The Voodoo Experience

When I was 9 years old, KISS was the only band that mattered to me. When I was 19, every girl I knew was obsessed with Jane’s Addiction. When I was 29, Eminem was forcing hip-hop into the adult circles to which I was reluctantly resigning myself. The common thread among these groups, along with being headliners at the Voodoo Experience this Halloween weekend in New Orleans’ City Park, is that they are all groups very much of their respective times. Nostalgia is a smarter marketing strategy than cultural relevance, I suppose—and you need to pack a lot of people into City Park to keep a festival this size afloat.

While jam band kings Widespread Panic and funk cosmonauts George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic operate in their own spheres that defy the times, other big-name groups on the bill, like Ween and the Flaming Lips, have adapted their own peculiar styles to festival-sized spectacles. Wolfmother, The Black Keys, Eagles of Death Metal, and Drive By Truckers all trade in variations on timeless, big-rock-show dynamics. Then there are the resurrection acts like the Pogues and the Meat Puppets that inspire that missed-them-the-first-time-around, better-see-them-while-I-can excitement.

As always, New Orleans will provide homegrown specialties with Rebirth Brass Band, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, and one of my favorite acts from Voodoos past: New Orleans Klezmer All-Stars. Our indigenous weirdness gets representation in the form of White Bitch, the R. Scully Rough 7, Ratty Scurvics, the New Orleans Bingo! Show and Baton Rouge transplants Bones.

For me it is often the less-obvious acts that give a festival its flavor. Generationals (former members of the Eames Era) have put together one of the best albums of the year, so it will be interesting to see how their smart but insular pop translates to a bigger stage. Spoon pulled it off in festivals past, so why not them? Alejandro Escovedo is one of the rare singer-songwriters who gets sharper with age and can captivate a crowd with one look. Janelle Monae brings a markedly dramatic, intellectual slant to the current state of R&B. New Orleans hip-hop duo The Knux incorporate a rock crunch into their infectious rhymes, reminiscent of the rap innovator Q-Tip, who is also slated to appear. Mix those acts in with the stellar quality of New Orleans festival food and the opportunity to see the full range of KISS-style makeup jobs, and the Voodoo Experience should offer something tempting for just about everybody. thevoodooexperience.com