Day 7 started like any other in Oxford, Miss. but ended in a blurry mess sometime around 10 AM on day 8 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The only weird thing that happened in Oxford was that Max, Kieran and Phil went for a run. It was painful. The roads here don't encourage anyone to walk, jog or cycle. There's just enough room for those gigantic off-road mountain vehicles everyone uses in the suburbs. Weirdos. Our bellies were looking up at us, wobbling and teary-eyed, thanking us over and over again for helping them. "We thought we were gonners," they'd say in their chubby tummy kind of way. We will probably run more now so we can justify our gluttony. Johnny has been swimming everyday so he's grand. Or at least we think he has. He leaves early and comes back with wet hair and smelling of coffee. If he's not swimming then we don't want to know what he's been up to.
Dennis picked us up at 4 o'clock to start the 4-5 hour journey to the Big Easy. The trip was spent listening to all our songs and figuring out which ones fell into the following categories: Bad, Good and Top 5. Very technical musical terminology there. The idea now is to start on the 5 tunes that are absolute and utter goers. Hits, chart-toppers, life-changers, penthouse suites, gold poodles, the finest A.D.H.D. medication money can buy and all the fried chicken we can eat type songs that will change our lives forever...but not us of course because we'll always be humble an all that.
Once we have the 5 songs to start with we.....we can't tell you. It's top secret. We simply cannot allow the likes of Whitney Houston and Seal and Cat Stevens and Rachel Stevens and whoever to steal our cool ideas and rejuvenate their weird careers. Anyway, we have a plan in place and we're all very happy about how things are going.
Where were we? Oh yeah, get into New Orleans at 10.30ish with sore bums and hungry guts. Dennis' old friend, an absolutely lovely and entertaining man called Carlos, met us at a mad little place called Jackomos where we ate fishes and calamaris and tiny skinny fries and gumbo and shrimp etoufee...they even had red cabbage cooked down with sausage. How the hell do you reduce a food down using sausage? Lunatics! A local gent bought us beers upon hearing we were from Ireland and didn't expect any chat or anything in return. Amazing!
Then Carlos took us to the Saturn Bar on St. Claude avenue to watch a bluesy African American gent play a blues guitar and sound like loads of other bluesy people with a blues band of lads who didn't really seem to have any blues to speak of it seemed. They were white, and I don't know if that has anything to do with it cos I thought everyone got the blues, but these lads looked quite content. A beer there and off to another place to watch a locally renowned black midget blues man called "Little Jimmy," or was it "Small Joe," or maybe "Tiny Terry" or "Donal Beag?" Anyway, he looked like a black Elmer Fudd in cowboy drag and actually wasn't really all that short. False advertising we think. He did play some nice stuff though.
Out in the street we were captivated by the first in a long line of the small marching bands we encountered. There was a chap with a bass drum wrapped around his chest with a teeny tiny cymbal popping out the top. He was Max's hero. He followed a pretty lady down the street serenading her with sweet sweet kick drum action while the rest of his mates stayed put killing Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing."
Another bar and another...and a vowel and another and a consonant please Carol and another bar...lets see, anything interesting happen? Johnny and Max got into a heated argument about...can't remember, could have been the "everyone can dunk but not everyone can finger roll" argument or the old "brown sliced bread is really white bread dyed brown" disagreement. They made up and hugged in the next bar, even though both had forgotten they had even argued, or were even in New Orleans...weird but they were probably drinking whiskey by that stage so...whatever.com.
Carlos went home, we went to our hotel and said g'night to Dennis before getting giddy and legging it out again. Philip remembered the address of the last place we were at, like super Rainman or Good Will Hunting out on the lash. What a memory for a party! The rest of the night was just a variety of 24 hour bars for nachos and dirty aul toilets and saying "Who Dat" a lot without knowing what the hell it meant and taking photos of ourselves riding locked bicycles and finally getting kicked out of some place, can't actually remember why. Max and Philip decided to head back to the hotel...again Philip knew where it was without knowing where the hell he was. Amazing and Johnny and Kieran got back into the bar by offering the barman 8 dollars, which he politely returned and then bought them drinks......then ?????????
We opened our eyes and it was Superbowl Sunday in New Orleans. Time to get the dinner jackets on and get ready to scream relentlessly all day. WHOOOOOOOOO DAAAAAAAATTT!!!!!
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