New Orleans: Music and Parades

My Fraternity brother Jay and I both flew down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras weekend. We stayed at another brother's house, Kelly. Kelly lives in a house with three other college students, and it definitely made me feel old! There was no food in the house, no clean dishes, not enough blankets, and occasionally no toilet paper(!!) Here's the three of us (Jay, Kelly, Me) having a great time at Pat O'Brien's....

Overall, the weekend was an AWESOME time. Not only did we get to experience the craziness of Bourbon St and the French Quarter, but we also checked out quite a few local places. I've told almost everyone about the trip already, so I'm just going to hit the highlights along with posting some cool pics and videos.

Here is a picture of the New Orleans' skyline as seen from atop a Mississippi River levy in the Holy Cross district.

Two different nights we had the opportunity to go to a famous New Orleans music club Tipitina's. One of Kelly's roommates worked at Tips, and he got us in with VIP bracelets for free both nights. The music was amazing - rock, jazz, funk fusion with lots of guitar, sax and horns. The first night we went and saw a well known hometown band called Galactic. Below is a video I took of one of their songs. And for good measure, I threw in a picture of the stage - full of dancing girls - during one of their performances.



The second trip to Tipitina's was even better. We saw, again from the VIP section, Trombone Shorty & Orleans Ave. Trombone Shorty is a 23 year old New Orleans resident who is nationally known for his horn playing. He was absolutely amazing on the trombone and trumpet. Below is a video of him along with special guest Juvenile.


Juvenile is a pretty mainstream, famous rapper. Now I'm no fan of rap music, but it was pretty cool to hear it mixed with a full brass band. Trombone Shorty is coming to Columbus, OH in June. I plan on trying to talk some of my buddies into going with me to see him play.

Since it was Mardi Gras weekend, we went to 2-3 parades each day. The parade floats were simple amazing. Each parade had a different theme, but there were many similarities. Every float threw beads, cups, etc. out to the crowd. Also, every parade seemed to have at least 20 marching bands from all over Louisiana and other parts of the country. Here are a couple pictures and videos from the parades.

If you look closely at the second half of this float you will see the New Orleans' skyline.


This is the first float of the Endymion Parade.


A dinosaur at the Bacchus Parade....


There were thousands of people at the parades so sometimes it was tough to get the cool beads. The second day we came up with a plan. We connected a basketball hoop to a shower curtain and goaded all the float-people to throw their beads into the basket. It worked better than we could have hoped! We got TONS of stuff thrown at the hoop. Kidd Rock was the Grand Marshal of the Endymion Parade -- he took four shots with beads at our hoop and never even came close. He had better stick to singing....






Finally, here's a video I took of a random French Quarter street band. There was music everywhere....