Happy Comfest everyone. It’s the time of year in Columbus everyone comes downtown and gets drunk in the park to listen to great local music. Me, it’s time I relaxed for a few days. Wedensday we packed our entire house into a truck, small trailer, and the Mini. Thursday we closed our house in Raleigh, then drove to Columbus through down pours and a slow moving truck. Today? Relax and at some point make it down to Comfest and hang out for the weekend. Give my cell a call if your around I’ll be the one in the park sleeping under a tree. Monday it’s back to work, gotta drive the truck to Kent, close on the house and move in.
OK, this new video is just clever. BPA ,BTW, is another Moniker for Fatboy Slim which is a moniker for Norman Cooke (AKA Pizzaman and Quentin Leo Cook). The song features the one and only David Byrne with Dizzee Rascal.
Kings of Leon have their fourth album coming out Sept 23, 2008 called Only By The Night. Personally I can’t wait. Kings are one of my favorite bands and their 3rd album Because Of The Times is still in heavy rotation as one of my favorites. They are also touring, although most of the dates are in the Europe except the All Points West Festival in Jersey City on Aug 9. Seems like another reason to hit up that festival.
27 June: Glastonbury Festival, Somerset UK
29 June: Open Air St Gallen Festival, Switzerland
4 July: Roskilde Festival, Denmark
5 July: Werchter Festival, Belgium
8 July: Le Zenith, Paris France
11 July: Oxegen Festival, Ireland
13 July: T In The Park Festival, Scotland
18 July: Summercase Festival, Madrid Spain
19 July: Summercase Festival, Barcelona Spain
9 August: All Points West Festival, Liberty State Park, Jersey City
16 August: V Festival, Weston Park, Staffordshire UK
17 August: V Festival, Hylands Park, Chelmsford UK
This was my question to the girl in the center of this photo. “Get peed on!” was her answer. That’s right, the fan on the left of her is relieving himself into a water bottle while waiting for Ben Folds to go on stage on Saturday afternoon.
I’m just glad he found some relief a while all the photographers slowly backed away from him. Just another reason to never go barefoot at Bonnaroo.
Oh ya, Ben Folds rocked the stage once again for the adoring fans with a full band to round out his sound. I love Ben, but I just feel his music has so much more power with drums and bass (sometimes guitar). So I was glad to see the full lineup.
Last leg of the road trip for the Jeep, ‘cept for the 2 hour trip from Columbus to Kent to be done at the end of the month. The Jeep ad boat in tow will be left in Columbus while the house is packed up and I drive the truck to the new house in Kent.
So, Kanye West as apparently pissed off everyone within the Bonnaroo community. Management, publicity, press, other artists, and most of all the fans that came to see him. Not only did he go on late, they told Bonnaroo management that they Kanye “was” Bonnaroo and denied them access to the stage. no press coverage, and the worst? He refused to play until all other artists where done playing. This forced long time Bonnaroo fan favorite Phil Lesh to stop playing a set a hour short of his scheduled time, and we normally would have played much after this time. Phil stopped playing at 3:30 and Kayne still didn’t play for almost another hour. Most fans left by the time Kanye’s “Good Morning” show started.
The reaction? Fans painting and wearing Fuck U Kayne and chanting Kanye Sucks! during performances on Sunday. As I’m sitting back my camp right now in full listen of Death Cap for Cutie and write this, the lead singer stopped between songs and said that for him to start playing he just needs “his shit together”, and he had his guitar and his mike and his shit was together. Once his shit is together he starts playing, just like any other professional musician.
Long time Bonnaroo artist Robert Randolph lead a chant during his show of “Kanye sucks”
I also thought it was really nice when I shot a different appearance of Phil Lesh that the fans kept yelling how much they loved him and of course… “Kanye Sucks!”
Rudeness, over-ego, disrespect, call it what you want, but that’s the feeling of the late night that lasted until sunrise on Saturday. I wanted to check out Kanye West, something entirely different for the Bonnaroo crowd. He was first to go on around 8:00, at the same time jack Johnson was to go on. That didn’t fly with him so he was moved to the first late night show on the main stage to go on at 2:45 AM. Late, but reasonable for most of the Bonnaroo crowd. While everyone was waiting it was moved to 3:00…..3:15….3:30….3:45 (announced at 4:00 A.M.). I made two trips back to my tent, came back and he still wasn’t on. Finally at 4:20, fairly appropriate, though still uncalled for, Kanye took the stage. Well, It looked more like a giant laptop that he rapped to pre-recoded music. The music wasn’t great, the stage show was worse, and for all the hype and waiting, it was easily the worst show I’ve seen from my 6 years shooting ‘Roo. If I want to see a performance of someone walking around to a cheesy lights and “storyline” side show, I’ll watch my 4 year old niece’s DVDs. I was willing to give Kanye a chance even though he refused to make any changes in his show and had to move his time/stage throwing the schedule of the entire festival off. His disrespect for artists that played around him and common courtesy to the (few) fans left standing tells me more then enough about Kanye West. I won’t be stopping for his show at Lollapalooza, not worth another sleepless night when I have work to do covering the rest of the more talented artists.
I took in about 4 songs, had enough, and a few of us went to the Farris Wheel and actually caught sunrise at the top. I guess one good thing came from it.
At that point it was time for sleep. Hope I have enough energy to make it through one more Sunday after such a disappointing night. Death Cab for Cutie should be awsome, as with a few others, but slow day overall.
You you know this is nothing new. It’s hot every year. But I do have wireless at the campsite, which just rules. I’ll prob blog a bit more with it here. There was the normal lines of cars waiting to get in, and there was already a parade, kind lame though, about 10 people.
We’re set up behind the Comedy Tent which is very nice, about the same place Paul and I had a few years ago against the wall. The neighbors are cool (literally) as they are letting me hang out in their camper that has air conditioning.
I’ll throw a few more in there as well. Full coverage with a real writer and my photos will of course be on Spinner, they have some cool free MP3s of bands playing this year as a ramp up to our coverage.
So tomorrow I leave to my 6th year of Bonnaroo. Fully shooting and being directly paid from old employer, AOL. Coverage will be mostly on Spinner.com but also on AOL Music. All this means I’m being paid more because I can also resell my images as stock as well as being paid form AOL. Better all around for myself and my freelance business.
Downside? Hmmm…might be the line up. I had to go through it today to decide what we are going to cover. My list was….lacking. Please feel free to suggest any bands I should shoot, my 1st pass list is below. Thursday and Sunday are really lacking. Other downside, this will be the first year I don’t know of any of my friends going. I couldn’t even give away my extra pass. Though in many ways it makes it better, I can actually get an assistant to help carry all my gear and help upload photos.
I have a feeling this will be the first year Bonnaroo will not sell out. It should still be a great show, just not quite it’s been in the last few years though.
Thursday (please add some bands)
Vampire Weekend
Friday
Tegan & Sara
Les Claypool
The Raconteurs
Willie Nelson
Rilo Kiley
Chris Rock
Metallica
My Morning Jacket
SuperJam
Saturday
Mason Jennings
Gogol Bordello
Cat Power
B.B. King
Ben Folds
Jack Johnson
Pearl Jam
Sigur Rós
Kanye West (2:45 AM!!! sheesh)
Sunday (please add more bands!)
Aimee Mann
Death Cab for Cutie
Well, what we are calling home for now anyway. Gretchen and I are back in Raleigh. I go to Bonnaroo next week to shoot it for the 6th year. I’ll be posting up photos from there once I hit the ground. We close on our house here on June 26, then it’s up to Ohio and we close on our house there on July 1. We’ll be living out of our moving truck for a few days in Columbus and will most likely be at ComFest on Sunday. Give me a call if you’d like to meet up. Wish us luck packing, 3 weeks and counting. The road trip is finally over.
So we’re in contract for this house. 477 W. Main St. in Kent, Ohio. It’s in the historic district and right down the street from all sorts of restaurants, bars and the booming Kent night life. This is provided our house in Raleigh gets though inspection. The person buying the house has been a pain in the ass, but we just got a back up offer for almost the same as our first offer, so we should be good to go. We’ll close on the house in Raleigh on June 26 and close on the house Kent on July 1. More details? The house was built in 1875, has gone through extensive renovation over the last few years, including a new kitchen, master bath, 2nd and 1st floor baths and most of the down stairs. At the moment it has two kitchens, well the cabinets, sink and dishwasher. Not sure what to do with it yet. Anyway, if you’d like to see everything I took, here’s more photos.
