Posts

"The Vieux Carré Times"

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Since 1999 I've been trying to put-together & develop an online publication I call a 'net-paper, located here: The VCTimes    Hope springs eternal, right? (:   For example, here's the latest from the VCTimes'  "Editorial Page": Go to Hell, #IMPOTUS if you think you're gonna send my son off to war in Civilization's Cradle! The VCTimes' cartoonist is the great New Orleans musician & artist Jim Smith. Check out his fantastic music on the Times' "Music & Art" section, such as these Jim Smith recordings I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn0jckzhnPQ&list=PLVh6T6ziwJgKp5DvXx3wwPCw-vsIaqj2R Enjoy! ~thomas balzac, editor & publisher,  The VCTimes   Email: vieuxcarretimescom@gmail.com   

"Locals' Musicians"

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"Genius" is found in every corner of New Orleans, Louisiana. Its vessels toil in Architecture, Art, Music, Poetry....and, usually -- when they go "over to the other side" or leave this City for whatever reason -- only the local people miss & remember them, these "locals'" musicians, artists, poets.... My video today highlights locals'-musician and friend Brett Richardson, tearing-up the new piano installed at The Spotted Cat Music Club on Frenchmen Street, with this 1914 classic (music by Maurice Abrahams; lyrics, Grant Clarke). He ends his set with a classical-style piece but its title escapes me at the moment, sorry.
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"Louder, Gents!" ~New Orleans' freestyle music This video could be from a hundred years ago on a typical hot mid-summer day in "the city that care forgot." I personally can't get enough of New Orleans' uniquely-original "free"-style, street music, and am amused when newbie-locals sometimes clamor for volume-controls on instruments played by "street musicians" such as the band in today's video. For generations, most of New Orleans' local musicians have performed on the banquettes and in the many bars of New Orleans' historic Vieux  Carré (" old square").  Today known as "The French Quarter," it's a historic residential neighborhood and Louisiana's most-profitable tourist district. Sadly, and partly as the result of gentrification, today in the Vieux Carre' there are many "naysayers of music" (as I label them); many are wealthy residents of the French Quarter (a

"Sundays"

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Here's a memorable video recorded and posted as part of a "Music in the Streets of New Orleans" series I was working on that got zapped by the google+ blue meanies: A Second Line jazz funeral dancer somberly leads an imaginary procession march in the foreground as, "Just a Closer Walk With Thee" is sung at a St. Louis Cathedral Elementary School fund-raising in the French Quarter. The local singer & trumpet player dedicated his last song "to the memory of Whitney" Houston who had died from an accidental drowning the Saturday night-before. My "Music on Frenchmen Street" series was also exterminated by G+ Daleks but I'll be resurrecting it here best I can, beginning with things like this cool version of "House of the Rising Sun" I recorded at an iconic local music club on a late-Sunday night in New Orleans, enjoy (:  Andre' Bouvier & The Royal Bohemians, with George Deane, Sr. (electric bass), Suzi Leg

"Dancing Girls"

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     But, forget about "the Report" for a moment.  I'm here to complain -- again -- about Google-Plus deleting all my original content from cyberspace, how dare he, they, it, w/e Alphabet truly is [insert scary emoticon]....        For instance, my series on "Dancing Girls" showed great videos of people dancing to live music at the many local clubs I haunt just outside the walls of my "slave-quarters" that sits behind a grand Creole cottage in New Orleans' French Quarter tourist district (originally called La Vieux Carré or  the old square , in French).  I'll re-post those here from time to time, let's begin with this gem (: Here's some tourists & locals having fun dancing to the vocals & trumpet of the great Charlie Fardella and "The New Orleans Cottonmouth Kings" (John Rodli, jazz guitar; Robert Snow upright bass; violinist Matt Rhody; (will ID later the band's fill-ins tonight for Tom Saunders (bass sa

"The Mueller Report" ~postscript

      The "wait" finally ends at 11:30 a.m. on April 18, 2019, and a million trees are quickly harvested for paper that's fed into the printing presses running wild, through the nights, spitting out copies of the " Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election."    Already, masses of citizens are parsing paragraphs and speculating over the legal brief detailing "Findings of Facts and Law," as if it were a Shakespeare play....       I haven't read it yet (and when I do it will be online: save the trees!) although I worked in law many years (including summarizing federal court decisions for a major law-book publisher).       At first glance, however, I'd advise this pretender-POTUS "clown in the 'House" to pack-up and get out ... before his ass is put in stirrups. As predicted from the beginning some two years ago, fake- @POTUS @realDonaldTrump has copped the exact-same def

Testing the Waters....

Most mornings I watch C-Span's "Washington Journal" and, often, comment on issues via Twitter.  Here's what I mean: The bigger "story" is that hospitals are systematically "dumping" many of the 100,000 patients annually who acquire deadly infections while being treated or examined; to other hospitals, nursing homes, home-care, etc., to avoid the cost & responsibility of fixing what they broke. pic.twitter.com/cr2L6g0khR — La Vieux Carré Times (@thomas70116) April 18, 2019 Here's a related discussion from a year or more ago: Are doctors so "distracted" they forget to wash their hands, causing a hundred-thousand deaths from hospital-acquired infections every year? pic.twitter.com/yojfmlhW35 — La Vieux Carré Times (@thomas70116) August 13, 2017 =================================