Fun Fun Fun Fest Sunday – 11.10.13
On Sunday I knew I was going to take it easy at Fun Fun Fun Fest. I hadn’t really slept in three days and the first band I was dying to see didn’t start until the late afternoon. A friend of a friend wanted to do a photo shoot with me so I photographed a girl in my friends kitchen, had tacos with his roommate and then slowly made my way down to the fest just in time to see the Cro-Mags.
I have photographed the Cro-Mags before and the legendary NY hardcore band is always impressive even during a day time festival show. I ran into their intense frontman John Joseph at the airport and said I had a blast at his performance. (They were one of the only bands I stuck it out for their whole set.) I was with Chris Weingarten from Spin and he just immediately started telling us amazing stories from the bad old days in NYC. He told us about getting stabbed defending the Beastie Boys and touring with Motorhead and a bunch of other amazing things in the 5-10 minutes we talked to him. Such an interesting, badass dude.
After Cro-Mags I made an attempt to shoot Deltron 3030 with a full orchestra but the photo pit was too full and by the time they let me in there I only got five shots or something before they kicked me out. This is why I hate music festivals. From there I hit the MGMT set and I got a few nice shots before these Absolut Vodka beach balls were thrown into the crowd as some sort of desperate promotional attempt and one of them landed on stage blocking my shot of the band. When one of the balls fell into the photo pit I grabbed it and tried to throw it at the beach ball that was in the way but I somehow missed and the ball floated right over my target and hit the frontman right in the face. It was pretty funny but I was also kinda embarrassed so I decided to sneak out of there and move on to the next act.
The next act was Texas legend Daniel Johnston. The mentally unstable folk singer is a personal favorite and I was getting to see him for the third time. This was actually my favorite of his performances and it was powerful to see him perform that close. He shakes with nervousness and performs with a vulnerability and sadness that you rarely see from a musician. I am a huge fan of him, his music and his art (I own one of his original drawings) and I just donated to a Kickstarter to make a half documentary/ half fictionalized film about his life. The first documentary about his life, The Devil and Daniel Johnston is one of the best music docs I have ever seen and it looks like this new film could be fantastic as well.
After Daniel I finally got to see the Locust although their set up and lighting made them incredibly hard to photograph. I’m not a huge fan of the band’s music but after one of their members made up some fake lovers quarrel and went on Jerry Springer with my friend Scott I have become a fan of the band as a concept. I was glad to get to see them.
From there it was finally time for the headliners. Slayer was probably the biggest draw at the festival but I shot them the last time I was at Fun Fun Fun so I was running a little late for their set. I knew the photo pit was going to be a disaster, especially after shooting M.I.A. on that stage. There is a huge speaker wall set up in front of the stage and so even if you can get in the photo pit you can’t move around because of this speaker wall. When I got into the pit I had no view of anything so I ended up crawling under the stage and popping out right next to the speaker wall. I still had almost no shot but it was better than before. After I took a few shots I said fuck it and jumped on top of the speaker wall and to get out of other photographers shots I ended up wedging myself down into the gap between the wall and the stage. My legs were actually under the stage and I would pop out, get a few shots and then duck back under so other photographers wouldn’t get pissed. A few of them got pissed at me but I did what I could to get out of their way and a bunch of them were actually cracking up. One of the photographers told me it was a highlight of his fest and sent me this photo of me wedged down in there. The whole thing was pretty metal, but not quite as metal as the guy crowd surfing to Slayer in a wheel chair. Just sayin’.
Finally I decided to catch Jurassic 5’s set. I was a big fan of them in the late 90’s early 2000’s but I sort of stopped listening to them at some point. Not sure why but I just hadn’t listened to them in years. I was exhausted from three days of festivals, mosh pits and not sleeping so I figured I could just chill by the side of the stage and enjoy their set for a few songs and then get the hell out of there. I made it to their set before they even started so I got to photograph them and I was instantly blown away. Those guys are fucking amazing live. It’s so great to see hip hop where the artists are working together instead of each person taking a verse. They finish each other’s sentences and like they say “take four MCs and make ’em sound like one”. After I shot their first three songs I moved to the little media area and watched their whole set with a bunch of journalists who were dancing and singing along. They were really one of the best sets of the whole festival if not the very best. It was a perfect way to end a pretty epic weekend.
