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2007 Voodoo Music Experience

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I skipped out on the Friday installment (the general consensus was that Rage Against the Machine was off the chain) of the Voodoo Music Experience so I could hit it Saturday and Sunday with both barrels, and here is how it went down:

Overall, I found the festival to be remarkably well organized, running on time and successfully getting you from one stage to the next and offering all the festival amenities we here in the land of festivals expect. You can find both fried alligator and a port-o-potty without too long of a wait.

Saturday, Oct 27:

The Zydepunks -- The first thing I wanted to see when I got on the grounds was The Bingo! Parlour spotlighting the projects surrounding Clint Maedgen of Liquidrone and The New Orleans Bingo! Show. It pleases me to no end to see a former Baton Rougean see a project to fruition and find an audience for his admittedly peculiar art. When I got there, wading through the cloud of bubbles at the gate, The Zydepunks were tearing through their mix of French and Balkan fiddle-and-accordion mayhem. I love the Zydepunks not only because they are a crack band, but they are one of the few groups that take our homegrown music and push it in new directions.

Mute Math -- I heard a new wave pulse in the distance that sounded like it might have come from my tape case in 1986, but it was just Mute Math, the New Orleans phenom band that recorded the main theme for the blockbuster Transformers movie this summer. I am skeptical about retro new-wave acts I witnessed in that scene firsthand and now how the story ends (it drove people to hair metal), but Mute Math has a lean all their own. Particularly sweet was when singer Paul Menay's grandfather joined the band on stage for the final number, staging possibly the only baritone ukulele/keytar duet in music history.

Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers -- I never miss Kermit Ruffin and neither should you. The funky man was resplendent in a lemon yellow suit, setting the whole Preservation Jazz Hall tent into a gyrating frenzy at 1 in the afternoon.

Motion City Soundtrack -- You know, the kids are all right. Motion City Soundtrack's mix of punk and pop is a little too clean and bubblegum for my tastes, but the band tore through their likeable melodies without a bit of pretension or that fake British accent I detect in a lot of their fellow bands.

Sinead O'Connor -- As I looked upon the crush of folks assembled for O'Connor from the relative comfort of the photo pit, my honest reaction was "Really? After all this time, you are all still that excited about Sinead O'Connor?" I know that's how festivals work -- big names from yesteryear that will get a wider swath of the public out, but still. I thought she was pretty exciting back in 1987, and I dug the moxie she exhibited when she tore up that picture of the Pope on SNL, but she hasn't really been on my radar at all since then. She gave an affable performance, though I must say she doesn't quite have the pipes she had back then, but it left me lukewarm.

Toubab Krewe -- A different story. Two drummers -- one of them beating on a log and a kid playing an electric kora, an elaborate African gourd harp -- transcended any jam band multi-culti hodgepodge that would sink an act like this. They have done their homework on contemporary African music, mixing South African highlife with the spectral blues of Mali's Ali Farka Toure. From a purely musical standpoint, maybe the best set I saw all festival.

Coheed and Cambria -- Remember how there used to be kid versions of the cartoons that starred teenagers and adults like The Flintstones and Scooby Doo? Coheed and Cambria remind me of a teenage offshoot of Rush -- bypassing the often too careful attention to detail that can mar their music and replacing that with hormonal zeal. I sort of love Coheed with their OTT sci-fi mythologies and larger-than-life catalog. My only complaint is that they played in the afternoon; their show would have benefited greatly by lasers and possibly a mothership hovering against the night sky.

Spoon -- Besides Wilco, Spoon was the band I'm here to see, and it's amazing to see how gracefully they have become a band as big as they are over the past couple years. Ironically they were playing on the SNL rerun when I got home, and I considered checking out their late night One Eyed Jack's performance, but I was afraid I'd never be able to listen to them again. I thought they imbibed their rather minimalist take on indie pop with enough muscle to fill a stage that large without sacrificing what makes them a good band. It'll be interesting to see where they go from here.

Smashing Pumpkins -- And so we come to the time when, once again, dinosaurs roam the earth. Like Sinead O'Connor, it's been some time since Smashing Pumpkins has really mattered to me at all, but they came on with a full sonic onslaught. Billy Corgan simultaneously engaged and alienated his audience, being the giant rock star he and many other see him as. I did not stay for the whole show, so I can't say whether his re-ascension to relevance was successful, but I did like what I heard roaring off the stage.

Sunday, Oct. 28

The New Orleans Bingo! Show -- The only thing I can really say about it is the tent was so jam-packed that I could not even squeeze in to get a photo, and almost everyone I encountered throughout the rest of the day had caught a bit of it were raving about it. Second only to Rage Against the Machine, Bingo! had the Voodoo fest hype race sewn up.

Fallout Boy -- OK, where Motion City Soundtrack had its relative successes, Fallout Boy had equivalent relative failures. I do see why Pete Wentz is a celebrity: He has the hair, the look, the pout, but the band just doesn't really have the music. I recognize when something is not "for me" and try to see through that -- I found some appreciation for My Chemical Romance at last year's fest that I thought improbable when they first took the stage -- but Fallout Boy had little more to offer than a lucrative mix of hormones and marketing for me.

Paolo Nutini -- I found this band's placement in the middle of the afternoon lineup, sandwiched between much more recognizable names a dubious decision, and the size of the crowd followed this. Nutini floats in the calm seas of pleasing music with fellow intertuber Ben Harper from the night before, but the great thing about Voodoo is its variety, and you are crazy to not have some hippie heartthrobs in there. Still, I propose a two-year moratorium on non-Jamaican reggae. Not that Scottish pop stars with sexy Italian names don't have anything to offer reggae and vice-versa, it is starting to sound like a default setting rather than a stylistic exploration.

The Black Crowes -- I have to say, The Black Crowes show was the moment where I finally felt swept up by the whole experience, where I felt like I was witnessing a serious rock show. I'm lukewarm on the Crowes on disc, but the band raged like a turbine shaking loose from its mount and Chris Robinson's Jesus Christ Rockstar persona is perfect. As I wandered away from the stage to grab something to eat before the Common show, The Black Crowes had overtaken the air at the event, sounding fantastic even at the far end of the festival grounds. When I got back they didn't show any signs of slowing down as their set careened into a perfect crescendo after the appointed hour.

Common -- Common's latest CD, Finding Forever, is in hot contention for my favorite of the year. The Chicago rapper injects his streetwise narrative with drama and pathos, and is unwilling to ever talk down to his audience, which is a refreshing trait in hip-hop. His live show was as energetic and uplifting as his records, jumping between seething indictments to booty calls to journalistic vignettes with ease, pulling a largely white audience into his world of black consciousness-raising for an hour.

Wilco -- I'm always shocked when a band I like as much as I do Wilco hits the big time. The current lineup featuring avant-garde circle heavy-hitters like guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Glenn Kotche, singer Jeff Tweedy's return to the less oblique side of his lyric, as well as some strategic commercial placements, has pushed this band on to the next level without sullying what made them a good band to begin with. Tweedy still has his dry stage humor, mentioning at one point "I'm actually scared of voodoo" and then following it up with "Uh, just for your information" when the crowd failed to pick up on it. The band, as did the sound in general at the festival, was exquisite. Their performance was air-tight while organic, causing a shock at the botched but recovered into "Casino Queen." Also, right before "Heavy Metal Drummer," Tweedy announced that this song was going out to Yuri from Mike, and soon enough, a young woman's picture with the text "Yuri, will you marry me?" appeared in the jumbo screen. I happed to be standing near the couple at the time, and can confirm that Yuri issued a resounding "Yes" and looking back on it, I issue a resounding "Yes" on the whole experience.