I've just returned from Mississippi where I was with a group pitching in on the hurricane relief effort. On our last day, we spent some time in New Orleans before heading to the airport.
When we walked into the House of Blues, We were surprised at it's appearence, and lack of a cohesive, appropriate motif. There was a wealth of Eastern imagery, Buddha posters on the walls and Hindu terms (like Dharma) on the plates. Cradle of Filth was billed to play.
It took me a week to finally understand it (and I mean the buddha stuff, because I'll never understand Cradle of Filth). The logic is in the juxtaposition.
The Blues is based in pain wrenched from the depths of the human soul. Buddhists and Hindus ideally achieve an ultimate sort of calm from the act of giving humanity up. Eastern philosophy is sort of the logical conclusion for one who's feeling the blues.
The blues is like an amorphous, metaphysical structure (or house) of worship and spirituality for those too touched by real life to be clean enough for the church, and the House of Blues is meant to stand as a beacon of hope, surrounded by sin as it is, in the heart of the Big Easy, where sex and liqour are like air and water.
It sort of fails, since it gives in hipness and the idea of moving with the times, at the expense of integrity. But hey, there are action figures being mass produced which prove that even Christ can be co-opted.
