More New Orleans like I like it by Pareles.
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DAY 3 | 02.18 6:30 P.M. At the Maritime Ball
Down a dark alley, behind a grocery store on a weedy main street in the Ninth Ward, a tiki torch was burning to announce a show at the Spellcaster Lodge, the home and performance space of the keyboardist and songwriter Quintron and his wife and bandmate, Miss Pussycat.
It was the annual Maritime Ball, an event they have held during Mardi Gras weekend since the 1990's--part house party, part proudly eclectic hipster showcase, and one of the few places anywhere to hear rap, punk, chamber-rock and Quintron's own keyboard-driven music on the same bill. In New Orleans, of course, people danced to all of them.
Quintron moved to New Orleans in the mid-1990's as part of an influx of artists into Bywater, a low-rent district on the higher ground in the Ninth Ward. The Spellcaster Lodge was slightly damaged but not destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Now it has been spiffed up as a lounge/club with two small stages and a disc-jockey booth.
Shiny plastic, something like a shag carpet, that is used for Mardi Gras floats covers the walls in ripples; the ceiling has glitter in it. Set into the walls are life preservers and little aquarium-like dioramas, like one that has a rock band made out of pine cones. Hundreds of people, many in costumes, soon arrived to pack the place. Keeping the maritime theme, Quintron wore a sailor suit; Miss Pussycat had an aqua dress appliqued with octopi.
Quintron's Hammond organ, probably the only one in the world mounted behind an automobile grille with a Louisiana vanity license plate spelling QUINTRON, was on a stage along with his Drum Buddy, a custom gizmo that sounds like a drum machine crossed with a theremin. But that performance would start later, around 3 a.m.
First came the Herringbone Orchestra, an unlikely sextet -- accordion, euphonium, harp, bass clarinet, cello, drums -- playing chamber-rock, New Orleans-style. The pieces circled through three or four chords, with crescendo variations and inner details emerging something like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. The New Orleans extra was the swing: some tango, some waltz, some oom-pah, making the Minimalism not just arty, but earthy. Also on the bill was the Overnight Lows, a punky hardcore band from Jackson, Miss.
But the crowd was there for Katey Red, a transvestite rapper in a red dress and a blonde wig who was all rhythm and raunch. It was bounce music, the low-budget, lowbrow New Orleans hip-hop that's so sex-obsessed it's almost pure comedy; it also allows New Orleans rappers to vow, "We gon' bounce back."
Katey Red had a few verses about 9/11 and a post-Katrina rap, but mostly bragged about being a gay prostitute; "Put my money on the dresser" is one of the few lines quotable here. Onstage, Katey Red led syncopated crowd chants as a CD played, everyone danced and shouted and there was pure, uproarious New Orleans call-and-response: "Ya ya, ya, ya-ya ya."
And then came Quintron and Miss Pussycat. Their self-named "swamp tech" wanders the last four decades of keyboard-driven rock, from garage-band organ stomps thorough motoric 1970's German rock through the pulsating punk Minimalism of Suicide through electropop, not to mention a little bit of lounge polka. Mr. Quintron cranked up his Hammond organ, pumping out chords and drones, shouting like a rocker who loves old R&B and trading chants with Miss Pussycat in songs like "Swamp Buggy Badass." His Drum Buddy -- which gets its rhythm patterns by using light sensors to pick up rays from holes punched through what looked like rotating coffee cans -- generated whizzing, swoopy sounds along with dance beats.
A woman in a tutu twirled onstage, her arms arched overhead. Miss Pussycat shook some glitter-fringed maracas. And the dance floor at the Spellcaster Lodge did, as one song put it, "the shake and bake."
(continued...)
