musing

Maybe we don’t know better

Parade in progress at New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival

When I wrote about New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival a couple weeks ago, Bill posed a question the the comments: “I have a question about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival – I know there are some jazz and New Orleans – based acts (and maybe more this year than in recent years?), but it always seems to be much more of an “acts you hear on the radio” modern music fest. Were things different back in the 1990s?

My quick answer is about 80 percent of the 5,000 musicians and performers (on 14 stages) will be from Louisiana. That’s a lot more that “some,” and I’m pretty sure more Louisiana musicians than appeared in 1990.

We went for the first time twenty years after the festival began. People we met who had been going for years, told us about how much better it was in years before, smaller, easier to get around, truer to its roots, whatever. We’ve tried our best not to become those people.

Yes, it is different. In 1991 you could camp out maybe five-feet in front of the Ray Ban stage (the largest venue, now called the Festival Stage, but also know as the Fess stage, a nod to Professor Longhair). Now there is very expansive fenced off VIP area in front of it. There are signs of corporate creep to bitch about everywhere. In 1993 I laid on my stomach right in front of the Lagniappe stage (really just a wooden floor laid on top of grass) to shoot a picture of Chris Smither’s feet. They were pounding out acoustic backup as he sang. Something you wouldn’t be able to do today.

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beer. festival fun. hops.

A parade at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival

Yesterday, Jeff Alworth wrote, “One comment I hear a lot is that beer ‘isn’t fun’ anymore. I certainly have as much fun with beer as I used to, and indeed in these fallen times, sitting with a pint and a friend is about the funnest thing I do.”

I also had pints with a friend yesterday, but funnest thing, sort of, was the “cubes” for the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival posted. Skip the rest of this paragraph and the next if you don’t care for this digression; I understand. One of the first things Daria and I did when we quit “real jobs” in 1992 was start “Music Festival News,” a guide to music festivals across the country. Eventually, we produced an annual guide they sold at Tower Records (RIP), and in the Jazz Fest bookstore (also RIP). That was a hoot.

The lineup for Jazz Fest, which we’ve been attending since 1990 (but not every year), arrives in pieces. First, the list of artists, followed by the weekend they will appear (that happened at the same time this year). Later, which days they will appear, and finally, what time they will be playing. Hence, the cubes. You know there will be painful conflicts. That you’ll have to choose between Rod Stewart, David Byrne, The Isley Brothers, Jon Batiste, Left Over Salmon (five of the nine closers April 26). But then there are the surprises. The Revivalists, Jason Isbell, Burning Speer, John Boutte, Sonny Landreth and Pine Leaf Boys are not closing, but they are all up against each other. Taking all of this into consideration and making a plan to maximize our music experience is part of the fun.

That’s the spirit with which I approach the Colorado Collaboration Fest. It’s a special event because talking to the brewers pouring their collaborations it is apparent how much fun they had making the beers. Also because there will be 130 beers none of the attendees has had before; these are one-offs. That they have not been perfected across multiple iterations adds to the appeal.

Take a little time to enjoy the list. Perhaps your eyes will pause each time you read the description of a beer in the weird category. Or you will be struck by some of the names: Naming Beers is HARD/Blending Beers is FUN, Buzzword, Liquid Thanksgiving-Get Basted, or Semicolon > Em Dash.

What also caught my attention is the presence of “Cold Pressed Hop Juice,” to be found in a New Image/Casey collab called Fresh Eyes and in American Ninja Keyboard Warrior from Milieu and Lady Justice.

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One link, one paragraph, one bonus link

The link.

The paragraph:

However, as I am doing now, I could speculate and take liberties with the advance of time, but all I know is that this pub was now as dead as Jacob Marley and one day no one would ever know that this was a place where those who called it their local felt at home and one last laugh from Ricardo and Howey rent the air like the sound of splitting fabric.

The bonus, a post that has been bouncing around a month now, but is relevant and worth your time (it is not short). Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They Were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next?

Hop object #2

A hop worker's shoes, seen at Deutsches Hopfenmuseum in Wolnzach, Germany

Spotted in Deutsches Hopfenmuseum in Wolnzach, Germany. The shoes were worn by a worker processing hops. When a bag was filled, a worked would jump into it, stomping down the hops to make sure the bag was full. When I dug this out, I wondered if these could have been called Hopfenstopgen boots. That’s because in Hop Queries Vol. 4, No. 6, I wrote about dry hopping in Germany in the 19th century. That was called Hopfenstopfen, which can be translated at hop plug.

Simon Moosleitner, a subscriber in Germany, suggested there is more to think about, writing:

“I would give it a slightly different translation. You’re definitely right with translating Stopfen as plug or bung. However, in this case the word Stopfen is a nominalization of the verb to stopfen (you may notice the difference in capitalization, in German nouns are always written with a capital letter).

“The verb stopfen has a slightly different meaning. It is used when repairing clothes or to be more precise darning socks. But more importantly it’s the same word (potentially even etymologically) as to stuff. Whether you want to say one stuffs a pillow with feathers or food into oneself, the word stopfen can always be applied. Hopfenstopfen is therefore the act of stuffing beer with hops, which I guess is an even more fitting term now with all the hazy beers around.”