Thursday, and Friday at Jazz Fest.

Thursday, Robert, Karen, Chris and I did the Magazine Street Run; lunch at Nirvana, an Indian restaurant, and then some shopping in the antique and esoteric junque stores on the street. We stopped at Anne Rice's shop; she has this place where she is selling all her cast off stuff, dolls, posters, jewelry, all kinds of stuff... (one of her old computer monitors for $300. Someone bought it...). Just amazing and too weird! The young man at the counter was ethereally beautiful in the extreme...

Chris and, especially Robert, experience Nirvana.



Jazz Fest

It was another hot, but gorgeous day Friday at Jazz Fest. The crowd was quite a bit larger than last Sunday, but as always very cool and easy to deal with. Karen and Chris wanted to visit all the craft vendors and artists, which we did in detail. (These gurls love to shop! Well, so do I...)

but my eye did wander a bit


We stopped by the Gospel Tent and Lady Tamborine was jumping! The group on the stage was The Greater Antioch Music Ministry and they had everybody up and wailing!
Lady Tamborine. I love this woman!







Then it was time for Bonnie Raitt! She is a big favorite at Jazz Fest; she has been performing at the fest since 1977, which means that she was supporting the festival when it was a very small affair. She's known as "The Queen of Jazz Fest" and she was incredible! She can still rock intensely, but her ballads had people hugging each other and swaying to the music. Performing with her was John Cleary, a consumate NO style pianist and on a few numbers, Ivan Neville, of the Neville Brothers.



For her encore, she did three numbers. The first one soft and beautiful, (she can really sing...), the middle one was a Mose Allison song from the 70's: "Everybody's crying Mercy, but they don't even know the meaning of the word." She finished out with a rocker featuring the kind of slide guitar work that she is known for. Just blew everyone away.




On the way home, on the city bus, we were sitting there listening to the lively chatter of all the folks who had been to Jazz Fest that day and I looked around at the people around me. The bus was filled with people of all ages and races, all sunburned and tired and happy. It's this amazing thing that the fest does to people; they all come together around the music and for a while, they are all so happy to be together.

And this one cute young man that was sitting next to me on the bus was sooo tired... He kept nodding off and resting his head on my shoulder...

sweet...