The Meters' third album for Reprise, Fire on the Bayou, is their best record for the label for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the high quality of material throughout the record and a focus from the band that keeps the music simmering, even if it never quite reaches a boil. That's not a bad thing, because the music IS simmering, always hot and enticing, never lukewarm or too cool. There's not anything that comes out and grabs your throat, the way that "Hey Pocky Way" does, but there never seems to be a concession to mainstream funk, the way Cabbage Alley or Rejuvenation seemed to be. This just keeps things rolling, nice and smooth. There's not anything that separates itself from its partners -- something that's unfortunately true of all of the Reprise albums -- but the overall feel is better than the Meters' other Reprise albums, since it has more grit and presence than its compatriots. [Sundazed's 2000 reissue contains one bonus track, a "long version" of "Running Fast."]
This track dates from the period shorly before the four Neville Brothers got together to make the Wild Tchoupitoulas LP, after which Art and Cyril left the Meters to form the Neville Brothers with Aaron and saxman Charles (now that his spell in Angola for drug ofences was over).The "Fire on the Bayou" LP shows a band not wholly sure of its direction; a cover of Art's first hit from 1954 "Mardi ...
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By the time New Orleans funk progenitors the Meters released Fire on the Bayou on Reprise in 1975, the secret was pretty much out: the seminal Crescent City band that had charted a string of infectious and highly-original instrumentals on the Josie label in the late Sixties and served as the de-facto house band for Allen Toussaint and Marshall Seahorn's Sea-Saint studios was catching a taste of...
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Lagniappe is a Louisiana French word, derived from American Spanish la napa, (with a tllde above the "n"), or the gift; a variant with Indo-European roots+ napa (variant of yapa, gift, from Quechua, from yapay, to give more).Just because it's in the forties tonight, under cold drizzle in New York City on my first Funky Friday, and still in the mid-seventies in the heart of some of the best weat...
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 "Fire on the Bayou")
