Fest birds of a feather

Each year, Threadheads and members of the Pet de Kat Krewe flock to the Fair Grounds to meet on the common ground of music

By Siona LaFrance
Staff writer
Friday, May 2, 2003

There are Jazzfest lovers and then there are the professionals.

They are the ones who would no more miss the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival than forget to eat, who count down the days and covet the "cubes," those ubiquitous grids showing the Jazzfest stage acts. For them, the New Orleans Fair Grounds is sacred ground on the last weekend of April and first weekend of May.

It was only natural that they would find one another.

Meet the Threadheads and the Pet de Kat Krewe.

The Threadheads are the Jazzfest faithful who regularly contribute to the message board on the official festival Web site, dispensing bits of wisdom to neophytes and discussing all things Jazzfest. On online message boards, each new subject is called a thread, hence the name Threadheads.

Last year, some of the Web posters decided to arrange a meeting during Jazzfest so that they could say hello to the people they knew only by screen names -- such as carolnabeadhed, festnut and eat_mo_crawfish.

They upheld the new tradition this year, meeting up last week just to the right of the Fais Do Do stage to pose for a digital camera that posts photos to the Jazzfest Web site.

"It’s nice to put names to faces," said Ben Baity of Sacramento, Calif., who is known to the group as bennyboy.

The Pet de Kat Krewe, which shares some members with the Threadheads, was started more than a decade ago in South Florida by music lovers who kept running into one another at festivals, especially those featuring Louisiana artists.

They call themselves a "loosely disorganized professional audience" of "worldwide festivalists" who go wherever Louisiana music is played. But each year, Pet de Kat Krewe members look forward to returning here.

"We spend all year talking to each other about coming to New Orleans for Jazzfest," said Marisol Rivera of Miami, a Pet de Kat stalwart.

"Being here is like being baptized each year."

Jazzfest-goers can spot krewe members wearing T-shirts or buttons featuring a design of a grinning cat and the group’s logo. On this year’s T-shirt, the cat is in wizard’s garb and gazing into a crystal ball that shows an accordion player and a dancing fest crowd.

"The shirt is this magnet for other members to see," said Joe Perez of Miami, also known as Big Chief Pony Dancer.

"If you see someone wearing a shirt, you know it’s someone who can easily become a friend."

There’s a story, of course, behind the peculiar name.

"One day some of us were sitting down looking at the trash crew picking up garbage at Jazzfest and noticed on the back of their shirts it said ‘trash krewe,’ " Perez said.

"We thought we’d come up with a shirt so we can spot each other from far away."

Longtime Jazzfest fanatic Steve Apple, another South Floridian, inspired the rest of it.

"He would do this dance," Perez said, demonstrating with one arm extended out with hand facing down and circling.

The bearded and burly Perez, who has been coming to Jazzfest for 14 years, is attending all eight days of the 2003 festival.

"What appeals to me about Jazzfest is that it’s just a wide open festival with so much music to offer and so many different styles," he said.

"For a hard-core music lover, it’s like an explosion between your ears."

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