Attendees from all over North America experienced Voodoo Music Festival 2019 in a city where up is down – New Orleans. They grabbed their best costumes that ranged from simple and stereotypical Electronic Dance Music garb to donning top hats and red bandanas that echo the 1980 Sunset Strip. Like we all have said before, “trick or treat, smell my feet, and oh shit… Is this mud or peat?” Nope, it’s just soggy festival grounds where everyone’s feet became anchored in the mired grounds of City Park, New Orleans. Despite the begrimed ground of the entire pit through the back viewpoints, the costumed crowds attended in droves.
Picking which Artist’s set at any festival can become like selecting which sweet morsel of candy to devour first in your orange plastic pumpkin pale. For me, Guns N’ Roses taking the stage was the first of these sweets. And oh “Sweet Child of Mine” I was defiantly not alone singing along. In the pit near center stage, I stood absorbing every note like a child even though most of the people in the pit might have been kids when Guns N’ Roses released Appetite for Destruction. While the rain drizzled down upon our already soaked through attire, we listened to songs from every Guns N’ Roses album. We even heard vocals from Duff McKagen the cover song “Attitude” off Guns N’ Roses least popular album, The Spaghetti Incident.
Although the rain almost never let up, it was still a beautiful touch of nature to actually have not so cold rain hit our ears while listening to Guns N’ Roses most famous ballad, November Rain. But my favorite part of the show was when the crowd erupted as lead singer Axl Rose rested his forearm on the should of guitar player Slash. For a brief moment, we got to see how far both have come to mend their broken ties to give us this show. But don’t you cry tonight because the encore gave us what we needed and expected from a band like Guns N’ Roses. A call to the Paradise City. While Guns N’ Roses’ sound is no longer the same as it was in its heyday (mixing in industrial elements, with blues riffs, and Axl’s more conservative banshee wail), in true rocker fashion I suspect they just don’t give a fuck what we think – those who stood in the rain sang anyway.
Trying to find figure out which piece of candy to save till the very end of your Halloween stash can be tricky. While the bigger piece can good, I’d rather enjoy something that was new to me. I caped my Voodoo Music Festival musical mixed bag of rock and electronic dance music was none other than REZZ. Just like a kid knocking on the door during Halloween REZZ took the stage without almost any prebuild up sounds or visuals. She simply doesn’t need to rely on them. From the stunning visualizations and impressively well-balanced transitions from track to track REZZ made sure the crowd was moving to every blood-stained beat to every macabre melody. I truly believed that we were all in a place where the dead can still physically touch the living. The steady beat blast that seems to pulsate through my torso turned my head into a skull candy bobblehead on a taxi cab’s dashboard as it rolls over train tracks. REZZ’s distortional and reverberated elements found in her tracks were a musically satisfying fit to an all Hallows Eve weekend at Voodoo Music Festival 2019, New Orleans.
