As the Band Begins to Play

My neighbourhood is funky. My neighbourhood is diverse. My neighbourhood isn’t cheap to live in. In a city that is a pulsating testimonial to the underworld existence of the musician, I live a block from arguably the greatest concentration of live music in town, Frenchmen Street in the Faubourg-Marigny. The lure of Frenchmen is two and a half blocks of restaurants and music clubs with the occasional tattoo parlour thrown in should you wish to up the ante on your evening. Any night of the week I can open my double, storm-plagued doors and across a courtyard and over rooftops hear the beautiful noise from the ten men who make up the Frenchmen Street Allstar Brass Band. If I’ve ever pictured an allstar in my mind he or she was never in a wife beater, oversized jeans and slightly exposed boxer shorts. Despite a surface lack of polish, their haphazard, street corner playing is tight and orchestrated. Their numbers and certain cumbersome instruments mean they can spill off the sanctuary of the foot path onto the road. Cabs crawl through the intersection to avoid hitting tourists transfixed with curiosity; their only motion being attempts to steady drawn cameras and phones. Out of state license plates have a tendency to stop and partake in possibly the only acceptable excuse to rubber neck. For brass is king in New Orleans and lifetimes are spent mastering one instrument or multiple. The energy from the Allstar sound is contagious; evident in shuffling feet and shaking hips. Perhaps it’s the delirium from 90+⁰ heat and 73% humidity talking, but despite all this frenetic activity a peace and a calm envelops this tiny precinct considered by some to be Bourbon Street for locals.

I could be alone in my belief that an important fixture in the fabric of any neighbourhood is a good bar. But I doubt it. One block in a different direction from my humble abode is my local watering hole R Bar, aka Royal Street Tavern. Smokey with red walls and darkness, the little light there is comes from the subtle glow of an old white neon hotel sign, dim chandeliers and an oversized screen above the bar which often pays homage to bizarre cult films or just downright bad ones with Tom Cruise in them. There’s also lightning in the sky this night (from the almost every day occurring summer storm) that looks like it could make it through the doorway. The electric show doesn’t appear to bother the goats on leashes that are mingling out front, that are understandably, the subject of passer-by discussion and double taking. But beyond the barnyard animals and cheap drinks perhaps what sets this hole in the wall apart from most is Monday night. For on Monday nights from 9:00pm onward, punters can saddle up the rest-of-the-time abandoned barber’s chair, and for the bargain basement price of $10 get a haircut and a shot. Miss Laura is the bearer of the electric razor and has been in this fine establishment for about a year and a half now. For those that know me, I won’t be placing the locks of fire on the chopping block anytime soon and you’ll find it amusing that with my issues with coordination, I kick the foot rest that comes out from the bottom of the barber’s chair every time I walk in.

The loneliness and disconnect from my native merry old land of Oz is, on a bad day, near crippling. Then I think of all this. I recently heard a great story about what can happen in the throes of Mardi Gras madness. A little too much booze goes a long way, occasionally to the point where one could find oneself putting on a digestive pyrotechnics display into a complete stranger’s garbage cans. While the owner of said garbage cans watches the circus from a vantage point above. It’s not unreasonable to think the suburban sniper would be more than a little annoyed at a drunken yahoo losing his lunch and some dignity into her unassuming and otherwise dormant garbage cans. But this lady, possibly just grateful the stomach contents ended up solely in the cans and not all over her front lawn, comes downstairs with a bottle of water and a cloth Captain Vomitron can wipe his face with. That’s what it’s really like to live here. Forget the crime. Forget the poverty. Just stop, don’t be outwardly hostile to people who puke in your garbage cans…..and always listen……as the band begins to play.