HOORAY! Spotted Cat comes back!
Tue, 10/06/2009 - 8:35pm | 
Shagadelic Baby
Spotted Cat to reopen on Frenchmen Street
By Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune
October 06, 2009, 4:50PM
A new incarnation of the Spotted Cat on Frenchmen Street is slated to open this week under the auspices of a new owner.
The original Spotted Cat closed last spring. Bill Byka, proprietor of the nearby Cafe Negril, is opening a music club in the same location under a slightly different name, the Spotted Cat Music Club. He’s renovated the barroom at 623 Frenchmen Street, and plans to use both upstairs and downstairs spaces. Now that he's secured the necessary permits, he says he'll open the room by Thursday, Oct. 8, when the New Orleans Moonshiners play at 10 p.m.
He intends to present the same mix of bohemian traditional jazz that the old Spotted Cat presented at the heart of the Frenchmen Street entertainment district. The Cottonmouth Kings (formerly the Jazz Vipers) will be in that mix, as will be Washboard Chaz Leary’s various projects.
“The Spotted Cat was a cornerstone of the entire street,” Byka said. “It will again be a home to unamplified, traditional jazz that is lacking in this city, but people crave and demand it. People are very happy that it’s going to be open.”
Thursday, the Moonshiners sounded great (mostly not amplified), the atmosphere was incredible. A Number of Lindy Hoppers showed up around 11 PM. Pretty amazing.
Next day, Friday, was not that great, the amplified band was too loud... until the great Marigny Triangle power outage (from about 11 PM to about 1 AM) which quieted things a bit. Jazz Vipers were have you gone? (just a rhetorical question though)
Oh dear god, no. Please, new Spotted Cat owners, if you are reading this, bands don't need to be--and shouldn't--amped in that place. No faster way to drive patrons out and away, plus piss off your neighbors.
JF, thanks for the info. Hopefully the Moonshiners won't be amped tonight--I'm really looking forward to going!