Rockin’1000, Harry Connick Jr. rocked New Orleans’ Superdome | Music

“The Saints Are Coming” returned to the Caesars Superdome on Saturday in a big way. Very big.

On Sept. 25, 2006, U2 and Green Day performed “The Saints Are Coming” at the “Domecoming,” the fabled first Saints game in the Superdome after Hurricane Katrina. That was the game in which Steve Gleason earned his statue outside the Dome by blocking an Atlanta Falcons punt.

Nearly 20 years later, with Gleason watching from his wheelchair, Harry Connick Jr. and the thousand musicians of Rockin’1000 opened their Dome concert with a mass “The Saints Are Coming.” Rockin’1000 thereby saluted the city and stadium that hosted the global collective’s first-ever American performance.

A decade ago, Italian marine geologist Fabio Zaffagnini gathered a thousand amateur musicians to perform the Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly” in the hopes of persuading the band to perform in his tiny hometown. Footage went viral, the Foo Fighters came to Zaffagnini’s hometown, and a global brand was born.

Rockin’1000 has since rocked stadiums in France, South Korea, Germany, Brazil and Spain. Zaffagnini partnered with New Orleans & Company, the city’s tourism marketing firm, to finally bring Rockin’1000 to the United States.

They likely hoped to sell more tickets. Cold weather, the Krewe du Vieux parade and unfamiliarity with the Rockin’1000 concept likely hurt sales. Only the Dome’s plaza and loge levels along the sidelines were open Saturday, and they were intermittently populated.

But footage from the event will play well on social media. And those in attendance enjoyed a “big” show in every sense.

Locals get it started

New Orleans’ own Cowboy Mouth kicked off the concert with a high-impact, 20-minute set atop a tiered stage at the center of the floor. Drummer/singer Fred LeBlanc’s outsized enthusiasm was as big as the room. He demanded, and received, audience engagement as the band charged through “I Believe,” “Jenny Says” and The Who’s “The Real Me.”

New Orleans & Company president and CEO Walt Leger introduced Connick, the show’s hometown guest star.

“I’ve had some big bands in my day,” Connick joked, “but never a thousand.”

The Rebirth Brass Band, Dumpstaphunk, the Rumble and Bonerama were set up next to Mardi Gras floats parked where the end zones are for Saints games. The four local bands took turns on “Hey Pocky Way” as Connick hustled by foot and golf cart to sit in with each on keyboards.

Back at center stage, Connick saluted Gleason, “a real, live superhero” who “made the play of the century right here in this building … He is the ultimate New Orleans Saint.”

“When the Saints Go Marching In” accompanied the entrance of the army of Rockin’1000 musicians. The Joyful Gospel Singers, Mardi Gras Indians, the St. Augustine High School Marching 100’s drum section and students from the Roots of Music and the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music escorted the musicians in groups of 250.

The mostly amateur musicians and singers of varying ages and skill levels were amped up to perform in a stadium. They were arranged by instrument in blocks covering most of the bare cement Dome floor.

Newscaster Hoda Kotb briefly joined Connick for a bit of awkward banter and to introduce Zaffagnini. With the thousand musicians at their assigned stations, Zaffagnini led them in the Rockin’1000 oath. They swore “to play only the notes that are needed and nothing more,” to not play during breaks, to stay in time with the “click track” in their headphones and to “have fun and give it all you’ve got.”

A powerful sound

With that, Connick sang the “House of the Rising Sun” lines that open “The Saints Are Coming.” As Daniel Plentz and the New Orleans Jazz Museum’s Greg Lambousy conducted from opposite sides, the musicians spread across the entire Dome floor jumped in en masse.

The sound was powerful. It was even more powerful for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The 200 or so singers arrayed on the tiered center stage gave the chorus a “whoa”-worthy wallop.

Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” packed even more of a punch when the main riff, rendered by 200-plus guitarists, kicked in. Two days of group rehearsals, the click tracks, and the Rockin’1000 audio team’s technical wizardry made for a cohesive arrangement.

During Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way,” select guitarists handled the solo while the others riffed on the rhythm parts.

After a solid take on the Black Keys’ “Gold on the Ceiling,” Zaffagnini gave a three-minute speech about the power of music to unite across language and other barriers.

The band went back to work with Simon & Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” and the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.” The Dome’s big screens showed a keyboardist dressed as the “Where’s Waldo” character, a cheeky bid to be found while hidden among so many musicians.

After Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild,” dozens of horn players – not normally part of Rockin’1000 concerts but added as a nod to New Orleans’ musical legacy – joined in for Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary.” The horns also punched up the groove of “Hard To Handle,” the Otis Redding classic later covered by the Black Crowes.

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Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” blossomed into a Superdome-sized anthem coming out of its mid-song breakdown. A straight-forward take on the Beatles’ psychedelic treatise “Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds” gave way to a credibly funky romp through the Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars smash “Uptown Funk.” For the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army,” the lights flashed red.

“Live and Let Die” was equal parts Paul McCartney and Guns N’ Roses (though without the concussive pyrotechnics McCartney deployed in October next door at the Smoothie King Center).

During the finale of the Foo Fighters’ “Learn To Fly,” Lambousy ran across the Dome floor to joyously pogo alongside Plentz. For the previous 75 minutes, they’d conducted the largest band that has ever, and likely will ever, rock New Orleans.