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.

A few images form yesterday….

Janeane Garofalo

Vampire Weekend

Fire Eater

Ski-Ball from Hell

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.

–Up for today (so far)

6:00 - Janeane Garofalo
8:30 - MGMT
10:30 - The Sword
11:30 - Vampire Weekend

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.

Roadtrip #2 for the month….

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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.

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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.

A picture is worth a 1000 words, here’s two.

Well, lack of internet access and time has slowed down my blogging. Sorry about that. I’ll recap our travels and make more detail posts over the next few days. We left Albuquerque on Sunday in search of The Grand Canyon, stayed two nights and then headed north.

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Next we drove through Monument Valley on the way to Moab, UT. I think I could have stayed at Moab for a week or two with everything to do (more on this later). We did visit Arches National Park while there.

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We left on Wednesday to head back east. We took I-70 through Denver and made it 785 miles to Salina, KS (can you say the middle of nowhere flatlands?)

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Thursday we drove 839 miles to Columbus. Bleh, too much motoring in the Mini. Anyway, more details later.

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Lots of photos today. Besides, do you really want to read my writing or look at my photos? You should really check out Gretchen’s blog for more about our trip as well.

Anyway, we stopped in Amarillo, Tx for the night and went to The Big Texas for lunch, a place Woody would be in heaven. Needless to say they had very large steaks, including a 72oz. steak that if you could eat in an hour you got for free. The record holder did it in 8 mins and 53 seconds. Um, yuck. Here’s my 8oz, the smallest they had.

Moving on from having way too much meat for lunch was this sight just west of Amarillo off 40.

Well, to be honest I was planning on stopping at the famous Cadillac Ranch anyway. But the view is pretty odd in the middle of nowhere Texas. Here’s more of my photos of the 10 old Cadillacs stuck nose first into the ground. They are continually changing as almost everyone adds a little more pain to the finish. No rust here.

Once into New Mexico I had to take a few shots of an abandoned church at one of our stops.

We finally arrived at Moe’s Place in Albuquerque, NM around 5:00 local time. Time for laundry and a few days break. Moe is thrilled.

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So the Mini to doing well for us on the road. Good gas mileage and even a great ride over Oklahoma’s crappy roads. So, lots of photos of the Mini today We are in Amarillo, Tx today and are going to go see Cadillac Ranch today. Then it’s on to Albuquerque, NM and see Moe.

Mini Camping in Petit Jean State Park in AK.

Mini at a stop before Oklahoma City.

Mini at our lunch stop at a cool little Irish pub in the middle-of-nowhere AK.

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We made it to Nashville to visit Gretchen’s aunt and uncle for the night. The settings on the auto-camera got messed up, so there won’t be any photos between KY and Nashville. The above is from NC somewhere. I’m now mounting the camera in the back seat facing toward the side. A bit more interesting hopefully. Next up, we are heading toward Little Rock, AK. Not a bad drive for the day. Hopefully we’ll find some internet in Oklahoma City when we stop there on Wednesday.

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Kinda. We drove from Raleigh, NC to Winchester, KY on Saturday morning. Mileage on the Mini when starting….

We are dropping Lucy and Scout off at Gretchen’s aunt’s house while we drive out west. Lucy loves chasing the cats and dogs and Scout gets to visit with her mom, dad and brother. Needless to say the dogs are not a big fan of the car. Though Scout loves to try to look out the front window and cuddle with Lucy.

I’m also working on another movie, kinda a stop action for the entire trip of the view out the front window. Here’s the rig set up in the car. It’s on a timer that shoots a photo every minute. I can also shoot extra shots when I want as well. working fairly well so far.

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Ok, reason I haven’t been blogging much is because we have finally officially put our house up for sale. So, buy my house, here’s the listing. Gretchen and I have been running around cleaning and getting the house ready. I was even outside mowing the lawn in the rain.

To add to everything Gretchen and I are taking off in the Mini and driving across the U.S.A. to the Grand Canyon and back. We leave in the morning and who knows when we’ll be back. We are stopping in KY, Nashville, possibly Dallas, Albuquerque, to the Grand Canyon, then back through Utah (watch out for polygamists!) to Denver and somehow back to Ohio to check houses out in NE Ohio. I’ll be making updates with photos along the way.

So…..stay tuned damnit.

Who doesn’t enjoy some free music?  NIN is giving away their newest album, The Slip, for free on their site.  Very nice give it up to Trent and the boys for this one.

Download it here.