This interview first appeared in the February ‘07 edition of ANTIGRAVITY. I interviewed Mr. Quintron in the back of the Spellcaster Lodge on January 23rd, 2007 and the day after I returned to take some photos of him in his Marching Band uniform. Quintron rarely does local press, and this interview happened because of a New York writer’s poorly-informed opinion on the Marching Band’s Mardi Gras ‘06 appearances. Quintron wanted to set the record straight, and he was very honest as we talked about the Marching Band in general, post-K New Orleans and the 9th Ward.
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To say that Quintron is unlike most New Orleans-based artists would be a grand understatement. His live shows draw quite a crowd, yet he doesn’t overbook himself, which makes his few shows (generally with partner and puppeteer Miss Pussycat) extra special. He’s the odd N.O.-based alt artist who tours successfully, but he maintains an air of credibility in the local scene. No one would dare brand him a sell-out and he garners respect like it’s going out of style—people who know him say he’s a “master organizer” and the “brains behind” the Ninth Ward Marching Band. It’s the Marching Band that brings ANTIGRAVITY to St. Claude Ave. and the Spellcaster Lodge on a cold, dreary late-January evening. When AG enters the Spellcaster, the Marching Band is wrapping up practice. With at least fifty musicians in the Lodge, a number that includes members of local bands like Egg Yolk Jubilee, the Buttons, Triple Delight and the Morning 40 Federation, it becomes clear that the Ninth Ward Marching Band is, in effect, the New Orleans rock scene’s preeminent supergroup even though you wouldn’t hear the Marching Band’s music at any of those aforementioned bands’ shows. After speaking to several attendees, one simple thing is certain—every member has a passion for being a part, no matter how big or small that part is, of the Ninth Ward Marching Band.
Over its decade-plus existence, things have generally been simple; play marching versions of classic rock songs (‘06’s repertoire included “Rock You Like A Hurricane,” “Love Is Like Oxygen” and “House Of The Rising Sun”) and march in a parade or two (the group has become a fixture in Muses and traditionally marches, in the early morning after the Maritime Ball, from the Spellcaster to Mimi’s in the Marigny) while looking snappy and, above all, having fun.
After Katrina, doors opened for the Marching Band. With many students still absent from the area and high school bands at a premium, krewes had rare open slots. Proteus, a parade that not only shares the group’s colors but, because of its old-school status and attitude, is respected immensely by Quintron, hired the Marching Band. The added exposure plus the national media attention given to the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras didn’t always work in the band’s favor, however. The New York Times published a “Mardi Gras Diary” entry that alluded to the Marching Band, and the simple fact that its members are almost all white, as a “telltale sign” that New Orleans was undergoing a “cruel demographic shift.” Was the notion a shrewd deduction or a complete misunderstanding and ignorance of the Ninth Ward Marching Band’s history? ANTIGRAVITY talked to Quintron not only to set the record straight regarding that N.Y. Times article but also to get some of his history with New Orleans and what the Marching Band means to him.
AG: Why did you move to New Orleans?
Quintron: I was touring with my original Quintron, One Man Band thing, and in 1994 I played at Pussycat Caverns, which is the club that Miss Pussycat ran at Piety and Burgundy. I met her, and I was just literally passing through town. I basically came here for a girl.
AG: How did the Ninth Ward Marching Band come together?
Quintron: I’ve always been blown away by high school marching bands. That genre or mode of creating music is the ultimate way to make music, ever. Creativity and individual artistry is taken out of the picture and it’s about getting a hundred people to do the same thing at the same time, to show up, play the same lines the same way and no one is really expressing themselves or soloing or doing anything like that. But when you put it all together…you know the feeling when a marching band passes you by and you see the level of playing is widely varied from virtuoso players to people who can hardly play, but they’re playing the same thing at the same time and they’re playing together…it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It’s the most beautiful example of collaboration.
AG: Do you think marching bands here are different than those in other cities?
Quintron: In other cities, it’s like marching bands are doing their homework, but here people are playing with guts and soul. They want to be a marching band, they want to be First Trumpet and they want to play their ass off and walk down the street with their friends cheering them on and following them down the street. Second lines start with high school marching bands, which are the shit. They make me cry…they’re the best. There are a million that are great. They’re not expressing themselves individually, necessarily. That group-wide monster pride is amazing. I wanted to make that with adults, with us freaky, rock ‘n’ roll, wacky people who don’t have jobs and aren’t in high school or the military, but make us do the same thing (those marching bands do). Forget your rock band, forget your composition masterpiece, we’re going to play these stupid classic rock songs, and we’re going to play these songs in unison and the power’s going to be in that we can actually do it. I think that works. The fact that we got it together enough to do it and no one’s jamming or being an individual, and they’re wearing a uniform and it’s clean and tight and looks good…it’s powerful, a symbol of unity, of people coming together and agreeing to do something together and achieving it. The sound represents that.
AG: How do you think the Marching band is tied to the Ninth Ward?
Quintron: Loosely. The drum corps is mostly from the Ninth Ward, and if you’re talking about whether they’re from New Orleans or not, probably close to seventy-five percent was born and raised in the city. The Marching Band itself has nothing to do with the Ninth Ward. Originally it had to do with our neighborhood, people who had moved into the white Ninth Ward art scene, which featured people who moved here from other places because rent is cheap, houses were cheap, and this was the East Village in New Orleans. The genesis of the marching band was those people. I’d say that the drum corps and a couple of the girl groups are still rooted in that original neighborhood group of people.
AG: How many members of the marching band are from or live in the Ninth Ward?
Quintron: All the drummers are from the neighborhood. Everyone else is from Metairie, the Northshore, all over the place. The residency of the band has nothing to do with the Ninth Ward. That’s just the name. To cop out and make it the “New Orleans Marching Band” or the “Mardi Gras Marching Band…” It was originally called the Ninth Ward Marching Band…it looks cool, the cat logo looks cool. I mean, none of the Metairie guys care that it’s called the Ninth Ward Marching Band. They’re not, “What about Old Metairie or the Mandeville Marching Band?” For people to nitpick at that, like critics or media people…to answer the media or whine against them, it’s fruitless.
AG: Did your admiration for marching bands exist before you came to New Orleans?
Quintron: It came totally from New Orleans.
AG: Were you in a marching band when you were a kid?
Quintron: I was never in a marching band when I was a kid, but I studied military snare for years and years, just rudiments and stuff like that, just marching stuff.
AG: Why are all the songs the marching band plays classic rock?
Quintron: Mostly so that no one has sole ownership of the music. If I were to write the music, some quick Quintron songs, it would make it like I want them to help me do my thing. I could make it as democratic as could be, but it’d still be the “Quintron Marching Band,” and I don’t want it to be like that at all. I want it to be this dumb, learning, rote…no one owns it, no one’s getting all the glory for the creation of the actual music. A bigger reason is because there are so many people in the band—if you’re playing material that’s familiar to a certain age group, and classic rock is the one genre that spans the widest age group, more than hip-hop or even oldies. The right classic rock songs, Little Gregory has heard them, and forty-year-old Jeff the tuba player has heard them…it sets something in your head in advance that allows us to, in a month and a half, to put this shit together; it gives people a head start, they know the melodies, you know when the chorus is coming because you’ve heard it a million times. And for the girl groups who are doing the dances, they can get their dances together before we get the music to them. It’s a crutch that allows it to be achieved, and if it were an original composition by me, no one would know what it was, it wouldn’t have that memory attached to it.
AG: How does the composition of the songs come about?
Quintron: We take the song and simplify it, pull out the elements, dumb it down to marching tempo. The best marching songs have distinct bass lines with overlaying melody parts that work well with each other. The classic rock bands that are all nerdy about music, like Styx or ELO, are great for marching bands because they really composed their music. You never think about classic rock that much until you start arranging it for marching band, but there’s a reason why certain bands are popular with marching bands—it’s because the bass lines are really distinct, they’re easy to arrange and the chords are really thick and you can do cool things with the chorus. We start by choosing the stuff that way, and then I get together with Eric from Egg Yolk Jubilee. He’s the chord arranging genius, and we figure out all that stuff. The drummers are working separately.
AG: How does one get selected for the Marching Band?
Quintron: It’s not a selection. People think it’s this elite thing. There are people I hear about second-hand who think, “Why don’t I get picked for Marching Band?” It’s like, “Maybe because you play guitar, you don’t read music or play a horn or play drums.” It’s not this totally democratic thing that’s open to everybody. The band’s got a twelve-year history. The drum corps has been basically the same corps since day one, with one or two additions or subtractions over the years. And the gun girls too, and the baton girls. I mean, it’s kind of random how people get added. A bass drummer dropped out this year, and this guy walked up to me on Frenchmen St. because he’s a friend of a friend of a friend of one of the other bass drummers. He said, “I’ve seen your band before, and I really love it, and I’ve got the time and I really want to do it.” Right there, I said, “Give me your phone number.” It was early enough in the process that he could learn the material. We’re a lot more likely to take great horn players late in the game, as long as they can read music. There’s a whole new trend of hippier, rock marching bands around the country that are kind of like drum jam bands. Over 75% of the people here have marched in high school; they know that you start the one on your left foot…that’s why we’re good. If it was just drums and a few wankers pretending to play some songs, it would suck. It takes those dudes who played at Rummel, you know, being good. The more horns the better. You add too many drums and it’s a mess. I’d take a hundred good horn players, though.
AG: What numbers would the marching band top out at?
Quintron: This year we have eighty-five members, and if it gets too much bigger than that it’s a hassle. Whenever we have to cancel band practice or something like that I have to personally call eighty-five people, and that could take all day.
AG: What was it like for the Marching Band last year, marching in the first post-Katrina Mardi Gras?
Quintron: We marched with Proteus and Muses, and the regular parade after the Maritime Ball. Of course, the national media was down here and the N.Y. Times wrote something about the Ninth Ward Marching Band…
AG: We should say that that was Adam Nossiter (N.Y. Times, Feb. 25th, 2006), and he said, “Another group styled itself the Ninth Ward Marching Band, but it was almost all-white — clearly commemorative, rather than representative, of what had been a black neighborhood, now gone. The band members wore military-style helmets with “9″ on them. The once-obscure Ninth Ward is now a world-famous war zone.”
Quintron: He said that we were “a telltale sign” of what the Ninth Ward would become—mostly white. We’ve been around for twelve years, and have always been, while not being all white, majority white. That was really annoying, but to be expected. Now I feel a little weird about the fact that we’re called the Ninth Ward Marching Band and that in the last year and a half the Ninth Ward has gotten all this publicity and been the symbol of the black victims of Katrina. That’s true, but anyone who lives here knows about the Upper-Nine, the Lower-Nine and the Bywater, that the Ninth Ward in the‘70s was all white and eventually became Chalmette. You wouldn’t expect the national media to understand that, but now I feel like “What are people seeing when they see us marching down the street with a banner that says ‘Ninth Ward Marching Band?’” In a way, I don’t even want to address it, because it’s like, we are what we are, we have been what we have been, and if you don’t know, you don’t fucking need to know. It’s still a weird issue.
AG: The guy who wrote that article is actually from New Orleans, and an odd thing is that Thinknola.com just called him out for his N.Y. Times piece on the recent crime march to City Hall. Thinknola posted links to four stories, and while the other three talked about creating accountability in the New Orleans government, his was about race and how most of the people in the march were white. Race seems to be at the forefront for him.
Quintron: That’s bullshit. I hate it, and I hate that the national media is making everything about race, like it’s us versus them, white against black, with white people being the evil race and black people being the victim, and that’s bad for both sides. For him to turn our band into a beacon representation of the downfall, the white-ization of New Orleans is really offensive to me. My immediate reaction was that I wanted to tell the world the way it is, but I kind of don’t feel that right now.
AG: Would you ever change the name of the Marching Band?
Quintron: I’ve never thought, “Oh, we should change our name,” but I know we’re going to get shit, even more than last year. We’re not going to change our name. The real question is, “Why aren’t there more black people in our Ninth Ward Marching Band?” The answer is that it just started from a neighborhood of friends who hang out and collaborate and communicate with each other. Why aren’t more of my true brothers in New Orleans black people? If there were, they’d be in this band. I’m not saying I’m a racist, but that’s a question for everyone right now. The racism thing in New Orleans is weird. I think it’s actually one of the least racist places in America. I think black people and white people understand each other fundamentally in a way that’s above and beyond most other places in the U.S. At the same time, our hardcore communities don’t mix, and everyone kind of likes it that way. You know Little Gregory, right? He’s in the band because he’s got guts. Associating with older people, and white people…he insists on being a part of all this crazy stuff that we’re doing, and there’s open-minded people and people crazy enough in our scene that accept that and we’re true friends now. Why can’t that happen more? Those are things that people who aren’t from here can never understand. They don’t know race relations in New Orleans, and they never will. Us shouting “Ninth Ward,” or whatever, was a way of bonding in this little art community that we’ve got, in the same way that other groups of people in the city do, whether it’s Uptown or St. Thomas or whatever. The cool thing about neighborhood pride existing on such a minute local level that you’re actually talking about ten square blocks. It’s so ridiculous and beautiful that that was part of the original Ninth Ward “thing” for us. In a way it’s New Orleans pride, but it didn’t become this touchy racial issue until Katrina, which turned everything into a touchy racial issue, which sucks.
AG: How did you get involved with Proteus?
Quintron: Proteus paraded a long time ago, and then stopped and started parading again. I used to be an electrician for Proteus, and I love their floats. Really old-school. Foil leaf, flower petal style, kind of like Rex but even more flowery and beautiful, the big giant wagon wheels and stuff. For years and years, the Ninth Ward Marching Band only did their own parades from the Spellcaster to the French Quarter and we were like this renegade thing. My mission the whole time was, New Orleans can be decadent and weird enough, but I never wanted to be anti-Mardi Gras or anti-New Orleans, I want to be in the real shit. Being in a real parade is as important as being this late-night, freak parade. I want to march down Canal St. and St. Charles Ave. Our first ever parade was with Shangri-La when it was in Chalmette. It was fun, a total country-style parade. Then we marched with Muses for a couple years, and after the hurricane, I had an opportunity to step it up. All these krewes needed marching bands because so many dissipated. I knew I didn’t want to march with Rex, and Zulu would be weird and controversial, and the super-krewes take too long, they stop forever and have a bunch of celebrities. I wanted to march with Proteus, the snarkiest, most old-line, Uptown, beautiful parade that exists, in my opinion. We even share their colors, red and white. I got their number and called them, and they were into it. It has nothing to do with sharing politics with them, I don’t even want to get into that. Joining up with them was about being in a high-profile Lundi Gras, classy parade and being able to march down St. Charles Ave. for tons and tons of people, little old ladies and little kids and high school students. Proteus is up there with Rex and Zulu as the best and most traditional.
AG: I was talking with Lefty (member of the Marching Band, owner of the Circle Bar) the other day, and he talked about this feeling that some people who move to New Orleans have. Almost that some people who grew up here don’t respect transplants, that people who move here can never become “real” New Orleanians. Obviously, some people are kind of “adopted” by the city (Archie Manning was born in Mississippi but is widely considered a “New Orleanian,” for example), but what do you think about that attitude?
Quintron: I will never be born and raised here. I will never be born and bred New Orleans. There’s something about you guys that will always and forever separate you from us. I don’t have a problem with that, but too many outsiders who move here get hung up on wanting to be born and raised here. There’s something in the water that makes y’all a certain way, that you have something over us, a magic power that people who were born and raised here have. What makes the city work, and function, and is beautiful about New Orleans is that it is a melting pot and accepts outsiders. I’m here for a reason, and I wouldn’t live anyplace else. I consider this my hometown, and I’m a military brat and I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere, so in a way it is my hometown. But I’m not Jude Matthews.
AG: Who else could be Jude Matthews?
Quintron: Nobody, and that’s the point. I worship and respect that, to the Nth degree. I don’t know what to say about that. I ’m not hung up on it. I’ll tell anyone that I’m not born and raised here. But if you have disrespect for me just because I’m not born and raised here, then you’re an idiot because I was a little baby, how could I have a choice? We’re all citizens of the world. And there are people born and raised here who are fucking idiots, that are narrow-minded and racist and useless, and there are genius and amazing people who are born and raised here, and there are genius and amazing people who move here. It’s almost easier for the outsiders that are here to stick it out as it is for you to seek greener pastures because it ain’t romantic for you like it is for people who are from somewhere else. For people who are coming here now from Portland, Oregon or New York, the liberation of New Orleans is this new beautiful thing. If you’re from here and your grandparents are from here, you see this whole cycle of horribleness that’s a part of the city and it’s easy to say, “Fuck this, I can make a lot more money in L.A. being a smart, creative person.” Honestly, it takes a lot of guts to stay in New Orleans. I have a lot of respect for the people who were born and raised here and haven’t left. There are a lot of reasons to leave. The reasons that you have not, that Jude has not, that Rik Slave has not, that Mike Joseph has not, are the same reasons that I’m here—forever and ever.”
Interview and photos by Leo McGovern
This interview first appeared in ANTIGRAVITY Vol.4 Issue 4 (February ‘07).
