Music and A Beach Vacation

Being on vacation at the beach, in particular the Pensacola Beach area, makes me realize how much different musically this area is to New Orleans. The beach is for all ages but certainly it is dominated by families and late teens and twenty somethings. Younger folks don't listen to radio the way I did when I grew up; youngsters these days can listen to whatever they want whenever and where ever they are thanks to digital music players.

Live music at this beach is dominated by local cover bands and a few bands from other places, New Orleans included. They aren't the bands I would go see in New Orleans for the most part but there some exceptions. Local New Orleans band Honey Island Swamp Band played here this week as did Cowboy Mouth. A  favorite traditional jazz band of mine, the New Orleans Moonshiners, have a gig this week, too, though the $20 cover would scare me away.

I sat in a bar in Navarre yesterday and was entertained by rock music I would have heard in the late sixties. I am sure it was some kind of satellite radio channel as I can't think of a lot of radio stations that would play Jimi Hendricks' "Are You Experienced," though who knows: I don't listen to radio much.

Yes, there are music festivals here, not like the Satchmo Summerfest  I am missing for the first time since it started in 2000. Here it is the Bushwacker & Music Festival, named for a drink that tastes a bit like a chocolate milk shake but with a kick like a Bourbon Street Hurricane. I don't recognize many of the bands and the ones I do don't make me want to attend.

They don't do the "shag" at the beach anymore, or at least not at this beach, and most of the young ones have probably never heard of "beach music" that was and still may be popular in the Carolinas. Yet there is still live music in the beach sand pits and that is good. I guess if I were here for more than a week or two, I would find myself out looking for live local music and be happy with whatever I found. Though I would miss terribly that ability to catch great live local music at my favorite New Orleans watering hole. The fact that it is free with a drink or two from the bar and diverse makes it the most attractive to me that and the fact that I don't need to get sand in my shoes helps.