“Having a website means people can find you from all over the world. And they do.”
Katrina also opened up new arenas for Kerry to sell her work in other states, including
antique shops and boutiques. But perhaps most importantly, she says that Katrina emphasized
the importance of keeping her materials 100% recycled whenever possible. For her, the storm
drove home the notion that “what and how we consume can impact our environment.”
When Kerry isn’t creating, she works full-time as an instructor at Delgado in what she calls
a “fantastic adult education program.” She has also kept busy by participating in the Artists’
Village at Wednesdays at the Square in Lafayette Park. The spring series of live music, local
food and arts and crafts ends this month—the last date is Wednesday, June 20th. If you do
stop by to see Kerry and her work in person, just tell her Miss Malaprop sent you.
FOR MORE MISS MALAPROP, GO TO:
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_05

COLUMN
local music
LIVE NEW ORLEANS
DOOM, GLOOM AND INXS
by jason songe jason@liveneworleans.com
WHAT IS THAT? INXS SUCKS? NO, YOU SUCK!
The point I’m about to make sounded so much better in my head a couple hours ago.
I’ve lost the fat, and I’m down to the tasty morsel, if it is even that. I rediscovered
INXS and I found out that I like them. I wouldn’t have thought this, but it’s true. I
converted my head—my mean, snobby head. I showed my head that it’s not important
anymore whether or not I was supposed to like INXS when I was in high school. It’s
not important whether I thought they were a crappy dance band with no substance
or grit. And, sure, INXS is pretty glossed over, but today I found that they write
hella good pop rock songs and a touching ballad, here and there. And that’s all that
matters. I have hopefully conquered all those that would “p-shaw!” at me if I told
them I like INXS. I move onto the next band that I’ve programmed myself not to like,
hoping to remove even more of the discriminatory black from my heart.
DOOM JAZZ
Every once and a while, I come upon a band that has cut up my favorite music, rearranged
it, and offered it back to me in a different package. It’s music that existed in
my mind before I even knew it was there. Stinking Lizaveta plays such music. They call
themselves “doom jazz,” a moniker that warms my heart. Yes, what I’ve been waiting
for, someone to bring together doom metal and freakout jazz. The instrumental band
is a ten year-old trio of guitar, bass, and drums that are just as likely to sludge out
and riff away Van Halen style as they are to deconstruct themselves into dreamy,
boundless excursions. Go to fabchannel.com, where you can watch a scarily recent
concert of theirs. Also visit concert.tv for more concerts.
PURGE
The Iraq war always lies at the bottom of a daily stack of worries in my mind. But,
when I do think about it (usually as a result of cnn.com) my face flushes, my breath
shortens, and my skin tingles. Lately, I’ve been purging this anger and frustration with
the help of Rage Against the Machine, Americana rocker James McMurtry and Oakland
metal group Totimoshi. Each artist has spoken out against this administration and the
war, either in their lyrics or publicly. I saw a great bumper sticker that said: “Forget
Iraq. Rebuild New Orleans.” It’s exactly how I feel. How much easier is to play G.I.
Joe and the hero than to actually do the less glamorous job of dealing with domestic
poverty, outsourcing, and the public school system, not to mention New Orleans,
which is still struggling? Do I even need to say that? Are you people fucking clueless?
Have you come down from Washington and looked at this place lately? FUCK!!! We
can’t afford to police the world with so many problems at home. Why let fear get
the best of us and be so pre-emptive about the terror concern? It’s not about that,
is it, though? It’s about the oil, and meanwhile, our citizens, our boys, are dying over
there, one by one, day by day. And there’s no end in sight.
A CRY FOR HELP
I have only myself to blame. In the hopes of maybe hearing some Rage, Tool, Nirvana,
or Pearl Jam, I tune in to 104.1. Instead I hear crap like Godsmack, specifically
“Voodoo,” which has lyrics like “I’m not the one who’s so far away/When I feel the
snake bite enter my veins.” I’ve gotten angry at a lot of ridiculously banal nu metal
lyrics, but for some reason, these really set me off. What the hell is he talking about?
He sounds like a third grader who doesn’t have the proper vocabulary to express a
feeling of numbness or detachment. Instead, the third grader just says “far away.” Not
to mention that song is terrible. Lord, keep my testosterone in check and allow me
no need to turn to 104.1. Please keep my dial on 91.5, 90.7 or 870 AM. Amen.
JUST CRAZY ENOUGH
Only in New Orleans would a funk band win for “Best Rock Band” at an awards
ceremony. At Gambit Weekly’s Big Easy Awards, Bonerama beat out Bingo! and
Morning 40 Federation. Aren’t rock bands supposed to be dangerous, subversive,
excitable, and rebellious? What do those factors have in common with forty to fiftyyear-olds
who re-hash the (admittedly awesome) hits of yesteryear (“Crosstown
Traffic,” “The Ocean”)?
RECORD SHACK
I went into the Domino Sound Record Shack for the first time a month ago. It’s a
relatively new store on Bayou Road (coming from downtown on Esplanade, take a
right at Broad and another right at Bayou Rd. and it’s in that first block on your left)
that specializes in vinyl, local and national. No CDs, and when I asked the owner if
they had a e-mail list, he gave me that “I hate computers” look. I bought a R.E.M. tape
for $2 and a Best of Ric Records tape for $3. Ric Records was an old local R&B label
that put out Irma Thomas, Eddie Bo, and Al Johnson, among others.
06_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

COLUMN
commentary
NOTES FROM LA VISTA
TIME KEEPS ON STICKING
by patrick strange patrick@antigravitymagazine.com
L
os Angeles has a wonderful way of making you believe in the impossible. The
thousands of aspiring thespians, musicians and fashionistas that migrate to
L.A. every year is a true testament to the city’s power. From far-flung outcrops
across Middle America to rural townships that litter the South, something about
L.A. beckons the idealistic dreamers among us all; no matter ilk or education.
Think back to when you were in high school and to those kids with the
porcelain complexions, the insatiable hankerings for a summer abroad in Paris
and killer deliveries in the school production of Brigadoon, if they didn’t stumble
into matrimony following the senior trip to Cancun, chances are that they are
somewhere living the dream in L.A.
And good for them.
L.A is a force to be reckoned with and its greatest talents are those that seep
into your skin slowly, medicating you in small doses like a nicotine patch. The
hype and the glitter dazzles, but the feel of a place is what holds you; anchors you
and keeps you from moving on. It’s this thing that makes a city. It’s unnamable;
unmovable. There is no relevant place without it.
Take New Orleans. People come to New Orleans for all sorts of reasons—the
romance, the lifestyle, the way a row of shotgun houses line up in a majestic
uniformity on a bright day—but why do they stay? It’s something else. It’s beyond
the people and the talk and the smells and it’s difficult to locate, much less
communicate.
People that share a love for a place have a quiet understanding. Places are
important.
What is fascinating about living in L.A. is the sense that time can be suspended,
drawn-out, put on hiatus and completely stopped. To anyone from the Deep
South where the years and days are nearly split in two perfect halves—summer
and winter, equal hours of day and night, dry season and hurricanes season—time
passes in a series of quick forward jolts like a wheelbarrow pushed through deep
mud. We might for a while forget worldly matters, but sooner or later the blows
of time smack us in the face. A sudden, dark thunderstorm on a hot summer day
does this, as does a September cold front; an evacuation—all measuring sticks
that help us gauge where we’ve been and where we’re going.
The weather in southern California is glorious. I cannot lie. I’ve never seen
such color. I drove through Salinas Valley and Steinbeck held dominion over
everything. Until then, I never understood the meaning behind all the “mustard
yellow valleys” and “glinted mountains” of the California writers, but I do now.
And in the city it’s no different. I, at first, thought that Los Angeles was just a
jagged scrape of cement and metal; a big desert-Pacific version of Baton Rouge. I
was wrong. I’m astonished at how angular the light can be and how many patterns
a building can take during a single afternoon.
The only thing is…every day is a sunny day. For three months I haven’t seen a
drop of rain or a thunder cloud or even a fog that could make your shoelaces wet,
much less the back of your neck. And the temperature, forget it. The temperature
here is better controlled than in a natural history museum. Thus, the tonic starts
to course through your veins and suddenly, nothing changes. With every day like
the last one, you begin to lose track of time. You wake up in the morning and the
sun’s so bright through the windows that you forget to go outside all day, and
even the next. People don’t normally call you but when they do, it seems that
the voice comes from some far insurmountable place where even if plans were
made; you’d be too lethargic to carry them out. Why bother? There’s always
tomorrow.
Los Angeles does this. There’s a heavy isolation that hangs around just long
enough for it to become familiar; almost depended upon. A cozy conservatism
wraps you up like a thick blanket and you start thinking that you can live here,
just like this, forever.
I want more than anything a hard rain, like the ones that you can set your watch
to during summer afternoons back home. I’d give anything for a crashing lightning
strike, a power outage, a street flooding—a puddle. Perhaps there is something
after all to the feeling of pending apocalypse in L.A. All the film images of urban
decay, environmental catastrophe, earthquakes, and riots burning block after
block speak of the primordial fear that Los Angelenos have of sudden, violent
change. But, maybe it’s not all dread but also a sort of welcoming; a preparedness
for the inevitable. Maybe it’s a secret, almost unthinkable longing for something
to come and wake us up from all this dreaming and set us out again in a direction
worth going towards.
And in this way, we will all be brought up to speed.
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_07

COLUMN
sports
SAINT NICK
ON PUNTERS, THE BLAZE, AND MORE
by nicholas simmons simmons@antigravitymagazine.com
P HANSON vs. P STEVE WEATHERFORD The Saints had their first “What the?!”
transaction of the ’07 offseason when they signed Chris Hanson (the punter, not the Dateline
pedophile-catcher—that’s Chris Hansen) to a one-year contract. Hanson was released by the
Jacksonville Jaguars after they drafted a punter in the fourth round of the ’07 draft, and he’s
probably best known for, three games into the ’03 season, gouging his non-kicking leg with an axe
and needing emergency surgery to close the gash (Jack Del Rio’s mantra at the time was to “Keep
chopping wood,” and the coach placed a giant stump in the locker room to motivate the players).
One wonders why the Saints brought in a punter to compete against Steve Weatherford, who
joined the Saints as an undrafted free agent in ’06 as an extra leg for training camp but became
the full-time punter after Mitch Berger’s pelvic injury didn’t heal in time for the regular season.
Weatherford became a solid punter as the season went on, ending up with a net average of 37.5
yards per punt with 10 touchbacks and 19 kicks downed inside the 20 yard line. To put that in
a bit of perspective, Craig Hentrich of the Tennessee Titans (who ESPN’s Scouts Inc. ranks as
the best punter in the NFL) had an ’06 net average of 37.3 per punt, with 10 touchbacks and 32
punts downed inside the 20 yard line. I’d chalk up the discrepancy of downed-in-the-20 punts
to the Saints having the NFL’s top-ranked offense—they punted far fewer times and with better
field position than the 8-8 Titans. The biggest aspect of Berger’s injury was losing him as a kickoff
specialist—John Carney’s leg was pitiful in that respect, and after Weatherford’s kickoffs weren’t
spectacular, the Saints signed Billy Cundiff for the remainder of the season just to handle kickoffs.
That issue was recently solved, however, when the Saints traded for kicker Olindo Mare, who
handles both field goals and kickoffs. Landing a good young punter doesn’t happen every year,
and Weatherford showed so much progress in ’06 that I wonder if bringing in a veteran to
potentially take his job will destroy his confidence. To this point, almost everything Sean Payton
has touched has worked out in his favor, so you’ve got to give the Saints’ brass the benefit of
the doubt—maybe bring bringing in Hanson will push Weatherford even harder and allow the
second-year player to make another big jump in ability.
NEW ORLEANS BLAZE IN POSITION FOR PLAYOFFS Full Disclosure: AG is a
sponsor of the New Orleans Blaze. By the time you read this the Blaze, New Orleans’ all-female
tackle football team, will be past the halfway point of their eight-game season and at press
time the team is 3-2. The Blaze have already played half their home games, splitting those by
beating the Emerald Coast Barracudas 30-0 and losing to the Pensacola Power 22-7. I haven’t
had a chance to write about the Blaze yet because I hadn’t seen a game in person—I attended
the game against the Power, and a few things became evident: If you’re as football-hungry as
I am (i.e., very), you’ll be happy to know that the style of football the Blaze and the Women’s
Football Association play is more in line with the NFL than the Arena League and the N.O.
Voodoo’s—we’re talking hundred-yard fields and twenty-two players on the field at a time.
The team’s play is passionate, the game is easy to follow and tickets are $10. Attendance hasn’t
been high, averaging just around 400, but they’ve had a bit of bad luck with scheduling—their
first home game was on NFL Draft Day and the game I attended was at Buddy Lawson Field
instead of their usual Bertolino Stadium, as well as being the same night as the big Oscar De
la Hoya and Floyd Mayweather fight. The Blaze, the loss to the Power withstanding, regularly
puts up over 300 yards of offense, and with multiple receivers with more than 100 yards each
the team seems loaded on that side of the ball.
DON’T SWEAT ABOUT ROBERT MEACHEM JUST YET There’s been a lot of
buzz about Saints first round wide receiver Robert Meachem and his showing up to minicamp
in May out of shape and quickly accruing an ankle injury. Until Meachem produces in a big-time
way, he’ll be in a bit of a no-win situation—forget that he showed up to the teams’ organized
team activities and did all of his work while catching passes from Drew Brees, all with his ankle
at 90%—every time he gets nicked up he’ll be compared to the last Tennessee wideout the
Saints spent a first round pick on, the constantly hamstrung Donte Stallworth. Here’s why
Meachem will be successful with the Saints: Sean Payton has shown that he knows how to
work a player, particularly one who have little playing experience, into his offense while hiding
that player’s deficiencies. Meachem will be weaned into the Saints’ offense while being used as
a kick returner, much like Reggie Bush was a year ago.
HEY TIMES PIC AND NOLA.COM—DON’T TRY TO INCITE US, OKAY?
It certainly looked like NOLA.com pulled the most inflaming quote from the Times Picayune’s
interview with outgoing Tulane sports law expert Gary Roberts for one of their homepage
headlines on May 28th: “Saints and Hornets will eventually leave.” Now, just to be fair, Roberts
actually said that “the reality is that unless New Orleans pulls off an absolute miracle and comes
back a richer, stronger city than before, the Saints and Hornets will eventually leave.” Roberts
admits that a year ago he was even more pessimistic about our chances at keeping the Saints,
and goes on to say that without a new stadium the Saints will likely leave. Let me say this: the
sports fans of the Greater New Orleans area (and surrounding cities of the Gulf Coast) pulled
the proverbial rabbit out of their hat when they bought up not only all the Saints’ ’06 tickets but
created a waiting list for season tickets that goes above 25,000. We’ll see how the Hornets do in
’07/’08, their first full season back in New Orleans. For now, thank the Times Pic and NOLA.com
for inciting unrest when there isn’t any. The point is that both franchises are doing what needs to
be done to be successful now—let’s worry about them leaving when they have reason to. Don’t
tell us the sky is falling, because, if ticket and suite sales are any indication, at least Saints fans have
no plans to give Tom Benson any good reason to pull away.
08_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

COLUMN
legalese
SOUND ADVICE
COMMERCIAL INTERESTS
by andrew bizer andrew@bizerlaw.com
Dear Andrew,
How much money do you get when your song is used in a commercial?
Thanks,
Gary G.
Gary,
There is no set formula for how much advertisers pay to license music for
commercials. The process is completely negotiable. However, it is important to
note that before a song can be used in a commercial, the advertiser needs to
secure two licenses: a synchronization license and a master use license.
A synchronization license allows the advertiser to synchronize the song in timed
relation with a moving image. This means that any time you hear a song while
watching TV or a movie, whoever produced that TV show, movie, or commercial
was granted a synchronization license. Synchronization licenses are granted by
the owner of the song, who is also known as a music publisher. The other license
needed is a master use license, which allows the advertiser to use the actual sound
recording in the commercial. Usually, the owner of the sound recording is the
record company.
If an advertiser is not granted both licenses, they cannot use the song in their
commercial. Usually, they offer both the music publisher and the owner of the
master recording an equal sum for their respective licenses. Since you can’t have
one without the other, it makes sense to offer an equal fee for each license.
However, an advertiser can get around this problem by having other musicians
re-record the song they want to use. When this occurs, they still have to pay
the songwriter, but they don’t have to pay the record label of the original artist.
That’s why when you hear Beatles songs used in commercials, you often times do
not hear the Beatles’ original versions. For instance, when Phillips used “Getting
Better” in their ads, they had the heavily Beatles-influenced British band Gomez
perform the song . Allstate went one step further and hired Julian Lennon to sing
“When I’m Sixty-Four” in their television ads (which makes no sense because
everybody knows “When I’m Sixty-Four” is a quintessential Paul song). While
Phillips and Allstate still had to pay the music publisher of those songs, the use of
a Gomez master recording comes a good bit cheaper than the original recording
from Sgt. Pepper. Phillips and Allstate most likely paid the music publisher of those
songs ten times what they paid Gomez and Julian Lennon to perform them.
To finally answer your question, if a company wants to use the original recording
of a famous song, it is not out of the ordinary for them to pay millions of dollars
for the synchronization and master licenses. When you hear a less popular band
like the Shins or the Walkmen in a commercial, the advertiser most likely paid less
than $75,000 for both licenses. Again, it’s all negotiable, but those are the ballpark
figures.
Dear Andrew,
How awesome was Freedom Fest?
Yours truly,
Chad
Freedom Fest was very awesome. Lefty and Dustin did a great job. I can’t wait until
Freedom Fest 2008.
Andrew Bizer, Esq. is an attorney admitted to practice in Louisiana and New York. He
is currently an associate at Kanner and Whiteley, L.L.C. He previously served as the
Manager of Legal and Business Affairs at EMI Music Publishing and has worked in the
legal department at both Matador and Universal/Motown Records. This column is to
be used as a reference tool. The answers given to these questions are short and are
not intended to constitute full and complete legal advice. The answers given here do not
constitute an attorney/client relationship. Mr. Bizer is not your attorney. But if you want
him to be your attorney, feel free to contact him at andrew@bizerlaw.com. Or, just email
him a question and he’ll answer it in next month’s ANTIGRAVITY.
NEED SOME SOUND ADVICE? SEND YOUR QUESTIONS TO:
ANDREW@BIZERLAW.COM
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ALEX MCMURRAY TALKS ABOUT MAKING A
SEA CHANTEY ALBUM THE NEW ORLEANS WAY
by jason songe jason@liveneworleans.com photos by zack smith smitzack@gmail.com
I
didn’t know New Orleans music before Alex
McMurray, just like I didn’t know rock before
Nirvana. I had heard it, of course, at parades and
various private celebrations, but it wasn’t until I
dug in with him and other ubiquitous musicians on
the blooming ‘90s scene, like Jonathan Freilich, Kevin
O’Day and Rob Wagner, that I understood how
loose, colorful, funny, and genre-spanning it could be.
Whether it was playing with All That at the Dragon’s
Den, Tin Men and Royal Fingerbowl at the Matador,
or by himself at the Circle Bar, McMurray was a large
part of my local awakening.
Over the years, McMurray has established himself
as the most talented songwriter in New Orleans.
Like any poet, McMurray is adept at describing the
cracks in between the human experience, but his
empathy for eccentrics and fuck-ups is really where
it’s at. Through his heartbreaking character studies,
he’s been able to expose the beauty in people’s
imperfections and the way they disintegrate. Luckily
for us, he peppers his songs with wry humor and is
also able to celebrate the bouncier aspects of life, an
example being the song “Cabral.”
Those of you that enjoy his wicked lead guitar
playing as much as his lyrical and compositional talents
will love to know McMurray has more outlets for
soloing than ever. Since sought-after performers like
Freilich and O’Day have lost some of their bands to
Katrina, I think I can confi dently say that McMurray,
besides his solo act, now plays with more groups than
any other local musician—Tin Men (the most genredefying
and unique local band), the Geraniums, 007,
Happy Talk, Schatzy, and the Folk Rock Trio.
All this from a guy who isn’t even supposed to
be here. McMurray moved to New York in October
of 2004, but after being encouraged by recently
deceased Royal Fingerbowl record producer Keith
Keller to return to New Orleans, McMurray and his
wife Kourtney did just that in February of 2006.
“’Cause we’re crazy,” said McMurray over the
phone in his half-serious, half tongue-in-cheek tone.
“If you could do the stupidest thing you could think
of, that would be it. Keith said ‘you’ve got to be a part
of the rebirth, blah, blah, blah,’ and then the fucker
croaks on us.” Something to know before we get
into the mid-May interview I had with McMurray at
his Bywater home is that you have to learn how to
listen for the sentimentality that trickles through his
grizzled veneer. Since returning to New Orleans, he
and his wife have become cultural leaders, creating
Chazfest and the Fifth Season Summer Tuesday
Nights, wherein the couple has and intends to
continue showing movies on a screen in the beautiful
backyard of the Truck Farm recording studio.
During the interview we focused on his new
album, Guano and Nitrates, offi cially credited to the
Valparaiso Men’s Chorus. This is the chorus of local
men he put together to sing as his band recorded
sea chanties in November of 2004 at the Mermaid
Lounge. The genesis for the idea came in late 2002,
when McMurray sang sea chanties as Cap’n Sandy at
Tokyo Disney. Since the CD Release Party for the
album at the Saturn Bar was such an out-of-control,
drunk, rollicking success, look for more performances
from the chorus in months to come.
10_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

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ANTIGRAVITY: Kourtney told me you have a
really interesting story.
Alex McMurray: It’s not that interesting. It’s just that I was at
Freedom Fest at the Circle Bar. I was standing there on the
sidewalk. We had just played with Luke (in The Happy Talk
Band). This guy turns around and punches me in the face.
AG: Out of nowhere?
AM: He just wheeled around and clocked me.
AG: You hadn’t been talking to him or anything?
AM: No. I’ve seen the guy around. I don’t even know his name.
He thought that I had spit on him.
AG: Oh.
AM: He said, “Dude, why’d you spit on me?” Well, there are
people out there with water pistols. They had a water balloon
launcher and water pistols and all sorts of shit like that. The guy, I
guess, got squirted and he thought that I spit on him, so he turned
around and fuckin’ clocked me. Look at my lip. He turned my
head all the way around and really fucked up my neck.
AG: What’d you do?
AM: I just stood there. I didn’t fall down. I was in such shock
that I was like, “What?!” I guess most guys would have hit him
back or something. After I thought about it for about thirty
seconds I was, “Wait, I should go kick this guy’s ass.” It was
the weirdest...
AG: He didn’t apologize or anything?
AM: He did, of course. He apologized profusely, and all this. I
still think it was a little bit overreacting, don’t you think? I was
afraid you were going to come over with some photographer
or something.
AG: Are you still at the point where you get
nervous on stage?
AM: Yeah, only if I’m singing. If I’m not singing, it’s no problem.
But, if it’s songs I wrote, yeah.
AG: Even at the Wednesday night Circle Bar gigs
that you do a lot?
AM: Yeah, I do.
AG: Because sometimes you look detached.
AM: There’re a lot of different factors involved. Who’s in
the audience? I get more nervous when there are people I
know there. If it’s people I don’t know, I’m more relaxed. I
get uptight when there are people there who are there every
week. I’m like, “Oh, man, I have nothing new for these guys.”
That’s a drag.
AG: Maybe they don’t want anything new.
AM: But I feel like I owe it to them to at least have one
thing that’s different. That’s the good part about that gig. It
should force you to always be working on something new,
but unfortunately, the way I arrange my life, normally the first
thing to get jettisoned is my own thing. There are all these
other things that I’m doing. What kind of an idiot puts on a
musical festival during Jazzfest? You’re a working musician and
you play in, like, six bands, and then you put on a festival?
AG: [Laughs] You’re trying to make it easy on
yourself, obviously.
AM: What’s the matter with me, you know?
AG: I think Chazfest is great. It seemed like it
really worked out.
AM: Yeah, it worked out, but the night before Chazfest I was at
my Wednesday night gig and I looked at the clock, wondering
when I could get out of there. I was operating on two hours
sleep. My mind was somewhere else. This was the Jazzfest gig
I’ve been doing for years, and it should be a big night in my
musical career, but it was the last thing on my mind. At that
point, there’s no point in bitching. It’s already happening. Make
the best of it, that sort of thing.
AG: I wasn’t there the year before, but there must
have been more people this time around.
AM: There was a bigger turnout. Not by a whole lot, but there
was more. The first year we had rain for four hours. As soon
as it started, it started to rain. It didn’t make people leave; it
just made people not come. People had a great time, though.
There was a lot more stress the first year. This year, it seemed
like more of a machine. We switched it on, and it just sort of
ran itself.
AG: So, next year, it’ll be that much easier.
AM: [Laughs] Yeah, you’ll see. Next year. Yeah, okay.
AG: Oh, no? Is that it?
AM: It could be. If we’re going to do it again—it’s too much
work for no money. It would have to be profitable. The amount
of work that Kourtney did. The graphic design. Designing the
postcards and the t-shirts and the ads and the signs. She works
on that for months. It’s got to be done months in advance
to get in the publications. The website and all this stuff. You
spend a lot of time on the phone. Like me, I get the stage
together, the sound together, book the bands, and you know,
get the toilets. Stuff like that. We both work on it. It’s a pretty
tough racket.
AG: Even with the door, were you still in the red?
AM: If we lost money, it was insignificant, but if we made
money, it was also insignificant. To do it next year...
AG: Maybe some real sponsors?
AM: Real sponsors and legit permits and we’ve got to make
a lot of money. It’s too much work. It was a great time and a
great party, but I kind of need money. [Laughs]
AG: [Laughs] Well, if people liked it enough,
maybe you could raise the admission next
year and people would be willing to show their
appreciation by paying it.
AM: Yeah, and maybe fewer bands. We’ve got to raise the
profile of the thing, and that means corporate sponsors, which
makes it kind of ugly. It’s kind of tacky. Maybe we could get
Abita to provide the beer.
important was alcohol to the recording? I have
this image of you playing the chorus with alcohol
so you would get more of this drunken, all-forone
feel.
AM: It was definitely part of our focus. You can’t have the
yo-ho-ho without the bottle of rum. The overall gestalt was
that we were going to do it at the Mermaid, in a bar. It’s going
to take the greater part of the evening. We’re going to start
around five and then go ‘til we’re done. The guys would be
able to come and go. It would be very loose that way. We’d
learn the song and do it until we figured we got a good take,
and then we’d move onto the next song. Meanwhile, there’s a
film crew, and everyone’s drinking. The last tune we did was
“Rio Grande.” It was one of those moments where the chorus
had had it. Half of them were outside...
AG: Going, “When is this going to be done?” Or
were they just too drunk?
AM: They were too drunk and just worn out. I’ll never
forget that. There was a buzz, this terrible buzz in one of the
microphones that was picking up Jonathan Freilich’s guitar
solo.
AG: Because the voices were so loud?
AM: No, because, I guess because Jeff was wasted in the
control room. [Laughs] There was so much mayhem that it
got overlooked. That was a nightmare, trying to get the buzz
off the track.
AG: How did you decide to augment the way you
traditionally see a sea chantey performed with
more of this New Orleans sound?
AM: It’s a natural thing. For a sea chantey record—first of all,
electronic instruments almost can’t do it, even though I played
“The sea chantey purists would want nothing to do with this
because trombones are way out, but we have bass drum and
tuba, so it’s kind of like a brass band approach to things.”
AG: That’s not so bad.
AM: Maybe Southern Comfort. Somebody was talking to me
about some local company—New Orleans Rum. Things like
that. We’ve got to know how to walk the fine line between
solvency and tackiness.
AG: Why did it take you so long to release the sea
chantey CD?
AM: I’d had the idea (while) in Japan to record these songs,
but with a New Orleans slant, like with Carlo Nuccio playing
drums. We did the recording at the Mermaid right before
Thanksgiving ‘04. Jeff (Treffinger) did a mix; Clint (Coker) did
a mix. There were these mixes, and the guys in the chorus
were bitching at me because the chorus wasn’t loud enough. I
played it for Jonathan (Freilich), and he said [McMurray doing
an amazingly spot-on Freilich voice impression]: “Oh, man,
what is this? There’s not enough chorus.” I wanted more
chorus, too. Anyway, at this point the Mermaid was gone, we
had these mixes that weren’t really happening, and, of course,
August of 2005 rolls around. After that the sea chantey record
went on the backburner. I was in New York, Jeff was in Texas,
and Clint was somewhere, and we don’t have a mix that
people are happy with. It was all on analog tape—half inch
tape, which we had the last two rolls for purchase in Orleans
Parish in 2004.
AG: How could it be the last tape?
AM: We got it from this store that was the only place you
could get it, and it was closing down. We wanted to get six,
but they only had two left, so we had to do only one take of
every song.
AG: Was better that way because you were more
focused?
AM: The record was a testament to mayhem. But it was great.
Anyway, we had to do a transfer from analog to digital. We
were going to mix it on the machine, but the machine was
mechanically flawed. It changed speeds and it had noise in it.
After that we started doing mixes with Jack Neely, who runs
the studio, and Ben Mumfrey. Ben did most of it. Then, it’s got
to be mastered and artwork.
AG: Yeah, that makes sense. Everybody took a
year after Katrina just to get back on track. How
an electric guitar. The tuba is a natural fit, the washboard
seems like a natural fit, even though it’s probably something
you’d never see on a boat. We had pennywhistles, Rick
Trolsen on trombone. The sea chantey purists would want
nothing to do with this because trombones are way out, but
we have bass drum and tuba, so it’s kind of like a brass band
approach to things. We also had accordion and fiddles, which
are very traditional. We just wanted to get all these different
flavors together and let it rip. When I was in Japan, I remember
doing my job, which was walking around this restaurant playing
“Drunken Sailor.” One day I was playing it really fast, because
nobody’s listening. I’m walking around in costume. They’re
all Japanese, and they don’t understand a thing I’m saying.
I’m playing with a swinging feel, the way it is on the record. I
was like, “Man, when I get back home, I’m going to get Carlo
Nuccio on this, and Matt Perrine, and we’re going to do this.”
I guess that was the genesis of the idea. The impetus was to do
the songs with New Orleans instrumentation.
AG: I think it’s much better than just doing the
thousandth traditional sea chantey album. You
put your own slant on it.
AM: We’re waiting to see how it fits into the sea chantey
canon.
AG: When I picture you performing in Japan, for
some reason I picture you performing on stage,
but no, you performed in a restaurant?
AM: I worked at the Cape Cod Cook-Off. The show was in a
big, big dining hall with picnic benches, and on the stage was this
half animatronics, half live action show. It was two alternating
shows. One was Donald’s Boat Builder’s. It was Donald,
Goofy, and Mickey trying to build a boat with all this mayhem
going on around them. The shows were about seven minutes
long. The other show was the Chipmunks doing something up
there. There was a big boat on hydraulics with steam piped in
and music—the voices were piped in. The people would get in
costumes and just go up there and move around.
AG: Were you familiar with the sea chanties on
the record before you left for Japan?
AM: No. I tried like hell to find sea chantey records. I first
became aware of the job in 2001. It was Adam Shipley
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(from Tipitina’s) that put me in touch. There was a website
called songsofthesea.com. It’s still up, but it’s got a different
name now (contemplator.com/sea). They had these MIDI
files—if you took a Casio keyboard and played “Blow The
Man Down” through it, that’s what it would sound like
[McMurray imitates it by singing the “Blow” melody like a
Wizard of Oz munchkin]. You could read the lyrics and hear
the tune, so you could pretty much tell how the line goes,
though there’s no singing, just the melody. I went through
all these tunes and I went to amazon.com and found one
record, called Men’s Corral. It was Burl Ives corny, but lovely
in a weird way.
AG: Was it a little bit too put together?
AM: It sounds like a twenty-to-thirty man chorus with four
parts: basses, baritones and tenors. It’s very clean, refined,
sophisticated arrangements of these tunes. I’m in the dark.
I ask Shipley to ask Disney, “Please, what are the tunes?”
They’re like, “Oh, don’t worry about it.”
AG: You want to do your research. You want to
do a good job.
AM: I’m freaking out. They’re like, “Don’t worry about it.
They’ll show you what to do in Japan, on the other end.”
And I’m like, “ That doesn’t sound right.” There weren’t any
sea chantey records on amazon.com. At least, I couldn’t find
any. I looked everywhere. Then, I did this MIDI thing. I do all
this crazy preparation, visas and whatnot, get on the plane,
and get to Japan. I finally meet with the director of the show,
who’s Japanese, at the orientation. There’s a translator and
the other Cap’n Sandy, John, a sixty-four-year-old guy from
Gainesville, Florida who knows over three hundred and fifty
sea chanties.
AG: There you go.
AM: Yeah, but—I sit down and they say, “Play a sea chantey.”
I played the three that I knew, but I hardly remembered those.
I was playing my own tunes.
AG: [Laughs]
AM: I played a song that I wrote.
AG: Did you pass it off as a sea chantey?
AM: Well, Cap’n John knew I was full of shit, but he didn’t say
anything. He was like, “Well, I never heard that one before.”
AG: You’re like, “Shut up, Cap’n John.”
AM: I said, “I must have different records than you.” So, anyway,
it was struggle but I got a twenty-minute show together.
AG: Why are you called the Valparaiso Men’s
Chorus? Is it because of Valparaiso, Chile?
AM: Yeah, Valparaiso was a famous, some would say infamous,
Chilean seaport. It was a major port of call for sailing,
merchant, whaling ships. What they exported there was bat
shit and guano, to get the nitrates out of it to make saltpeter.
Valparaiso is mentioned in a lot of sea chanties. “We’re off to
Valparaiso/Around the horn.” When you go around the horn,
you’re inevitably going to end up in Valparaiso.
AG: I’m going to completely get off the sea
chantey topic. I love what you do with the
Geraniums and the color you add to their
music. I know Jeff Treffinger (of the Geraniums,
the Saturn Bar and Truck Farm) made your
solo record and he’s played on your songs, as
well, but how did your collaboration with the
Geraniums come about?
AM: The Geraniums have had a couple of color guys
throughout the years, whether it be on harmonica, fiddle,
or trombone. I’m not sure how I got picked to do it, but
one day Jeff said, “Hey man, would you come play with the
Geraniums?” I jumped at it. They used to play at the Circle
Bar on Sunday nights when I bartended there. They’d play
and there’d be no one there. I could sit in with them because
there was no one to serve.
AG: So, you already knew the songs...
AM: I’d heard them, and some of them I still really don’t know.
It helps that they’re mostly in D. It kind of hurts, in a way.
Like, “What am I going to do with D this time?” I love Jeff and
Brendan’s songs.
AG: When are you going to come out with another
solo or Tin Men record?
AM: That’s the $64,000 question. I guess I’ve got enough tunes
that I could do a record. It’s also a question of money. There
was talk for a while to get a label like Yep Roc to finance it,
but they didn’t bite. Financing a record by yourself—it’s doable
because I did it, but you amass credit card debt doing that. I’m
still paying it off.
AG: Seems like Tin Men is more of an every-twoyears
type of group.
AM: Yeah, but the Tin Men haven’t been playing much. Matt’s
really busy with Bonerama. We’ve got a couple ideas for
records. We might do a record that’s all by one composer,
or we might do one record that’s all composed by us. We
always have a record that’s originals and unoriginals. We have
moxie. We’ll put our heads together one of these days and
figure it out.
AG: You all perform Dirty Dozen’s “Blackbird
Special” live. That’s my favorite song you do live,
probably because the way you do it has such a
concentrated anxiety to it.
AM: [Laughs] Yeah, for me it is. It’s a very difficult song to play.
It’s one of the most taxing tunes, for me, anyway. And there’s
not even any singing.
AG: Did you have any specific approach when
covering it? Are you more of a traditional person
when covering songs, or do you veer off the
beaten path a bit?
AM: We do the All That arrangement, the Davis Rogan
version. That’s a tune we used to do with that band. It was
like, “Okay, it’ll be funny—we’ll take this brass band tune and
do this weird, not so fat instrumentation.”
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AG: I’ve talked to you in passing about getting Royal Fingerbowl back
together, and you’ve said people don’t care but the people I’ve talked to
say differently.
AM: Well, you know, those fourteen people are still around.
AG: [Laughs] That’s exactly what you said last time.
AM: Whenever someone asks me about the Fingerbowl, I always talk about those fourteen
people. And the fourteen people really loved it.
AG: But that’s not enough to make any money, is it?
AM: Whenever I feel like making that seventy bucks, we’ll go out there and do it. We could
probably get those fourteen people out to Carrollton Station.
AG: You know, you might find those fourteen people brought one friend
each, and then all of a sudden, there’s twenty-eight.
AM: But, you see, these fourteen people are like those guys in the army jackets.
AG: [Laughs] The curmudgeons?
AM: The guy in the army jacket at the end of the gig that wants to ask you about your gear.
“What year amp is that? ‘64? That’s what I thought.”
AG: And you’re a little creeped out?
AM: Well...
AG: I got it.
AM: We did an Uptown party a year or two ago and Becky Lloyd said, “I really want the
Fingerbowl.” I said, “Okay.” It’s not impossible.
AG: Are you able to make a living as a musician in New Orleans?
AM: I have. For ten years I didn’t have a job. Since we’ve been back we’ve been kind of—we
did a little work for Jeff on this house here. We painted that place—Kourtney and me. My
friend has a rental property on Congress Street that had Katrina problems, lost a lot of the
roof. It needed to be gutted, blah, blah, blah. He’s living in New York now, so I supervised
that for him. I don’t know if I can make a living. The last month has been—I’ve made a living
this month.
AG: So, it’s month to month?
AM: You talk to guys and you know that summertime’s going to be slow. You got to line up
your ducks so you can make it through the summer. It’s good to get out of town. Duking it
out down here can be really demoralizing.
AG: You’ve been playing for so long, and I’m wondering if you’ve ever gone
through lulls where, out of frustration, you’ve thought about giving up
writing and performing and recording?
AM: Sometimes you get frustrated. Never to the point where I’ve said, “Fuck it, I’m going to
get a straight job.” Sometimes you say, “Fuck it,” but you don’t really mean it. The good times
are really great, and the bad times are really bad, but overall it’s a good life. I have no other
skills.
AG: Recurring players in your songs are drink and water, patrons of which
tend, to me, to be misfits or lonely. I was wondering if you have a soft spot
for curmudgeons or the unwanted.
AM: Yeah, I think everybody can relate to that as a romantic notion. Loneliness, sentimentality,
ne’er-do-wells, drinkers, brawlers, people in the bar. Saloon society. Sometimes I make up my
mind not to write about these people anymore, but it’s sort of inevitably goes back to that
sphere.
AG: Because you live in that atmosphere, as well?
AM: I don’t know. I work in bars. I used to go to bars a lot more than I do now. I used to
live at the R Bar. I’d get done playing and go to a bar. I could never go straight home, but I
don’t do that anymore. I used to spend a lot of time at Markey’s. I got out of that group, you
know. I haven’t written too many songs in the last year, and the ones I have written really have
nothing to do with it at all. I wrote a song about Cabral, this recurring guy named Otis, the
two Katrina songs. I’m working on a song for Chaz to sing in the Tin Men. I’m trying to write
a dance number. It’s baffling to me.
AG: Do you think New Orleans is more forgiving of the socially inept?
AM: Absolutely. This town’s got its own social code. People tolerate lateness. They know you
can’t be expected to do things early in the morning. Half the people you know are in bands
or work in bars or restaurants. The bon vivant factor is high. You’ve heard the expression, “If
you can’t make it here, don’t leave”?
AG: [Laughs] That’s great.
AM: New York has their saying, and we have ours.
AG: Eccentrics are celebrated here.
AM: Yeah. What’s going to happen to all the guys that hang out at stores, drinking Busch beer
all day? I see these guys floating around town, waiting for the bus. You can do it. The people
that float around the Circle Bar, the homeless guys. The train station is right there. It’s a
pretty forgiving town. There’s this couple that’s been going through my songs, and they’re still
together but they’re terrible for each other.
AG: You can’t figure out why they’re still together! They’ve been through
things and stood by each other.
AM: They just get into so much trouble together. There’s something primal about their love
that I find fascinating.
AG: It doesn’t make any sense.
AM: This couple, they should really get out the bars and go take care of their kids.
Thanks to Kourtney for entertaining me with water, books, NPR (Andrei Codrescu!), footage of the
album release party and a tour of the backyard while I waited for McMurray to join me for our
interview. For more info on Alex McMurray, the sea chaney album and any of the bands McMurray is
a member of, go to alexmcmurray.com or myspace.com/alexmcmurray.
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_13

COVER FEATURE
music
THE KING OF BOUNCE & THE COURT JESTER:
AN EVENING WITH DJ JUBILEE AND BALLZACK
interview by ballzack ballzack.com intro and photos by dan fox fox@antigravitymagazine.com
What is bounce? Some say, in a very National Geographic kind of way, that it’s “Call and response
music with a synthesized drum track foundation.” But that doesn’t sound like much fun, and if
bounce is anything, bounce is fun. Some call it “Project music” as a term of endearment and as
a put-down, but that seems kind of limiting, considering the vast and ever-increasing fan base it
has taken on over the years, including such local music acts as Mr. Quintron, Telefon Tel Aviv, and Oakdale’s
own Ballzack. Some just say “Man, if you have to ask...,” and it’s tempting to leave it at that, but where does that
get us in our quest to appreciate this musical style’s amazing history? Bounce is a lot of these things and none of
these things, but essentially it is sonic democracy in action, combinations of shared beats and harmonies, verses
and shout-outs that inspire a feverish need in the pelvis as well as civic pride when your school, your street, your
ward, your projects, your college, or your name is called upon to act. And at the heart of it all is DJ Jubilee and
Take Fo’ Records, home to all six of Jubilee’s albums.
Taking his stage name from Jubilee Dunbar of the Saints (circa 1973), DJ Jubilee is responsible for making bounce
the athletic, party-minded, and school-spirit music we know and love today. If you’ve been to a prom, half-time
show, Mardi Gras parade, block party, wedding, or even a bar mitzvah or two in the past fi fteen years, Jubilee’s
music has been there, igniting and guiding the crowd. Jubilee has also weathered the storm of bounce’s growing
pains, whether it was losing a court battle to the better-funded Cash Money over the ownership of “Back that
Ass Up” or losing his fans to the redevelopment of certain neighborhoods (including the St. Thomas) and, of
course, Katrina. Jubilee seems to understand that New Orleans needs him more than ever, not only to remind
us of happier times but also to get us through these current times as we struggle to maintain in our beloved New
Orleans—or some far away place in the meantime. As a devoted fan, walking encyclopedia, and torch-bearer of
bounce, Ballzack was the natural choice to lead an interview with DJ Jubilee. That a former student of West Jeff
High School could meet with his (substitute) teacher and dialogue on the past decade-plus of bounce music speaks
volumes on its lasting power. Get ready, ready.
14_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

FEATURE
music
BZ: I want to ask you about the early days of
bounce. How did you get into it? Was there a
specific moment where you were like “I want to
do this?”
JB: Well, I’ll say this: bounce back then, man, it was fun.
Not saying it’s not fun now, but it was so much fun back
then because we were all new to it. I heard that a guy in my
neighborhood had an album out; his name was T.T. Tucker.
Well, I been knowing Tucker since he was a kid; I coached
him in little league football. I said, “Hold up, I gotta find out
what he’s saying” because I know Tucker. So I heard the little
tape they had out on the street, right: “MC T.T. Tucker, DJ
Irv, 1992 Haaaaa...” And he was just talking about anything:
buy me an outfit, get me this, buy me that…Lord! During
them days you had Soulja Slim, Lil’ Slim, PNC, UNLV and
them; they used to just jump on the mic at each club: Club
49, Club Detour, places like that. At the time, T.T. Tucker
was one of the hottest ones on the street, and I was like
“Man, everybody’s following this crazy stuff; it don’t make
no sense!” I followed him, doing a couple of concerts to see
what the crowd was like, but I never thought about getting
into the business. But it so happened that my DJing was so
popular when I left (For Grambling State University) and
when I came back it was still popular so I started DJing all the
high schools, especially where I graduated from, Walter L.
Cohen Senior High School. So when I started teaching over
there I started doing all the dances. We had dances every
week, I mean we rollin’. I used to put rappers on at one time
and let them rap; and all of a sudden they started cursing so
I had to trim it down a little bit. A friend of mine, his name
was Tyronne Jones (we called him “Rip.” He plays for the
Voodoo right now; number “1”), he was doing a dance but
he was doing it so funny and he had me laughing the way
he was sliding left and right, left and right; so when I came
home I just said “Do the Jubilee.” So we started doing the
Jubilee and the whole gym just started doing it for no reason,
because they needed something to do. Then next week, the
Magnolia came with a dance: the Eddie Bauer. The Calliope
came with the Jerk Baby Jerk...when that trend caught off
them first few dances and we were giving dances every week
that summer? Aw man, everybody came with a dance. And
before you know it, I had over fifty something dances on the
first album: Stop, Pause Do the Jubilee All...
BZ: Let me ask you about the production. Why
the “Trigga Man” beat?
JB: At a club in the St. Thomas, T.T. Tucker’s uncle used to DJ
with Trigga Man in a club called My Place. He used to scratch
the “Trigga Man” instrumental for two hours. We in the club
all day boppin’ our heads...it almost became a dance! We
walking around, giving daps, talking to each other while the
music’s going on: “What’s happenin’ man? Nothin’ we chillin...”
[Tucker’s uncle] was in the club before Tucker even started.
He was DJing back to back, alcohol sprayed on the record and
everything. Back in the day you used to see DJs licking they
fingers, touching the record. You don’t see that no more. And
then came the “Brown Beat.”
BZ: Right, tell me about the history of the ‘Brown
Beat.’
JB: “Brown Beat” came by luck; somebody happened to hear
the beat somewhere. I think Cash Money was the first one to
use that beat with UNLV or either Mia X, Joe Blakk, somebody
in that era and we caught on to it. And then somebody said,
“Let’s put ‘Trigga Man’ and ‘Brown Beat’ together.” It was
“Trigga Man” by itself then “Brown Beat.” And when you ran
them on top the beat was even fresher and even thicker.
BZ: The “Paid in Full” beat was big, too.
JB: We went from “Trigga Man,” to the “Brown Beat,” to “Paid
in Full.” Then we started mixing all three of them. After that,
here come DJ Manny Fresh with that “Trigga Man” beat with
the drum machine with what we called the “Cheeky Blakk”
beat—
BZ: With the soul claps on it—
JB: There it is. And once he integrated that he really changed
New Orleans music; he created a whole new sound for the
city. It’s like he donated that beat to the city.
BZ: Have you worked with Manny Fresh? Is there
any possibility of that?
JB: No, we never did. Me and Manny Fresh, we knew each
other from way, way back and from my Grambling days. We
had a big New Orleans group up there in Grambling, and we
invited him to come do a New Orleans concert and it was off
the chain. I got to know him personally because instead of him
staying at a hotel he stayed at the house with us and we joked
all night, laughed, played football in the house. We didn’t go
“When you make a hit you might last six months, then you
dead, you gone. But when you do a New Orleans bounce
song? Man, it lasts a long time.” —Jubilee
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_15

FEATURE
music
to sleep until four o’clock in the morning because we were
moving furniture out the way and playing throw up tackle in
the living room. That’s how much fun we had and that’s why
he respects me so much. But all the years I’ve been trying to
do something with him...maybe it’s my time, maybe it’s not.
BZ: A Jubilee/Manny Fresh song would be crazy!
JB: His beats, my lyrics, his joking and it’s going down.
BZ: I remember way back in the day there was
talk about Take Fo’ and Tommy Boy. What
happened with that, exactly?
JB: I say this, man, I was about to shock the world and I still
don’t know the whole full details of it. I signed a four, five
album deal for three million dollars, which is good. They gave
a hundred stacks up front and they sent representatives down
to come see me at Teen Summit in New Orleans. I’m packing
the Superdome—35,000 people dancing on one accord. They
said, “Hey, this kid is for real.” But I don’t know—we had
went to a convention in Miami. It was an Impact convention.
They invited all the people who Tommy Boy had signed on
the label: me, Lil’ Jon, East Side Boyz, Crooked Lettaz...I didn’t
know the cats at the time but that’s who they were. And after
we get back from the convention—at that time, I didn’t hear
about Juvenile’s stuff yet. I’m doing my “Back That Thang Up;”
my stuff is poppin’, I’m flyin’, I’m rollin’; I’m doing concerts all
over. So, in my mind, I’m thinking that Tommy Boy got scared
because they heard Cash Money was putting out something
nationwide. I had the number one song in New Orleans in
1998 on the radio for the 100 top countdown. My song “Back
that Thang Up” was hot for eight weeks straight—number
one. Eight. Weeks. In a row. At number one! That’s a good
little while. Then all of a sudden, after Miami, we started calling
them and they stopped returning our phone calls. They didn’t
say nothin’, that was it...
I think I’ve been black balled, if you ask me personally.
Because I don’t understand: I done sold more albums than
anybody in this city just about, any local artist or whatever.
Never been on BET, never been on MTV, never been in those
places where everybody’s been, never been in that mainstream,
never been on anybody’s video. I’ve been to their shoot but
they never give me a cameo appearance. It’s crazy.
BZ: But I think you’re outlasting a lot of people.
JB: Well, fifteen years and still going, still holding the clubs
down, which is making me humble. I’m just as popular as
my music and my music is as popular as me. I’m doing it
on both ends. A classic lasts around a long time, you know
that. When you make a hit you might last six months, then
you dead, you gone. Then after that you can’t repeat it. But
when you do a New Orleans bounce song? Man, it lasts
a long time. It sticks to you. When you drop a nice hot
New Orleans hit, it’s gonna stick ten years. You got me
ten years, Partners ‘N’ Crime, Cheeky Blakk, Ms. Tee, Joe
Blakk...there’s so many artists that I just can’t name who’s
from that early bounce era that it wasn’t even called bounce
when they was doing it. It didn’t become bounce until
probably Everlasting Hitman started saying “Bounce, baby,
bounce” and everybody else started saying “Bounce for the
Juvenile...” So when you start saying bounce and all that,
some news reported said, “Okay, well, we’ll call it bounce.”
And that’s how it happens.
BZ: Do you reminisce about the old days? My
dad tells me a lot of stories about back in the St.
Thomas they used to have block parties in front
of his store a lot. Do you miss that kind of thing?
JB: And that’s what made me so popular. We used to have
DJs every week, and in the summer time almost every day!
And a lot of people don’t understand that’s what makes your
community your community; this is what makes people get
to know each other. I get to know your mom, you get to
know my mom; I get to know your dad, you get to know his
dad, your son, your daughter, your brother, your friend... so
we all know each other. And that’s what kept the St. Thomas
hoppin’ over the years. We would invite people from all over.
Different projects was coming in and they were coming to
have a good time, and that’s what made it special. We kicked
off about four o’clock in the evening, end about nine o’clock,
go home take a shower, change your clothes, then go to the
club from about ten to three in the morning. Then you get
your rest, you finish for the week, and you start again. It gave
the community something to do on the weekend.
BZ: Do you find there’s been a resurgence and
interest in Bounce music?
JB: Yes, yes, yes. Since Katrina happened it kind of opened
the eyes up for New Orleans. If you evacuate to Atlanta or
Cleveland or Detroit, you want that New Orleans music! You
going to the club—New Orleans people go out no matter
where we at—and you tell the DJ, “Hey I’m from New Orleans,
play this.” Now they get to hear our music out there and we
get to send them more music; that made us much popular.
BZ: Did you ever think that you would be making
bounce songs?
JB: I’ll say this: bounce is for everybody. It’s not for no particular
person, it’s just that in order for you to get established in
bounce, you have to establish your own individuality. You got
a lot of people that copycat songs—don’t make you. But when
you create something that you created, it’s gonna move, it’s
gonna sell, people gonna like it, people gonna buy it, they gonna
follow you. That’s the whole thing about bounce: you can create
your style by still using the same music. You can go reggae, you
can go gospel, hip-hop, gangsta, go whatever you want to do.
BZ: It’s all about feeling.
JB: Yeah, it’s all about movement, smiling, making you laugh,
having fun. It’s gonna make you dance no matter what. But like
an old DJ once said: “You don’t have no bounce, you don’t
have no party.” There it is.
Friday, 6/22
DJ Jubilee plays the Adult Sock Hop Summer Series,
Howlin’ Wolf, 907 S. Peters St., (504) 522-WOLF,
www.howlin-wolf.com
Ballzack’s bounce album is scheduled for a Fall ‘07 release.
For more info on Ballzack, go to:
www.ballzack.com or myspace.com/ballzacknola
16_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

FEATURE REVIEW
music
Wilco is often labeled as
“America’s Radiohead,”
which I suppose means that
they are the band that we
Yanks can be the most proud of. If that’s the case, Sky Blue
Sky is Wilco’s Hail to the Thief. Both records fi nd the “World’s
Best Band” returning to more traditional structures following
two records of groundbreaking experimentation.
Like its British counterpart, Sky Blue Sky seems at fi rst to be
more notable for what it isn’t than for what it is. Gone are Jeff
Tweedy’s obtuse lyrics in favor of straightforward narratives;
gone is the static-y smear of migraines, replaced by sunny
melodies and guitar jams. What we are left with is something
of a Wilco concentrate with all of the excess noise removed.
While this approach allows new lead guitarist Nels Cline to
stretch, bend, and fl utter his way across sprawling rockers
like “Impossible Germany” and the sunny jam “Walken,” it
cripples folkier tracks that would have benefi ted from Yankee
Hotel Foxtrot’s experimental production.
On repeated listens, though, Sky Blue Sky begins to reveal
itself as a record just as interesting as predecessor A Ghost is
Born. The group perfectly emulate the Band on “What Light,”
Tweedy sounding like a tired Robbie Robertson while the
band soulfully marches on. “You Are My Face” builds with
the same emotional locomotion that has powered nearly all
of Tweedy’s classic tracks. The drum fi lls on “Shake it Off”—
Wilco’s version of Steely Dan’s “Black Cow”—are intricate
and deceptively complex. This is something that Wilco have
made their stock and trade for six albums now; the music is
at once strange but comforting, new and familiar.
What Sky Blue Sky gives the listener is something of a mixed
experience; one leaves it at once satisfi ed yet wanting more,
pleased yet disappointed. Wilco have long gloried in their
own paradoxes, scratching beauty deep below the surface on
tracks like 2001’s “Poor Places.” This record simply takes a
bit more effort to appreciate. Sky Blue Sky is, after all, the fi rst
record that Jeff Tweedy has written as a perfectly satisfi ed
human being. There are no remnants of his rehab experience
that colored A Ghost is Born, nor is the nervous energy of
Summerteeth or Being There present. Instead, Tweedy and, by
extension, all of Wilco, seem relaxed, perfectly comfortable
playing simple throwbacks to their favorite bands. To
paraphrase Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s “Heavy Metal Drummer,”
Wilco have rediscovered the innocence they once knew,
only instead of Kiss covers they’re channelling Steely Dan,
beautiful and sober.
So while Sky Blue Sky may not be the paranoid masterpiece
of YHF or the confused A Ghost is Born, it is a step forward
for the band. Wilco are growing into their role as America’s
Radiohead, taking full advantage of their freedom to make
the music that they want to make. —Marty Garner
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_17

REVIEWS
books
Pity the memoir. It was
brutalized less by James Frey
and J. T. LeRoy than by the smug
peanut galleries at opposite ends
of Freygate 2006: Oprahites, with
their uncanny ability to make any
book about themselves, and the
literati for whom reading is the
precious act of tying books to chairs to torture confessions
out of them. Talking heads condescended to readers by
subjecting the memoir to tiresome, freshmen English debates
pitting total recall against the porousness of memory,
nonfi ction versus fi ction, objectivity versus subjectivity.
Soccer moms bayed for public stoning. Only after Frey and
publisher Nan A. Talese were pornographically chastised on
daytime’s hallowed white couch were they sated.
When the smoke cleared, the memoir looked like it had
been ripped through by a dirty bomb, languished in Walter
Reed, and dishonorably discharged. Nora Vincent, author of
Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man, archly
dismissed it: “If we could apply the L word to it at all, we
might call [the memoir] the literature of woefest. But on a
woeful tale one cannot always hang talent or, indeed, much
of more than passing prurient interest.”
The military comparison may ring incongruent with
Mississippi Sissy, a memoir by journalist Kevin Sessums about
growing up as a, well, Mississippi sissy, but indulge this penis-mightier
shtick. Wars, literal and bookish, are at the mercy
of ideas and the policies of a time and place, as we have seen
far too well this century; the only constant is the warrior in
the trenches and his humanity — the singular perspective, in
confl ict with larger forces, that turns visionary.
Sessums is no oracle but the originator of one hell of
a tale about growing up gay and fl amboyant amidst the
racist politics, machismo, and eccentric grace of the rural
south in the 1960s and ’70s. Instead of a caveat, he gives
no scruples or apologies: “All the people and the names
are real. All the events actually occurred.” In a few words,
blood starts pumping again through this much ballyhooed
genre, propelled by the shared intimacy, between writer
and reader, in the experience of bearing witness: “When I
recall my life in Mississippi, what I hear are the rich sounds
of voices that surrounded me and from those sounds come
the words, the movement of conversation. It’s the way
perhaps a composer hears a symphony before transcribing
its notes, making it attainable for others who want to listen
just as intently to what he hears. Although there is an
alchemy involved, there is an equal measure of faith in one’s
own voice, the sound into which all others combine.” Turn
the page, and we’re in the bed of a murdered local arts
editor, Frank Hains, then on an interstate speeding back in
time with no seat belt.
Sessums’ style, like his memories of too much death and
not enough love, is marked by “the eerie smoothness of the
ride.” He lost both parents by the time he was ten, his alphamale
father in a car accident, his mother to cancer a year
later (“‘Can heartbreak metastasize?’ she asked.”). Calamities
come in pairs; he was also molested twice.
Mississippi Sissy is not a daisy chain of woes, but a
comedy, which, like all comedies, has a tragic heart. In his
teens, Sessums was gathered into a demimonde of Jackson,
overseen by Hains, that included Eudora Welty. People
with memories of Welty are compelled to share them, even
imitating the venerable southern writer to convey the force
of her presence. Few recreations, though, are as multidimensional
as Sessums’ stories, from driving her home after
she “she reached over and tapped my steering wheel with
her story-telling fi ngers” to the time Frank Dowsing, the fi rst
African-American football player at Mississippi State, whom
Sessums briefl y dated, gently took her to task on the subject
of race relations.
Hains recites the story of Welty appearing on Firing Line,
when William F. Buckley asked, “‘How can a person of
sensitivity have lived in Mississippi during the time you’ve lived
here? To which Eudora replied, in essence, ‘How could one
not have?’ Everybody looked at Frank Dowsing… Everybody
but Miss Welty. She ate staring at her vanilla ice cream. “I
think,” Frank Dowsing said, “you have to be a privileged
white person to have the luxury of a reply such as that.”
The time-stopping moment recalls an earlier event, when a
young Sessums went to pick cotton just to visit his mother’s
cook and cleaner who had been let go. He asks Matty May,
mimicking her old salutation, “So, how y’dwine?”
“‘How you think I’m a’dwine?’ she asked, her tone as
pointed as the one she had summoned that morning when I
had asked her in my bedroom if she’d seen Sidney Poitier win
his Oscar and proceeded to use the N-word in her weary
presence. ‘I’m a’pickin’ cotton, ain’t I?’ she said, wearier than
ever. ‘When a soul’s a’pickin’ cotton, child, it ain’t got no
time to think about how it’s a’dwine. It’s only got time to
think about what it’s a’dwine. How’s a luxury out here in all
this heat. A cotton fi eld ain’t no place a’tall for no how.’”
The authenticity of these stories would not have nearly
the same impact in any other form, if they could even be
transcribed. Moreover, the art with which Sessums con
stantly braids seemingly disparate memories into others,
within sentences that clobber you with the beauty of their
construction, fusing humor and pathos and a seductively
dangerous yet distinctly southern worldview, is worth the
price of admission alone.
In a bullied genre, that’s no small wonder for such a sissy
of a book. —Alan J. Williams
18_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

REVIEWS
comics
I
’ve reviewed Hack/Slash a
number of times, and the
series has always been hit/miss
with me. A variety of artists
have worked on the series—
some good, some not so good, a
couple very good. It’s had some
very fun, memorable stories,
and others that suffered from
the series’ one-shot structure.
The Hack/Slash ongoing series is a way for the book to develop
its interesting premise and characters, and writer Tim Seeley
has found an excellent artistic collaborator in Emily Stone, who
keeps the creep factor up but also delivers the emotional core
of the story. The first issue is a classic Hack/Slash tale, riffi ng a
bit on the recent evolution of the slasher subgenre that includes
Hostel and Saw, that provides an origin that both recaps for
new readers and expands for long-time readers while serving
up a tantalizing bit of history on Cassie that will defi nitely play a
major role going forward.
The concept of Hack/Slash, for those who are unfamiliar, is
that Cassie Hack is a vigilante who hunts down slashers, a subset
of serial killers who exist in the Hack/Slash world the way that
vampires do in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, Buffy is one of
the easiest comparisons to make when it comes to Hack/Slash.
Cassie is to slashers what Buffy is to vampires, and Hack/Slash
is what Buffy might have been if it had been created by Wes
Craven and Rob Zombie instead of Joss Whedon. It’s less with
the quippy (although there are smart and occasionally darkly
funny bits, ala the Scream series) and more with the physical
violence and psychological trauma. There’s a lot of both to go
around in this issue, which fi nds Cassie facing down a murderous
psychologist who tortures her physically and mentally while her
sidekick Vlad is looking for her.
The woman-in-jeopardy thing has been done, I’ll admit. But it
works here, for three reasons: One, it’s an effective twist on the
slashers Cassie has fought thus far, who tend to be more of the
“find them and kick their ass” variety, and it has the benefit of
addressing the torture conventions that have infiltrated the genre
Cassie makes her home. Two, it gives a perfectly reasonable story
explanation for why the reader would be hearing Cassie’s history,
including new tidbits like how she first met Vlad. And three, it
gives us some nice tension as we wonder how Cassie is going to
survive. I like that, despite Vlad’s assistance, Cassie doesn’t come
off like a victim. She comes off like a captured heroine who was
biding her time and gets the last laugh. As always, Cassie is the last
survivor of the slasher flick, except she’s survived dozens of them
and gotten pretty good at dishing out punishment as a result.
Hack/Slash has had a variety of artists, and I’ve enjoyed a lot
of them, but Emily Stone is a real find. Along with the colors by
Courtney Via, this may be the best the book has ever looked.
These two lay on the gore quite effectively, and they know how to
do their action and their comedy. The final smack down is brutally
effective, beginning with a use of Vlad that is a nice reversal of
the “he’s behind you!” moment from any good slasher movie. But
more than that, the artists bring the characters to life emotionally.
Cassie’s anguish as she faces her demons, the betrayal her mother
feels when she’s caught, the rare vulnerability Cassie shows at
the end; these are all brought to life very well on the page. And
Via’s colors give the whole thing an almost animated sheen that
is particularly effective on the flashback scenes to Cassie being
harassed on the playground.
Hack/Slash has never been a property aimed at younger
readers, but it’s clear with this particular series that Seeley
is embracing the R-rating that his horror movie infl uences so
often earn. The language here is fi lthier than anything you’ll
see outside of a Garth Ennis book, the gore and torture very
visceral and affecting and the heroine not so much a noble
creature as a damaged, but functioning, vigilante. There’s moral
and psychological complexity available, especially with the lastpage
revelation, and I’m glad that Hack/Slash is now an ongoing
as it means Seeley will have more room to explore that kind of
thing along with the slasher/action plots he’s been doing so well
for years now. —Randy Lander
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_19

REVIEWS
film
Director Francis Veber has
been making French farce
for the past thirty years; some
of them, such as 1997’s The
Dinner Game, show inspired
comic genius. Unfortunately
The Valet, Veber’s latest
export, is a pale imitation
of his best work and as the
credits roll you’ll wonder
where the laughs have gone. Gad Elmaleh plays François
Pignon, a regular bloke who valets at a chic garden restaurant
across from the Eiffel Tower. He shares a crummy apartment
with a co-worker and his life-long crush (Virginie Ledoyen)
has no romantic interest in him. Enter millionaire industrialist
Pierre Levassuer (Daniel Auteuil). Caught on camera with
his supermodel mistress (Alice Taglioni), Levassuer tells his
suspicious wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) the model is actually
with Pignon, who happened to be walking by when the picture
was snapped. To lend credibility to his lies, Levassuer pays
Pignon to room with the model. Were this a classic farce,
hilarity would ensue, but by the time the fi rst reel ends so
does any hope of humor. Pignon has been the butt of Veber’s
jokes since he introduced the character in 1973, with Belgian
songwriter Jacques Brel handling the role. You really have to
sell comedy for it to work, but not even the actors seem to
believe their roles. Forget the blockbuster summer sequels,
The Valet is my big disappointment of the season. The Valet is
to Veber what Curse of the Jade Scorpion is to Woody Allen. I
even gave the picture an extra half-star for clocking in at less
than ninety minutes. Here’s hoping the Farrelly brothers, who
hold the U.S. remake rights, can do better with the source
material. —J.W. Spitalny
Pirates of the Caribbean:
At World’s End sailed
into theatres Memorial
Day weekend, during the
summer of the sequel, with
an extended running time, a
whole lot of star power and
infl ated expectations. The
result is a highly entertaining
ride for fans that leaves everyone else lost at sea. Much has
been said about the twisted plot of Gore Verbinski’s 168
minute monument to buccaneering; yes, there is doublecross
galore—these are pirates, after all—but as far as
knowing who’s a hero and who’s a villain? If you truly can’t
follow along then nothing I tell you is going to help. Will
Turner (Orlando Bloom) wants to free his father from
servitude aboard the fearsome Flying Dutchman. Recently
re-animated Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) wants the
Black Pearl as his own. Lord Beckett wants the East India
Trading Company to eradicate all pirates, Davy Jones (Bill
Nighy) wants Jack Sparrow dead, Elizabeth Swan (Keira
Knightley) wants to free Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) from
Davy Jones’ locker and Jack Sparrow wants to continue being
Jack Sparrow. It’s absurd to think a sequel is going to be as
good as the original which spawned it; only two sequels in
recent memory matched or bested their predecessors: The
Empire Strikes Back and Godfather 2, yet for some reason
people routinely hold the bar higher for sequels than they
would otherwise. The singular goal of the movie sequel is for
an audience to spend more time with characters they love,
and that level At World’s End succeeds in spades. You won’t
fi nd a more visually spectacular moment in fi lm this year than
when the Black Pearl faces off against the Flying Dutchman in
treacherous waters. Sure, Will Turner proclaiming his love
to Elizabeth Swan during the climatic battle scene induces
eye rolling, but it’s a necessary plot point. For such a long
fi lm it moves quickly. You actually want more Jack Sparrow
and particularly his father (Keith Richards). Keira Knightley
proves salty, if a bit whiney, as Elizabeth Swan, but anything is
an improvement over Domino. Barbossa is a marvelously good
bad guy. Verbinski’s artier scenes depicting Jack Sparrow’s
increasing madness are fantastic and the monkey acts better
than most leading men. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
is a delight for fans, easily better than the second fi lm simply
by having a resolution and satisfying imaginative minds with
visual pleasures and performances the medium was made for.
—J.W. Spitalny
20_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

REVIEWS
music
I
can’t say anything bad about
Dan Deacon’s new record
Spiderman of the Rings. On every
level it’s an amazing record,
bridging the gap between fiddly
art noise and clubby dance elation. Imagine every happy memory
you had as a child, every sing-along 45rpm and Saturday morning
cartoon theme song that made you giddy with excitement, all
balled up into a pile of synthesizers and samplers, gift-wrapped
with danceable beats and given back to you in a shiny box. The
worst thing you can say about Spiderman is that sometimes its
eccentricities and twee stylings can dull its pop hooks, but even
that’s a backhanded complaint because it’s precisely that air of
whacked insanity that makes the record so good and original.
Altered-state chants, analog melodies, and machine-like drums
rule the day here. Opener “Woody Woodpecker” layers multispeed
samples of the titular bird’s laugh over fuzzed and tweaked
harpsichord and IDM beats so fast that the machine has to be
smoking. “Trippy Green Skull” is the missing link between popgospel
and break-heavy electronica with its pitch shifted vocals,
flighty keys and distorted snare rolls. The record’s centerpiece
and fullest track is the eleven-minute “Wham City,” which
begins as a tone sustained with cartoonish xylophone taps and
blooms into a wall of sound over wavering computer hum and
jubilant melodies. Some listeners might be put off by Deacon’s
relentlessly cheerful music, but its inexhaustible optimism is the
record’s strongest weapon. By combining the experimentalism
of laptop electronic music with the joyous energy of dance,
Spiderman of the Rings creates a near perfect pop record full of
infectious beats and childlike exuberance. —Mike Rodgers
Dan Deacon plays the Green Space on Friday, 6/8
and the Spanish Moon on Saturday, 6/9
Don’t Mess With The Dragon,
Ozomatli’s first studio
release since 2004’s Street Signs,
is an even record but seems
largely uninspired compared to the band’s previous efforts.
Ozomatli has, on the surface, infused Dragon with the same mix
of Latin beats, hip-hop vocals and rock guitar riffs that filled two
Grammy-winning records (Signs and ‘01’s Embrace the Chaos).
While that combination is absolutely still viable, one wonders if
the band’s recent attempts to become more accessible by using
more English-language lyrics and focusing on radio play have
taken away their edge. The usual dynamic, strong songwriting
that has produced excellent hooks, like those in the title track
of Street Signs, Embrace The Chaos’ “Dos Cosas Ciertas” and ’03
EP Coming Up’s superior live-version of Sign’s “Ya Vienne el Sol,”
has seemingly disappeared only to be replaced with a jam-band
theme—most songs feel basic and simply repeat its main riff,
making a club sound that ignores the band’s rock angle. Dragon’s
not all under par—on the New Orleans tribute “Magnolia Soul,”
the band manages to put a new spin on the famous phrase “Let
the good times roll” by adding “Let the bad times go” to the
album’s most impressive hook and chorus. Dragon also picks
up a bit of steam in its final two tracks—the dancehall-heavy
“La Segunda Mano” has the always impressive and under-utilized
rapper Jabu front and center, and “It’s a Feeling,” while still feeling
a bit jam-bandish, brandishes some ‘60s-esque psychedelic guitar
work. While Ozomatli remains a socially relevant band with an
ability to perform excellently live, Dragon is, one hopes, simply a
recording misstep. —Leo McGovern
As a critic, my job is to
listen to albums several
times over, digest them,
analyze them, and tell you
why they’re good or why
they’re bad. I would love to tell you, dear reader, that I was
able to do that with Je Suis France’s latest release, but, well,
there’s only so much I can take for your benefi t. I’d love to
be able to say that I was able to stomach the sixteen-minute
opener enough times to truly understand what The France
are trying to do with it, but after several aborted attempts
I’ve decided to cut my losses. I could not make it to the end
of Afrikan Magik. There is no unifying theme throughout the
record, unless you count the numerous squirty keyboards that
seem to pop up and stick around well beyond their welcome.
Sandwiched somewhere between ten-minute plus tracks are
lazy Sonic Youth knockoffs like “Virtual Heck.” Critic Steve
Nelson gives the France props for not taking themselves too
seriously, but I think that this may be their problem; they don’t
take themselves seriously enough. This is, after all, a band
that recorded an album of Frank Zappa songs that they had
never heard, relying on tablature found online. Don’t get me
wrong, I’m not at all against having fun with music, but sitting
through a ten-minute bass loop waiting for the singer to say
some cryptic line about God hanging out with Shaq (two of
my favorite people, incidentally) is not my idea of a good time.
There is a blaring diamond in the rough, though. “That Don’t
Work That Well For Us” is an almost perfect three-minute
pop song, acoustic guitars lightly strummed over a sampled
backbeat, voices lightly chanting in perfect harmony. Here the
normally lazy band seems tight, focused, emotional. There is
not a hint of irony or immaturity present. Instead, we are given
a glimpse of the greatness The France are capable of. This may
be the reason that iTunes was invented. —Marty Garner
Since 1994, Chicago’s Sea
and Cake has released
seven thoughtful albums with
exactly ten songs each, and
several of those albums, such
as The Fawn and their self-titled debut, belong way up there
in the indie rock canon. They’re breezy and pleasing, good
for studying to or as hummable background music, but also
intricate enough to be challenging. Each one is reliably wellwritten
and tasteful—including the new album, Everybody.
However, as the band’s career as gone on its music has evolved
from a jangly rock this side of R.E.M., Velvet Underground, and
Stereolab into something weightless that threatens to fl oat off
into the clouds. My wife calls the Sea and Cake the “indie rock
Steely Dan,” and (sorry to my next-door neighbor who was
gushing about Donald Fagen during Jazz Fest) it’s not meant in
a complementary way. Listening to Everybody, I’m more and
more inclined to agree. The Sea and Cake increasingly has
a tendency to come off like jazzy soft rock…slick, anodyne,
and maybe a little too arty for their own good. Everybody is
like an affable but boring chance reunion with a former coworker
in a grocery store. I think the band’s in a rut. Seen live,
the Sea and Cake can have more heft, and some songs show
promise. The tail end of “Introducing” segues into a groove
with a touch of white-boy funk. “Exact to Me” is my favorite,
with a great guitar lick and tight rhythm that seems lifted from
a ’70s Afrobeat jam. I shouldn’t criticize too much. The four
gentlemen of Sea and Cake seem like such nice boys, and they
do play together so nicely. But the album never really lets
loose, nor does it want to—maybe for their next album, they
should write eleven songs. —Henry Alpert
Before its release, Volta was
being touted as Bjork’s
return to her accessible dance
roots, a la Post. Instead, Volta
tries to meld her older work’s
vitality with her more avant-garde records, a melding that works
at times and falters at others. Half of the record embodies an
energy that her icy early-aught’s work all but abandoned—a
sound boiling with layer upon layer of percussion, brass and
computer throb. Album opener “Earth Intruders,” one of two
tracks co-produced by Timbaland, is a programmed tribal thump
that successfully turns what could have been a Pro-Tools mashup
into an organic, fun track. “Declare Independence” is Bjork’s
most immediate and confrontational track since, well, ever. It
MUSIC REVIEWS SPONSORED BY THE OFFICIAL RECORD STORE OF ANTIGRAVITY
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_21

REVIEWS
music
builds on a deep analog bass buzz until massive break beats are
pounding alongside Bjork’s shouts of “Declare independence!”
Unfortunately, the entire record can’t keep up the pace. The
middle tracks all suffer from a lack of energy and, placed
together, they create a meandering, hollow midsection to the
record. “Vertebrae by Vertebrae” uses subdued, hissing pulses
and martial drums to set a tense tone, but sandwiched between
other muted tracks its power is diluted. Songs like “I See Who
You Are,” with its subtle bloops and bleeps and ethereal horns,
feel almost undercooked—simply minimalism in a record
flaunting excess and catchy magnetism. This schizophrenia
creates a rift in the album and keeps it from ever truly taking
shape. Only album standout “Wanderlust” manages to bridge
the two sides—a slow brass and strings jaunt that builds piece
after piece until it’s overflowing with laptop beats and looming
bass swells. Despite its weaker moments, Volta remains a strong
record and is a disappointment only because Bjork has set her
own bar so high. —Mike Rodgers
Bill Callahan’s Woke on a
Whaleheart begins on a
strong conversational note, with
“From the Rivers to the Ocean”
serving as a remembrance of
life before the protagonist’s current lover came along. Callahan’s
sound can be characterized as a blend of country and modified
surf, though this blend is not rendered consistently on the rest of
the album. The confessional style Callahan employs via his vocals
is certainly intimate and, in that sense, brave, but his confessions
are often not particularly significant. There’s a more intangible
quality to his music, one that is alternately complemented and
detracted from by pounding drum beats and twangy guitars.
The lyrics hint at themes like ambivalence over that same
lover, as in “Night,” but specifics are so sparse that they could
be referring to anything or nothing, in stark contrast to the
storybook nature of “From the Rivers…” Simplicity veers into
simpleton status on “Sycamore,” which is kind of, well, hokey.
There are some fine, layered melodic arrangements in spots, such
as on the aforementioned “Night” and the final track, but overall,
his writing here is not very compelling; Whaleheart radiates more
of an adult contemporary vibe than anything else. Certainly,
Callahan’s style is much more traditional than experimental, and
in his more evocative moments one can tell he was influenced by
both Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, but these glimpses are few and
far between. —Lisa Haviland
Nick Cave records have
become an institution.
He’s been at it for over
twenty years and you pretty
much know what to expect:
verbose prose that describes all manner of killers, queers, and
lovers torn asunder over lavish arrangements. Grinderman is a
reaction to those expectations—it’s a stripped down, wornraw
version of a Bad Seeds record that returns much of the
punch that band’s lost over the years. The music is bluesbased
fuzz that’s aggressive, dirty and at times both beautiful
and obscene. Grinderman is laid bare here, with extraneous
instrumentation left behind in favor of guitar skronk, thick
bass plucks and a rough organ screech. “Honey Bee (Let’s
Fly to Mars)” is a boiling punk scrap-job—bits of naked keys
and screaming guitar pieced together and ran at break-neck
speed. “No Pussy Blues” is all buildup, with high-tension
bass strings and hi-hat hits that hang like the eye of a storm
until whirling, white noise guitars crash down like hurricane
winds. Even when the band calms down a bit, as on “When
My Love Comes Down,” the menace of impending violence
hangs heavy in the dissonant squall of noise. Even Cave’s
vocals seem energized, dropping the croon of the past ten
years for a grin and a snarl. Obviously feeling constrained
by the trappings of his Bad Seeds, Nick Cave has skinned
his fatty layers and stands a leaner beast. Grinderman is a
powerful record, a reinvigorated musical force and a grizzled
piece of rock music. —Mike Rodgers
Now That’s What I Call
Arajay is spoof—a
satirical take on musical and
cultural clichés that is, by
and large, well-crafted in its own right. Lil’ Jon’s “skeet skeet
skeet” comes to mind when “Spraying Semen on Stuff,” the
album’s fun-spirited, porno dance track, kicks in. Now That’s…
is diverse and effectively arranged, offering a postmodern
critique of sorts on genres ranging from mainstream rap to
pop to electronic, with Arajay, who dubs himself “David Alan
Greir-ical” at the top of the album, working in references
to Andy Capp, Eazy E. and the Audubon Zoo within one
verse on “Born to be Mild.” Comparisons to Weird Al are
inevitable, but Arajay’s electropop is tightly programmed with
enough effects and bells and whistles to be interesting without
becoming distracting. His raps are old-school in that they tell
extended stories, albeit with the narrative steeped more in
geekdom—actual and tongue-in-cheek--than hardcore. The
mix becomes a bit repetitive in spots, such as on “Orange” (I
like the post-Katrina version better, yo), relying too heavily on
vocals, which could be fuller on the less overtly witty tracks.
Still, this is some fun, legit shit, an anomaly on the too-often
humorless New Orleans music scene. —Lisa Haviland
JUNE SHOWS
6/9: Scarlet Speedster, Suicide
Assyst, w/ special appear
ances by Daisy Berkowitz
and Ego Likeness, 10pm
6/3 & 6/17: Love Lyricist
Lounge - Instrumental
Hip Hop, 10pm
6/10 & 6/24: Noxious Noize
w/ DJ Christion, 10pm
6/18: Chant, Suicide Assyst, 11pm
6/29: Guacos, Die Rotzz,
The Black Rose Band, 10pm
6/30: Creatures of Crystal Lake
Tour w/ Freak 13, First
Jason, The Pallbearers
22_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

EVENTS
NEW ORLEANS
45 Tchoup, 4529 Tchoupitoulas (504) 891-9066
The Big Top, 1638 Clio St., (504) 569-2700, www.3ringcircusproductions.com
Cafe Brasil, 2100 Chartres St., (504) 947-9386
Carrollton Station, 8140 Willow St., (504) 865-9190,
www.carrolltonstation.com
Checkpoint Charlie’s, 501 Esplanade Ave., (504) 947-0979
Chickie Wah Wah, 2828 Canal Street (504) 304-4714,
www.chickiewahwah.com
Circle Bar, 1032 St. Charles Ave., (504) 588-2616, www.circlebar.net
Club 300, 300 Decatur Street, www.neworleansjazzbistro.com
Coach’s Haus, 616 N. Solomon
D.B.A., 618 Frenchmen St., (504) 942-373, www.drinkgoodstuff.com/no
Eldon’s House, 3055 Royal Street, arlovanderbel@hotmail.com
Dragon’s Den, 435 Esplanade (504) 949-1750,
www.myspace.com/dragonsdennola
Fuel Coffee House, 4807 Magazine St. (504) 895-5757
Goldmine Saloon, 701 Dauphine St., (504) 586-0745,
www.goldminesaloon.net
The Green Space, 2831 Marais Street (504) 945-0240,
www.thegreenproject.org
The High Ground, 3612 Hessmer Ave., Metairie, (504) 525-0377,
www.thehighgroundvenue.com
Hi-Ho Lounge, 2239 St. Claude Ave. (504) 945-4446,
www.myspace.com/hiholounge
House Of Blues / The Parish, 225 Decatur, (504)310-4999,
www.hob.com/neworleans
The Howlin’ Wolf, 907 S. Peters, (504) 522-WOLF, www.thehowlinwolf.com
Kajun’s Pub, 2256 St. Claude Avenue (504) 947-3735,
www.myspace.com/123332278
Le Bon Temps Roule, 4801 Magazine St., (504) 895-8117
Maple Leaf, 8316 Oak St., (504) 866-9359
Marlene’s Place, 3715 Tchoupitoulas, (504) 897-3415,
www.myspace.com/marlenesplace
One Eyed Jacks, 615 Toulouse St., (504) 569-8361, www.oneeyedjacks.net
Pravda, 1113 Decatur St.
Republic, 828 S. Peters St., (504) 528-8282, www.republicnola.com
Rusty Nail, 1100 Constance Street (504) 525-5515, www.therustynail.org/
Tarantula Arms, 209 Decatur Street (504) 525-5525,
www.myspace.com/tarantulaarms
Tipitina’s, (Uptown) 501 Napoleon Ave., (504) 895-8477
(Downtown) 233 N. Peters, www.tipitinas.com
Zydeco, 808 Iberville St.,
BATON ROUGE
Chelsea’s Café, 2857 Perkins Rd., (225) 387-3679, www.chelseascafe.com
The Darkroom, 10450 Florida Blvd., (225) 274-1111,
www.darkroombatonrouge.com
North Gate Tavern, 136 W. Chimes St. (225)346-6784,
www.northgatetavern.com
Red Star Bar, 222 Laurel St., (225) 346-8454, www.redstarbar.com
Rotolos, 1125 Bob Pettit Blvd. (225) 761-1999,
www.myspace.com/rotolosallages
The Spanish Moon, 1109 Highland Rd., (225) 383-MOON,
www.thespanishmoon.com
The Varsity, 3353 Highland Rd., (225)383-7018, www.varsitytheatre.com
Friday, 6/1
DJs Kristen, Pasta, Bateman, Andy
of Team Hardhat vs. Team Tanktop
DJs, Circle Bar, 10pm
Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, House Of Blues
Lifesavas, Strange Fruit Project, The Parish @
House Of Blues
New Orleans Klezmer All Stars, Dragon’s
Den
Morning 40 Federation, the Way-
High Men, Hi Ho Lounge, 10pm
Cities Killed Starlight, Zama Para, Zydeco,
10pm
The Ready Teddy Shows, Tarantula Arms,
10pm
Octastival ’07 w/ the Fantastic
Ooze, the Bally Who?, the City Life,
the Tomatoes, One Eyed Jacks, 9pm
Hot Club of New Orleans, d.b.a., 6pm
Grayson Capps, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Saturday, 6/2
Gravity A, J Wail, Dragon’s Den
Red Lipstick Letter, Batchburner, Hi Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Aggro-Fate, Throughwhatwas, Imperial,
Benison, High Ground, 7pm, $7
Octastival ’07 w/ the Gubanatorial
Candidates, the Public, the Fantastic Ooze,
James Hall, One Eyed Jacks, 9pm
Mice Parade, Tom Brosseau, Spanish
Moon, 10pm
The Pallbearers, Black Market Halos, Zydeco,
10pm
The Garden District, Break or Burn,
Tarantula Arms, 10pm
John Boutte’, d.b.a., 7pm
Sunday, 6/3
The Omega Project, Dragon’s Den
Fluer de Tease Burlesque, One Eyed Jacks,
8pm, 10pm
State Radio, House Of Blues
N.O. Love Lyricist Lounge, Hi Ho Lounge, 9pm
Linnzi Zaorski, d.b.a., 6pm
Washboard Chaz Blues Trio, d.b.a., 10pm
Monday, 6/4
Hamid Drake, Rob Wagner, Nobu
Ozaki, Dragon’s Den, 10pm
Monty Are I, New Atlantic, the Audition, the
Graduate, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Blue Grass Pickin’ Party, Hi Ho Lounge, 8pm
Hex, Hi Ho Lounge, 11pm
The Jeff Guitar Nelson Band, Tarantula Arms, 9pm
Bob French and Friends, d.b.a., 9pm, $10
Tuesday, 6/5
Jealous Monk, Doomsday Device, Dragon’s
Den
N.O. Rhythm Conspiracy, Hi Ho Lounge, 8pm
Karaoke Tuesday, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Johnny Vidacovich Duo, d.b.a., 10pm
Wednesday, 6/6
Dancehall Classics w/ DJ T-Roy, Dragon’s Den
Alias, Buck 65, Buddy Wakefield, Sage
Francis, House Of Blues
The Banner, Across Five Aprils, Phantom
Communique, Bela Kiss, High Ground, 7pm, $8
Open Mic Comedy, hosted by Wild Bill
Dykes, Howlin’ Wolf, 10pm
Hip-Hop Wednesday w/ DJ Real, Tarantula
Arms, 10pm
Walter Wolfman Washington and the
Roadmasters, d.b.a., 10pm
Thursday, 6/7
The Bombshelter w/ DJ Bomshell Boogie,
Dragon’s Den
Peppermint Pony, Quintron and Miss
Pussycat, Black Wizardz, Rhodes!!, Dirty
Circuit, Count Jeremy, TOFUIK, Harahan
Playground, 3:30pm, FREE
Simply Play Presents: Laugh Out Loud
Comedy Night, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Flip-Side w/ DJ Pasta, Tarantula Arms, 11pm
Fast Times ‘80s Dance Night, One Eyed Jacks
Paul Sanchez, d.b.a., 7pm
Clint Maedgen, d.b.a., 11pm
Friday, 6/8
Dan Deacon, Video Hippos, DD/
MM/YY, Peppermint Pony, Sewn
Leather, Green Space, $7pm, $5
My Graveyard Jaw, N.O.madic Belly Dancers,
Dragon’s Den
Rocky Mountain Rhythm Bums, Zydeco,
10pm
Honky, The Way-High Men, Code Duello,
Spanish Moon
Antenna Inn, Big Blue Marble, One Eyed Jacks
DJ Soul Sister Presents: Sound Clash, Big Top, 9pm
Gradoux, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Ingrid Lucia, d.b.a., 6pm
Brian Seeger and the Gentilly Groove
Masters, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Saturday, 6/9
Chuck Perkins’ Down South Revue, Dragon’s Den
Scarlet Speedster, Suicide Assyst, Hi Ho
Lounge, 10pm
Lazy K, Howlin’ Wolf, 10pm
Soilent Green, Southern Whiskey Rebellion,
In Tomorrow’s Shadow, One Eyed Jacks, 9pm
Dan Deacon, Video Hippos, Spanish
Moon, 10pm
Luke Starkiller, Rising Sun, Zydeco, 10pm,
10pm, FREE
Amanda Walker, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
John Boutte’, d.b.a., 7pm
Otra, d.b.a.,, 11pm, $5
Sunday, 6/10
Crescent City Craft Market, Big Top, FREE
Skychild, Dragon’s Den
At All Cost, One Dead Three Wounded,
xBishopx, the Red Baron, Sinking, Bite the
Curb, Pay it Forward, High Ground, 7pm,
$10
Noxious Noize, Christion, Hi Ho Lounge
Spooky LaStrange and Her Billion-Dollar
Baby Dolls, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Vietnam, Greg Ashley, One Eyed
Jacks
Linnzi Zaorski, d.b.a., 6pm
Monday, 6/11
Ratzinger, Poor Boys, Dragon’s Den
The Red Chord, Through the Eyes of
the Dead, Despised Icon, See You Next
Thursday, All Shall Perish, High Ground, 7pm,
$12
Blue Grass Pickin’ Party, Hi Ho Lounge, 8pm
The Jeff Guitar Nelson Band, Tarantula Arms,
9pm
Bob French and Friends, d.b.a., 9pm, $10
Tuesday, 6/12
Ratty Scurvics and the Invisible
Gambling Jews, Go Motion,
Dragon’s Den
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_23

EVENTS
The Click Five, The Parish @ House Of Blues
N.O. Rhythm Conspiracy, Hi Ho Lounge, 9pm
Karaoke Tuesday, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Johnny Vidacovich Duo, d.b.a., 10pm
Wednesday, 6/13
Imperative Reaction, VNV Nation, House Of
Blues
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, the
Cobbs, Republic
Manu Chao, Tipitina’s (Uptown)
Dancehall Classics w/ DJ T-Roy, Dragon’s Den
Kill the Ego, Bones, Hi Ho Lounge,
10pm
Open Mic Comedy, hosted by Wild Bill
Dykes, Howlin’ Wolf, 10pm
Maserati, Fred Weaver, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Hip-Hop Wednesday w/ DJ Real, Tarantula
Arms, 10pm
Walter Wolfman Washington and the
Roadmasters, d.b.a., 10pm
Thursday, 6/14
The Bombshelter w/ DJ Bomshell Boogie,
Dragon’s Den
Simple Play Presents: Laugh Out Loud
Comedy Night, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Flip-Side w/ DJ Pasta, Tarantula Arms, 11pm
Fast Times ‘80s Dance Night, One Eyed Jacks
Paul Sanchez, d.b.a., 7pm
Joe Krown Organ Combo, d.b.a., 11pm
Friday, 6/15
ANTIGRAVITY’s 3rd Anniversary
w/ Metronome the City, One Man
Machine, Big Baby, the White Bitch,
One Eyed Jacks
Skinny Puppy, House Of Blues
Marcia Ball, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Midevil Party Nite f/ the Buoyant Sea,
Dragon’s Den, 9pm, $5
Egypt Central, Pandemic, Visions, Point of
Reason, Howlin’ Wolf, 10pm
Dirty Rotten Shame, Life Without Elvis,
Zydeco, 10pm
Action Action Reaction (Indie-Rock
Dance Party), Pravda
Kitty Lynn, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Hot Club of New Orleans, d.b.a., 6pm
Mem Shannon and the Membership, d.b.a.,
10pm, $5
Saturday, 6/16
Johnny Woodstock and Friends, Double Plus
Good, Dragon’s Den
The TA-TA Destroyers, U.S.A.D., Roseline,
Johnny on Coke, Zydeco, 10pm
Colour Revolt, Spanish Moon
The Sight Within, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
John Boutte’, d.b.a., 7pm
Steven Walker’s Funk and Horns, d.b.a., 11pm,
$5
JULY 10 - BATON ROUGE RIVER CENTER
TICKETS ON SALE NOW AT • ticketmaster.com
• All Ticketmaster Locations • River Center Box Office
• Charge By Phone At 225.761.8400
: A N O T H E R B E A V E R P R O D U C T I O N :
24_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

EVENTS
Sunday, 6/17
Les Claypool, Two Gallants, House Of Blues
Gasoline Heart, Panic Division, The Parish @
House Of Blues
The Places, Miss Amy Annele, Dragon’s Den
Monday, 6/18
Some Dancing Skeletons, Dragon’s Den
Chant, Suicide Assyst, Hi Ho Lounge
Tower of Power, House Of Blues
400 Blows, Mouth of the Architect, Unsane,
Spanish Moon
The Jeff Guitar Nelson Band, Tarantula Arms,
9pm
Bob French and Friends, d.b.a., 9pm, $10
Tuesday, 6/19
St. Vitus Trance, Sista Otis, Dragon’s Den
Hawthorne Heights, House Of Blues
The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello), Dustin
Kensrue, The Parish @ House Of Blues
Karaoke Tuesday, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Johnny Vidacovich Duo, d.b.a., 10pm
Wednesday, 6/20
Dancehall Classics w/ DJ T-Roy, Dragon’s Den
Suzanne Thorpe, Hi Ho Lounge
Joan Armatrading, House Of Blues
Hip-Hop w/ DJ Real, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Walter Wolfman Washington and the
Roadmasters, d.b.a., 10pm
Thursday, 6/21
The Bombshelter w/ DJ Bombshell Boogie,
Dragon’s Den
He is Legend, Maylene and the Sons of
Disaster, Modern Life is War, House of
Fools, High Ground, 7pm, $12
Tesla, House Of Blues
The Rosebuds, Chelsea’s, 7pm
Simple Play Presents: Laugh Out Loud
Comedy Night, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Flip-Side w/ DJ Pasta, Tarantula Arms, 11pm
Fast Times ‘80s Dance Night, One Eyed Jacks
Paul Sanchez, d.b.a., 7pm
Palmetto Bug Stompers, d.b.a., 11pm
Friday, 6/22
Shadow Gallery, Dragon’s Den
DJ Jubilee, Howlin’ Wolf, 10pm
Candlebox, Cinder Road, House Of Blues
Battles, Spanish Moon, 10pm
Lucid, Seiver’s Drive, Zydeco, 10pm
Zosimus, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Ingrid Lucia, d.b.a., 6pm
Good Enough for Good Times f/ Mercurio
and Raines of Galactic, d.b.a., 10pm, $5
Saturday, 6/23
Southern Hostility, Requiem, Sick of Silence,
Chickie Wah Wah
Section 8 Hip-Hop Extravaganza, Dragon’s
Den, 11pm, $4
Frank Booth, Keychain Piston, Hi Ho Lounge,
10pm
U.S. Air Guitar Championships, House Of
Blues
Gang Gang Dance, Spanish Moon
N.O. Highrise, Sustenance, Smuteye, Zydeco,
10pm
Junior League, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
John Boutte’, d.b.a., 7pm
The Iguanas, d.b.a., 11pm, $10
Sunday, 6/24
Ingrid Lucia, Dragon’s Den
Drop Dead Gorgeous, the Devil Wears
Prada, Dance Gavin Dance, the Throne of
Judgement, High Ground, 7pm, $12
Spooky LaStrange and Her Billion-Dollar
Baby Dolls, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Linnzi Zaorski, d.b.a., 6pm
Schatzy, d.b.a., 10pm
Monday, 6/25
Fucked Up, Chopsley, We Need to Talk,
Dragon’s Den, 7pm, $5
2.1.3., the Low Budgets, Dragon’s Den
The Jeff Guitar Nelson Band, Tarantula Arms,
9pm
Stand-Up NOLA Presents: Tom Rhodes, One
Eyed Jacks
Bob French and Friends, d.b.a., 9pm, $10
Tuesday, 6/26
The Polyphonic Spree, House Of Blues
Big Business (f/ members of the Melvins and
Ill Whiskey), Spanish Moon
Karaoke Tuesday, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Johnny Vidacovich Duo, d.b.a., 10pm
Wednesday, 6/27
Dancehall Classics w/ DJ T-Roy, Dragon’s Den
N.O.N.M.E., Big Top, 7pm
Hip-Hop w/ DJ Real, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Walter Wolfman Washington and the
Roadmasters, d.b.a., 10pm
Thursday, 6/28
The Bombshelter w/ DJ Bomshell Boogie,
Dragon’s Den
Pretty Boy Thorson and the Falling Angels,
Hi Ho Lounge, 10pm
Simple Play Presents: Laugh Out Loud
Comedy Night, Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Flip-Side w/ DJ Pasta, Tarantula Arms, 11pm
Fast Times ‘80s Dance Night, One Eyed Jacks
Paul Sanchez, d.b.a., 7pm
Scott Albert Thompson, d.b.a., 11pm
Friday, 6/29
Soul Rebels, Dragon’s Den
Voxtrot, Spanish Moon, 10pm
The Garden District w/ special guests,
Zydeco, 10pm
Action Action Reaction (Indie-Rock
Dance Party), Pravda
Lotto Ball Show, Ratty Scurvics Singularity,
the Microshards, One Eyed Jacks
Hot Club of New Orleans, d.b.a., 6pm
John Mooney, d.b.a., 10pm, $10
Saturday, 6/30
The Gong Show, Dragon’s Den
Worn Again Recycled Fashion Benefit, Green
Space
The Police, Fiction Plane, New Orleans Arena
Acute, Jesse Malin, the Wildbirds, The Parish
@ House Of Blues
Creatures of Crystal Lake, Freak 13 f/ the
1st Jason, Pallbearers, Hi Ho Lounge, 10pm
Get Your Guns, Arcane Theory, By His
Blood, In Fear of the Fall, High Ground, 7pm,
$7
Greater Than Pi, Not All There Band,
Zydeco, 10pm
Doc Otis and the Junker Jazz All-Stars,
Tarantula Arms, 10pm
Papa Grows Funk, d.b.a., 11pm, $10
antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative_25

COMICS
26_antigravity: your new orleans music and culture alternative

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