Okay, this is it. The last post of the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans and we are going to pack a lot into it. I have four galleries of images for you in this one post because I gotta start getting up Fun Fun Fun fest pics later today.  In this post we have mini galleries of Snoop and Kreayshawn and then a mixed gallery featuring live shots of Cheap Trick, Z-Trip, Star Eyes and TV on the Radio. And then finally we have all the random crowd shots I took at the festival. Those probably deserve their own post but I don’t have the time for it…

Snoop Dogg and Kreayshawn were pretty much playing at the same time at opposite ends of City Park in New Orleans. Snoop was supposed to go on a few minutes earlier than her but he ended up going on late. When he did go on his stage lights shined right into my lens and most of my shots had crazy lens flare. As much as I love Snoop I have shot him before so only shot one song and booked it down to Kreayshawn. I know a lot of my friends hate her but I really do love that Gucci Gucci song and I kinda think she is adorable. I also think that the argument that she is racist is bullshit. Whatever the case I had been wanting to shoot her for a while but I only got to shoot about 45 seconds of her set before they kicked me out of the photo pit. My photos were mediocre at best and I only got a few of them. I only got one song to shoot Cheap Trick and TV on the Radio as well and that accounts for why there is only a handful of shots from those sets.  As far as Star Eyes and Z-Trip… well shooting people DJing is just boring so I only took a few shots of them.

Lastly in this post we have the gallery of crowd shots. Most of them are shots of people drinking either out of Sailor Jerry cups, people in crazy halloween costumes or the occasional cute girl. There were a lot of great costumes but it wasn’t really my job to be taking photos of concert goers so I only shot a few photos while I was in between bands. There are also a few random back stage shots like the photos of OFWGKTA members Tyler the Creator and Left Brain.

Anyway, it’s time to put the Voodoo Music Experience to bed and move on to Fun Fun Fun so click below to check out one or all of the four galleries I have left. Thanks.

Click here to see photos of Snoop Dogg at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see photos of Kreayshawn at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see photos of Cheap Trick, TVOTR, Star Eyes and Z-Trip at Voodoo Music Experience.

Click here to see some random crowd shots from Voodoo Music Experience.

Trying to crank these Voodoo Music Experience photo updates out before I get to the new stuff from Fun Fun Fun Fest. I shot a few thousand images this weekend and I have tons of fun stuff for you guys. I was thinking about just putting up all the rest of the band photos from Voodoo all up at once but I wanted to give special consideration to Peelander Z and Boots Electric and for the same reasons. Both bands feature rad people and both bands got Sailor Jerry tattoos.

As you may know by now I am a big Peelander Z fan. They are a crazy Japanse band that I have been checking out for about a decade now. They put on an amazing show and they are all super friendly and hilarious. I have nothing but love for this band. And then you add to that the fact that Peelander Green got a big bad ass Sailor Jerry octopus tattoo and it makes me even more pro-Peelander.

Boots Electric got our Sailor Jerry tattoo promotion the most press because their frontman Jessie Hughes (also of Eagles of Death Metal) got his tattoo filmed for Fuse TV. He actually got a Sailor Jerry bomb with the Fuse logo in it. Jessie hung out most of the day and seemed like really good people. Also his girlfriend Tuesday Cross is a girl I photographed at a hotel party in Vegas like four years ago. She is rad as fuck and their band is a lot of fun.

So, now that I gave both those bands a little shout out, let’s get on with the photos. God willing I will only have one more Voodoo fest update and I can get started with the Fun Fun Fun stuff ASAP.

Click here to see all the photos of Peelander Z at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans.

Click here to see all the photos of Boots Electric at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans.

So I am at the Fun Fun Fun Music Fest in Austin, TX right now (follow my Tumblr for pics from that) but I still have a bunch of photos from the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans last weekend. I don’t have time to do a post for each band so I am gonna do some group posts starting with today’s old school punk rockish bands, Social Distortion, Fishbone and X. None of these bands are exactly punk rock but all of them are listened to by punk rock kids so that counts.

I had a Social Distortion poster on my college dorm room wall and X is one of my favorite bands of all time. I never listened to Fishbone back in the day but a lot of my friends did and I saw them at SXSW and they were fucking amazing. I hung out with Angelo a bit during the Zombie Crawl and then I hung out with the rest of the guys in the band at Voodoo so I am a big fan of that band now. I have had a crush on Exene from X since I was 14 and I saw Decline of Western Civilization. I still have a crush on her now even though she is looking a bit grandmotherly these days…

So that is my pointless rant about these three rad bands and I am gonna go back to my new life in Austin at a totally different music festival. While I do that, you should go look at photos.

Click here to look at the photos of Social Distortion.

Click here to look at the photos of Fishbone.

And click here to look at the photos of X.

I don’t really have a whole lot of amazing photos of the Raconteurs. There are a few shots I like and I don’t really have that much to say about their set but I just fucking love this band. Jack White is pretty much the only relevant rockstar left who isn’t a rapper and Brendan Benson is kinda fucking amazing. Them teaming up is pretty much my favorite thing about modern rock music. And that is all I have to say about that.

Click here to see my shots of The Raconteurs at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.

Girl Talk shows are always fun. I have seen him three times before he blew up and four or five times since then and they are always epic. I think the early shows after he got big were the best because they were just chaos. Now the Girl Talk team has it down to a science and it’s a little more controlled chaos. It’s still one hell of a party.

A number of the photographers at Voodoo had no idea what was going on when Girl Talk went on. I was sort of explaining to people that when you shoot Girl Talk you aren’t shooting Gregg Gillis behind the computers, you are shooting the whole scene, the crowd and the flying toilet paper. Gregg was wearing a Freddy Kruger mask when he came out and we never really saw him again. Honestly the photos I took of everything kinda sucked but I was having a fucking blast.

I was having so much fun that when I had to leave and get back to the Sailor Jerry Air Stream I decided I wanted to go out with a bang so I climbed up the security barricade and dove into the crowd. People had been crowd surfing but it was a quick up and down, but when they saw I was shooting photos while crowd surfing everyone got really excited and kept me up in the air. Not only was it the longest I have ever crowd surfed, but it was the longest I have ever seen ANYONE crowd surf. I was up in the air for 2 or 3 full minutes and I was more than 50 yards away from the stage when they finally put me down. The shots are pretty awful technically but they are really fun to look at to see the faces of the people in the crowd framed by my legs.

The other thing I should mention Re: Girl Talk is that later that night I hit up Girl Talk’s video art designer Andrew (Bad Brilliance) and I met him and the Girl Talk crew out at a hip hop club on Bourbon Street. After a while we ended up at a steampunk ball that Girl Talk’s booking agent Sam had to convince the manager of the House of Blues that it would be a good idea to let us all in. But we quickly got kicked out when Andrew got on stage and started dancing with steam punk go-go dancers who spanked him until security pulled him off. After that we ended up in the shadiest strip dive bar I have ever seen called Harem. There was a one drink minimum so Gregg bought everyone beers and when he gave them a credit card he had to fill out exhaustive credit card and leave a thumb print for identification. I am not even joking. The one stripper on stage was a black tranny who did some amazing tricks for Andrew and Sam’s girlfriend. After her set Andrew got on stage and tried to do his own pole tricks. One of the strippers was yelling at him to get down from there but she was laughing so hard that it was hard to take  her seriously. We finally bounced before they kicked us out and Sam’s girlfriend bought us all hot dogs. The end.

Click here to see all the pictures from the actual Girl Talk set at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.  The pictures of Andrew dancing with steampunk go go dancers we will have to save for my Tumblr…

One of the cooler branding promotions that exists on Earth is Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum giving out free tattoos. Not little fake temporary tattoos with their logo on them, but actual real life tattoos given by a bearded man in a small air stream trailer. If you are not away Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins was a bad ass motherfucker who pretty much revolutionized tattooing. He was tattooing sailors in Hawaii for something like 40 years and designed thousands of flash tattoos that have been compiled into three tattoo flash books that pretty much every tattoo shop in the world owns.  Sailor Jerry died in 1973 but his legacy lives on and hundreds of people still get his work tattooed on them every week. At special music events around the country Sailor Jerry rum sets up a make shift tattoo shop in their air stream trailer and give out Sailor Jerry tattoos to any of the musicians who want one.

During Voodoo Music Experience New Orleans tattoo artist Terry Brown set up shop in the air stream for three days and did close to twenty tattoos on bands, crew members and me. He tattooed Diplo and Piink from Major Lazer, two of the members of Fishbone, Peelander Green, Jesse Hughes and Tuesday Cross from Boots Electric, my homies Star Eyes from Trouble & Bass and Roofeeo from TV on The Radio and a bunch of other people who I lost track of. Sorry.

Terry Brown is a great tattoo artist who specializes in this traditional tattoo style pioneered by Sailor Jerry. If you are in New Orleans you can set up an appointment with him at his shop Uptown. But if you happen to be a musician at Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin this weekend he will be doing them there for free. I’ll be there so get at me and I can make sure you get hooked up.

Now check out all the shots of musicians getting Sailor Jerry tattoos at the Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans.

As you may noticed the people paying for my adventures of late have been Sailor Jerry Spiced Rum. They hired me to shoot CMJ, Voodoo Music Experience and Fun Fun Fun in Austin next weekend. I feel like they are a perfect brand for me to represent as they do rad shit for bands, throw awesome parties and are entrenched in the tattoo culture that I love to document.

At the Voodoo fest in New Orleans they had a photo boot set up and provided the rum for the festival but they also had one of their air stream trailers parked in the aritst only area and were serving up rum drinks to all the bands back stage. We had a bunch of cool bands hanging out all weekend and I got to document that stuff while they still let me check out all the bands I wanted to see. It was a pretty ideal situation.

We had Major Lazer stop by one night for tattoos and Fishbone stop by for a random 80′s dance party in the trailer. Peelander Z were there all day Friday and members of Fitz and the Tantrums and Civil Twilight spent a lot of time hanging out. Jesse Hughes from Boots Electric (and Eagles of Death Metal) stopped by and filmed a segment for Fuse and he and his girlfriend (and Boots Electric bassist) Tuesday Cross got Sailor Jerry tattoos. You might recognize Tuesday from somewhere…

Anyway this gallery is a bunch of shots of bands and other people hanging out at the air stream. Tomorrow I’ll get up all the pictures of people getting tattooed including Diplo, two members of Fishbone, Roofeeo from TV On The Radio and Peelander Green. Get excited.

But for now, click here to see the shots of the party that was the Sailor Jerry Air Stream trailer at the 2011 Voodoo Music Experience.

There is a lot of buzz on the internet right now about how Left Brain from Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All attacked a female photographer during their show at Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans on Sunday.  I was there in the photo pit and I happened to be standing right next to the woman who supposedly got slapped in the face. Her story is bullshit.

Odd Future has a reputation for fucking up photographers. At SXSW they ran across the photo pit stepping on the heads and cameras of many a photo blogger. I have never seen them but I was well aware of their reputation. When I got to the photo pit at Voodoo I was pretty excited about the madness that would be happening. After Tyler the Creator told all the photographers that he fucking hated them for taking up space that should belong to fans I got excited. I was ready to see what kinda violence Odd Future was willing to dish out. I wanted to know if their shows were as wild as I had heard.

Two minutes later Hodgy Beats took a bottle of water and swung it at me covering my camera and I with water. Photographers on either side of me got a litte bit wet and a lot of people backed the fuck up. Personally I just wiped the water of my camera and face and started shooting again. When I wasn’t taking a shot I was just smiling like a crazy person at them ready for whatever the fuck was next.

What happened next was what made news. Left Brain came out to the front of the stage and swatted at the cameras below him. He slapped the guy to the left of me. It was pretty hard and kinda fucked up but I didn’t expect anything less. Rock and roll should be dangerous and Odd Future is doing that right. Moments later Left Brain slapped another camera, this time it was a camera belonging to a woman. She almost dropped it but caught the strap and was perfectly fine  just clearly shaken by the experience. He then came towards me but I think he probably saw that I was looking at him like a crazy person and decided to kick over the video tripod that Voodoo had set up. There was not a camera on it.

The the reason Left Brain targeted the photographers he did was because they were in slapping distance and nothing else. This woman is claiming that he slapped her across the face and targeted her because she is a woman. That is complete bullshit. She got targeted because she decided to shoot a crazy fucking band and was not ready to deal with that. Any serious pro photographer has all their gear insured and while getting your shit broken is not ideal, when you are shooting dangerous subjects it is a risk you have to take.

Personally I live to get the shot that no one else has. I am the guy who takes his camera in the mosh pit to get the shot.  At a festival like Voodoo every photographer takes the same fucking photos because we are all in the same pit for the same three songs with the same lighting. It’s so fucking pointless. At Lollapalooza I was the only photographer that had up close shots of Crystal Castles because I shoved my way to the front of the mosh pit and got the shot. Having a band like Odd Future trying to fuck up photographers will scare people off and only the photographers who take the risk will get the shot and I love that.

After the photographers got kicked out of the pit I got in the crowd and made my way to the front. I knew Odd Future was going to get in the audience and some point and I wanted that shot because no one would have it. I also wanted to make it clear to the band that I would not be scared away. Not that they give a shit but it’s a personal thing.  I got to the front of the barrier and Tyler the Creator jumped into the crowd. I got some fun shots of him and I got a text from my client saying they needed something so I needed to get out of the crowd.  The night before I had crowd surfed out of the Girl Talk show so I figured maybe I could get someone to lift me up and push me over the barricade where I could cut though the VIP area back to my client. But as soon as I got picked up by the crowd they started moving me away from the stage because they saw I was taking pictures while crowd surfing. Everyone started flicking me off because I was the photographer so I started flicking them off. Eventually I got turned around towards the stage so I gave Odd Future the middle finger all while shooting photos.  Left Brain saw me from stage and pointed me out to everyone. I think he said something like “Look at that photographer in the mosh pit!” All I know is that when I finally got down people were high-fiving me and flicking me off at the same time. It was a lot of fun.

After the show I walked through the artist area to piss and on the way back from the bathroom I saw Left Brain and he started pointing at me from about 20 feet away. I wasn’t sure if when I got to him he was going to try to fight me or what but when I got over to him he said something like “You are that crowd surfing photographer! I was just talking about you.” We shook hands and I told him how much I loved the punk rockness of their set.

I need to wrap this up as this post is getting really long but I want to make it very clear that the woman who claims she was slapped in the face was not slapped in the face. I also think that if you are worried about getting hurt or breaking your equipment you should go shoot safe sedate bands that stand around playing their guitars making it real easy for you and 200 other photographers to get the same damn shot of them. And if the photographers who are up in arms about this want to get pissed off at an artist get pissed off at performers that make you shoot from the sound board or artists like Britney Spears and the Foo Fighters who try to and force photographers to sign contracts saying they own the photographers images. Those are the bands really fucking up photographers… not a group like Odd Future.

Now that my rant is over, click here to see all my shots of Odd Future from Voodoo Music Experience in New Orleans, LA, including the shots of me crowd surfing and taking photos at the same time.

UPDATE: In the 30 minutes this post has been up two people have commented on the bland of these photos after I “bragged” about getting shots no one else gets. They have a point. These photos are pretty mediocre and other than the shots of Tyler in the crowd pretty much the same as any other photographer who covered this event has. I know I am going to make a lot of photographer enemies if this post gets out there so I just wanted to point out that I don’t think these photos are anything special. I also want to point out that you are a bitch. Thanks.