The first day of Jazz Fest.
Larry and I left for the Fest at 7:30. Now you have to understand that the Festival doesn't even start until 11:00. It only takes about an hour to get there, so we were going to have a few hours to kill. But it gets us at the head of the line. And imagine this, when we got there we weren't even the first ones waiting for the gates to open. In fact there was a group of girls from California that had slept on the street in front of the gates so they could make sure they didnt miss Dylan's appearance at the Fest.
Once inside it's a quick sprint to the stage. Okay, maybe not a quick sprint. In fact for me it was a sprint than a stop and catch my breath and think that I used to be able to run longer than this without having a cardiac arrest before? What was I doing? Getting old or something?
The idea of the rush to the stage is to claim a spot. Today most of the acts we wanted to see were going to be at the Acrua Stage, which just happens to be the biggest stage there. It's good to see some of the smaller acts and the smaller stages, but sometimes it's also good to catch the major stages. This was the stage that Dylan was going to perform on and I don't miss Dylan. We managed to get a spot at the front and set up chairs up. The nice thing is once you get your spot, you can generally leave your chairs and wander a bit. At least for the first few acts, by the time the main events come on you need to be back at your chairs or you'll lose your spot.
So we planted our chairs and than headed off to buy the offical Jazz Fest poster. We figured this would be ten, twenty minutes tops. We waited in line for over an hour to get the poster. On the way back we stopped and bought the Jazz Fest beads also. This is getting expensive, so much to buy.
Once back at the stage and our seats we figured we were stuck for the rest of the Fest. It was getting very crowded. Fridays are normally the lightest day of the Fest, a lot of locals are working and can't make it.
First up, actually second up but he was performing when we got back, was Anders Osborne. Anders is orginially from Sweden and has lived in New Orleans for more than a few years. He sings a blend of New Orleans music and blues. Very good.
After Anders came the blues great Keb Mo. Keb is one of the best blues singer out there. He performed with just himself on guitar and one other player, this man was either playing guitar or banjo or mandolin. Keb plays sitting down for his entire performance. He doesn't do the jumping around or showing off, he just lets his music speak for itself and it speaks volumes.
Bob Dylan was next. He was about fifteen minutes late, which is not a good thing for the Fest. The time lines are pretty strict, with a seven o'clock cut off time. They need time to get the place cleaned up for the next day. Finally Dylan came out and began to play. I've read that he is playing keyboard now on tour. It was interesting to see him stand behind the keyboards and sing. He started with "Maggie's Farm" and ended with "All Along the Watchtower" in his encore. I was surprised that he had an encore, ususally there are no encores mainly due to the time restraints. In face Dylan played almost thirty minutes past his time.
I was surprised by the amount of young people that were there for Dylan. There were a lot of kids in their teens and early twenties that were there just to see Dylan. I didn't realize that he was still that popular.
Dylan loses points though cause he would not allow anyone to take pictures. That's one of the nice things about the Jazz Fest. You can take pictures. I enjoy taking pictures of the singers and groups. And what was worse was that there was no announcement from the stage that you couldn't take pictures. You found out when you raised your camera to take a picture and a security guard descended on you like a ton of bricks and demanded that you stop what you were doing. They were pretty ugly about it, none more so than Dylan's head of security. He strutted around scowling at everyone and jumping on people if they even looked like they might be thinking about taking a picture. I know it's Dylan's right not to have his picture taken, but some reason I would think he would be above such acts. It just didn't set well with me.
Dylan wasn't the final act. Dr. John came after. I was going to leave that stage when Dylan finished and head over to see Ani Difranco. I've seen Dr. John a few times and have never seen Ani Difranco. But Dylan went long, so by the time he was finished she would have already been started. And there was a little matter of the size of the crowd. This has to be the biggest Friday in the Fest's history. There were more people there than I have ever seen. There was no way I was going to even attempt to make my way through that crowd. So I just sat back and listened to Dr John and enjoyed it. Dr. John always puts on a good show.
After the end of the singing we headed over to buy more goodies. A t shirt and we were ready to head home. All in all we couldn't have asked for a better opening for Jazz Fest. The weather was great, it never got too hot and the rain held off. So tommorrow is another day and more great music.
No comments:
Post a Comment