(Photo by Hannah Lipman)

View the full photo set here (Thanks Hannah & Joshua)

[Ed Note: Here is the grand recap of all the on-goings that happened this past weekend in New Orleans, as seen through the eyes of ML contributor Julie. Be sure to check out Julie's twitter stream which had a bunch of nuggets from the festival. Also, if you would like to check out Eminem's performance, I got word that it will be airing on Fuse as a part of the Best of Voodoo 2009 TV Special, tonight, November 6th @ 10PM EST (check the trailer here).]

Taking place during Halloween weekend in a city known as one of the greatest places in the country to don a costume, listen to music and get drunk, The Voodoo Experience 2009 inspired a lot of expectations. We’re talking Eminem, KISS on Halloween night, P. Funk, local artists that sound like nothing you’ve heard before, funky folk artists and talented craftspeople… and overall, Voodoo brought it. This festival required a stamina that most don’t because it was interrupted by some of the wildest Halloween parties in the nation. Voodoo, however, proved worthy of every ounce of effort it required to dance through each and every show.

The festival got off to a rough start with the chilliest storm New Orleans has seen all season. Mud, rain and kicking The Knux off stage didn’t make for the most promising opening day. Yet the festies got creative, borrowing trash bags from the grounds crews to make ponchos and huddling together at Justice to keep warm. With the help of a few beers and an other-worldly dance party/light show, the crowd managed to forget the cold and have a blast. Most people who lasted that long trudged through the ankle-deep mud to at least catch the first few songs from Eminem + D12 before heading out. Eminem’s decade of fame has taught him how to really wake a crowd up, showing a gory short film of a psychotic, asylum-bound, murderous Marshall Mathers. They threw in gunshot noises between songs, keeping the audience on their toes throughout Eminem’s energetic performance. When the audience finally dispersed, most people looked pumped for the next day’s shows.

Saturday’s lineup included The Black Lips, Mates of State, a cancelled K’naan show, Mutemath, Gogol Bordello, Parliament-Funkadelic and KISS. Few people showed up without a costume, and the crowd started drinking early. The festival had a friendly, frenetic vibe, people getting more and more excited as the day wore on. Strangers took pictures of and with one another, and the festival-goers traded tips on where to spend the evening between the countless after-parties, Halloween parties and Frenchmen Street.  Security wasn’t too tight, and most shows smelled strongly of pot, contributing to the audience’s already relaxed, comfortable vibe. K’naan’s cancelled show changed the locations of many artists slotted to perform around the same time, making for a confusing afternoon. Yet things got back on schedule by Mutemath.

Gogol Bordello got the festies dancing harder than any other show all weekend, save Justice. P. Funk, on the other hand, played for a relatively small, chill crowd on a quiet stage between folk art vendors’ tents. As they got funky, the majority of the festival-goers rushed toward the KISS stage, dancing through art installments on their way. The crowd was packed, and KISS was, in a word, insane. Pyrotechnics, Gene Simmons flying across the stage, an infomercial between songs to buy their new album — it’s available at WalMart, apparently Simmons has seen it there. Teens and college kids were busy texting their dads, blown away that rock ‘n’ roll used to rock this hard. Older women in leather jackets and KISS-style face paint sang every word of the KISS classics (though, as Simmons reminded us, just because something is a classic doesn’t make it an oldie). People walked out of City Park that day high from the music and drunk from the spectacle, ready for an even wilder show: the New Orleans Halloween scene.

The entire festival crowd seemed at least a little bit hungover Sunday. Relatively few people showed up before The Flaming Lips, but the Voodoo producers seem to have anticipated this. With an emptier schedule than any other day, Sunday’s big shows included The Pogues, Widespread Panic, The Flaming Lips and Lenny Kravitz. Yes, Lenny Kravitz. It was almost as if they wanted to clear the park before the final performance. Yet those who did leave before Lenny walked away with a most beautiful ending to an exhausting weekend. The almost too-mellow show saved itself by concluding with the sound of “Do You Realize?” playing under the full moon, tens of thousands strips of confetti floating in the dark sky like psychedelic stars, and an entire audience singing together “to make the good things last.”

[Dj01 Note: ML is back at The Voodoo Experience, one of the most prominent music festivals, kicks off in New Orleans tomorrow, and we have dispatched Julie, a talented and up & coming writer to cover all the festivities. Enjoy Julie's picks below, with live coveritlive/twitter coverage to come throughout the festival, and a wrap-up & dope pictures early next week!]

The Voodoo Experience 2009 is only one day away, so  it’s time to figure out which shows you’ll hit and which ones you’ll miss. New Orleans is home to some of the best bands and the biggest parties in the states, and if you’re going to do Halloween weekend here, you better do it right. That means the checking out the Zydepunks instead of the Black Lips on Saturday, and missing the first few Flaming Lips songs to hear all of Trombone Shorty’s set on Sunday. Here are some of this year’s Voodoo essentials, and why you’d be crazy to miss them:

Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship?
3 p.m. Friday @ Bingo! Parlor
The local nine-member ensemble has more energy and more instruments than you can imagine. An accordion, a stand-up bass and a banjo make appearances in most of their songs, and the band is known around town for their bluesy, gospel-infused, funk performances at AllWays Lounge. Yet Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? can do more than play mellow shows with haunting vocals — they can also tear it up as well as any New Orleans band. The first time I saw them was at an abandoned warehouse with no sound system but plenty of gutter-punks and beer, and I expect the band to get the Voodoo crowd moving as hard as we all did that night.

The Black Keys
5:40 p.m. Friday @Billboard.com Stage
With a blues-rock sound unlike anything else produced in the past decade, The Black Keys play live shows with the same soul as they record their music. Watching drummer Patrick Carney play like his life depends on each and every beat is not something you want to miss. Never mind Dan Auerbach’s powerful voice, the intensity of his guitar will be enough to get you hooked on The Black Keys for good. So if you hate the superficiality of the most modern rock, stop by The Black Keys show for a refreshing reminder of what rock is supposed to feel like.

The Knux
7:30 p.m. Friday @ Soco/WWOZ Stage
Also hailing from the New Orleans, The Knux are a rap duo that work so well together that could almost guess that they’re brothers. Kentrell “Krispy Kreme” and Alvin “Rah Almillio” Lindsey got discovered in Houston, where they landed after Hurricane Katrina. They moved out to the Los Angeles area, and the self-produced pair has been playing their own music ever since. While The Knux made a name for themselves touring with Common and have worked with Eminem’s producer Paul Rosenberg, their original style and musical talent ensure that they’ll do just fine on their own.

Eminem + D12
9:30 p.m. Friday @ Voodoo Stage
Ten years since his debut release, Eminem is back with as much fire as ever. Not that you really need someone to encourage you to pick his show over the second half of Ween, but in case you do: Eminem is one of the greatest rapper-MCs of all time. Relapse may not be your favorite Eminem album, but the man’s energy and talent — plus D12’s own skills — doesn’t seem to have faded, and Friday night is your chance to find out for sure.

Saturday/Sunday highlights after the jump!

[Read more]

Off the Forge Your Own Chains 45, a limited edition bonus that comes with Forge Your Own Chains Heavy Psychedelic Ballads and Dirges 1968-1974. Tell ‘em, Stones Throw:

With the same detailed, no-stone-unturned approach he used for deep funk on The Funky 16 Corners and Cold Heat, Egon’s Now-Again Records tackles beat-heavy global psychedelia with Forge Your Own Chains. Psychedelic records, long the mainstay of older, grizzled collectors, are giving up new ghosts in the hands of Egon and those of this generation.

Guilty Simpson pounds out a verse over the original (which is included separately) and then Oh No flips the beat on the second half.

I can’t say I know anything about global psychedelia. This wouldn’t be the first time a Stones Throw Record introduced me to a new genre of music.

Download: Guilty Simpson & Oh No – My Time To Shine (produced by Egon, Oh No)

Download: Damon – Don’t You Feel Me

via Stones Throw Records

Presumably you’ve heard of this videogame.

Everything about this clip is great, especially the cartoon renderings of the Beatles. Giant elephantmen? Walruses? Bring it on.

Via Exclaim!

Okay, this is a few days old, but it’s worth hearing. Not as surprising of a combo as you might expect. GZA  made a few appearances on the Atlanta garage rock band’s SXSW tour, and seem to have become fast friends. As for the track itself, it’s…interesting.

The band’s playing is a bit too sloppy for GZA to ever gain a foothold, so he stumbles over the song’s reverbed haze. The verse was also clearly recorded separately from the Black Lips’s playing; GZA’s voice sounds too clear compared to the distant vocals on the backing track. The twangy, dusty vibe of the song isn’t too far removed from some of the spacier stuff on Liquid Swords. Nonetheless, I’d much rather hear GZA spitting with the El Michels Affair, or better yet, a full-length collaboration between the band and the Clan. It just makes more sense, especially in light of the Affair’s recent cover album of Wu-Tang instrumentals, Enter The 37th Chamber.

DOWNLOAD: Black Lips – The Drop I Hold (Remix ft.GZA)

And here’s another reminder of how good El Michels and the Wu sound together:

DOWNLOAD: Raekwon & the El Michels Affair – The PJs

Did you know that Dee Dee of the Ramones recorded a rap album as Dee Dee King in 1989? This single is not on the album but still terrible and entertaining in a kind of car-wreck way. Seek out the whole album if you hate your ears.

I like rap/I like hip-hop/I like hardcore and punk rock

To clean your ears out, here’s the video for “I Wanna Be Sedated” featuring Courtney Love in a cameo as a junkie (really!):

Shouts to Nate Patrin for reminding me about this.

(img source)

So, if you haven’t heard about Phish’s comeback tour after breaking up in 2004, then you must be living under a rock. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get tickets to their three night opening run at Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, but the band was kind enough to release free soundboards from each night that were quickly put on Livephish.com the next day. After listening to each show I can ecstatically say the boys are back and playing with a vengeance. Opening with “Fluffhead,” a fan-favorite that hasn’t been played since 2000, they set the tone for the next three nights. After witnessing the trainwreck that was Coventry, their “final” show/festival and my one and only time seeing them, hearing the band (especially guitarist Trey Anastasio, who dealt with drug addiction and was practically nodding off while playing at Coventry) absolutely nail complex compositions such as the aforementioned “Fluffhead” and “You Enjoy Myself,” and looking like they were having the time of their lives while doing it, has put a smile on a face that won’t be leaving for a while. Here’s a phan’s video of the opener that gives me chills every time i watch it:

Can’t wait to catch these guys at Bonnaroo and hook it up with another review!!!

Don’t you love that feeling when you hear a track so good from an artist that’s new to you that you seek out their whole catalog. That’s the feeling I had when I had this funky electronic track come across the ML e-mail box a few day ago. I went in search of more music, only to find out their debut isn’t even out, but they do have some samplings on their myspace. The group is from Portland, but their debut, Mind Chaos is coming out in the UK first on Virgin in June, shortly followed by their Stateside debut on Capitol. Plus, how can you hate on a band named after the best sport ever?

Hockey – 3am Spanish

ML was at LIV Night Club last night to check out BYT’s 19 hour party (sadly, we were there for only about a 4th of that..there was some obscure ceremony going on downtown that we decided to check out.)

This was our 4th time seeing Wale live, making it his best that we’ve seen yet (and it softened the agony of missing out on that epic NYC show he had last month). Wale ran through his most known cuts like Nike Boots to W.A.L.E.D.A.N.C.E. (favorite of the night?), in addition to performing 2 debut album cuts for the 1st time. Wale performed the Cool & Dre produced Chillin (the final version, which isn’t out, will feature Lady Gaga) and Pretty Girls. Wale’s stage presence should be in a textbook for all rappers performing live, the crowd was feeding off of it all night. The vibe of the whole club was so dope, that it seemed Wale didn’t want his time to end, scrambling last minute for a make-shift encore featuring a line over My President Is Black (“My President is Black, my credit card is too./ but my credit is fucked up thanks to that previous dude“) as well as inviting local-bred producer/rapper Oddisee to freestyle a quick 16.

Wale also had a few PSAs through out his set that stuck with us:

*UCB x Wale album coming soon (separate from the debut).

*If you hear someone mispronounce his name (ie Whale or Wall-E (Wale predictied that he’s gonna be bigger than the Pixar joint).. smack that person for Wale .

*Tre (of UCB) wrote a Lindsay Lohan (or say it like Wayne: Lo-hann) song.

*Wale is signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation.

The event in of itself was kick ass, there were 2 floors of live music, cheap Colt 45s, intermissions with Burlesque Dancers and Comedians (Tig Notaro). We even got some good new music on to our radar, Team Facelift (who might be the wildest partying pack, I’ve ever seen live?) & Team Robespierre.

Peace to Dan & Wale; Victor & the BYT crew for organizing such a dope event.

Check the whole set of our pictures at the Flickr page. Seeing as I used my dslr camera at a concert for the first time, I plan on getting better at it, to see dope(r) fisheyed photo’s check out BYT’s stash.

Lastly, check what Washington Post had to say about Wale’s performance.

I’ve gathered bits and pieces of these developments on twitter, now elitaste wraps it up in nice video form.

*Ben Baller grills coming soon (the impressions are done?).

*You can hear a minute & a half preview of the Wale Ft. TV On The Radio track in the background starting at 4:25, and it sounds fantastic.