As mixed-use propositions go, Mid-City Lanes, better known as the Rock ‘N’ Bowl, was a well-loved New Orleans oddity: a rock (and zydeco and funk) club in a working bowling alley in a dumpy strip mall. It had echoey bowling-alley acoustics, with strikes and spares crashing while the bands played, but it was a fun place. This month, it moved to a new, much bigger building of its own. The new Rock ‘N’ Bowl is a clean, surprisingly well-lighted place where the bar is big enough for women to stand on while twirling hula hoops. And someone actually considered acoustics; the high ceiling above the stage has sound-absorbent cushions, along with a disco ball, and the bowling alleys are further from the dance floor and, somehow, quieter. It’s so new that the ambiance is not particularly funky, but in New Orleans, that will change.
On Thursday night, it had a high-powered zydeco summit. There were two heirs to zydeco glory: C.J. Chenier (the son of the modern zydeco king, Clifton Chenier) and Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. Both of them had Buckwheat Zydeco (Stanley Dural Jr.), still jamming the night after the Ponderosa Stomp, sitting in on organ (so much for thoughts of bitter rivalry for the zydeco crown). He didn’t sing; the club’s owner, John Blancher, announced that Buckwheat had throat surgery on Tuesday. The zydeco dynasties were only part of a lineup that also included Leon Sam, the guitarist Lil Buck Sinegal (with C.J. Chenier) and a set by Sunpie Barnes, who had been at Jazzfest earlier that day playing harmonica and singing the blues in the Blues Test; now, Barnes was playing accordion.
The second-generation bandleaders made gloriously frantic music, particularly when Buckwheat joined them to fill in spaces with hooting, jabbing chords and counterpoint. C.J. Chenier carries on where his father left off, playing muscular blues and steamroller two-steps and singing in French and English, then playing solos that skitter all over the accordion; his “Hot Tamale Baby” turned into a dizzying stretch of high-speed triplets.
The family of Rockin’ Dopsie (whose real name was Alton Rubin) have split his tasks; instead of the typical zydeco setup in which the accordion player also sings, Anthony Rubin plays the three-row button accordion with breakneck virtuosity while Rockin’ Dopsie Jr., David Rubin, plays rubboard and sings in a ferocious, raspy shout, demanding “Somebody scream!” between songs and sometimes during them. He started with the zydeco standard, “Hey, ‘Tite Fille” but by the end of the set he had sicced the band on James Brown’s “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” and “Living in America,” with Buckwheat Zydeco jabbing every conceivable syncopation between Rockin’ Dopsie Jr.’s soul screams. The dance floor at the new Rock ‘N’ Bowl is still new and shiny, but with bands like this it won’t stay that way long.
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