Each year on the first Sunday of May, the Festival powers demand that the Bywater holds forth with an additional afternoon of merrymaking and music is staged each year. Beginning at noon, this year's edition of NOizeFest boasts a deep lineup of local acts pushing music to its outer limits. Acts include Ratty Scurvics, The Bongoloids, The Death Posture and Genrefuck. Once upon a 2004, however, there was no NOizefest. Then Deacon John's son Keith Moore came along. On the eve of this year's action, NOizefest facilitator Michael Patrick Welch relays how the whole thing got started:

by Michael Patrick Welch

Just over ten days after Mardi Gras 2012, legendary perverted New York rapper Kool Keith played a last minute 2am New Orleans show at the tiny Dragon’s Den on Frenchmen Street, on his way out to a bigger performance at the 5th Annual Arizona Pornstar Ball industry function. Ten years ago, Keith filled the big room at New Orleans’ House of Blues with the likes of Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor in the audience.

Michael Patrick Welch, NOLA reporter, novelist, and teacher recently released an updated version of his guidebook, The NOLA Underground Guide and a ten-years-in-the-making novel, Y'all’s Problem. 

There's plenty of swamp, squash and strut on tap for this weekend, but let us take a moment to remember the books. Tomorrow is the annual New Orleans Book Fair, a Marigny symposium that puts independently published books, zines and all things written (or, well typed), in the spotlight. Thanks to the Great Mardi Gras Costume Bust of 2011 and its sheer growth, the annual event is centralizing itself this year. The Fair will shut down the block around Frenchmen and Chartres for vendors to hawk their pages.

To the windows down, music up, driver’s seat rappers, to the roommates gone, kitchen dancing, ladle clutching lyricist, and to the underwear only, rap to your reflection, mirror-audience wordsmith; it’s time to pull on some pants, hop in your vibrating Prius, and lay it down for real at Mimi’s in the Marigny this Saturday at 10pm (2601 Royal St.).