[Updated May 26]

I just received this hype for Better Than Ezra’s CD-release party for Paper Empire at the House of Blues Friday night:

Better Than Ezra
Along with such similarly styled outfits as the Goo Goo Dolls, the New
Orleans-based trio Better Than Ezra helped open the floodgates for
countless mainstream alt-pop acts of the late ’90s (including
Semisonic, Matchbox Twenty, and Third Eye Blind) by merging rock with
melody to create an easily digestible form of alternative music.

Could that possibly make the band sound more like a blast from past, one whose accomplishments have to be explained to kids these days? And could that sound any more detached? The writer makes a BTE show sound as joyful as a trip to the library to return overdue books.

Update: BTE’s Tom Drummond says that didn’t come from the band’s PR firm. Now the question is where it came from.

               

I’ve done all the post-Fest writing I’m going to do, and our Jazz Fest wrap-up will appear in the June issue (due out later this week). But writer Larry Blumenfeld has a strong, unified take worth checking out – more about the context of Jazz Fest than the festival itself. But really, that’s more of a story than who did what, particularly this year when Mardi Gras Indians and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs and Mardi Gras Indians could parade for tourists on the sidewalk on the infield at the Fair Grounds, but a real jazz funeral on the walkway under the Claiborner Overpass was broken up by the cops.

… and in completely unrelated news, I’m trying to decide what it means when your music is used to accompany a fireworks show. Friday night after the Zephyrs game, the fireworks show was set to a medley of songs by Better Than Ezra. It was far better than a series of generic patriotic anthems or classic rock hits, but I’m not sure this didn’t simply mark the band as classic rock from another era, and its music as officially safe for all ages.