Fools Gold Records threw it’s annual Labor Day party yesterday at Williamsburg Park in Brooklyn. It’s the first one that I’ve been in town for and it was a hell of a party. So much was going on that I am gonna try to make this write up as brief as possible because if I don’t it will end up at like 5000 words and no one wants that.
I walked in right as World’s Fair were playing and they were jumping all over the stage. I had never heard them before but they put on an awesome show and I would check them out if I were you. Plus one of em told me he was a Driven By Boredom fan, so I fuck with them now. Also during their set one of the dudes from Flatbush Zombies jumped off the stage in a raft and I got a couple of insane photos of that so that ruled.
Just Blaze came out and DJ’d between World’s Fair and the Unibros reunion. Fool’s Gold Co-Founder and serious unibrow haver A-Trak teamed up with fellow unibrow having DJ Boys Noize to form the DJ super team Unibros. People were psyched and A-Trak’s brother and 1/2 of Chromeo Dave 1 came out threw Fool’s Gold T-Shirts at everyone and the kids in the crowd lost their damn minds because for some reason there is nothing more important on earth than a t-shirt when it is thrown from a stage.
Mykki Blanco came out with A-Trak for a couple quick songs and then Migos came out and tore shit up and I had Versace Versace in my head for the rest of the day. There set was actually really fun and there were a million people on stage at that point so for part of their set I was just sort of sitting on the stage shooting over my shoulder and enjoying their set.
Up next was Run The Jewels the collab between El-P and Killer Mike. Both those dudes have been doing this shit for a very long time and their tag team shit is pretty great. Killer Mike seemed genuinely psyched to be there and be in NYC and kept shouting out New York and thanking the audience for inventing hip hop, although my guess is that there might have been four people in the audience that were alive in the late 70’s and I am pretty sure none of them were living in the Bronx back then… but their set was great and they use the same artist (Nick Gazin) to do their artwork as my shitty punk cover band so I support that.
A$AP Ferg was up next and had been waiting for that shit. I’ve seen A$AP Rocky a few times and both times the shows were pretty fucking wild so I was really looking forward to Ferg. When I saw Rocky hanging out back stage I was extra pumped. Unfortunately so was everyone else and they had to clear the stage and the photo pit was filled with random VIP peoples so it was a pain in the ass to shoot. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and kicking out everyone without a media pass the security guards kicked everyone out and started being total assholes to everyone for no real reason. I tried a few things to get on stage but shit was shut down. I decided to just go through the crowd so I could get my Rocky shots but by the time I got to the front they were just ending.
Fortunately I was able to get on stage for Danny Brown and he brought out Rocky again. I am sort of a huge Danny Brown fan at this point after shooting him three times and I was pretty excited for his set. He tore that place down and it was by far the best set I have seen him do. Although in defense of his other performances one was before anyone had ever heard of him, once was at the Gathering of the Juggalos and once was at one of the worst festivals I have ever been to… Anyway, Danny fucked shit up and there was a bunch of weed smoking and Twerking on stage and it was magical.
Lastly, A-Trak and Armand Van Helden brought out the big bad duck and did a rare Duck Sauce set. At that point I was so exhausted and I had an awesome bruise on my leg that I have no idea how I got so I took off about 15 minutes into their performance. I mean there are only so many photos you can take of people DJing in front of a giant fucking duck. Seriously though, that duck is amazing and they give out duck bills to all their fans and make amazing music videos so yeah awesome, etc.
The point of this tale is that the party was fucking amazing and a great way to end the summer. And shout out to Fool’s Gold co-founder Nick Catchdubs for hooking up the VIP passes for me and my intern and for growing Fool’s Gold into this awesome thing that it is. He also DJ’d before Run The Jewels and for some reason I forgot to mention that in the 850 words above this sentence. This write up has clearly gotten out of hand. Let’s look at some photos.
Click here to see a huge gallery of photos from the 2013 Fool’s Gold Day Out at Williamsburg Park.
