Monday, October 15, 2007

A New Orleans Musical?

I've been out of touch for a few days because my laptop died and I went on a short camping trip. I'm baaaaack.

Looks like the big news today is that David Simon, producer of The Wire, might be making a mini-series for HBO about musicians in New Orleans. I'll definitely try to find out more about this.

According to the New Yorker,


The series will focus on New Orleans’s music community, and Simon plans to base some of the main characters on real people: a jazz trumpeter named Kermit Ruffins, who plays with a band called the Barbecue Swingers; Donald Harrison, Jr., a musician who is also the chief of an Indian tribe that performs at Mardi Gras; and Davis Rogan, a local d.j. and piano player. Rogan was at the parade—Simon had picked him up earlier at his house, whose decrepit interior had more shades of paint than I had ever seen in any dwelling. Rogan is a tall, shambling guy with unruly sandy hair and a soul patch. He seemed to know every musician in New Orleans, and perhaps two-thirds of the people at the parade. He teaches music in the New Orleans schools, and he once ran for state representative on a platform of legalizing marijuana and using the revenues to fix the city’s streets—“Pot for potholes!” was his slogan.


The article also says that Simon is a freak for realism. That could be awesome for a series.

I've read in other blogs where people say K-Ville needs to watch out. I think a series by Simon will be so different, that it may even get more people watching K-Ville, just to see more of New Orleans if for nothing else.

LewisC

No comments: