Live music—the bedrock of New Orleans’ reputation as a music city—is in danger of collapsing. This is kind of a complex issue, so bear with me. OffBeat has always been focused on live music. Without live music, New Orleans would not be the music mecca it is. Live music is the fist thing that groups who want to develop our music industry need to address. Yeah, it’s a gig economy, but it’s a start for any musician who wants to make a living playing music. It’s elemental. But getting $100 a gig today is not the same as making $100 three years ago or even last year. Costs of everything—especially ..read more

Radio station WWOZ is negotiating to sign a long-term lease for a new home to be located on the entire fifth floor of The Shops at Jax Brewery, a prime location at 600 Decatur Street overlooking the French Quarter and Mississippi River. As readers of OffBeat know, WWOZ has been looking for a new permanent home for a while, and more urgently since the station’s plans to move to a property at 717 St. Charles Avenue were shot down by the Board of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Foundation (the Foundation). The St. Charles Avenue property that WWOZ wanted to relocate to is a three-story, $2.37 ..read more

New Orleans has long been known as the “City That Care Forgot,” but I think it might be renamed “The City That Doesn’t Care” when it comes to its musical history. Having published several features over years regarding the deterioration of New Orleans musically-significant properties, I was dismayed and disappointed to read in today’s newspaper that Buddy Bolden’s home in Central City may be “demolished by neglect” by the city—because it’s literally falling down. We’ve already lost so many relics of the city’s musical history that one wonders if New Orleans is really a city that cares about her ..read more

In response to last week’s blog on the sad state of Frenchmen Street, we received this letter from a local jazz musician, who asked us not to identify him, his colleagues or club name. He has some interesting points that made me think about the state of New Orleans music: Your latest “rant” on May 25 has inspired me. Let me tell you a story about an experience I had recently on Frenchmen Street. My first gig in that area was when Jason [Patterson] was calling Snug Harbor “The Faubourg” and it was the only club on the street. (I vividly remember playing James Black’s tune “Jasmine”, which tune ..read more

Last weekend, I wanted to showcase Frenchmen Street to a music-loving friend from Europe who had never been to New Orleans before. We ventured there late on Saturday afternoon; the city was chock-full of tourists, and even so early in the day there were many obvious tourists wandering down Frenchmen, which typically has music starting usually about 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. I can sum up his impression of Frenchmen Street in one word: sleazy. The street is filthy, there’s rancid water standing everywhere as a result of poor drainage on the street—something the business owners on the street have been com ..read more

Where do people find live local music? Is there a regression in the information age in finding live local music? Most of you know that OffBeat has included music and culture events in our free music and calendar listings, for as long as the magazine has been in existence. We also have always included music listings and events at OffBeat.com in our calendar listings. In years past, music venues and clubs were relatively conscientious about sending us info on who was playing for the upcoming month. We had a print deadline and needed the information so we could list in the print version of O ..read more

Straight from the horse’s mouth, here’s the real reason that Krewe du Vieux won’t be parading on its usual route down Frenchmen and lower Decatur Streets. This is a press release from the Captain of Krewe du Vieux that lays it all out: “There has been considerable discussion regarding the Krewe du Vieux (KdV) parade route for 2023. Krewe du Vieux would like to explain where we are and how we got here. To provide some context, the KdV 2022 route was the shortest in the history of our parade.  This truncated route was at the NOPD’s request in light of the City’s recent challenges such as NO ..read more

Irvin Mayfield was sentenced to 18 months in prison in January 2022, but was released on January 9, 2023, after serving less than a year. Although Mayfield pleaded guilty to diverting $1.3 million in New Orleans Public Library Foundation funding to other accounts for personal use, I continue to wonder why he and his business partner Ronald Markham were the only ones that were held responsible. The fact that former Mayor Ray Nagin put Mayfield in charge of the New Orleans Public Library system must be examined. I always consider the facts when something seems so bizarre—there’s always an explan ..read more

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all OffBeat and Weekly Beat readers. It’s just a few days before Christmas and I’d like to take this quiet time to thank all of our loyal readers and supportive advertisers and sponsors for continuing to see the value of and to support what we do. We thank you most gratefully and promise to continue to cherish and promote local music and culture faithfully throughout the upcoming years. We have not abandoned print, by any means. Throughout the upcoming year, we will publish OffBeat in print format on a limited basis (for sure, with the Jazz Fest Bible). Al ..read more

Over the weekend, OffBeat received critique on social media from Kr3wcial on the Best of The Beat Awards. Kr3wcial, is a well-respected local hip-hop artist whom OffBeat has covered in the past and who was nominated for “Best Rap/Hip-Hop/Bounce Artist” and “Best Rap/Hip-Hop/Bounce Album/Mixtape,”  regarding the Best of The Beat Awards. Below are images of his post: Our staff discussed the critique and decided to create this post in response.   First, we’d like to say we’re responsible for any problems in our awards process and we want to address them. We take the input from t ..read more