Blog2L2
- Baldessari May 18, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Rewind May 11, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Going in the Opposite Direction May 8, 2012 Derek Bridges
- Rope Man with Cigarette April 25, 2012 Derek Bridges
Derek Bridges
Extra
I know a Mandingo warrior. Usually he does home repair and he's got a catering thing, but for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained currently in production in New Orleans, he became a Mandingo warrior for a day, fighting another Mandingo warrior no less, with the aid of three shots of tequila that folks on set downed before the scene. No idea if he'll make it in the final cut.
Last Tuesday I was a NYC hipster circa 2008 for HBO's Treme. I'd registered with Caballero Casting hoping to score a role as an extra in the Treme shoot scheduled the second Sunday of Jazz Fest (Fais Do Do stage for an hour or so, then released to enjoy the Fest) but instead got called up for the NYC hipster circa 2008 group a few days post-Fest.
Continue reading“We must do better”
John Edwards at a podium in the Ninth Ward on January 30, 2008:
Continue readingI began my presidential campaign [in New Orleans] to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters. We must do better, if we want to live up to the great promise of this country that we all love so much.
Fest for Life
New Orleans clarinetist John Casimir founded the Young Tuxedo Brass Band in 1938. In the liner notes of the band's first (1958) album, Jazz Begins, alto sax player Herman Sherman is described as the "baby of the band." (For black and white photos of the band parading during this period, see Lee Friedlander's Jazz People of New Orleans).
Sousaphonist Wilbert Tilman took over as band leader for a brief period in 1963 after Casimir died. In poor health Tilman handed over leadership to Andrew Morgan and when he died in 1972, the baby of the band, Sherman, ascended to the leader position. In 1983 the band released its second album, Jazz Continues, and Sherman continued to serve as leader until his death on September 10, 1984. Cornet player Gregg Stafford took over as leader and remains so today. The roster of the Young Tuxedos over the years has included the likes of Paul Barbarin, John Brunious, Walter Payton, Charles Barbarin, Ernest "Doc" Watson, Joseph Torregano, Fred Lonzo, Lawrence Trotter, Mark Braud and Dr. Michael White. I think even Shamarr Allen played with them at least once.
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My wife Dedra is from New Orleans and when I fell in love with her, in 1992, we were living in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The next year we moved in together and I also fell in love her jazz records. They once belonged to her jazz musician grandfather, Herman Sherman.
The two albums that most captivated me were A Night at Birdland with the Art Blakey Quintet (it never fails to amuse me when Blakey recounts how Dizzy Gillespie composed "A Night in Tunisia" "on the bottom of a garbage can") and Dexter Gordon's One Flight Up. I played that Gordon album relentlessly, especially savoring the first track, "Tanya," all 18 minutes and 21 seconds of it. The Gordon album was held together by a couple generations of tape, yellowed Scotch and gray duct, applied by her grandfather. That his hands had worn the album to such a degree seemed a kind of validation of my love for the music.
Hot Like Fire
Check out this video my friend Trey Deark shot of the Hot 8 Brass Band circa 2002-03. If I remember correctly, the Hot 8 were playing at a party for someone in Mystical's family. If you know the Hot 8, you know you're going to dig these 6 minutes, 17 seconds. The rest of you, you're invited to join the party.
Over at the neighbor’s
The February featured artist at B2L2ART is Mark Grote with his "Is it S, or is it Z?" exhibition.
Gangsta Red [Updated]
Update: Red has survived another dog attack. Two dogs this time.
Diamond said Red apparently got away from the dogs by taking refuge under a house. Another woman in the neighborhood has taken Red to a veterinarian.
There is talk of relocation and the shaking of heads.
It looks like Washington Avenue has lost its rooster.
Continue readingSloganza™ 4
Sloganza(TM) 4 from B2 L2 on Vimeo.
RetroReview: Stay out of the box
What: A "Special Collector's Edition" magazine called Oliver North: Portrait of an American Hero.
Where: Purchased in 1987 for $3.50 at an Eagle supermarket in northern Illinois.
Why?: Yes, it's true, almost half of all Americans at one time were hot for Ollie North.
Huh?: You didn't answer the question: Why?: I bought it to prove that I'd seen it. I recently dug it out of a box I had in storage and ...
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B2L2ART
I'm pleased to announce the launching of our new website dedicated to art, B2L2Art.com. Gerald Cannon will be curating the site and we're using work from his Portraits series as the inaugural exhibition. From his site description:
Continue readingB2L2ART is the art centered version of B2L2. The general approach we will be taking in populating this site is based on submissions and solicitations of a particular artist's work, site based art projects, curated digital exhibitions, and other proposals that fit the largest definition of "professional art" we can justify calling visual art.
We are sure that some proposals and submissions will be rejected. This does not mean we don't respect the art submitted or proposed, but only that it does not fit the site's intent.
That said, we hope the images and archives constitute a high quality and long-term source for potent art works.
We will average one exhibition per month and archive past exhibits and archives of each previous year for three years.
Dirty Birds in the Spin Cycle
I fear the management team at the Black & Gold Wash & Fold has grown complacent.
Jude v. World
I wrote about New Orleans chessmaster Jude Acers a few months ago. Right now he's competing in the World Senior Chess Championship in Opatija, Croatia . He's 1-1 after the first two rounds; he lost yesterday to one of the tournament's top players.
Continue readingSubversive Sounds: The HBO Pilot
Bluesy cornetist Chris Kelly, most popular with the downtrodden and ratty, “always ended his performances with the hymn ‘When the Saints Go Marching In,’ played, contrary to modern practice, as a ‘sacred song’—slowly” (p. 169).
Information Wrangler: An Interview with Infrogmation
A few years ago I started noticing many of my photos were getting uploaded to Wikimedia Commons--which was perfectly legit as I'd uploaded them to flickr using a Creative Commons license that allowed anyone to use my images so long as I received attribution. The Wikimedia uploads, mostly pictures of musicians, second line parades and politicians, were diligently attributed to me and increased the likelihood someone would see them. I liked the idea there was some guy out there who thought my photos were worth the effort--his effort, slight as it may have been.
At some point I finally connected that the guy uploading my pics to Wikimedia was one of my flickr contacts, Infrogmation. I poked around and found he was quite active in Wikimedia and Wikipedia, and judging by some of his photos, he seemed to play a little trombone. He didn't shoot with a high end camera but he had a decent one (Canon PowerShot) and a patient eye and he covered a lot of ground (a good example of his dogged work is his series documenting Banksy's graffiti art around New Orleans). He also uploaded photos he inherited of family members from the 1920s and 1930s and he had a good feel for oddball but revealing historical ephemera:
High Society Rag
From Subversive Sounds: Race and the Birth of Jazz in New Orleans by Charles B. Hersch (University of Chicago Press, 2008, pages 180-182):
The small group transformation of ragtime through the blues tradition, hauling it onto the streets where it marched, can be seen in a performance of High Society Rag by King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, featuring a young Louis Armstrong. This tune defined New Orleans jazz, for as Lee Collins put it, 'at that time when you heard a clarinet play High Society you didn't ask him where he was from. You knew he was from New Orleans ...'
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Look Them in the Eye
Watching live coverage on Democracy Now! last night outside the prison where Davis was later executed added some alienating spin on the ball. The protesters and press were forced to stay in penned in areas, separated by a rope line, so when the on air reporter interviewed someone they had to have the rope between them because ... they might reproduce or something. The one time the reporter stepped into the forbidden territory where the demonstrators had gathered in prayer, police quickly told her to get back in her pen. This was followed by countless police cars parading past with emergency lights on in a kind of show of force. It was all very authoritarian.
From Motown to The Big Easy: Interview with Musician & Photographer Joseph Crachiola, part 2
Continue readingIt sounds like you’ve walked into a lot of great situations.
Yeah, I’ve been really lucky. Like I told you earlier, when I shoot musicians I’m very careful about respecting them, making sure they know what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and I make sure that they get a few prints. You know, I always give Benny pictures if I shoot the Treme guys. I gave Kermit a bunch of pictures when I was hanging around Bullet’s all the time. So they all know me, they know that I have no hidden agenda. I guess that’s something I learned during my newspaper career. If you’re really going to get good work, you’ve got to have some kind of trust with the people you’re shooting, if you’re going to have work that’s going to have some intimacy. I did the same thing with the burlesque. We had this agreement where they would let me shoot whatever I wanted. I could walk in the dressing room and shoot if I wanted to. But up front I said, ‘I’m not going to put these pictures on Facebook or anyplace unless you see them first and you know it’s cool.’ After a while, it was like, ‘Yeah, you can do whatever you want. We know you’re not going to jerk us around.’ I like doing these things—that was one of the reasons I left the newspaper business, you’re always like hit and run, you never get any real depth. So now I can work on something for months and months at a time.
From Motown to The Big Easy: Interview with Musician & Photographer Joseph Crachiola, part 1
Joseph Crachiola is from a small town outside Detroit that got swallowed up by the suburbs (same story for me, except replace Detroit with Chicago). He worked 15 years for suburban Detroit newspapers and 22 years as a corporate photographer before he got bought out and decided to move to New Orleans about 2 years ago. He recently served as road manager for the Pinettes Brass Band in Turkey, and photographed the Umbria Jazz Festival in Perugia, Italy.
Continue readingWe Have A Winnah
Congratulations to B2L2 contributor G Bitch for winning the 2011 Ashley Award at the Rising Tide Conference in New Orleans yesterday.
Continue readingTulane & Broad
Amendment 6 – Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses. Ratified
12/15/1791.
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Let’s stipulate that jury duty is indeed a solemn responsibility and not something to be shirked for shirk’s sake. Let’s also stipulate it can be a mad making experience that may prompt some to–reasonably–run for the hills.
I didn’t shirk and I didn’t run and I answered questions truthfully and, likely to a fault, thoughtfully. And I was not selected for any juries.
Last week I completed a tour of jury duty service at the Orleans Parish Criminal… Continue reading
A Beautiful Sunday
Clint Maedgen wants everyone to have one.
Continue readingKeep on Knockin’
A student documentary about the history of New Orleans jazz.
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