Watching: “A Warehouse on Tchoupitoulas” (2013)

The 2013 documentary A Warehouse on Tchoupitoulas offers 75-minute glimpse into the New Orleans music venue called simply The Warehouse. After a couple of minutes of background info from the guys who converted an old warehouse into a concert hall, the discussion turns to opening night in 1970, which featured the Peter Green incarnation of Fleetwood Mac and The Grateful Dead. As a bit of rock n’ roll lore, it was that opening weekend that yielded the lines about being busted in New Orleans in the Dead’s song “Truckin’.” What follows are a bunch of stories about Jim Morrison’s last show in the US, Bob Marley in his prime, going deep see fishing with Foghat, and whole weekends with the Allman Brothers.

The Warehouse hosted a huge slate of bands over the years, many recognizable while some clearly came and went. To view the full list of shows held at The Warehouse throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, look on the website blackstrat.com. There are also images and more.  

About the film itself, the subject matter is really interesting, but what is on-screen lacks energy. Viewers are told in the opening moments that, due to legal issues, the music and footage of the actual shows won’t be included. That leaves a plethora of still images and a bunch of interviews with older people who are waxing nostalgic about things they did and saw thirty to forty years earlier. While it’s easy to tell that what they experienced was probably really cool, what a viewer gets is just individual ones of them talking about it . . . which isn’t nearly as cool. But to document that place at that time, it’s what we have. (The warehouse-turned-venue has even been torn down now.) 

Below is a link to the full documentary, which is available on YouTube.