The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Fifteen years ago, I won my first ever foreign holiday, a two week trip to New York courtesy of the white goods giant Hoover, who stupidly promised to give everyone who bought one of their products a fortnight in America. Pre-Zero Tolerance, it was a high rise playground for the brave. I played tic-tac-toe with a chicken in a glass-fronted machine in Chinatown and lost seven games in a row. I saw a naked man on roller blades shooting down Broadway at 35mph with a pink feather boa streaming out behind him. I had a knife pulled on me in the Village. I stood at the top of the WTC feeling some of its awesome seven-metre give in the strong winds nearly half a mile high. And now I’m on way my way back for another fortnight to see old friends, to visit musical shrines and to see how various storms have affected the US in the time that has elapsed since.

The first port of call, Houston, is too big to get a handle on. There’s an old Islamic adage about a flea living in a wonderfully woven carpet never having enough distance to be able to see the pattern and beauty in his environment. I’m too close so only see fragments of the whole. The Rothko Chapel is morgue quiet apart from the low hum of air conditioners keeping the giant arterial crimson canvases at exactly the right humidity and temperature. The painted oblongs swamp the field of vision and are arranged in triptychs, so even though this is supposed to be non-denominational, it is instantly recognisable as being Christian. It’s so beautiful it’s almost easy to understand why Marc Rothko opened the arteries of his neck after finishing the commission.

Houston is so big it takes a full 24 hours, several bus rides and four taxi journeys to find the actual downtown. Once there we are introduced to ‘The Man’ who motions to us that we are alright to smoke inside his bar, in amongst his hundreds of oil paintings and stacks of vintage board games. He brushes his long greying hair back and says: “The music of Houston has been changed out of all recognition by Katrina. Mainly it’s for the good. It used to be so quiet round here but now we have blues. Now we have jazz. But the hip hop culture is too different. The New Orleans and the Texans can’t get on. Every weekend kids are shot dead outside hip hop clubs. It used to be quiet but now all you can hear is gunshots.”

The Man invites us back at 2am to come to the official downtown afterparty. “That’s when the Speak Easy opens,” he explains.

Up a narrow wooden staircase lit by strings and strings of fairy lights is the Speak Easy. It was once the grand first floor shopping area of Houston’s biggest shoe store. All along one massive wall thousands of pairs of vintage shoes of all shapes and sizes are still in their boxes. The rest of the floor is taken up with stone statues of angels and other fragments of broken mausolea, baby grand pianos, oil paintings, WWII pinball machines, metal cigarette hoardings for brands that have long since been stubbed out. The Speak Easy stays open all night, every night.

It’s business as usual in New Orleans. Or at least it is in the French Quarter. Folk memory says that during the penultimate great storm, Billion Dollar Betsy in ’65, the authorities blew the levees with dynamite to allow the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to flow into the 9th Ward and spare the revenue generating French Quarter. Forty years later, they might as well have done, given that by the time Katrina hit the defences were still inadequate to stand up to even a Category 1 hurricane in parts, let alone a Category 5. Driving down Claiborne Avenue, you pass under the length of the great flyover that was broadcast into the homes of millions 24/7, covered in bodies, surrounded by water, glinting in sunshine. The floodwater has receded now but you can still see telltale signs of damage everywhere: houses boarded up and walls repaired with corrugated iron. Our host, Andy, whose job it is to help reopen schools in the area points out the St Louis Cemetery where a youthful Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda took acid at the end of Easy Rider. I go to get out of his truck but he stops me: “It just isn’t safe here any more. Not even during the day.”

At the end of the bone yard is the oddly jaunty Mother in Law Lounge, painted bright purple, with colourful murals of Nawlins funk legends surrounded by iron baths full of sub-tropical plants. It is an oddly heart warming sight amongst all the vacant lots. We are greeted by Mrs Doe, the widow of Ernie K. Doe. Inside, she has converted the front rooms of her house into a bar and shrine to the late R&B star who recorded the rocking ‘Mother In Law’ and was responsible for the irrepressible ‘Here Come The Girls’. Propping up the bar is Guitar Slim Jr whose dad played with such luminaries as Dr John, Professor Longhair, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and Lee Dorsey. I play the jukebox and when ‘Mother In Law’ comes on a look of sadness crosses Mrs Doe’s face. Later she tells us to be careful going home as the area under the giant concrete flyover isn’t safe. But Ern is still here in spirit. He looks down from all the corners of the bar. Life size waxworks of him in his bright purple stage suit with golden shoes smile down munificently from the corners and we get home safe.

In the French Quarter we go to Pat O’Brien’s to visit Mr Fast Eddie Gabriel, but when we get to the lounge that houses the two copper-topped duelling pianos, he is nowhere to be seen. When the husband and wife team sit down to blast out numbers facing each other they take a break and ask for requests. “Britney!” shout some locals. “The Eagles?” say some others. “Lee Dorsey!” we yell.