Living in New Orleans Has its Privileges

You might come down here for the Voo Doo Music Experience (unofficially the October version of Jazz Fest) this weekend, but maybe not for last weekend's Crescent City Blues & Barbecue Festival, possibly the best kept music secret in the city of New Orleans, and completely free. There were no football stadium headliners, the audience was loaded with locals, and the music sounded so good it was ridiculous.

I think on Saturday in New Orleans it's morning until 2PM because Marc Stone of The Marc Stone Band kept apologizing for making everybody say "Yeah!" so early, even though it was already 1:30. They began building with some less demanding blues for breakfast until it reached 2 o'clock, when you could palpably feel a crowd energy shift. Marc and the boys then initiated the afternoon and the block party by tearing the house down with beefy blues, ringing out across Lafayette Square Park. City pigeons winged in V formation against a cloudless sky from elegant CBD office buildings to the old City Hall and back. Couples spontaneously danced with each other's partners on the grass.

Whatever you wore to the festival, you were dressed right. Maybe you had on a shiny olive pinstripe suit and black cowboy boots. Maybe you had glitter adorned sneakers. Overalls? OK. Cargo shorts and tee shirt? Very popular. And hats from stingy brim fedora's to feather embellished velvet caps - not important, just for fun...

We sat in the grass behind some wizened festival veterans with their portable chair cup holders cradling brimming beers and waited. Then, a tuba, a drum, a saxophone and a genius appeared on stage. We had missed Anders Osborne at the Jazz Fest because he was opposite someone we had to see, but now we were seeing him for free. Passion is not a New Orleans monopoly, but we've got it in spades, and Anders & Co definitely came to represent. He could be the modern soundtrack to New Orleans - so outstanding he sounds good sober.

After that, we had to hit the Best of New Orleans 2008 po-boy #1's, so we did a tour. After finding Domilise's in the middle of an uptown neighborhood on Annunciation, we ordered and split the large shrimp po-boy. The authentic flavor of that joint can not be replicated. Then all the way across town to Parkway Bakery and Tavern for the dressed roast beef. As the sun set on Bayou St. John, we cruised back up Broad St. Just another ordinary weekend in New Orleans.