Mardi Gras in Boston

Mardi Gras and Boston don't exactly go together. This is, after all, the town founded by people who thought England was too much fun in the 1600s, so they came to Cape Cod and New England to pass along smallpox, live a life of repressive religion and cook their food without spices. A lot of that still reverberates here: classic boston cooking tends to involve a hunk of white fish covered in breadcrumbs and broiled, then served without sauce or pepper.

The whole idea of a multiweek outdoor pagan celebration also doesn't work as well in the depths of a real winter.

There is a lot of Mardi Gras activity on the various ski resorts. Unfortunately nearly all of it happens after Fat Tuesday, which is even worse than having a Halloween party the week of Thanksgiving. I saw the Radiators at Killington one year in such an event, and when the doorman offered me beads I intoned that I'd given them up for Lent. Blank stare in return. New Orleanians love that story.

Anyhow. Last night the good folks at Harpers Ferry booked a real New Orleans show during the real Mardi Gras weekend. My friends in the band Juice came up for three nights with Brotherhood of Groove, and Big Sam (trombone player from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band) came along for the ride, sitting in with everyone. Boston Horns opened the show. Juice was a little sloppy but energetic, funky and well received.

It's easy to forget to go see music and your friends and dance and all that good stuff, especially when work is fun and fulfilling itself or when life is...hectic. But it's an imbalance. Mardi Gras is in its own way about addressing that - having fun in the face of impending abstinence, laughing at tragedy, inverting rituals. It's also about making fun a priority sometimes, an organized and specific part of life for a date certain. For a few days a year at least, Dionysus is in charge. He even gets his own parade in New Orleans. And I'm glad I got to see him last night, if briefly.