Lessons and highlights from the first weekend JF 2012

Lesson No. 1: Shoes. Don't wear shoes with a rough strap on the heel the first day. If you get a blister, which I did, you will not want to wear anything but flip-flops for several days. This makes the $80 Keens, which you bought specifically for trundling from stage to stage, of no use.

Lesson No. 2.  Water. Don't think you can stand at the front of a packed stage with no way out, aka no way to get water, for hours at a time. I abandoned my favorite musician's performance (Trombone Shorty) before it was over because I stood during the hottest part of the day in the hottest city in the United States of American for an hour waiting for him. Then I stood for another watching him. I don't sweat. I am short. There was no air where I was. I made it to the hospitality tent where I spent a full hour rubbing my skin down with ice. That is how long it took for my body temperature to come down. That is not good. I very likely had heat exhaustion, which could have been worse. For real.

Apparition in left corner is me, trying to get
cool in front of one of those fans that blow water.

Lesson No. 3. Tickets. Seven days of individual tickets to JF are about $370. Meanwhile, for another $80, you can buy a brass pass that not only gets you into every day at JF, but part of the money goes to support the local non-profit music station, WWOZ. AND  you and a guest (Thank you, Susan!!!) get into the very necessary, survival-of-the-fittest hospitality tent where you get to eat from endless bowls of fresh Louisiana fruit, drink as much ice water and iced cafe au lait as you can hold, go to clean portalettes and sit in front of fans that blow water. (See above.)

Lesson No. 4 Erase your preconceived notions about New Orleans festivals. It occurs to me that somebody who has never been to Jazz Festival might think it's a drunken crowd fest and if you're not into a drunken crowd fest, you might not even attempt JF. First of all, not everybody who goes to New Orleans is drunk. In fact, I don't think of JF as a place to get drunk. I have been known to put a little vodka in the rose mint tea they sell out there. And back in the day, I could put away the wine. But it's just not a thing. Eating, listening to music, wearing cute clothes-- that's all JF. Not alcohol necessarily.

Lesson No. 5  How, what and when do you manage so many performers? The festival is at a racetrack that is acres and acres, I think 300.   Here is a map.There are four main stages at the festival, four large huge mega tents and several smaller stages, including some inside the racetrack facility. IF you wanna see the most mega mega performers, like Jimmy Buffett, Bruce, U2, you will see them  at a stage called Acura, which has the biggest surrounding area. I think they can pack 4.5 million people in there, and yes, you can get in the middle of a huge, huge crowd. You can also stand on the outskirts of these 4.5 million, and the music is just as good, as are the visuals on the Jumbotron. They put great speakers midway through the crowd so that the sound is awesome.

But IF you want to lie in the grass and listen to a clarinet wafting across the fairgrounds, you can do that too at the Economy Hall tent where the traditional jazz, a la Pete Fountain is lilting on the wind. There is everything in between, as far as music goes, and large, small and non-existent crowds. There are large open grassy spaces.  And shade sometimes.

HIGHLIGHTS

OK, so there were, as I see it, three highlights of JF first weekend. I saw Trombone Shorty, Janelle Monae, Iron and Wine, Bon Iver, Al Green, Pete Fountain, Carolina Chocolate Drops, a little bit of gospel, a little bit of Egyptian music, Rebirth Brass Band, jazz salsa.

But the winners are:
Second runner up: Beach Boys. Who'd a thought? Singing "California Girls" with a multi-age crowd at the end of my first JF day in NOLA, with blue skies above and breezes all over, around 6:30 at night is my idea of magic.

First runner-up:  Dixie Cups. One of my LEAST fav JF moments is going to see an hour's performance by a performer who was made famous by ONE song. All I want to see is THAT ONE SONG, thank you. The Dixie Cups performed just their two hits, thank you, at the end of a tribute to their producer, who died in the past several months. They handed out big pieces of tissue to the crowd of 5,000 so we could second-line NOLA style and wave them, then proceeded to sing Goin to the Chapel and Iko Iko, the two songs that made the Dixie Cups famous and the two songs there are among my favorite dance songs ever. The entire crowd was up on its feet with their tissues. I got still photos and video, such as it is, and Susan and I kept making eye contact in tears. It was a moment, I tell you.

And the winner is: Bruce. So I never know what to think about Bruce Springsteen when I am not seeing him in concert. I am not from New Jersey. His voice always sounds a little cigarette-y to me, like he's been sitting in a bar all night drinking Jack Daniels and yelling about the Confederate flag and Harleys. He seems like a man's man. Meanwhile, I have seen him five or six times and EVERY TIME I SEE HIM, he gets into my heart. He is a poet for the common man. And he is humble. Somebody once told me  he gets pre-performance jitters every time he performs.

Here's the deal-maker, though: He loves New Orleans. He was here in 2006 for the first JF post=Katrina. New Orleans was raw. The fairgrounds were beat to hell by the storm. He sang some songs and said some things about New Orleans, about the downtrodden, about the government's lack of response, that brought the crowd to tears and hope in one fell swoop. NOLA felt vindicated, affirmed, seen. This year was the same as he galvanized a mammoth crowd in a three-hour -- unheard of -- concert. One of the best moments was as he was singing a slow, mournful rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" when he took a poster from somebody in the crowd that said "New Orleans loves Clarence." He held it to his chest and stood, silent, for a long minute. The crowd did, too. Unheard of:  a three-hour performance by anybody at the JF. And silence at the JF.