Fun Fun Fun Fest Saturday – 11.9.13
Saturday at Fun Fun Fun was even more packed with bands I wanted to see. I got there early so I could check out one of my favorite newer bands Bleached. I like them better every time I see them and I listen to their record all the time. Low fi female fronted rock and roll is oddly becoming one of my favorite types of music. After Bleached I got to see Brooklyn’s finest Flatbush Zombies. I once photographed them playing on a skate ramp and they always put on a hell of a show.
I took a quick break to catch some comedy. My old pal Jenny Slate told a bunch of jokes and then the JASH comedy tent turned into a hot box when the weed obsessed Doug Benson came on and proceeded to be hilarious. Either that or I had a serious contact high. Craig Robinson came out and did a pretty epic comedic musical performance with a full back up band.
After that I was walking over to the press tent for a second when I passed the Glass Candy performance. It was super weird and high energy so I stopped by for a few shots. After that it was on to check out Television. I know people love them but I just never got into them. Seeing them live didn’t really change my opinion but I only saw the first few songs before running across the festival to the Black Stage catch mother fucking Body Count!
Unfortunately when I got there Ice-T was already a song into Body Count’s brutal set. My punk band covers Cop Killer and I loved Body Count growing up so I was really bummed when they wouldn’t let me into the photo pit. I said “Fuck it” and jumped into the crowd and watched the show from the mosh pit. I got some okay shots but I missed a lot of others as I was dodging stage divers and trying not to get killed. I ended up smashing my Ray Bans in the process. Damn. It was worth it though and they were one of the highlights of the fest for me. They are coming out with a new album soon and the new shit they played sounded awesome.
After Body Count I got to knock another band off my must see bucket list. I came to this festival mostly to see two bands, Flag and Sparks. Flag’s set yesterday really lived up to the hype and I was so excited to see Sparks. They have been around since the early 70’s and have more than 20 albums and very few people know them in the US. It’s really strange because they are so brilliant. I got turned on to them about a decade ago and I consider myself a huge fan despite owning barely a quarter of their albums. Seeing them live was really awesome but they played so much stuff I didn’t know that I was a bit disappointed over all. But that’s on me. They still put on a hell of a performance to a pretty impressively large crowd.
After Sparks I walked over to M.I.A. to see the start of her set. I missed a chance to see what I believe was her first show in the US in Austin about 10 years ago and I sort of always regretted it so I wanted to at least try and take a couple photos of her. Unfortunately the photo pit was overfilled with photographers and I mostly got shots of her from the side or the back of her head. I was pretty disappointed but it was a good lesson in shooting that stage which served me well when I got to shoot Slayer there the next day. My M.I.A. photos were also lacking because I only saw about a song and a half of her set before I ran across the grounds to the Black Stage once again.
The Descendents were about to go on but I made it in time, unfortunately they still wouldn’t let me in the photo pit. I was pissed because I supposedly had a “headliner” photo pass but they still wouldn’t let me in so for the third time in two days I jumped into the mosh pit and took photos from the crowd. I love the Descendents and I hadn’t seen them since 1998 so it was awesome to see them. I remember thinking how old they were back then and Milo was only two years older than I am now. God damn. They put on an awesome show but I didn’t take great shots. I was having way too much fun. At some point I told a guy in the crowd that if they played “Pervert” I was going to stage dive with my camera. My band covers Pervert so I know every word and two songs later they played it so I climbed on stage, tried to take a photo from stage and then jumped into the crowd, camera in hand. Unfortunately my settings got bumped when I climbed on the stage and I set it on self timer mode so my camera didn’t take a photo. I changed modes while crowd surfing and was getting ready to take some photos from the air when a guy stage dived right on top of me for some reason. I got dropped but my legs stayed in the air. Fortunately I have a life time of crowd surfing practice and I let myself fall but kept my camera up. I got trampled on the ground and fucked up my shoulder but managed to keep my camera safe. I did lose my flash diffuser but it could have been a lot worse.
I limped out of the pit to a bunch of high fives and slaps on the back. It was a lot of fun but I was done for. The fest was almost over so I slowly walked out of there with the sounds of the Decendents soothing my painful trip back to my friends couch. I was ready to call it quits but I had 1400 photos to edit and another whole day of the fest. Bring it on.
