Author Archives: Lauren Noel

13th Annual French Film Festival: What the French?

For anyone who’s wondered what a French movie version of the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale might look like, the 13th annual French Film Festival can show you. Presented by the New Orleans Film Society and the Consulat Général de France á la Nouvelle-Orléans, the festival features six French language films at the Prytania [...]

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Tropical Isle: Back on Bourbon

A year after a four-alarm fire ripped through the building, the Tropical Isle at the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon re-opened last month with a renewed commitment to live music on Bourbon Street. Equipped with new state-of-the-art sound systems, the Tropical Isle and Tropical Isle Bayou Club (formerly Beach Club) will continue the tradition of [...]

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Tropical Isle Returns Thursday Night

A year after a four-alarm fire ripped through the building, the Tropical Isle at the corner of Toulouse and Bourbon is re-opening tonight with a renewed commitment to live music on Bourbon Street. Equipped with new state-of-the-art sound systems, both Tropical Isle and Tropical Isle Bayou Club (formerly Beach Club) will continue the tradition of [...]

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Michael Patrick Welch with Alison Fensterstock, New Orleans: The Underground Guide (UNO Press)

New Orleans has long fostered an underground scene unlike any other. Our tendency to prefer life a little quirkier is one of the reasons people migrate to the Crescent City. Not many other places offer great live music by talented musicians accompanied by a cabaret show and a bingo game.
Still, the rest of the world [...]

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Horn Adjustments

Dubbed the Horn Doctor, Mike Corrigan is a master repairman and craftsman of brass instruments who owns B.A.C. Horn Doctor, a repair shop and horn manufacturer in Olathe, Kansas. In addition to his shop, he also owns a mobile instrument repair truck that he uses to follow high school and college marching bands to fix [...]

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Back to the Bayou

The most bike-friendly music festival in New Orleans kicks off this Friday evening. Mid-City’s Bayou Boogaloo is a free music, food and arts festival on the banks of Bayou St. John. Festival organizers encourage attendees to bike, streetcar, even canoe down the bayou rather than drive and clog up the Mid-City neighborhood where the festival is [...]

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Stone River Boys Merge Country and Funk

To some music aficionados, genres are defined for a reason and should never be mixed. For musicians Dave Gonzalez and Mike Barfield, those lines are a little smudged. Actually, they are more like the traffic laws in New Orleans — merely suggestions.
Both are steeped in the tradition of country music, but neither seems to be [...]

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Honey Island Swamp Band: Jazz Fest Focus

For the guys of Honey Island Swamp Band (HISB), Katrina was almost as much of a blessing as a curse. Stranded in San Francisco with just their gig playing with Eric Lindell, Aaron Wilkinson and Chris Mule knew they needed to find more places to play to get by.
In a chance meeting that could only [...]

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BTE Raises $200,000 at the Ezra Open

New Orleans rock band Better Than Ezra, through its Better Than Ezra Foundation, held the 9th annual Ezra Open March 27 to a resounding success. The combined day of celebrity bowling, concert and donors’ party raised more than $200,000 – $32,500 of that raised when the band auctioned off a gig in the home or venue-of-choice of [...]

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Kermit Ruffins Gets the “Real” Treatment

Last night, I went to see Kermit Ruffins and made an unpleasant discovery: The Real World has found Vaughan’s. MTV’s The Real World is one of the pioneering reality shows, one that throws seven complete strangers together in a house for several months to see what happens “when people stop being polite, and start getting real.”
Except [...]

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