Rachel Vette (Getty Images)

There is an old saying of the devil’s – “If you’re up after three, your soul belongs to me.”

Interestingly enough, I’ve also heard of an old truck driver’s proverb that rings of a similar truism:

“If you drive before five, you’ll never make it there alive.”

It had been just over a year to the day since my photographer, Dave, and I had last set sail for the Mississippi Delta.   And with these ominous warnings echoing in the back of our minds as we turned onto I-10E at 3AM Friday morning of October 30^th , we had more than enough reasons to be afraid.  After all, we were going to New Orleans on Halloween weekend to see KISS.  In long history of pagan rituals and western civilization, I can’t think of another more diabolical configuration of evil that even comes close to the seething potential to unleash Hell’s fury on All Hallow’s Eve offered by Saturday’s lineup at Voodoo Fest 2009.

But…it is KISS…and Dave and I were willing to take our chances.

We drove valiantly towards the rising sun.  Not that we could ever see it, of course.  The gods rained down their indignation at our quest with torrents of rain and furious winds.  Our trip seemed to be doomed from the start. However, Dave and I already had a firm understanding and had long since accepted “doom” as an inevitable part of any and all of our shared pursuits.  In defiance, we through up our fists at the gods, we turned up some Skip James, pushed the gas to 80mph, and I held the wheel steady as we diligently charged onwards to our destination.

As we passed over the swamplands east of Lafayette, the waters of which were rapidly rising on either side of the road, we saw a break in the otherwise dark grey skies.  Upon reaching the first sign that read “New Orleans – 19 miles”, the rain finally came to a halt and the weather shifted from a brisk 62 degrees to a humid 82 degrees.  In an instant (literally), every window of my automobile fogged up as if Satan himself had just huffed a heap of his black lung all over our windshield (just as one might do when cleaning off the lenses of a pair of spectacles.) For all I know, it really was ol’ Lucifer blowing his rank sulphuric breath over the front of my Accord as we entered the city limits of New Orleans.  But, regardless, this strange, demonic occurrence gave us a second wind (so to speak) and we rode with a new energy to our housing situation for the weekend.

This year, if nothing else, we’d live like kings while attending the 2009 Voodoo Music Experience.  I had acquired by good fortune a corporate suite at the apartment complex of one of my former landowners.  This stroke of luck was an essential, vital component to our chances of surviving this weekend.  For, if we learned anything from last year’s experience, we learned good and well that the most-sure weapon of surviving one of these things is a good bed and a hot shower.  We stocked the fridge with an appropriate supply of the High Life, splashed cold water on our darkened countenance, and made our way to the festival grounds.

The Silversun Pickups meet and greet fans (Getty Images)

After driving around the festival for a good half hour in search of the “Press” parking lot, we finally parked our steed in a field designated for the “press” (or so we were told) that put us a good 45 minutes walk from the entrance gates.

Damn it all.  We had come this far, no way in hell were we turning back now.

We trudged, sweat-soaked and broken, into the first show on Friday’s bill that peaked our interest – The Cool Kids.

I had seen The Cool Kids two years prior at a Blender Magazine Party during SXSW.  The hip hop duo from Chicago has always proved a great live show complete with all the fresh energy and keen wit of the great classic hip hop acts.  The crowd was an unusual mix of apparent hip hop disciples, novice hipsters, Goths, assholes in Ed Hardy shirts, and middle-aged folks desperately hanging on to the transparent fibers of their youth.  All of them a good fours hours into what would inevitably end up to be a solid days’ work of hard drinking and untethered consumption of various pharmaceuticals and herbal supplements – the depraved landscape of the human race on which the Devil goes jogging to keep a check on his slowing metabolism and the expanding waistband of middle-age.

All in all, The Cool Kids gave my photographer and I the perfect welcome to the second year of what we have argued is the best music festival south of the Mason-Dixon.  The samples of Ice Cube and other notable icons of the hip hop Hall of Fame have given The Cool Kids clout with the tried-and-true hip hop faithful and enough fresh appeal to attract the ears and eyes of this next generation.  Yet, more than that, their set is license to party.

As my photographer so poignantly put it, “If 2Pac and Snoop Dogg were Impalas, if Diddy was a Roll Royce, then The Cool Kids are Black Mags.”

Voodoo Fest 2009 had begun.

Janelle Monae (Getty Images)

We made our way over to the Main Stage where Janelle Monae (who I had never heard of) was getting ready to perform.  Her set essentially amounted to the sum equivalent of playing “Hey Ya” on repeat for 45 minutes, which may seem like pure bliss for some and the very pit of hell for others.  As for me, I was indifferent.  I will say her vocal range and stage presence was very impressive.  My photographer returned from the front of the stage lauding about “how photogenic that girl is!!”…but my mind was in other places…namely, The Black Keys over at the Playstation Stage.

Sometime past the sixth hour of the evening, when the sun was overcome by the storm clouds looming over the tree tops of the east side of City Park, The Black Keys took the stage.  It was then that I felt the first droplets of rain begin to baptize the sinful heads of the waiting crowd.  I myself had taken to chewing on a Backwoods cigar I’d found in my bag to satiate a pounding hunger pain and sipped on a $5 Miller Genuine Draft for my thirst.  Dave had taken his spot in the “photographer” section at the front of the stage.

The Black Keys are a perfect fit for Voodoo Fest and all that is dark and dangerous about the City of New Orleans.  I, for one, had had a very long day.  I’d not slept but 2 hours in the last 48.  I had driven a solid 10 or more hours since 3AM, leaving my faculties to the mercy of caffeine and a steady rotation of KISS’s “Greatest Hits” and some ZZ Top.  I had not dressed appropriately for sub-60 degree weather or rain, for that matter, and I was in dire need of the raw grit of the blues.  I didn’t care from whom or whence it came…I just wanted the distorted bend of an electric guitar to set fire to this whole damn place.  God knows, we needed it.

Dan Auerbach and drummer, Patrick Carney, rocked courageously at the welcome mat of the storm as the rain and freezing winds whipped at their backs.  In the audience, we were also being pelted by the storm and freezing winds but we didn’t care.  The Black Keys set was epic and, in the almighty presence of rock, one pays no mind to the finite trappings of nature or mortality.

As he endured the icy winds of the Ninth Circle with guitar in hand, Dan spoke out to the crowd, “Let us embrace this darkness…”

And, at once, we did.  Our resolve was made stronger by Auerbach’s aggressive riffs and guitar solos, the haunted howls, and Carney’s pounding percussive charge.  Yet, as the set progressed, the wheat began to be separated from the chaff as the devoted fans persevered the elements and the weak went in search of shelter from the storm or more drink.

Dan Auerbach (Getty Images)

I doggedly persevered against the elements, but the long day was beginning to take it’s toll.  The Siversun Pickups were the next band on the bill over at the mainstage.  The band from Los Angeles has been a dominant presence on rock radio for the past two years or so I was told. I was only familiar with one song that seemed to be playing on 101X in Austin every time I flipped through the dials looking for something else to listen to, something better.

Nonetheless, I had heard word of The Silversun Pickups from the loose-knit web of connections I’ve tried to tie together down in Austin to keep me “up-to-speed” with the latest dealings in modern music. Even still, I was under the impression that The Silversun Pickups were fronted by a lady.  I could still swear on my own life that it’s a lady’s voice singing “Lazy Eye”.  HA!…as it turns out, she’s the bass player and vocalist Brian Aubert just has an extremely effete voice.  I can’t really claim any preference for or against the band.  Their sound is vaguely familiar – the same whine and howl as Billy Corgan and song-structure similar to The Smashing Pumpkins.  I would love to say that all these meaningless comparisons make me a fan (as I do like The Smashing Pumpkins), but they don’t.

Following The Black Keys, The Silversun Pickups show was a massive lull in the festival.  The cold weather and Brian’s mindless banter between songs was killing me.  The self-aggrandizement was near torture by this point and I finally left the show when Mr. Aubert failed miserably to tie the Voodoo Festival to The Goblin King of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

“It’s good to be here at the Voodoo Festival!” he says.  “You know, there’s a prince of Voodoo.  You know, the Voodoo prince, Jarel, David Bowie’s character on Labyrinth?  Yeah, ‘you remind me of the babe…what babe? The babe with the power…” and so on and so forth.

Jarel?  You serious? Jarel?  The Goblin King is Jareth!  Jareth!! Now, I can tolerate such a flaw in informal conversation, perhaps.  But, from the stage, under the bright lights of self-obsession, unchecked narcissism, and the desperate attempts to be “cool” that come with the Rock and Roll package, this mistake was inexcusable.  Unforgivable.  It’s blunders like these that can terminally ruin a man’s credence, his ability to stand on his own two feet.  Fortunately for Brian and The Silversun Pickups, their fanbase seemed to be incognizant of the error and cheered him on anyhow.

Good riddance.

Silversun Pickups (Getty Images)

We moved on.  The rain was still pounding down on our heads and I was beginning to feel the first effects of frostbite sting the ends of my toes.  Justice followed The Silversun Pickups and it seemed by all appearances that the crowd was ready for a long run of looped beats and dubbed disco tracks that would take up the better part of an hour-and-a-half show.

I had no desire to dance or be riddled to the bone by the pulsating bass of a monotonous club beat.  The Voodoo crowd was taken away by the lasers and engulfed by a wave of smoke that billowed forth from the stage.  You couldn’t see four feet in front of your own face.  We were left with only the ear-piercing mix of disco dubs and looped soul tracks that have put Justice in the pop mainstream.

Eminem was scheduled after Justice to close the first day of Voodoo Fest but whispering amongst the festival-goers hinted at a possible no-show.

I’ve never been much of a fan of Eminem and I am definitely not a fan of “house” music, or whatever it is that Justice plays.  Although they certainly did look cool standing up there behind their turntables and various other technological devices, I found it exceedingly difficult to get into the Justice performance.

I was also freezing and the rain showed no signs of stopping despite the periodic lulls in the downpour.  My throat began to tighten up.  My vision was blurring and I was soaked from head to toe.

Now, there’s a certain psychological test that has plagued and continues to plague every and all festival-goers since the late 1960s.  These events are as much endurance competitions as they are massive showcases for as many artists an organizer can bill into one weekend.  It’s the sheer inhuman stamina required by these three-day music binges that compels the majority of festival-goers to lubricate their minds and bodies with any number of chemicals and/or poisons they feel will carry them through to the end.  Combine the factors of inclement weather possibilities, limited facilities, the ridiculous price of a cold beer, and the inevitable squeeze of being surrounded by thousands of unfamiliar human beings for 10 to 12 hours a day, and you have an athletic achievement worthy of being considered in the Olympic canon.  Ha…so be it…a sport with as much money-mongering and copious drug-use as Major League Baseball.

Justice (Getty Images)

Personally, I was in no shape for indulgence nor did I care about hearing any more music on Friday night.  I was beginning to fear the worst as my immune system slowly began to cave in and I felt my physical defenses dwindling in a massive enclave of complete strangers, all of them ripped to the gills on God-knows-what and thirsty for more.  A macabre hoard tromping around City Park dressed in garbage bags in the rain – the perfect storm for a mass sweep of the swine flu tucked away in the bellybutton of New Orleans.

I knew I had to go find shelter soon or there was no chance I’d be in any shape to do what I drove a near 500 miles to do – see KISS on Halloween night.

Dave and I escaped from Voodoo Fest early as the faithful legions of Eminem fans (all of whom looked no more than 19 years old) passed us on their way to the front gates.  High schoolers?  It made perfect sense at the time that Slim Shady’s dominant demographic would be the “teen” scene.  His juvenile wit and cliché persona fits perfectly into that odd, seminal time where you’re brain is trying so hard to be an adult while at the same time it attempts to make sense of the biological hailstorm that is adolescence.

As a native of the city would say as we ordered some burgers from Bob’s Broiler, “I used to be into [Eminem]…you know, back in high school, when he first came out.  Eventually, I just grew out of it, you know what I’m saying?”

It was at this point that the inevitable came to mind – “Am I too old for these things?”