Category — music

This video has been up for a couple months on YouTube and a friend just posted it today on Facebook.  I was feeling a bit down today and it totally cheered me up.  Enjoy!!!

Thank god for the show last night at Celebrate Brooklyn. I was having a crap last two days and danced it off. Luckily we got VIP bands, which don’t really mean much at Celebrate Brooklyn (like you can’t go backstage) but they do mean VIP tent, short bathroom line and access to the photo pit. So I grabbed an overpriced beer and made my way down. I only grabbed a couple shots, but that’s okay, sometimes you want to let loose and not work.

It’s a bit late, but I’ve been lazing about all day. I had a pretty rockin’ 4th of July. Started the day at the annual River2River 4th of July show, this year featuring Sonic Youth + the Feelies (free!) at Battery Park with one of dear friends, Naomi.

As expected, Battery Park was swarming with hipsters, and young ones too. Man, I felt old. And in my age, I couldn’t even be bothered to move super close to the stage. So we stayed a back a bit, dropped our NYC-summer de rigueur ethnic blanket and ate salad and too many chips in the blazing sun. Naomi also gave me an early bday present - a cute necklace with a very discrete “J”.

There was much hype about the Feelies reuniting after 17years. I hadn’t listened to them before, but definitely could hear their influence on REM and Sonic Youth.

Sonic Youth took the stage and the crowd went mental! And Kim looked amazing in that animal print dress! They played songs spanning their career, but I don’t remember hearing well known ones like “Candle” and “Teen Age Riot”. During “Drunken Butterfly” Kim forgot the lyrics. We all thought it was some weird staged event that seemed so unlike them. She DID forget the lyrics except the last two, so they went with it.

I brought my camera, but forgot CF cards! Great.

One set, two encores, steamy weather and a bit o rain. Good day so far.

Then it was back to Brooklyn for another friend’s BBQ. Good because I was HUNGRY! Later we watched the fireworks from their rooftop. I must say, there has definitely been advances in pyrotechnics since I last saw them because the City had fireworks with smiley face and cube shapes. Of course, it started to rain again. No matter, good music, good friends, funny exploding colors - what else do you need?

This afternoon we went to a live taping of The Sound of Young America and had the pleasure of hearing Dawn Landes play. Her music is awesome, heartfelt, at times mellow and dreamy. If I wasn’t flying to LA tomorrow, I’d definitely go to her show at Mercury Lounge. Check out her bluegrass version of Peter, Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks”.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of working with Paolo Roversi.  I’ve enjoyed his work for quite some time and was totally stoked to be on his set.   It was refreshing to see another style of photography and less obsession with technicality, focus and detail.   It’s less shoot, shoot, flag this/that, shoot, shoot and more like, take a frame, review and think about, take another frame.  That comes from his 8×10 background.  I feel so inspired now!   Hopefully, I’ll get to work with him again.

On another note, I finally checked out the Summer Stage and Celebrate Brooklyn schedules.  I didn’t go to any shows last year (and totally missed the Yo La Tengo show), but the lineup is looking good this year.  Some highlights for next month:

Summer Stage

• June 13: Mavis Staples
• June 14: Vampire weekend
• June 26: Thievery Corp w/Bebel Gilberto

Celebrate Brooklyn

• June 12: Isaac Hayes
• June 19: Medeski, Martin and Wood
• June 28: Crooklyn Dodgers Reunion

Summer Stage - http://www.summerstage.org

Celebrate Brooklyn - http://www.briconline.org/celebrate/2008season.asp

It’s been about a week since I last posted.  I’ve been working and dealing with the renovation.  After nearly a year, we finally have a working sink in the bathroom!!!  Anyways, in celebration I added another image to my site.  Termanology just signed to Nature Sounds, an indie hip-hop label and I got to shoot the album cover.  I like this image better than the shot we did with for the cover.  We were lucky to shoot @Dan’s studio and rooftop.  Lately I’ve been into backlit shots with a bit more of a feeling but crap, I over filled this one.  What do you think?

As a favor for someone, I agreed to a last minute shoot with a rapper, whom I’ll call R, who was in town from Massachusetts until Saturday. It’s supposed to rain on Friday, so cool, today will work. I’ll hold off on what I originally planned - working on images for my portfolio and finally sorting out the stone for the shower curb. (Yes, we ARE STILL renovating the bathroom!) I had a great location at my friend’s studio in Chinatown featuring a rooftop and a stairwell a la Mark Seliger. At our scheduled time, 4p, I get a voicemail that R can’t make it until 5:30. Uh, ok. Thanks for letting me know, calling when we were going to meet. But things happen; we can reschedule. I call R back, but get his voicemail. I’m still @the location and a videographer walks in, then the second videographer walks in. They were supposed to shoot a video with R, which BTW, R didn’t bothered to tell my friend that these guys were showing up. I explained the situation to them, was totally annoyed and walked out. At least I can do some street stuff in Chinatown for the next hour or so. As if on cue, at 5:30 R calls me back tell me that he’s on the way. What? I thought you would be there @5:30, not “I’m on my way there from Bushwick”. Dude, sorry but I offered you a favor, last minute at that. If you were paying me, yea, then ok, sure I’d wait. I’d be really annoyed, but I’d wait. But considering you were trying to get your self back in the game after a bit of absence, don’t flake like this on someone who offered to help you out. What a waste of time. At least Chinatown/Lower East Side was interesting.

I haven’t shot a concert in 4 years. It’s not an easy job, especially @the big venues with all their restrictions, the quickly changing lighting. Luckily, last night’s show was @the Knitting Factory, so it was cozy. I’ve realized that I’m definitely more of portrait photographer and work better in a more controlled situation. But it’s good once in a while to change it up! Here’s the pics from last night.