"Sounded Like Nothing Else on Earth"

"Moreover, 1968 was the year that flower-power idealism curdled: it was a year of rioting, violence and upheaval, of Sympathy for the Devil rather than All You Need Is Love. That suited the album's sinister atmosphere perfectly. Its flatly astonishing closer, I Walk on Gilded Splinters, offered up eight minutes of crawling malevolence and threatening braggadocio: if you took the title as a reference to needles, as plenty did, it sounded remarkably like a sneering, screw-you defence of Rebennack's drug use, a distant Louisiana relation of the Velvet Underground's Heroin. The live show Rebennack devised to support the album was a sensation, involving dancers wearing nothing but body paint, the singer disappearing in a puff of smoke and voodoo rituals. In St Louis, they were arrested after a band member bit the head off a chicken on stage."

Alexis Petridis at The Guardian writes an appreciation of Dr. John.

"A Nearly Successful Slave Revolt Was Intentionally Lost to HIstory"

"The suppression of the extent of the rebellion kept the uprising from historical attention for decades. Hall calls it a kind of 'historical amnesia' in the Times-Picayune piece. However on the 200th anniversary of the revolt, area museums and historical sites in Louisiana organized a year-long commemoration of the event. In time, the uprising may gain the recognition it deserves, thanks to the efforts of historians willing to sort the fiction from the reality."

In a 2016 Smithsonian article, Marissa Fessenden discusses the 1811 Louisiana slave revolt.

The Fat Man

"'After John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Fats Domino and his partner, Dave Bartholomew, were probably the greatest team of songwriters ever,' Dr. John told Rolling Stone in 2004. 'They always had a simple melody, a hip set of chord changes, and a cool groove. And their songs all had simple lyrics; that's the key.' Domino himself, who preferred to let his music rather than image do the talking, was typically modest about his accomplishments: 'Everybody started callin' my music rock and roll,' he once said, 'but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playin' down in New Orleans.'"

David Browne at Rolling Stone writes an obituary for Fats Domino.

"To Grow Some Historical and Moral Backbone as They Think About Memorialization"

"Wittingly or not, the mayor gave the whole country a serious lesson in how Americans should contemplate their war dead, indeed their broader past, in this divided and quarrelsome nation. He suggested they learn some good history first, face its most troubling parts however painful, and separate 'remembrance of history and reverence for it.' It is an extraordinary act for a Southern white politician to ask his fellow citizens to seriously separate heritage from history, to look down the dark tunnel of slavery and New Orleans's infamous 'slave markets,' and the 'misery, rape, and torture' that followed for so many unnamed individual Africans, Creoles, and African Americans sold as property into the Mississippi River valley. Landrieu argued that ignorance or denial of this past for so long had been collective 'historical malfeasance, a lie by omission.' He called New Orleanians, and thereby all Americans, to an alternative kind of remembrance for this Memorial Day. He asked his auditors to learn a more complex past and to grow some historical and moral backbone as they think about memorialization."

David Blight at The Atlantic considers Memorial Day in the wake of the end of Confederate monuments in New Orleans.

And Adam Serwer at The Atlantic criticizes the cult of Robert E. Lee.

"Mass Violence and the History of Gay Liberation Go Hand in Hand"

"The UpStairs Lounge was not the only target of mass violence during the height of gay liberation in the 1970s. Arsonists set fire to gay churches in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Nashville and San Francisco in 1973 and 1974. Six months before the fire at the UpStairs Lounge, on Jan. 27, 1973, a fire broke out at the 'Mother Church' of the M.C.C., in Los Angeles, where a gay Jewish group met for services.

"Though no other attack came close to the death toll at the UpStairs Lounge, the attacks collectively set off an undercurrent of fear among the L.G.B.T. community in the 1970s: that our bars, which have been the sites of our political liberation, the focal point of our community, and even our places of worship, have also been the visible targets of violence and hatred committed against us."

Jim Downs in The New York Times recalls anti-gay violence forty years ago.

"The Last Time Britain Fought America"

"The British sustained 2,042 casualties; the Americans 71. To make things worse, the battle was unnecessary. The Treaty of Ghent, ending the 1812 War, was signed on Christmas Eve. News of the treaty didn't reach Washington until February 17."


Harry Mount at The Spectator marks the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans.

"Well-Reported and Colorful Tale of Jazz, Sex, Crime and Corruption"

"The reformers had triumphed over vice. But it wasn't a clean moral victory. They had also triumphed over tolerance. 'For the city’s privileged white elite, jazz and vice were of a piece, along with blackness generally and, for that matter, Italianness, too,' Krist writes. Therein lies this book's most important lesson: Rooting out sin may be worthy, but beware the unsavory motives that can lurk in the hearts of moral crusaders."


Walter Isaacson in The New York Times reviews Gary Krist's Empire of Sin: A Story of Sex, Jazz, Murder, and the Battle for Modern New Orleans.

Thru the Perilous Fight

"Historians of the period and of the war may resent Hofstadter’s summary dismissal, but it offers some clues as to why neither is the subject of much popular interest. The very things that put Hofstadter off—the bumbling diplomacy, the bitter infighting, the ineptly executed war effort—force us to confront a vision of the United States that doesn’t generally fit our understanding of its origins. The war plays out as a disappointing second act to the Revolution, with the nation suddenly at the whim of Europeans and Indians and riven by internal dissent, and the heroes and heirs of 1776 acting without the pluck and ingenuity that we expect of them. How are we to commemorate that?"

In Slate, James M. Lundberg observes the War of 1812's bicentennial.

Some Men Worked while Others Snored

"A second tragedy in the immediate background of the 1892 Columbus celebration took place in New Orleans. There, on March 14, 1891–only 10 weeks after the Wounded Knee Massacre–11 Italians were lynched in prison by a mob led by prominent Louisiana politicians. A trial for the murder of the New Orleans police chief had ended in mistrials for three of the Italians and the acquittal of the others who were brought to trial. Unhappy with the verdict and spurred on by fear of the 'Mafia' (a word that had only recently entered American usage), civic leaders organized an assault on the prison to put the Italians to death. This episode was also troubling to the U.S. Government. These were legally innocent men who had been killed. But Italians were not very popular, and even Theodore Roosevelt was quoted as saying that he thought the New Orleans Italians 'got what they deserved.' A grand jury was summoned, but no one was charged with a crime. President Harrison, who would proclaim the Columbus holiday the following year, was genuinely saddened by the case, and over the objections of some members of congress he paid reparations to the Italian government for the deaths of its citizens."

William J. Connell in The American Scholar defends Columbus Day.

A City Named Desire

"From the front of his flat in Orleans Alley—city fathers renamed it Pirates Alley in the '40s to add what Sealy calls 'pizazz'—Faulkner could look out onto what remains the city's most famous landmark: the towering St. Louis Cathedral. Jackson Square was only steps away. The park remains the bohemian gathering spot it was in Faulkner's day, although the surrounding streets now are home to trendy boutiques and restaurants instead of bleak warehouses."

Jay Jones in the Los Angeles Times visits the heart of literary New Orleans.

The Beat Goes On

"'When you're working in the studios, you're playing every genre of music,' Hal Blaine, his friend and another prolific session drummer, said in an interview Saturday. 'You might be playing classical music in the morning and hard rock in the afternoon and straight jazz at night. . . . That's where they separate the men from the boys. If you're going to be a studio musician, it's the top of the ladder. You can't go any higher than that in the music business.'"

Claire Noland in the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for session drummer extraordinare Earl Palmer.

Social Insecurity

"On the field of ideology, 2005 was a lousy year for the American right. Twice--in the president's proposal to privatize Social Security and in the government's failure to save New Orleans--it confronted the public with the prospect of a radically reduced government. Twice, the public recoiled at the sight. In retrospect the year's biggest mystery is how George W. Bush thought he could privatize Social Security. Essentially Bush assumed the role of the national CEO who tells his workers he's dumping their defined-benefit pensions for some ill-defined 401(k) investment schemes. And essentially the American people responded with the same anger and anxiety that airline and auto employees have shown when their bosses reneged on their commitments of a secure retirement. The difference, of course, is that the American people have a lot more power as voters than they do as workers."

Harold Meyerson in The American Prospect discusses the human need for stability.