Essays & Road Stories  |  Postcards from the Past

A New Jersey Yankee
In King Zulu’s Court
(Book II)

“The ambiance of palm fronds, rusting grillwork, and garish pastels that tried to cover the cracked plaster and crumbling brick was ultimately the signature of [this] world – jaded, alluring in its decay, seemingly reborn daily amidst tropical flowers and Gulf rainstorms, inextricably linked to a corrupt past that we secretly admired.”
– James Lee Burke

“Well, the gig pays two hundred dollars, and you guys drank three hundred dollars worth of beer, so you owe us one hundred dollars.”
– The Blues Brothers

Los Angeles

Mardi Gras was well under way when I got the call. They were dancing in the streets of New Orleans, and I was stuck in L.A.. It had been raining all week – the sort of pathetic, fitful, noncommittal Southern California rain that, like an A&R guy or a television executive, goes on and on without ever really deciding whether it actually wants to do anything or not. I’m from the East Coast, where when it rains – it rains. Back east, if you wake up and it’s a rainy, crappy day – you know you’re in for a rainy, crappy day, so you can plan accordingly. Here in L.A., it rains in such a way that you are forever paralyzed by false hope.

The carpet in my apartment was being replaced. The furniture was stacked in the garage and I was taking phone calls on a cordless phone – outside in the rain that wasn’t quite rain. I’m not a fan of gray weather in general, but a day like this is particularly awful in Los Angeles. This town’s singular saving grace is its fabulous weather. Without it, all you’re left with is the godawful architecture and a bunch of people sitting in traffic talking to their therapist on the phone. On a rainy day, L.A. looks more like a communist-bloc industrial city than the alleged cultural mecca it is purported to be. Kind of like Minsk with palm trees.

So there I was, sullenly wishing I was in New Orleans sipping an Abita Amber in a go-cup and catching beads in a parade on St. Charles Street instead of making phone calls standing in the rain in L.A. and wondering when the carpet guys were going to give back my so-called life.
The phone rang. It was my friend Josh Katzman from the William Morris Agency, with good news: I was booked to open two sold-out Mardi Gras shows for the Neville Brothers at House of Blues in New Orleans. Could I be there in two days? Oh, and the House of Blues manager didn’t think a solo act could hold the drunken Mardi Gras audience, so could I put a band together for the show? Apparently this guy had never seen me work the Gazebo on Decatur Street with nothing between me and the drunken, moiling mass but an out-of-tune upright piano and a piece-of-shit p.a. system. That, of course, was not a subject that would be up for discussion – in cases like these, you either take ‘em as they come, or they get someone else.

“Are they paying for the flight?” I asked Josh, already knowing the answer. “Will there be enough money to cover the band? Do we have hotel rooms?”

“No, no, and no.”

“Do you know what it would cost to fly a band to New Orleans with two days notice? During Mardi Gras?!”

“Yes.”

“Where are we going to sleep? All the hotels have been sold out for months!”

“I know.”

“I can’t take a piano on the plane. Will they supply one?”

“No.”

“There’s no way I can afford to do this!”

“I know, I know. So – you’ll do the gig, right?”

“Of course.”

After the Midwest tour I’d just done with the Nevilles, I wasn’t going to miss playing with them on their home-turf in New Orleans – this would be the greatest honor of all. The tour had been a lot of hard work, but very rewarding. Opening shows for famous people is much like living in the worst house in the best neighborhood: you’re at the bottom of the top of the heap. Since 1996, Josh had booked me to open for a number of well-known acts – Boz Scaggs, Paul Rodgers, Manhattan Transfer, Average White Band, Maria Muldaur. The pay isn’t great when you’re the opening act. You’re lucky to get a soundcheck. You have to pay for your own motel room. You get the worst dressing room, if you get one at all. When I opened for Boz Scaggs, my backstage trailer was empty except for one plastic folding chair and a six-pack of Bud sitting warm and forlorn on the lumpy linoleum floor. I didn’t mind – I was just happy to be there.

When you open concerts solo, however, you can usually do it for what they’re offering and still make a profit, and the exposure is priceless. There is nothing like going out in front of five or ten thousand people who don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your music, and turning them into autograph-seeking, CD-buying fans. You have to earn that applause. The challenge keeps you on your toes.

But opening for the Neville Brothers was special. I’d done covers of their songs for years. I’d paid to see them whenever they came to Los Angeles. The opportunity to open shows for them . . . that was not just a career move. I’m a fan. I could not say no.

I called my band and made them an offer they couldn’t help but refuse. They all said no. The money was laughable, the plane fares obscene. They already had other gigs booked anyway. I called Josh back.

“You gotta find me a band down there. My guys aren’t going.”

“Whadda ya mean they’re not going? It’s the Neville Brothers!”

“You wanna pay them?”

“I’ll find you a band.”

Next I called my usually unflappable travel agent, Jimmy, who said: “You want to go where? When?” The best he could come up with, while swearing at his computer, was $650 round trip coach. I hadn’t even left yet, and I was already losing money.

“Put it on my fucking Visa,” I said.

A call-waiting signal interrupted us. It was Josh. He had contacted legendary New Orleans guitar-slinger Jumpin’ Johnny Sansone, who was a friend of a friend of his. Johnny had agreed to help me assemble a band. This was good news, indeed. If Jumpin’ Johnny couldn’t find me good players – nobody could.

The next lucky break in this scenario was that Karen already had plans to fly to New Orleans to do Mardi Gras with her best friend Suzie Kramer. Suzie and Karen have been best friends since they were both eighteen, when they met while attending college in San Diego and bonded instantly because they were the only two chicks on the beach wearing high-heels and bikinis. Suzie had moved to New Orleans a couple of years ago, and owned a big bourgeois pad in the Garden District, so my hotel dilemma was solved, at least. Karen had bought her own plane ticket months ago for $200. I called her up – she was very happy that I was going, of course – and it turned out we were booked on the same flight.

Before I called Jumpin’ Johnny, I buzzed some of the people I’d met on the Neville Brothers tour. Maybe they knew some New Orleans players. I got hold of Rocky, the stage-manager, who put me in touch with the Nevilles’ rhythm section guys. I gave them my best pitch, but they were way out of my price range. I called the lovely and talented Saya Sayito, the Neville’s keyboard player – she had bupkis. Finding decent players in New Orleans two days before Mardi Gras is like trying to find a good New Year’s Eve band on December 30. Even the guys that suck are booked. I gave up and went to bed feeling a mixture of dread and elation: everything was a mess, but goddammit, I was going to the Mardi Gras!

New Orleans

The next day I sweated through a previously scheduled all-day recording session in the Valley (Valley, as in: “Like, totally!”), got paid, fought my way home through the five o’clock Hollywood traffic, and packed. After a number of calls, I hadn’t yet located Jumpin’ Johnny. I had a shot of Jack from the fifth on the kitchen counter and a Pacifico beer from the fridge, and got myself back in touch with my New Orleans mantra: Fuck it. Whatever. My mental state now properly managed, I fled through a wet labyrinth of Los Angeles streets to Karen’s place. We closed down the night with some spectacular pre-Mardi Gras sex and a few pre-Mardi Gras shots of tequila (Patron Silver . . . Patron on a Cuervo budget was a nice metaphor for this gig I couldn’t afford).

The next morning, Karen and I continued the celebration by fortifying ourselves with more top-shelf cactus juice at the airport bar. Then we headed out. A few ear-pops later we were in a Crescent City cab, weaving around the parade routes toward Suzie’s place.

Suzie.

Suzie Kramer.

How can I describe the phenomenon that is Suzie Kramer? She looks exactly like a Barbie Doll. Impossibly perfect frame. Impossibly long mane of blonde locks hanging all the way down to an impossibly perfect ass. I don’t care if you’re a woman or a man, straight or gay, married or single, young or old: if Suzie Kramer crosses your path, you will look.

Men worship Suzie in what seems to me a most embarrassing manner. Maybe I’ve always been immune to this sort of behavior myself because since I’ve known Suzie Kramer, I’ve been in love with her best friend. Or maybe she’s not my type. Or maybe it’s that she’s every man’s type, so, being the unrepentant iconoclast that I am, I will instinctively seek something else. In any case, Suzie, who was in the throes of some awful flu death-virus, but still looking fabulous, met our cab at the curb as we pulled up in front of her place (“just look for the white house that looks like the White House”), and paid the driver.

On the way to the front door, we detoured around Suzie’s cat, Billy (the girls call him Beeely) – the world’s fattest feline – who was sitting in exactly the same position on exactly the same step where he’d been the last time I’d been here. Hadn’t moved in a year. The only difference was – he was even more obese than before. Maybe he had been eating other cats unfortunate enough to have come within his paw’s reach. That must have been what was happening, because there wasn’t enough cat food in New Orleans to explain the monstrosity that was Billy. Excuse me – Beeeeeely.

We settled our bags in the guest room and I dialed Jumpin’ Johnny. He was in! I dropped mutual names to establish rapport, and told him my predicament. He lamented on the near hopelessness of my situation, in the way that people do when they’re so relieved that it’s not their problem that they can hardly refrain from sounding a little happy about the whole thing. He said he’d see what he could do. I hung up and waited.

Karen and Suzie were sitting out on the porch reminiscing in the twilight. A sultry, sexy, warm New Orleans breeze was blowing, and the noise of parade-goers drifted towards us from St. Charles Street. It was a perfect transcendent moment of New Orleans’ laissez les bon temps roulez culture. But the Jersey-guy deep down inside of me where all the important machinery grinds away would not let me enjoy this moment with no band booked for the gig.

One hour later the phone rang. Jumpin’ Johnny had scored a drummer and a bass player who could read music (a must, if you do my gig). I was speechless and utterly thankful that he had taken the time to do this for an imperfect stranger. He gave me the digits and I called the cats. The bass player conveyed ominous weird, flakey musician vibes, but I was so happy that he was available, I didn’t care. Next I called the drummer, who came across as one of your classic, dependable, stand-up, go-the-limit, there-to-the-bitter-end, E-Street Band kind of guys. I always feel privileged to meet players like this. I am a player like this. I scheduled a rehearsal for the following day, in Suzie’s basement. We were all set. I had a band!

I finally remembered where I was: New Orleans. Sin City. The Big Easy. The City that Care Forgot.

I needed a drink.

Also, I was hungry. Eating and drinking were two things this town could take care of with much aplomb. Karen and I walked two blocks down to Magazine Street, to a little corner joint called Joey K’s that had the essentials we needed for the night:

A. Full bar.
B. Po-boys.
C. Low prices.

I ordered up an Abita Amber in a goblet so big you had to lift it with both hands, and a double shot of Jim Beam rye, and an oyster po-boy, dressed. Karen, who regretted that the place didn’t have Abita Purple Haze (it’s chick beer, and Karen is all chick), ordered wine and a shrimp po-boy. As we toasted Jumpin’ Johnny and Mardi Gras and the fact that we were lucky enough to be in this New Orleans bar together, the weight of the world lifted from my shoulders.

The next morning, we moved Suzie’s electric piano down to the basement and waited for the band. The drummer arrived on time, set up and began listening to a cassette of my tunes on his Walkman and taking notes on the charts. A real professional. Nothing to worry about here.

The bass player was another story. Forty-five minutes went by and there was no sign of the guy. As I was about to give up, he pulled up at the curb in an unhurried manner, as if he wasn’t an hour late. No apologies, no hurry to set up. Not even an attempt to come up with a lame excuse. All he had to say was that we needed to wrap this rehearsal up quickly, ‘cause he had other stuff to do that day.

New Orleans. Everybody’s late, if they show up at all. I suppose it wouldn’t be such a wonderful town if that mon-soon-come Caribbean work ethic were not such a part of the culture, but it’s a real pain in the ass when you’re trying to get something done. I cut my canines on the New York mon-soon-never-work-in-this-town-again-if-he’s-late-for-the-gig work ethic. It has always been hard for me to adjust to working in New Orleans.

We began to play, and it all came together quickly. Both guys were good players. The drummer grooved and played a mean second-line. The bass player – late or not – was burning. I was much relieved. We ran the tunes down a couple of times to get them tight, and that was pretty much it.

I love a short rehearsal – cats can either play or they can’t. I know from bitter experience that a ten-hour rehearsal won’t change that fact.

After the band left, I went out to the porch to sit with Karen and Suzie and Beeely. The sun was going down. People walked past the house toward the parades on St. Charles, with coolers in tow. Karen was itching to go catch beads. Catching beads at Mardi Gras is not a mild diversion for my girlfriend, it’s a mission. She has to choose the proper clothing, for maximum attractiveness to the male-dominated krewes who throw beads from the floats. She has to go to just the right spot along the parade route, and time it perfectly to be there for the better krewes with the highest-quality beads. Walking away with twice as many beads as any female within two hundred yards is a must.

In past years, Karen and Suzie worked the bead-catching routine as a team, easily crushing all competition on every parade route. This year Suzie’s virus was keeping her from making the scene. Karen, though attractive, was only one woman, so extra planning was required. After much putting-on and taking-off of clothes and heated discussion of the best places to stand along the parade route, we were off to the corner of St. Charles and Seventh. I, a male of average looks and below average build, was a non-entity in this scenario. That was okay with me. Karen would get more than enough beads for both of us. I’m not a passionate acquisitor in this arena. I just like observing the madness and soaking up the atmosphere.

The marching bands and floats (many with political themes, such as comparing our country’s current trajectory to the fall of the Roman Empire) came and went, and lovely Karen amassed an embarrassing amount of beads. I was impressed. She wasn’t.
“Wait ‘till tomorrow, when Bacchus comes through. I’ll really get some good ones then!”

The Gig

We awoke to a beautiful day…most of which we would squander trying to get to soundcheck. Driving in the French Quarter during Carnival is not easy. Soundcheck was scheduled for four o’clock and we left around one o’clock. This trip would normally have taken about fifteen minutes, but today we just barely made it. When we pulled up to House of Blues, a security guy was waiting to admit our car behind the barricades that keep the street clear at the curb. My old gig at the Gazebo was just a few blocks up Decatur from House of Blues, but for me, it might as well have been a million miles away.

Two guys came out to haul the piano (Suzie’s piano – good thing she had one) out of the car. We were directed to a door with a sign that said:

NO ENTRY
BAND ONLY
NO GUESTS
NO HOUSE OF BLUES EMPLOYEES

I loved that door. It seemed a reward for all my years of hard work. I knew it was really the Neville Brother’s door, but still I got to go through it. I savored the moment, and then went in.

The piano was set up quickly at stage front. The drummer was there, warming up on the house drum kit. The bass player was not there. We waited a while, then I sound checked with just the drummer. We sounded good, just the two of us. Fuck the bass player if he didn’t show. I met the stage manager, Chopper, who hooked us up with our all-access passes and meal tickets. I lamented not having a real piano for the gigs, which lead us to a conversation about a recent Fats Domino show at the club. Fats did get a real piano, and it had been his first time on a stage in years. Chopper told me Fats had come out and played the first three notes of “Blueberry Hill” and the crowd had gone so crazy you couldn’t much hear the piano after that. Man, I wished I could have been there.

After soundcheck, Karen and I ventured out in search of libation through the surging mass of drunks on Decatur Street. A couple of doors down we found a bar open to the street that had Abita Purple Haze. Karen was pleased. We had a few beers and listened to an awful set by a guy with a guitar and a drum machine. All the time, I was thinking: but for the grace of God, that could be me up there. After a while we went back to the club, had a quick reunion with the Neville Brothers’ band and crew, and repaired to our dressing room.

Ten minutes before showtime, the bass player showed up as if nothing unusual was going on. I was too relieved to be mad. The stage manager gave me the sign, and we went out and did the show.

It was a good one. The band sounded great, and Karen came out and sang some background vocals. The place was sold out and the crowd was, as we used to say in high school, digging my shit. They were surprisingly attentive for a French Quarter Mardi Gras crowd. Perhaps the $36 ticket price had kept the riffraff away. By riffraff I mean the type of person who is turning Mardi Gras into an unpleasant experience even for the most good-natured and easygoing among us. These are people usually between the ages of 18 and 23, college boys from LSU (as Randy Newman wrote, “Went in dumb, come out dumb too”) with the backward baseball cap, fifty pounds of beads around their neck, and wearing a sweatshirt with the name of their frat on it or a tee shirt that says something witty and trenchant such as “Show Me Your Tits!” or “Shut Up And Blow Me!” or some other phrase guaranteedto get you laid as long as the woman in question is deaf, blind, and illiterate. This person stumbles around the French Quarter cutting loose with loud, high-pitched utterances of “Wooo!” along with the occasional “Woo-hoo!!” Between outbursts, they yell incoherent and disparaging comments at anyone who doesn’t look exactly like them. They drink Budweiser or Miller Lite from theme cups that they got at Planet Hollywood or Hooters. This year the cups were shaped like a football with a straw in it and held the equivalent of three beers. You could drink the whole thing through the straw in ten seconds if you were in a real hurry to turn yourself into an asshole. Last time I’d been in New Orleans, a couple of these guys had accosted me about my long hair as I was walking down Bourbon Street. They hadn’t seemed to grasp the fact that I had Karen on my left arm and Suzie Kramer on my right arm, and all they had was each other.

I hope my assertion that guys like this don’t get laid much is true. The thought of them breeding makes me nervous.

Seconds after finishing the set, the bass player started hassling me about his pay, which I explained he could have as soon as I went up to the office, found the manager, filled out the W-2, and cashed the check. “Give me twenty minutes,” I said. That pissed him off, so he left with his panties in a twist and no money. The drummer, who was really happy to be there, hung out with his girlfriend in the dressing room. Karen and I shoved through the sardine-packed crowd to the CD table to move some product. From this vantage point we watched the Nevilles do their usual wonderful set, heavy on stuff from the Wild Tchapochulas record. Also Cyril’s awe-inspiring version of Bob Marley’s “One Love.”Let’s get together and feel all right, indeed. The only thorn in the side of this evening was a cataclysmically drunk guy dancing out of control in front of the CD display. We were constantly pushing him away as he was about to knock the whole table over. He never noticed. Eventually he got bounced, to our relief. At the end of the show I sold a bunch of CDs and signed some autographs. Chopper took me up to the office, where I found the manager, filled out the W-2, and cashed the check. Then Karen and I blew the scene just as I was feeling the first telltale signs of Suzie’s death-virus.

I awoke the next morning feeling like shit. Prescribed myself a dose of Advil and whiskey for breakfast, and hoped the feeling would go away.

I needed to go shopping for new shoes. The old pair had holes in them so big that vile debris from the sidewalks of the French Quarter had been slipping up inside my shoes and clinging to my socks. When it rained, my socks got wet and squished as I walked. Unacceptable. Karen and I went into town in a cab whose driver artfully dodged parade routes and talked politics the whole way. This guy wasn’t what you’d call book smart, but he was one of those rare people who had much common sense when it came to politics. If I’d known his name, I’d have given him a write-in vote for president. Of course, being such a sensible man, he’d probably rather drive a cab.

We couldn’t find any shoes worth a damn, and I was feeling worse than ever, so we headed back to Suzie’s. Karen put me in the shower and instructed me to put on nice clothes: she was going to take me out to dinner. Never one to argue with a free meal, I draped my frame in my most respectable threads, and we drifted out into the balmy, fragrant night. I had no idea where we were going. Two blocks later we were standing in front of the Commander’s Palace, one of the five or six best restaurants in America and one of the most expensive. I figure we’d walk on by to wherever we were going. Then I tumbled to the fact that we were already there.

I couldn’t believe it: the Commander’s Palace. I’d been here once before, back in July of 1997, when I was playing a three-night marathon gig at the Gazebo. On that occasion, Karen had been in town visiting Suzie, and to reward me for playing an out-of-tune piano eight hours a day outside in the 110-degree heat and 95% humidity, we’d all gotten decked to the nines and they’d taken me to the Commander’s Palace for dinner on my night off. The food and service had been stellar, but the best part had been walking up the stairs with an extraordinarily attractive female on each arm. All the men in the place had looked at me with longing and admiration, and all the women had looked like they couldn’t decide whom to kill first: the men they were with, or Karen and Suzie.

Now I was back at the Commander’s Palace, and it couldn’t have happened at a better time: the death-virus was really taking hold. This was just the kind of cheering up I needed.

When the waiter, who mercifully wasn’t an out-of-work actor, came by to see what we wanted to drink, we requested Talisker, our favorite single-malt. Unlike many restaurants, at the Commander’s Palace they knew what Talisker was. They had it. They brought it. I toasted Karen and let the scotch do its work of warming body and soul and telling the death-virus to take a hike.

For two hours we ate and ate, oysters and fish and crab and all sorts of delicacies. We drank red wine and laughed and told stories as if it were our first date. Later that night Karen and I made the kind of love that can only be made in New Orleans.

The Gig, Part II

I awoke to the familiar sound of Karen yelling at someone on the phone. Unlike me, Karen is always surprised when things go wrong. In cases where I would choose weary resignation, she generally opts for going ballistic.

This is what happened:

Karen and I had flown to New Orleans on the same flight, but she was booked to go back a day earlier than I was. Karen decided that after singing with me in front of that sold-out House of Blues crowd, it was out of the question that she should miss the second night’s show. We were having such a good time in the Big Easy. She called the airline to change her flight to the one I’d be on. They said everything was great, they’d fax us the new flight information. The fax never came. Now, on this hungover, death-virus morning, she had just been informed that the airline had canceled both of our return tickets. Somehow, the airline’s Stepford-employee had interpreted “change my flight” as “cancel both of our flights.” I was not surprised, but we were in a pickle all the same. We had to be back in L.A. on Fat Tuesday to play House of Blues there. All flights out of New Orleans on Monday and Tuesday were sold out. Would we like to fly out in August?

Well, Karen always gets what she wants. After an hour of systematically working her way through the airline employees all the way to the person with enough power to actually help us, she got us a flight out on Tuesday morning. We’d miss the sound check for the gig in L.A., but at least we’d get there.

Crisis averted, it was time to eat. I lobbied to go to the Camellia Grill, home of possibly the best cheeseburger in America. The girls denied my cheeseburger pilgrimage. They knew that if you get within twenty feet of the Camellia, your arteries instantly clog and your colon clenches up in stark terror – but damn, they do lard right!. We ended up at some nondescript place, eating nondescript food, then went over to House of Blues for another soundcheck.

It was a replay of the day before. The drummer was there with bells on. The bass player was absent. We made some noise and then waited. Had some dinner and free beer backstage. Showtime rolled around. No bass player. We waited a few minutes. Chopper, the stage manager, knocked on our dressing room door and said it was past time to go on. As I tried to explain about the missing bass player, an alarmed squawking sounded from Chopper’s walkie-talkie. There was a fire in the kitchen – they might have to evacuate. Delay showtime. Standby for further instructions. Granted this temporary reprieve, I sat there and willed the bass-playing slacker dickhead to show up and not ruin my night. Fifteen minutes later, the fire was out, the crowd was still waiting, and I was fucked. Still no bass player. A dangerous restlessness was sweeping through the crowd. They were hot, uncomfortable, and packed standing cheek to jowl out there. Chopper came back and gave me my marching orders. I folded myself into a mental lotus position and recited my New Orleans mantra: Fuck it, whatever. Then the drummer and I took the stage.

We put on a great show. I rocked furiously, as I often do under duress. We closed with a manic, piano-destroying “Rockin’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu.” By the end of that, no one in the house cared that there was no bass player. We exited the stage to massive applause and immediately hit the dressing-room fridge for beer. Jesus, what a night. Everyone was slapping me on the back telling me how great it was, blah, blah, blah. I was relieved that we got through unscathed, but I was pissed off that my show had been compromised by someone’s lack of professionalism. It’s hard enough to survive in this business without that shit.

The Neville’s wrapped up their set. The crowd began to leave. We said our goodbyes, packed up Suzie’s piano, cashed the check, counted the CD sales loot, and blew the proverbial pop-stand. I felt like I could sleep for a week.

Homeward Bound

Monday, Karen and I spent the morning at PJ’s Coffee near the Garden District cemetery reading the Times-Picayune. That evening we watched the Rex parade go down St. Charles. Karen caught another impressive load of beads. I continued to enjoy my role as the passive observer.

There was a practical reason for Karen to catch as many beads as possible: we needed them to throw to the crowd at our Fat Tuesday show at House of Blues in Hollywood. You can buy almost anything you want in Los Angeles, except Mardi Gras beads and a sense of humor.

After the parade, we headed to the French Quarter for one last toot before leaving town. We had drinks, we had crawfish, we had more drinks. We considered cruising The Gazebo to see what was shaking and to gloat about how I was opening for the Neville’s down the street. But revisiting the past has never worked out very well for me. It’s had a tendency to turn good memories bad and bad memories worse.

We followed the sound of a crying cat down a dark, empty side street. This cat was hungry and homeless . . . or he was expertly working the tourists for treats. Either way, he was damned good, because after petting the beast we found ourselves at the nearest corner market buying him a few cans of Fancy Feast.

After a while, the crowds got tiresome, and we headed back uptown. It was three a.m., and we had an early flight to catch.

Next morning, as we left the Garden District to go to the airport, the Zulu parade was making its way down St. Charles. I was depressed. I knew we’d get back to L.A. and it would be as if none of this was even happening. At the airport we said our goodbyes and got on line to check our bags. The New Orleans airport is as disorganized and chaotic as everything else here, but it lacks the charm of the rest of the city. After interminable waiting in lines worse than even at the DMV, we managed to get aboard. We only had to change planes twice on the way home. Oy.

We hit L.A. ragged, three hours before the gig, and took a cab directly to House of Blues. My band was there, including bass player Lynn Keller, who always shows up for the gig, God bless her. I’d never been so glad to see them. We performed a great show for the hometown crowd, and threw many beads. I was sick, exhausted, and broke, but as I looked out at the sea of swaying, smiling people in front of the stage, I was once again reminded of just how lucky I am to be doing what I do for a living.

And most of all – I made it to the Mardi Gras!

© 1999 by Bob Malone