Rock and Roll Voodoo

CHAPTER TWO FRITZEL’S-2

The room seemed to be rotating like a merry-go-round gone wild. Two delirious young women tackled Dale to the floor. He pushed them off and got back up, shaking his tambourine, without missing more than two or three measures. The temperature in the room rose to sauna bath levels. Dutch had called in his backup bartender, who was in a full sweat by the time he fought his way through the crowd and into position behind the bar. The backup waitress never did make it in. The crowd was tight as a rugby scrum. More than a hundred and fifty people had crammed into the club.

Three songs into the second set, Jesse had to stop playing momentarily to puke into a cup. The room was spinning. So was his stomach. Nothing seemed real anymore, not even his own vomit. Butch saw him do it and had to do the same. The music never faltered. The club became dangerously overcrowded. Jesse could see Dutch was having a hard time selling drinks. Customers at the bar were packed so tightly they couldn’t move their arms. It was a crush of humanity.

Across the street from Fritzel’s, Murphy Campo and his Jazz Saints were playing to an empty house. Next door, Johnny Horn and his Jazz Giants had a roomful of nothing but chairs. The neighboring club owners were not happy with the hippie happening at Fritzel’s.

It had been Johnny Horn who sat Jesse down three weeks earlier in the back patio to impart the facts of life about the music business. “Here’s the way it is,” the older trumpet player said in his raspy, cigarette voice. “We’re all whores in this business. What you’ve got to decide is whether you’re a cheap w***e or an expensive whore.”

That important lesson was on Jesse’s mind as the crowd grew ever more wild and crazy. He was feeling expensive.

Near the end of the extra-long set, between songs, Jesse heard what sounded like someone speaking through a bullhorn. The garbled sound was coming from Bourbon Street, behind what could only be described as a mob scene. Whoever it was, he was beginning to make the crowd settle down. Eventually, Jesse could hear what was being said through the bullhorn.

“This is the New Orleans Police Department. You are in violation of the city noise ordinance. Your decibel levels are too high. You must stop playing immediately.”

It was obvious the police could no more gain access to the bar than anyone else. But they had a bullhorn, and they were warning anyone who could hear them that further police action was imminent. The band looked at Jesse for a heads up on what to do.

Jesse said to Butch, “Never argue with a man with a microphone.” He was referring to himself, not the bullhorn operator.

“Don’t do it, Jesse,” Butch warned.

“This is the New Orleans Police,” the man with the bullhorn said again. “You are in violation of the city noise ordinance. We will start making arrests if you don’t stop playing and clear this area.”

The crowd booed loudly. So loudly they drowned out the bullhorn.

Jesse quieted them down. His microphone was louder than the bullhorn. “Okay, everybody quiet down. I need to talk to the police. Please, be quiet so the police can hear what I have to say.”

A hush fell over the crowd. Even the bullhorn operator seemed curious and ready to listen.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your cooperation. I have something to say to the New Orleans Police Department. Are you ready to hear it?”

“Yea!” everybody in the crowd screamed.

“I said are you ready to hear it?”

“Yea!” everybody screamed again, as if it was possible to get any louder.

A small voice inside Jesse’s head told him not to proceed. He paid it no heed. A darker force was driving him. A force that told him he had the hottest band in the world and that the rules no longer applied to him or anybody he knew.

“All right, then. Here’s what I have to say to the New Orleans Police Department.” He made the crowd wait a full ten seconds before he shouted into the microphone.

“f**k you, pigs. f**k the New Orleans Police. Go back to your pigsty. We’re having a private party here. Go f**k yourselves.”

Pandemonium erupted. The cheer from the crowd sounded like some football star had just scored the winning touchdown as time ran out in the game.

The band kicked into “Little Liza Jane,” and the party rocked on as though the evil police had finally met their match and been defeated forever. The bullhorn operator didn’t try to compete with the rock and roll hysteria. The band played on with all the wild determination of a herd of horses that just broke through the gate. Jesse saw Dale looking at him with profound admiration. Butch, on the other hand, looked at him like he knew the episode would not end well. Tim kept playing fiddle like he was welcoming the Devil to New Orleans.

Victory was short lived. Eleven minutes to be exact.

As the band was bringing their extended version of “Liza Jane” to a frenzied conclusion, the lights went out like a knockout punch. The music stopped like Death itself changed the channel. A shocked silence pierced the room for a brief moment until it was replaced by a collective howl of disapproval from the disoriented crowd. Shouts of confusion from the crowd turned into screams of panic. The total lack of light disoriented those who were already hallucinating. The sudden darkness left the crowd with nowhere to turn. Desperate souls pushed and punched and shoved and clawed for whatever exit they could find. All Jesse could see in the sudden blackness was the cow skull from the bayou, flashing on and off in the darkest corner of his brain like a subconscious neon sign. He thought he heard it say something, but when he listened again, there was nothing.

The band put down their instruments as best they could in the darkness and groped their way back to the patio garden. Butch lit his lighter. Even in his frightened state, he had to chuckle at the jack-o-lantern faces gathered around. “Looks like we really f****d up this time. Nice work, Jesse. Way to be diplomatic with the cops. Who’s ready to go to jail?”

Jesse hung his head. “I’ll go. I’m the one who got crazy on the microphone.”

“I say we climb the wall and get out of here,” Dale said.

Tim sat down cautiously. “Let’s just stay back here and hope they don’t arrest us.”

Dutch walked in, carrying a lantern that was bright enough to light up the entire patio. “Time to pack up your gear and get out of here. I can’t have horseshit like this going on in my club. I don’t know what you did to make the crowd so crazy but that thing with the police was more than wrong. I might get shut down for good. So guess what. You’re fired.”

Dutch turned around and walked out, leaving the band in the dark. Nobody lit a lighter. Darkness was appropriate for the moment. It took a few minutes before their eyes gradually adjusted to the starlight of the patio and the lights from adjoining buildings. Fritzel’s was the only club to have its plug pulled.

Butch fumbled for a chair and sat down. “Feels like it’s time for a band meeting, but I think I’m too high to concentrate.”

“Let’s not do anything until the lights come back on,” Tim said. “Maybe the police won’t come looking for us.”

The police never did enter the club to arrest anyone. They had an extremely tolerant attitude toward musicians. In three months at Fritzel’s, the band had been busted four times outside the club for smoking m*******a. Each time, the officers simply confiscated the weed and let them go. Musicians were expected to be eccentric and creative. The cops gave them room to move and license to explore. After all, it was the musicians of New Orleans who gave Jazz to the world. They called it Jazz because the girls in the brothels where the bands played wore jasmine perfume.

Knowing the laissez-faire attitude of the police, Jesse had been emboldened on the microphone. What he hadn’t counted on was the political clout of the nearby club owners who were losing customers to the psychedelic party next door.

When the lights came back on at Fritzel’s, about an hour later, The Divebomberz piled most of their gear into the van parked outside on the street. It took longer than usual since they were too disoriented to organize much of anything. They couldn’t get everything into the vehicle, and ended up dragging their instruments and microphone stands out to Bourbon Street like a squad of wounded soldiers after a brutal firefight.

Dutch was nowhere to be found. The club looked like a tornado had touched down. Tables and chairs were broken and turned over, shattered glass and spilled booze covered the floor. The window over the front door was smashed. Garments had been left behind. A blond wig was pinned to the ground by a chair with only three legs. Two Mardi Gras posters had been ripped off the wall and stomped to death at the entrance.

Dutch wasn’t about to deal with what had happened to his beloved speakeasy. He left the mess for Dolly and the backup bartender to clean.

The Divebomberz retired to the private patio of a friend to drink the night away and lick their wounds. Nobody took any more mushrooms. By sunrise, it was beginning to dawn on Jesse that his band had lost their only source of income.