Drummer Zig Modeliste swaggers through this with every part of his kit singing, as soon as bassist George Porter, Jr. starts the strut after the band members make a swelling shout together.
There's nothing muffled about what he's doing. His snare has that New Orleans street parade sound.
Guitarist Leo Nocentelli and organist Art Neville answer the bass and sometimes Zig with perfectly-timed simple ideas that feel so good.
It seems like it all should be too simple to work, but this adds up to create a track that's a funk juggernaut.
Posted on 01/26/2008
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This one is not playing for some reason. It keep telling me to sign up for this rapsody thing.
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A classic.
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Georger Porter, Jr. has become somewhat known among the jam bands circuit doing gigs with the String Cheese Incident and Gov't Mule. Hopefully, that will open whole new musical vistas to jam band fans.
On another note, I think you could do a really great post, or series of posts, on the whole Mardi Gras Indians phenomenon in general, and, in particular, the connections between the Wild Tchoupitulas, the Meters and the Nevile Brothers. There's a lot of fascinating stuff there in terms of how the music all connects together through various influences.
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Art Neville was the organist of The Meters and in the mid-70's Cyril Neville started to play percussion with them .
Big Chief Jolly of the Wild Tchoupitoulas at the time of the recording back in 1976, was George Landry, the uncle of the Neville brothers. When they decided to record the Wild Tchoupitoulas, The Meters provided the accompaniment and the brothers helped out with it. That expanded Meters band accompanied a Wild Tchoupitoulas tour.
The Neville Brothers band which added Aaron Nevile to sing and Charles Neville to play saxophones started to book itself separately in 1976 and The Meters disbanded in 1977.
There is a Funky Meters band which plays Meters material, that is done mostly by members of the Neville Brothers band. The Original Meters have started to do reuinion performances in the last few years.
At the time of the Tchoupitoulas recording in 1976, the competing Wild Magnolias tribe had recently recorded. Some of the other tribes that I heard about that were active then were the Pretty White Eagles and the 12th Ward Hunters.
This article on the influence of the Indians on New Orleans Music seems good: http://www.jass.com/tom/next/indian.html
It shows pictures of some of the Indians' feathered costumes.
I'd love to find a list of the names of the different Indian tribes. I imagine that Katrina has messed this scene up pretty badly.
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It's a real treat to have you and RShaut discussing like this on-line.
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I ran across this page. Looks to be pretty up-to-date.
http://www.mardigrasdigest.com/Sec_mgind/indian_rosterpg.htm
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Great find, Rick! I had no idea that there were so many active tribes. Thanks!
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It's great to see some content here on MOG about The Meters ... but strangely Nothing comes up in the search box category when plugging in The Meters.
I've had a jones on for some Meters music the past few days ... used to have this stuff on cassette tape ... and loaned it to someone and never got it back.
Nice to hear it again ... Thanks.