Dancing In The Street: New Orleans Throws A Memorial Parade For David Bowie
Mardi Gras was still close to three weeks away. But on Saturday afternoon, Jan. 16, the French Quarter was gridlocked with costumed frolickers, a massive, glittery throng radiating out through the narrow streets from the historic traditional-jazz venue Preservation Hall. The occasion? A parade in memory of David Bowie, led by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.
It's not a stretch to imagine that Bowie fandom would be rampant in a city for which flamboyant, gender-ambivalent dressing up, not to mention music, is a way of life. That, combined with a perfectly warm and sunny afternoon, the beginning of the Carnival season and, certainly, interest in the parade's co-hosts Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, who have lived in New Orleans for about two years, drew multiple thousands of fans downtown — so many that the blocks outside the hall and the parade's end point, the rock club One Eyed Jacks, were almost impassable. The band, led by Butler, who sang through a small red megaphone, and Chassagne, who played a keytar, left Preservation Hall and gamely shoved its way through the mass toward the Mississippi River and then back, along a route about a half-dozen blocks long, playing Bowie songs arranged for parading brass.
Bowie was an ardent fan of Arcade Fire. In 2005, they recorded a live EP together; eight years later, he contributed backing vocals to the band's album Reflektor. Standing on Preservation Hall's balcony with Chassagne and Ben Jaffe, the hall's creative director, Butler spoke briefly about the shock of his friend's death. "It felt like a planet exploded," he said. He opened a bottle of wine and poured a splash onto the crowd.
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