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It is 1:44 a.m. Some party folk just set off some big fireworks. I have no wireless access at the “24/7” Internet kiosk. Dumpstaphunk was too much.

It is 1:55 a.m. I'm with my revived laptop at the FloydFest site ops trailer.

I wrote some stupid, overly exuberant mess a few hours back about how no other band could beat a good African band. I remember writing, "prove me wrong." I'm glad no one posted anything yet arguing with me. I had forgotten about New Orleans bands.

I just heard Dumpstaphunk, and my attitude is properly adjusted. It's not about who can kick whose behind. It's just turning on a crowd -- any crowd, any music.

In this case, it was about Big Easy royalty, Ivan Neville, and some of the nastiest live playing I've ever heard.

It was about "Livin' in a World Gone Mad," where you take a problem and "Put It in the Dumpsta." It was about the wherewithal to "Shake It Off." If Neville and his band have a thesis, it's this: Life sucks; have a good time.

It all starts with Neville, a Hammond organ, a Leslie spinning cabinet and a Hohner synthesizer that just happens to have a Clavinet setting. He works all the keys and footpedals with the New Orleans syncopated soul that is his birthright.

Next, you get the double-bass guitar attack. Tony Hall, who also plays guitar, and Nick Daniels, who sings the high notes, play together as one -- except when they're playing off of each other's lines, and then they still sound like one giant bass guitar. Early on, Hall played some Rocco Prestia-style 16th notes while Daniels slapped, thumped and popped at his strings. Later, they did a slap-and-pop solo together. Sick, I tell you.

Neville's cousin, Ian, played mostly rhythm guitar (and when I say rhythm, you say New Orleans) but busted out a couple of solos, most notably on the band's cover of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil." Ian Neville was a Morning Star of the wah-wah pedal on that one. Hall also stepped on his wah for the last solo of that tune.

Drummer/toastmaster Raymond Weber -- "The Gas Man himself," according to Hall -- gave it up with an infallible groove and hip syncopation, working the double-bass drum pedals Billy Cobham-style.

More on "The Gas Man" later.

The band kicked into a hot singalong: "You could feel so much better, if you would show me how to funk like you." Later, they called women to the stage and got them dancing, while they sang about "standing knee-deep in your stuff."

After it was over, Ivan Neville told the crowd: "Just when you think it can't get funkier than that, it's gonna get funkier."

He introduced a song about "a man with a flatulence problem ... 'The Gasman Chronicles.' Inspired. A true story." He dropped in plenty of "pffftt" sounds throughout, taking time to show Clavinet-sound mastery.

"The Gas Man -- it's all funky now," the band sang.

It was all funky.