Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all of my readers. 2010 was a year that I am very glad to put in the past. I don't think I have had a year like the last one in many many years and without going into details, I hope it is many years before another stinker of a year like 2010 occurs again. It is not that last year did not hold much promise as I had a new book out with great reviews and had some good things planned but sometimes things don't work as they are planned.

This is partly what worries me about my upcoming year. I again have good plans, very ambitious plans to sell my house of 11 years, change cities from where I now live in New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida at least three hours away. A new city, new job, new house, and new friends is a big change, one that many of us these days go through at least a  couple of times in our lives. Many folks do the bulk of their moving around when they are in their twenties and thirties and tend to move less as they grow older. This has been my case as I have moved into a different house twice in the last 25 years and have changed cities 2 times in close to forty years.

Time seems to accelerate as I grow older. It seems as  though the years speed by. It is not unusual now, due primarily to Facebook, to see or hear from old friends that I knew over forty years ago. It is amazing what that amount of time can do to our bodies, hair and facial figures. Sometimes I am hard pressed to recognize an old friend but if I look close I can normally find that long lost person in their eyes. We may grow wider and grayer but our eyes are still the window to our souls.

So here is to a new year with new promise and probably many new surprises. I hope this will be the last or next to the last move of my life. I hope I find peace of mind and a way to feel like I am accomplishing something as I approach the twilight years of my life. Only time will tell, so let's get this year in motion. Anyone want to buy a beautiful mid 19th century house that is a 5 minute walk from the bustling music scene on Frenchmen Street  and right next to the French Quarter in New Orleans?

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.