I’ve made no secret of my hostility toward Jazz Fest’s VIP package that allows high rollers to buy their way into a special enclosure in front of the stage. It not only takes the front row away from the band’s biggest fans, but it backs those fans further away from the band because of the space created by the pen. It turns out I and fans aren’t the only ones displeased by this development. Onstage, Britt Daniel of Spoon commented on the gulf between the band and the audience, and in Keith Spera’s story today at Nola.com, so did Wilco’s John Stirratt:

Stirratt picked out “tons of familiar faces” in the Jazz Fest crowd. He liked the standing-room-only space adjacent to the barricades, but was thrown off by the premium ticket corral directly in front of the stage.

“The premium area wasn’t very well-attended — not that many people ponied up the premium money for Wilco. It was weird to see faces in this sparse area, then it was jammed behind it,” he said, adding that some guys in the premium area “were moving and wrestling around. Looked like they got their money’s worth.”

 I’ve never had an issue with the Big Chief package, and if I were a business owner, I’d purchase a pair of Big Chief tickets so I could sit comfortably with a client, drink beer and watch the show. Those grandstands aren’t taking prime real estate from diehard fans, so I have no issue with them. but if the VIP pens in front of the Gentilly and Acura stages diminish the experience for fans and distract bands, they’re a really bad idea.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to be at the Fair Grounds, but it sure seemed like the crowds were a little thin. I walked to the front of the stage easily for Drive-By Truckers and Booker T. before their set (though it did fill in as showtime neared), and the same was true at the swamp pop showcase and Spoon. Does that reflect on the lineup, the recession, or the serious work ethic of New Orleanians?

I saw and liked Lost Bayou Ramblers, David Egan and Christian Serpas and Ghost Town but have nothing to say about any of them that I haven’t said before. I tried to see DJ Hektik, but technical difficulties resulted in false start after false start, and even though my entourage wanted him to succeed and get his show going, and some point we bailed. There’s too much going on during Jazz Fest to watch techs check wires on a silent stage.

Yesterday in the Times-Picayune (two days ago online), Keith Spera asserted that people really aren’t that bothered by the VIP/corporate accommodations, but I know one woman who was really pissed off when she discovered that the largely empty, clean bathrooms in the Grandstand were waiting for Big Chiefs to use them, while the riff raff had to wait in a 20-woman line on the ground floor or face the portables. I guess she was okay with that and just didn’t know it. Later in the day, Britt Daniel of Spoon looked at the largely vacant tract of land in front of him and asked, “What is this end zone? Oh, VIP,” as if he’d just discovered he had mice.

In yesterday’s story, festival producer Quint Davis said Jazz Fest “should be safe, clean, well-behaved and run on time,” he said. “It should be good music, the best food on earth, and it should be an environment where you can bring your children and your parents.” Evidently no one gave the Drive-By Truckers’ Patterson Hood that story; he walked onstage and the first words out of his mouth were, “Look at all you good-lookin’ motherfuckers!”

It’s hard to imagine that we’ll see a more emotionally complete show this Jazz Fest than the Truckers’ set. They started with a man contemplating suicide in a stomping, big rock “Lookout Mountain” and finished by celebrating the joy of living with “Let Their Be Rock.” The party gladiators could sing along to much of it, even “The Living Bubba,” the story of a musician Hood knew who refused to stop performing even as he was dying of AIDS. “I love how they get the frat boys to sing along with a song about a guy who died of AIDS,” my wife said. “That’s how you change the world.”

Booker T. slid onstage unobtrusively during “Lookout Mountain” and accompanied the band with equal discretion. His contributions to their songs were rarely noticeable, but about 20 minutes in, Hood announced Booker for a mini-set drawn almost entirely from Potato Hole, his new album on which he’s backed by the Truckers. The night before at a television taping in a room small enough to hear the guitars from the amps, the band sounded as rowdy as the Exile on Main Street-era Rolling Stones under Booker’s beautiful, floating organ lines. Yesterday, they sounded more like heavyweight MGs channeled through the PA, but the songs gained power and size outdoors. The Booker set could probably have been a song shorter, but it finished with a version of “Time is Tight” that made sense for the Drive-By Truckers, raving up in the end and turning everything they touch into something that can flourish on the big stage.

I ended the day at Spoon, and they were clearly not a typical Jazz Fest band. I don’t think any song followed typical blues changes, and the only solo I can recall was a strangled, noisy, often dissonant break by Britt Daniel. Otherwise, the tight, clockwork-like compositions were the thing, and they worked over and over again because of the inventive arrangements. The airy and effects-laden “The Ghost of You Lingers” from Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was simplified for the stage and became relentless and vaguely menacing in the process.

The Dirty Dozen Horns joined them for a handful of songs, but a wind tunnel effect seemed to roll right through their end of the stage, playing hell with their sheet music. Still, they soldiered on and added classic soul fanfares to “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” and “Rhythm and Soul.” Those touches, though, suggested that Spoon wasn’t as out of place as it might have seen. The audience that stayed put for most of the show says they were doing something right, but ultimately, Beatles-era British pop is central to their sound and they’re just as rooted in the pop/rock tradition as anyone on the Fair Grounds. They just weren’t grounded by their roots.

On our way from Drive-By Truckers to Spoon, we walked by Congo Square where Wynton Marsalis was leading the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and Yacub Addy and Odaadaa through the 2 1/2 hour-long “Congo Square”. On our way from Spoon to our car, we passed Congo Square again and it was just finishing up. People I know that have heard it say it’s amazing, but from the start it seemed hard to imagine that people would sit for the whole piece, and it turned out they didn’t. The audience was solid to the soundboard, at which point there was more and more space between people who seemed to be checking it out curiously before moving on.