Little Feat, Tchoupitoulas (Again) and Crisis in EDM-Ville
What should be on your radar this week?
What should be on your radar this week?
Friday: Brother Tyrone and the Mindbenders, 8 p.m., Chickie Wah Wah: Brother Tyrone is an old-school, '70s R&B soul man. There are no nods to modernity beyond the world his songs live in, and there's nothing neo- about it.
Saturday: Little Feat, Roy Jay Band, 10 p.m., Circle Bar: Little Feat played funky country R&B-based rock when no one else did, and their new Rooster Rag shows that they continue to do it just fine. (Tickets)
Also, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, Gary Wrong, T-Kette, the Dropout, 10 p.m., One Eyed Jacks (Tickets)
Monday: David Doucet, 8 p.m.,The Columns: It's not a show as much as a casual evening with the guitarist from BeauSoleil, who plays acoustic blues beautifully with understated soul.
Wednesday: Fly Golden Eagle, Clear Plastic Masks, Banditos, 8 p.m., Circle Bar: Swagger by Fly Golden Eagle is a very cool, psychedelic album with clear songs and a strong hint of British pop-ness.
Thursday: John Ellis and Double Wide, 8 & 10 p.m., Snug Harbor: Ellis' Double Wide includes Jason Marsalis and Matt Perrine and merges a few streams of jazz from New Orleans and elsewhere in smart, immediate ways.
OTHER STUFF
On Friday, the New Orleans Film Society, the Louisiana State Museum and the Louisiana Museum Foundation present the local premiere of Tchoupitoulas,a New Orleans-shot film that garnered acclaim during this year's SXSW. It will be shown at the Old U.S. Mint at 8:30 p.m. with $3 tickets for NOFS and Friends of the Cabildo members; general admission tickets are $6. This show was scheduled for last Friday, but was rained out.
On Saturday, Cree McCree is selling her summer cree-ations at Cree's Cheap Chic Summer White Sale. Sundresses, Whites and linens in time for White Linen Night, men's summerwear and more. 3728 Laurel St. from 11 a.m.-6 p.m.
Finally, there's a fascinating anxiety gripping the electronic dance music world: What's the DJ doing during the show? It started when deadmau5 explained what he does at EDM shows in a blog post titled, "we all hit play." His piece doesn't say that he and other DJs are fakes, but he lays out the realities as he sees them of his music, how it's made, and where the music lies. This prompted DancingAstronaut.com to run an editorial worrying about EDM selling out. "What worries me is not that DJs are simply 'pressing play,' but that they’re pressing play on the same tracks in the same order night after night after night," the writer says. I'm not sure why he/she expects EDM to be different from other music, but that was one response. Gregg Gillis--Girl Talk--then explained his method. For a long time, he was the odd fit in the EDM community and the target of hostility from those who thought he did nothing but play a bunch of hits and a cappellas. "Every sample is triggered by hand," he writes on the Illegal Art website. "Every element is as isolated as possible. In an hour of a typical set, there's probably somewhere between 300-400 samples." On Monday, A-Trak felt a need to defend his performance at The Huffington Post. He points out that concerns over what the DJ does started last summer when a YouTube video showed a Swedish House Mafia DJ playing pre-recorded music for 15 minutes on one CD. A-Trak's background is in turntablism and DJ culture, and he contends that it's not accurate to liken what he does to what deadmau5 does just because people dance to both. This spate of self-analysis suggests that the EDM community is experiencing growing pains as it learns how to talk about what it does.
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