Red Bull Moon Tower 2009

Okay, this is it for the Red Bull Moon Tower photos… We just have the remaining crowd shots. I wanted to tell this story about my friend Mike on mushrooms and how he had about 15 drinks and started trying to destroy Red Bull from the inside by ordering free drink after free drink and immediately throwing them out right in front of the bar tender and how he threw some Red Bull & Vodkas at some guido break dancers and had to hide in the press area from them, but it has been two weeks and I just want to get these photos up, so just look at them and I am going to go to the post office and try not to shoot myself in the fucking head. Have a nice night…

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More Redbull Bands – 3.18.09

Remember the Red Bull Moon Tower? It was the late night version of the Fader Fort… Free booze, bands and tacos. It was a nice spot to hang but it was a bit far from town. The first night I went here my friend Mike was on mushrooms and he was ranting about how the bands playing were “lynching” rock music. Those bands were Republic Of Tigers and I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness. And while I thought both of the bands were pretty good, unlike Mike, I feel its time we start reusing band names, because it is clear we have run out. I only took a few shots of each, but you can check out the Republic Of Tigers shots here and the I Love You But I Have Chosen Darkness shots over here.

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10 Years Of SXSW

As we speak (or as I type) I am on an airplane headed to Austin, Texas on my way to South By Southwest. This is not just any SXSW for me; it is my 10th straight SXSW. I started out traveling to Austin when I managed a dance pop band called The Gaskets. After the Gaskets broke up I started going as a member of the media, covering it for the last six years with a camera in hand. This year I am going to be EXTREMELY busy and I will be on the road for at least two weeks. I have a feeling that I won’t be able to update this site as much as I would like to so I wanted to put this post up. I WILL be updating my Twitter, Instagram and most importantly my Tumblr. I will be posting highlights from every day on Tumblr so check over there if I am slow to update this site.

Anyway, in honor of my 10th at SXSW I wanted to give you a little break down of some of the highlights of the last 10 years. Austin is crawling with musicians and celebrities so this list is going to sound a little (okay, a lot) name droppy, so I apologize for that in advance. Just don’t read it if that sort of thing is as grating to you as it is to most people. I am going to include some links and photos to keep you guys entertained while I am busy taking photos 14 hours a day. And if you are going to be in Texas over the next two weeks hit me up! See you guys in a food truck line! (Read the article)

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Shepard Fairey DJ Set – 3.18.09

I have been a fan of Shepard Fairey’s art work for a long time.  I actually have one of his prints hanging over my bed.  I own two more, including one of the not-so-limited Obama prints my mom got me for Christmas.  She is a huge Obama supporter and is now a pretty big Fairey fan.  It’s pretty funny that he has this huge cross over audience that now includes my mom.  I am sure you all know who Shepard is by now since his iconic Obama prints are everywhere.  I would like to hope that I have the type of fan base here that has known about him for years, at the very least knows about the Andre The Giant Has A Posse stickers.  And if not that, maybe you remember the video I posted where Boing Boing interviewed him and my idol/psudo-mentor Glen Friedman.  Whatever the case, you may not know that he also Dj’s… and he knows how to rock a crowd.  Despite shooing dance parties every single night of my life, I still have no idea of a DJ is technically good or not.  So I can’t judge him like that, but I will tell you that everyone was pretty much standing around before he went on, and he got everyone dancing.  He and I have a pretty similar taste in music it seems cause he spun exactly what I wanted to hear.  Old rock and soul to old school and some newer hip hop…. this is pretty much everything I want to dance to.

Anyway, since photos of DJ’s are insanely boring, I added a bunch of shots of the crowd going nuts for him.  I am eventually going to post the rest of the Red Bull Moon Tower crowd shots, but these are just from the spontanious dance party that broke out right infront of the stage about 3 songs into DJ Obay Giant’s set.

Check out all the Shepard Fairey dance party photos by clicking here.

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The Beatards – 3.19.09

The second night of SXSW I went back to the Red Bull Moon Tower to check out Lady Sov.  Unfortunately my friend passed out on the way there and was lying face down in his fan.  His roommate and I checked out the scene but decided we should probably get my friend back home and skip Lady Sov.  When we got there though, The Beatards were about to go on.  My friend Shira told me to check them out, so we decided to stay for a few songs… I am glad I did.  They did some old school hip hop stuff, playing off old lines and beats but doing new and fun stuff with it.  I was pretty into it.  They are from Brooklyn, so I am not sure why I haven’t heard of them before but I gotta check them out again soon.  When I was in college I was going to start a ’79 style hip hop group.  My style was pretty much based on only Kurtis Blow.  We wrote three songs I think.  One of them was about the 4th of July because by the early 80’s it was sooo played out to be rapping about Christmas, so we had to change it up.  We also had a song introducing the crew… “Everybody in the place, just gather ’round cause The Party Rock 3 are new in town.  We came rock a mic and bust a rhyme, we can rock any party, any place, anytime.”  Legendary.   The Beatards probably take themselves a little more seriously than we did…

You can click here to see them in action at SXSW.

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Monotonix – 3.18.09

The first night I of SXSW my friend Michael was not in a very good mood.  He was on a head of mushrooms and decided to drink about 10 Red Bulls and vodka and he may of pissed one or two people off… but I will get to that in detail in a later update.  The only reason I wanted to mention that is because he was trying to get me to leave the Red Bull Moon Tower as soon as fucking possible.  I was having a good time but clearly he was not in the mood for such a thing.  I understood and was about to leave when these strange dudes in late 60’s era costumes started setting up their gear in the middle of the crowd.  They kinda looked like pretentious assholes so I was ready to split but this girl just turned to me and was like “You will want to shoot Monotonix.”  I could tell by the way she said it that she was serious and I didn’t inquire further.  I told Mike that we had to stay for two songs… We stayed the full set.

They lost all sense of pretension when they got out of their clothes, into spandex suits and put on gold chains.  Then the lead singer pretended to swim through the crowd like a fish very slowly, most likely on a head full of the very same mushrooms that Mike was on, and then he climbed onto his drummer and posed on top of him like some long haired circus acrobat.  Then they played.  At once every one in the crowed tossed their Red Bull and vodkas at the band and into the center of the crowd where I happened to be.  Every other photographer fled and climbed on stage to get shots from above.  I have too many years shooting in mosh pits to be smart enough to get out of the way and I plowed through.  Michael took his underwear off and threw it into the crowd.  He loved it.  It was the only good spot of the night for him.  At one point the singer took the kick drum and moved it into the crowd.  The guitar player walked over to it and started playing it while he was still jamming.  The drummer kept playing without the kick drum.   A few moments later the singer rode on top of the crowd on the same drum and then stage dived off of it.  This was after he had already taken a ride above the crowd in a trashcan.  It was pretty intense. After it was over I was covered in Red Bull and I found ice cubes in my back pants pocket.  My camera somehow survived and I got some insane shots.

If you click right here, you can see all those shots in their full glory.  These might be my favorite images of the trip (although the re-edits I did for this site look a bit over exposed).  More Red Bull Moon Tower shots tomorrow.

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