The Radiators ended their 33-year run last night in New Orleans.
The Rads were part of a season in my life that changed me forever, part of a transition that turned me from a first-semester molecular biology major at Tulane into a student of philosophy and languages. Their end as a touring outfit brings a bit of closure to that season even though I left the majority of that life behind me a long time ago.
My first shows were in September of 1990 at Tipitina’s in New Orleans. I’d heard their first CD as a kid in Knoxville in the late 80s (used to shoot baskets in my driveway with “Law of the Fish” on the boombox with one of my friends) and as soon as I got to campus I saw posters for a three-night run at the famous club. Since the drinking age in those days in New Orleans was 18, but in reality was “if you are tall enough to order across the bar”, my age, and the fact that I looked about 12, couldn’t stop me.
I didn’t really have any friends yet. I was a skinny kid with big glasses from east Tennessee, a bit of a geek with a giant box of sci-fi books, so I went by myself. It was revelatory - I’d never seen musicians that in sync with one another in a rock and roll context, playing like jazz musicians, extending songs for solo after solo. They didn’t repeat a song in three nights.
Their fans took me in. I got adopted by a few of the older local Fishheads (because the Rads were about being funky, and there is nothing funkier than a day-old fish head) who in turn showed me more places to see more local music, like the Maple Leaf and Jimmy’s and Muddy Waters (where I later became a short-order cook), but also jazz places like Snug Harbor. Who served as my network, before the Web, to find out about private solo piano performances by Ellis Marsalis, who turned me on to Earl King, to Henry Butler, to Professor Longhair, who told me to listen to WWOZ, who taught me how to survive Jazzfest during final exams. They led me in a way to my friends in Juice.
They were a movement. And a private one. Very few outside New Orleans knew, or cared. We didn’t have email yet, at least, not unless you walked to the computer lab.
By the time I was a senior, all my friends (I did make some eventually) were hooked. Rads runs at Tipitina’s were an excuse to spend a weekend together, suffering through the mornings as a group, anticipating the evenings, and on the best ones, watching football in the middle.
I saw the Rads in 20 states, all told. Saw ‘em in London, once, even. Spent my New Years with them a couple of times. Spent my Halloweens with them. Sweated out summer nights with them. Saw a moonrise on Cape Cod, dancing in the sand, speakers mounted outside at a clam shack. They’ve been part of the soundtrack of my life for more than 20 years now.
They taught me about sharing music, too. Taping shows was encouraged from the very beginning, and their space at the Internet Live Music Archive is full of shows, going back to the beginning. They are part of a thread that connects those days to my days at Creative Commons, the idea that giving something away for free can bind a group together and, in the end, create something bigger than could have existed if every note were monetized.
It was about being there when liftoff happened, when a show made The Leap.
I didn’t see a great Rads show the last few years. The last time they really, really blew the roof a show I was at was the night before new years in 2001, a private show at a tiny bar in Baltimore. They played great shows after that, I just didn’t make it.
My life’s changed. I have a kid now, and my vacations the last few years have trended towards visiting my family at home and abroad, not towards seeing live music. I was so tired from caring for the newborn that I left my tickets to the last Rads show in San Francisco untorn at will call. But there’s an oil painting of a Rads show at Tipitina’s by Frenchy, and my son spent his first few days in a crib underneath it, looking up at it, and I played him an acoustic version of Viva Las Vegas they playeda long time ago in Rhode Island while he was still in the hospital after being born. They are gone, but not forgotten, and in no small part because they shared what they had.
So long, boys, and thanks for all the fish heads.