Saturday, July 25, 2009



My friend K and I are trying to not take New Orleans’ fantastic music scene quite so for granted. I don’t have the stamina I once did to go out late to see music, especially not on a work night. We took advantage of Tipitina’s Free Fridays a couple of weeks ago and saw a great show with Soul Rebels and DJ Soul Sister. Even though the place was packed, we scored a great spot upstairs. Last night, we ventured to d.b.a. It’s been a while since I’ve hung out on Frenchmen Street. It was hopping last night. I was pretty surprised for such a crowd on a night in July, but what do I know?

Lost Bayou Ramblers were playing. A great young Cajun band out of the Lafayette area (a.k.a. “Cajun Country”). K and I had the pleasure of discovering these guys at the Creole Tomato/Cajun Zydeco/Seafood Festival back in June. It was a blistering hot Saturday afternoon. We walked around for a while, had lunch but it was just too hot, so we parked ourselves in Café Angeli and had some cocktails. Once we had cooled down and had a nice buzz we wandered back to the music stage to catch the end of Sunpie and the Louisiana Sunspots set. After Sunpie, the Ramblers came on.

About half way through their set, the power went out. This did not deter them in the least. The bassist unplugged himself and jumped off the stage into the crowd. The rest of the guys followed suit with the drummer grabbing his snare from his drum kit.

They moved over to stand on some steps near by and the crowd followed them, clapping keeping time. Sunpie had been dancing in the crowd when this all happened. He rushed off to grab his accordion and joined in. I don't know if the techs got the power back on, but nobody cared. It was one of those magical musical moments.


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