As squeaky-clean as he looked (speaking of the parts that weren’t concealed in Gothic get-up) he still managed to give us hardened, cynical, Post-Summer of Love, Hippies a pretty good case of the willies.Īll the way from just outside New Orleans to King’s City, California, where we bid him adieu (whew),we would exchange glances with unspoken messages, looking in the rear view mirror, wondering if the guy is for real, wondering if we had stumbled into a real life horror movie. It seems he was returning to Ventura after his pilgrimage to the grave of The Voodoo Queen, Marie LaVeaux had successfully concluded. This Draculoid ensemble clashed with his blonde, wholesome, Southern California good looks, giving him the appearance of a Partridge Family Aliester Crowley. He wore a long black cape with red underside, a high-collared white shirt with a pleated front, and a pendant pentagram on a red silk ribbon, black tuxedo pants, and pointy-toed black boots. There was a little nervous tittering when we pulled over and got a load at close range of what we were picking up. Our battered ‘61 Volkswagen Van was loaded with all our earthly belongings (and a significant amount of unearthly shit that didn’t take up much space) which still left plenty of room for an odd hitchhiker with only one suitcase. Oddly though, we stayed our quest long enough to pick up a strangely-dressed hitchhiker, standing at a crossroads where our interstate West intersected with a state road out of New Orleans. We were on a mission to NorCal’s freer climes. Me and two co-conspirators were fleeing a sour South Florida scene because of: various and sundry failed relationships, small town ennui, fear of being busted/drafted, you name it. That’s right, I never got closer to this musical Mecca than the very outskirts of town. Unfortunately, my closest brush with “The Big Easy” had nothing to do with musical magic. Doe, Tab Benoit, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and that’s a real short list. John, Alan Toussaint, Jesse Hill, Lee Dorsey, Irma Thomas, Sonny Landreth, Ernie K. Professor Longhair, Dave Bartholomew, Fats Domino, Clifton Chenier, Beau Jacques, The Meters, Nevilles, Dr. Something to do with the triplet structure or the syncopated rhythms seems to fit right to the beat of my biological clock.Īs soon as Shirley and Lee beckoned me to “C’mon Baby, Let the Good Times Roll” and Huey “Piano” Smith gave me “Rockin’ Pneumonia and Boogie-Woogie Flu”, I knew I’d had a gateway musical experience which would lead to a habit I’ll never be able to kick. I apologize in advance in case it happens to bubble to the surface, usually in the form of some sort of nervous rhythmic outburst. The internal soundtrack that backs up all these serio-comic thoughts that you are reading as we speak is entirely “mos scotious” music from that neck of the woods. If you could see inside my brain with the little guys in axon and dendrite costumes conducting happy impulses up and down my cerebral corridors, if you could just look on the walls…there, see the speakers. I have been possessed body and soul by the spirit of New Orleans as embodied in their music, and I mean all of it: traditional jazz, cajun, zydeco, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, country, or any combination of the above.
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