Rage Against the Machine

Wilco playing against the Chicago skyline.

Dierks Bently

A few quick photos from yesterday.  More later!

Well, Gretchen and I leave today for Chicago as I’m shooting Lollapalooza for the first time.  Hopefully I’m be able to shoot it for several years going forward, but who knows.  Anyway, I’m packing basically the same set up I run with for Bonnaroo, minus the camping gear.  Gotta say, I’m excited to shoot a different type of festival in the middle of a large booming city instead of the middle of nowhere Tennessee. Hopefully it goes better as well.  I feel my shots for Bonnaroo where a little lacking this year, maybe it was a combination of some rain, a bad lineup and general negativity surrounding the Kayne West show. He’s actually going to be @ Lolla as well, but I’m shooting Nine Inch Nails instead.  Hopefully with better sleeping conditions and what so far has been a better run publicity campaign I’ll have better shots.

Off my music norms…

I should have lisetened to Eric.  Since we moved and got a new flat screen tv we wanted to get cable. Got Time Warner with HD and a DVR, was told HD/DVR was free. We got the bill today and we are being charged for it.  So we called them up.  Basically, after being transferred 4 times and alot of rude customer service reps. I canceled my service. Apparently they had no record of them promising free HD/DVR and wouldn’t even take my conformation number from when I ordered it.  My bill was coming total almost $74 a month for cable, the same price DirecTV with HBO, Showtime and 265 other channels I won’t watch. Gretchen and I just wanted basic cable and don’t want to pay $74 a month for it.

I can’t believe a company the size of Time Warner wouldn’t even try to keep me as a customer.  When I was told there was nothing they could do, I told them to cancel my cable. “Ok” she told me, nothing to even try to make a customer happy.

So ya, screw your Time Warner Cable. While I still have their high speed internet, I’m very, very actively looking for a replacement.  But for my and Gretchen’s work we need to have something faster then DSL.  If only the faster and cheaper Verizon FIOS service where more widely available. Though I am looking into their EVDO service.

Spin is offering a new track off the forthcoming album  “Only By The Night,” due Sept. 23.  Sounds great.  I can’t wait for the new album!  You can down “Crawl” from the link below.

SPIN.com piece:
http://spin.com/articles/exclusive-mp3-download-kings-leon-crawl

Download “Crawl”
http://www.kingsofleon.com/spin_crawlfreedownload/

I came across Emily Wells today with a free MP3 for ya.  She releases her album “The Symphonies: Dreams Memories and Parties” on Saturday July 19th.  Her music is much more like a score then like a normal album. Kinda reminds me of Dresden Dolls in some ways also.

MP3:  06-symphony-6_-fair-thee-well-and-the-requeim-mix.mp3

On MySpace

Jenny Lewis at Bonnaroo 2008

Rilo Kiley’s red-headed lead singer has a new solo album coming out in September.  “Acid Tongue” will feature a few big names on it as well…Elvis Costello, M. Ward, and Zooey Deschanel, the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson, Rilo Kiley producer Jason Lader, and singer/songwriter Johnathan Rice. Tour?  Oh ya, many of the dates with Bright Eyes’ singer Conor Oberst.

09-16 Boulder, CO - Fox Theatre
09-17 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre
09-19 Chicago, IL - Epiphany Church
09-20 Omaha, NE - Anchor Inn
09-21 Nashville, TN - Ryman Auditorium
09-22 Knoxville, TN - Bijou Theatre
09-23 Fayetteville, AR - George’s Majestic
09-24 Oxford, MS - The Lyric Theatre
09-25 Tulsa, OK - Cain’s Ballroom
09-26 Austin, TX - Austin City Limits Festival
10-02 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
10-04 New York, NY - Apollo Theater

With Conor Oberst in bold.

“Acid Tongue” track listing:
01 Black Sand
02 Pretty Bird
03 The Next Messiah
04 Bad Man’s World
05 Acid Tongue
06 See Fernando
07 Godspeed
08 Carpetbaggers
09 Trying My Best to Love You
10 Jack Killed Mom
11 Sing a Song for Them

The album I am referring to is Evil Urges by My Morning Jacket .   This is one of those albums that takes a few listens (5 fore me) before it sinks it’s hooks into you.

I remember seeing My Morning Jacket the very first time I attended Bonnaroo 7 years ago.  In fact, they were the first band I saw that year.  They were virtual unknows at the time, but I kind of dug their Neil Young influenced rockers.  Well, Evil Urges is a long way from those early days.   Some critics are even going so far as to say they are the Radiohead of the U.S. of A.  I can appreciate that metaphor, though, because primary song writer Jim James keeps surprising his fans by not writing the same song over and over.  This one is chock full of surprises.

My personal favorites, which continue to change daily are Touch Me I’m Going To Scream, pt. 2 (with it’s hypnotizing keyboard intro),  Highly Suspicious (which reeks of Prince, but in a good way), and Librarian (this ones a no brainer).

Well.  We’re finally in Kent, Ohio.  If anyone wold like to come visit we have 2 extra rooms right now with beds.  Today was a good day, we got internet and Gretchen’s Dad and I got 3 new windows installed in the front of the house.  I still have the molding, outside trim and then 2 more whole windows to go.  The move itself went well.  We had hired 2 movers to help unpack the truck and they showed up with 3!  So helpful and great to work with.

More about the house later…

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.

View Larger Map

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.