The VIP Ladies & The Stooges

Not everybody knows how to catch a New Orleans groove though it’s flowing everywhere in this city. So if you figure out how to slow down, let go and listen, the spirit uplifts and moves through you in a way which was a little easier to feel here on March 6th 2005 at the VIP Ladies Social Aid & Pleasure Club 2nd line parade. The VIP’s dressed to the nine in lime green and fuchsia, 2nd lining in front of the band who fed on the energy they got to see – good time folks everywhere in back behind swelling out to the sides, a river of people swallowed in sound eating and drinking and smoking, feeling good, hot stepping, uptown jumping, moving along to the Stooges.

The brass bands’ sound reflecting off new orleans in beautiful motion in the street so the police sirens and car horns and generators, and whistles and mammas hollering for their sons and the man selling cold Heinekens for two dollars, the someone playing a beer bottle, a tambourine, a clave, a cow bell, foot stomps and hollers and screams with the big crowd talking and laughing, excited singing along only adds to the wonder of the whole parade moving together in step and time with the band. Or really the band, the 2nd line, the all of us in time and step with the rhythm flow of our magical city. Sometimes the sound deepens, lightens, swims and swoons for the outdoor air – a low branch of a big live oak tree – shotgun houses squeezed tight together on both sides of a narrow street – a brick church – a wide avenue – torn down projects – the temperature change – the black top road, the shell top road, the turning point lounge, the mic tip toed round a parked cop car with the band and the whole parade smiling having a Sunday 2nd line time. This other church that lifts people up. Sunday the sixth of March was a day to celebrate the club, those still here who could step along shuffle sway and move to the music and those that have passed on into something outside the veil of this world we’re all of us only a short while dancing through. For it is this place, the lake and river and wind and trees and mix of people walking on a swamp bed six feet below the sea which is the funk essence of new orleans, driven along by rhythms and beats still alive from a long time ago when the slaves were still gathering and honoring one another Sundays in Congo Square by the drum and rhythms and ways from far across the sea, a longing for a land all but disappeared, a longing to be treated with respect, let go, let free. Life roughing up the sound of the Stooges, New Orleans cutting cross that which she has created, nourished and held dear we hope comes through the recording when you slow down, close your eyes, let go and listen to the explosion of spirit coming out of the sound. Melodious Thunk is a grass roots projects, a group of new orleans artists immersed in the culture and devoted to bringing the sound of the street to your ears in a new way a community recording. We’ve open books.

Believe the best music should be heard no matter. That musicians shouldn’t have to be wealthy, bow down, grovel, get up to their necks in hock to have their sound out and heard and appreciated for where would any of us be without music which sometimes seems to be forgotten in the current climate of recording where how one looks is often more important than how one sounds which is so absurd it’s hard on the mind to think true. This project finds the music alive in its element in the streets of our homes where everyone feels comfortable enough to do what they wanna, let go, sing along, have a time. We’ve left it as clean off the mic as possible so what was there is what you hear. We hope it all comes through so you can close your eyes and feel it.