And we are back… We keep clicking on with Siren Music Fest.  This time we have the bands! I got there around 4pm so I missed a lot of the earlier bands but I photographed in chronological order Night Marchers, Earl Greyhound, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Harlem, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Cymbals Eat Guitars and Holy Fuck.  One band is missing, but I will get to that in the next update.

Of the bands there I was pretty underwhelmed.  That’s not to blame the bands, it’s pretty fucking hard to put on a great show during the day time especially when you are playing in 100 degree heat and 20 feet from the crowd. There was a press/vip pit between the band and the real fans making the band play over a bunch of cameras to the crowd. I managed a band for 5 years and one of the things I learned was that no matter what outdoor concerts were a mistake. They always were terrible shows and we turned them down unless they paid a ton or we got to play a museum in Virginia Beach, VA opening for Mudhoney. Seriously.

Anyway, the one band that stood out was Earl Greyhound. They were pretty fun.  I also thought it was cool to finally see Ted Leo. Harlem seemed like a band I could have been into if I was at a house party at 2am instead of at the beach. So maybe it was the atmosphere or the heat or the fact that I was too tired, but I was overall unimpressed with the bands. I didn’t get great photos either, which is probably not a coincidence. I pretty much shot every band in less than two songs and then walked back over to the other stage. Back and forth all day. I think it probably just comes down to me being too old for this shit.  But I don’t know what 30 year olds are supposed to do for fun, so I guess I will just keep doing it… at  least until I get somebody pregnant.

So click here to see (almost) all the band photos I shot at the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island.

Ps. For 10 bonus points, please vote on which one of these bands has the worst name.  It’s a tough choice…

I have three updates today from the 10th annual Siren Music Fest at Coney Island.  I shot the thing for the Village Voice which incidentally happens to throw the event. I had a blast last year but this year it was really really hot, and I was really really tired and I may have been a little bit mopey. Anyway, other people were less mopey. In fact it seems like almost everyone was having a pretty fucking amazing time. Everyone was dancing and crowd surfing and rocking the fuck out and they didn’t even get the free drinks and shaded VIP areas I was offered. Poor simple bastards….

Hah. Anyway, let’s start with the crowd shots, and the crowd surfing shots and the kids just hanging out having a good time. Then I am gonna go try to see Inception and then I will be back with band photos.  Excited already? Let’s get to it.

Click here to see the kids that make the Siren Music Festival what it is…

Continuing my coverage of The Siren Music Fest we bring you the bulk of the bands that I photographed. I have separate updates for headliners Spankrock and Built To Spill as well as the completely fucking insane Monotonix and the new Frank Black project Grand Duchy. The rest of the bands, while still excellent I am sure all get lumped into this big update because I don’t want to spread this Siren Fest update out all week. That being said, I will give you a little run down of everyone involved.

Japandroids were playing when I got there. My editor really wanted me to get shots of them so I timed my arrival perfectly. They were a pretty fun two piece a la Japanther and they give their drummer a mic which is always awesome because I was always a huge Mickey Dolenz fan growing up. I also really appreciated how psyched the band was to be playing in front of thousands of people. At one point they said that if you added up every person who had ever seen them play it would have been less people than were at Siren. Check out the shots I took of them here.

Frightened Rabbit and Future of the Left I shot at the hottest part of the day and I shot them quickly and escaped to the comforts of the VIP tent. I got some nice shots of both bands but I really don’t remember much about them for some strange reason. That part of the day is a complete blur. I did however see a pretty amazing Future of the Left video when I looked them up that involved a British Pub and had a Donkey in it. Check out their shots here and Frightened Rabbits shots over here.

A Place To Bury Strangers just sort of stood there playing. After pretty much all day of people with pretty good music, but little stage presence, I was getting a bit bored. I turned to my editor at the Voice and said something about a bands responsibility to put on a good live show. She defended them by saying that in clubs they have a whole crazy video set up and cool lighting effects, but then midway into her sentence they began swinging a guitar around wildly and ripping out strings. And even though I was stuck behind a monitor and couldn’t see what I was aiming at, I got some pretty fun pictures of them fucking shit up. Intense. You can see it all here.

The Raveonettes are the only band in the Siren Music Festival that I own music from. When my old roommate moved out he gave me some CDs and there were two Raveonettes discs in the box. I don’t think I actually listened to them, but I don’t really listen to any music except old records because I have become a weird old man some how. The Raveonettes also had the disadvantage of playing right when the sun was perfectly aligned to shine perfectly on the left side of them, and not at all on the right side, ruining every possible chance I had of getting a decent shot. Sharin Foo’s white blonde hair and all black dress did not help the situation. If only I remembered my Zone System classes… Still, I managed a few decent shots, and you can see them all here.

So the Siren Music Festival happened yesterday at Coney Island. I was there shooting for the Village Voice. The Voice is the main sponsor of the festival, and I was the primary photographer for their web coverage, but some how I ended up not on the list. Woops. After managing to talk my way in I spent the next 7 hours shooting band after band pausing only to walk the three blocks across the board walk to get to the second stage. I probably didn’t have much time as I would like to shoot crowd shots and people just hanging out at Cony Island. When I did have time to breath I was mostly trying to get liquid in me as I am not built to exist in the day light, especially for 7 hours at the beach running 3 blocks every 25 minutes. When the fest was over I had shot 2100 photos and managed to drain all my batteries so I could only get a few shots post bands playing. The point being, 98% of what I shot was bands. The other 2% is in this gallery that you can check out right here. To be continued…

The Village Voice is my oldest client and I got to shoot their 4Knots Festival for them on Saturday. I used to shoot their Siren Festival in Coney Island and I shot the first ever 4Knots Fest but I have been out of town for the last couple of them. Glad I got to get back to the fest this year.

I headed down to the South Street Seaport a bit late and then I got kinda lost. It’s sort of amazing that I have lived in NYC for nearly a decade AND I have a phone with maps on it and I could still get lost. But I did anyway. So that’s a thing. I finally got down there in time to catch Nude Beach on the second stage. I thought they were really good which says a lot considering how “over it” I tend to be about everything.

I headed over to the main stage for Those Darlins and Mac Demarco and then spent some time on the giant pirate ship looking VIP area hanging out with important Instagram influencer Marnie The Dog. I also got to meet Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and then headed down to shoot the legendary Dinosaur Jr. Then I bonded with some Voice staffers and ate a steak. Over all a pretty good day.

Now click here to see all my Village Voice 4Knots Festival pictures from the South Street Seaport. 

On Saturday the Village Voice threw their first summer music festival that wasn’t Siren Fest.  Siren was an annual NYC tradition held at Coney Island for 10 years until it was replaced this year by the 4Knots Music Festival. 4Knots was headlined by The Black Angels and Titus Andronicus and featured a handful of bands which originally seemed a little disappointing compared to the two stages of bands and some of the bigger headliners Siren had over the years. But 4Knots in my opinion ended up being a lot of fun and in a lot of ways it was better time than past Siren’s have been.

The first improvement is obviously the location. As much as I love Coney Island the hour train ride leaves a lot to be desired. Coney Island also tends to be pretty brutal weather wise. The South Street Seaport in lower Manhattan is in the city and quite actually right on the water giving you a nice breeze no matter how hot it is. As great as it was to have so many bands play at Siren I spent half the time running back and forth between the two stages.  At 4Knots you could just hang out in one location and have a good view of the bands from anywhere.

The biggest 4Knots improvement had to be the VIP area. I know it’s sort of unfair to talk about that considering most people at the fest didn’t have the opportunity to enjoy it but at Siren the VIP area was a little tent with one open bar that people had to wait 30 minutes to get their drinks. At 4Knots the VIP area was an entire fucking pirate ship with a much bigger bar space and short lines all day. Plus you could actually see the bands instead of being behind the stage like at Siren.

Whatever the case I loved Siren Fest and I think if 4Knots becomes a yearly tradition I am going to enjoy it just as much and I am pretty sure NYC is going to feel the same way.

Anyway, before I get to the pictures I should point out that I was pretty sick on Saturday so I didn’t get to the South Street Seaport until about 5pm. I also was hired by the Voice just to shoot crowd shots so there aren’t really any photos of the bands. There are also shots in here at the beginning and the end of the gallery from the indoor lounge that featured DJ’s until midnight. I’ll stop talking now. Enjoy the pictures.

Click here to see all the shots from the Village Voice 4Knots Music Festival at the South Street Seaport.

By far and away the biggest highlight of the Siren Music Fest were Matt & Kim. I mean clearly they had some advantages over the other bands. They had one of the last spots so the light was better, I have actually heard a few of their songs, and we have so many friends in common that I really wanted to like them.  I didn’t have to try to hard.  As soon as they came out they looked so happy to be there.  As Brooklyn natives they talked about how excited they were to play in front of thousands at Coney Island after playing basement shows in Bushwick. They were super energetic, really fun and put on an amazing show.  They were funny and they got into the crowd and they just straight rocked the fuck out. I had to leave to go shoot Holy Fuck, so I actually missed the two songs I know by them if they played them at all, but I had a blast for the 5 or so songs I got to see.  The only reason I know the two songs is because the homies Ninjasonik cover them, so I went home and listened to both versions of both songs.

Also, because of the better lighting, my better mood and because they put on such a great show I took much better photos of them then I did all the other bands combined.  I am posting about 70 pictures of them and about 100 pictures of the other 7 bands and so I decided they needed their own section. Thanks Matt & Kim for redeeming my day.  I just wish I had given you guys a chance years ago.

Click here to see all the awesome pictures of Matt & Kim at the Siren Music Festival at Coney Island.

So as amazing as Monotonix was, I am not sure they were the highlight of the night.  Spankrock was fucking amazing.  They headlined the Stillwell Ave Stage and despite being on the 2nd stage, they were the last band to play.  The set started out during the day time and by the time they got kicked off the stage it was dark. This made for some really crazy photos.  I was pretty excited when I got to the front of the stage and saw Prince Terry looking like he was in Earth Wind & Fire or something getting down on some conga drums. Shit just got better from there when Naeem told the crowd to jump over the barrier that separated the VIPs and Press from everyone else.  It pissed off the security staff and a few of the photographers, but everyone else went nuts.  Moments later Jah Jah aka The Rev McFly from Ninjasonik came out (Telli aka bathroomsex was already on stage) and fucked everyone’s shit up, including his own.  At some point Naeem fell over a monitor and in either in a fit of rage, or a fit of rocking the fuck out, he started trying to kick the monitors into the crowd.  This pissed off the sound guys to no end and almost crushed the small girls standing next to me. (Fortunately, in a great moment of personal heroism I managed to keep the monitors from murdering them.)

After that Naaem disappeared and my future girlfriend Amanda Blank came on and did her thing.  These girls behind me were yelling “Amanda! I want to be you!”.  I am not sure Amanda Blank is the best role model, but as soon as she came on stage kids were getting berserk.  Amanda was barefoot on stage wearing this tight black dress with some sort of cloak that covered her entire head.  Her skirt was unreasonably short and everyone at the front of the stage could see up in the whole time.  She asked me after the show to “try to avoid putting (her) vagina on the internet”.  I think I did my best, but she still just exudes sex.  I can see why girls become groupies.

Eventually Naeem came back on stage and all of them performed at once, running all over the place hyping each other and causing a ruckus.  Some girls got on stage and the back of the stage became a dance party.  During the end of their set they started pulling people up on stage. Telli saw me in the crowd and tried to pull me up but I was holding my camera.  I handed it to him and climbed up.  At this point the security staff was throwing everyone off stage and the second I got up a guy grabbed me and tried to get me off the stage, but Telli still had my camera. He was yelling at the guy to let me stay on stage, but he was pretty intent on kicking me off.  At that point Prince Terrence stopped playing his drums and pulled me away from the bouncer and sort of blocked me into his drum area.  I got my camera back and took about 2 shots before they pulled the plug on Spankrock.  I am not sure if it was them pissing off the security or the sound guy or just the fact they were about to run into the fireworks show, but they refused to let Spankrock play their last song.  This caused a bit of a commotion and a lot of wrestling with security and knocking over drums and general madness, unfortunately at this point I had shot 2100 photos and my batteries were pretty much dead.  Everyone was super pissed, but shit got worked out when an hour later Spankrock played a show on the middle of the Williamsburg Bridge.  At this point I regret missing out on that because it was evidently epic, but at the time I couldn’t think about anything but laying in my air conditioned room, so I completely flaked.

Anyway, the Spankrock shots turned out pretty sick, you should click here to check them all out for yourself.

I was waiting all day for it.  Ever since I saw them at SXSW I couldn’t wait to shoot Monotonix again.  My editor at the Voice told me the one band I had to shoot was Monotonix and I couldn’t wait.  I had sat through a bunch of bands that while were reasonably enjoyable were pretty boring live.  I knew Monotonix was going to fix that.  When I made it back over to the Stillwell stage from shooting the Raveonettes on the Main stage Monotonix had already started playing.  Despite the fact that I was working for the Village Voice, who are the main sponsor of the damn festival, the security guard would not let me back into the press area.  I was pretty fucking livid.  I tried to call my editor and tried to find someone backstage that could help but it was to no avail.  That is when I just took off running.  I ran all the way down the block until I got to the end of the gates which would let me into the crowd.  I then ran through as much crowd as I could, darting and pushing my way towards Monotonix who were somewhere in a sea of people.  I spotted the drummer and started shooting while being tackled by crowds.  My years of shooting punk bands came in handy and I managed to get a couple shots.  I started looking for their singer, when all of a sudden he arose in the air in front of me on a drum.  I was right under him and started shooting these crazy shots of him going nuts on the drum held above the crowd.  Peoples hands kept getting in my shot so I decided to embrace it and I sank deep beneath the waves of sweaty concert goers.  I used the hands in the shot. What seemed like hours later I realized I needed to get back over to the Main Stage for Built To Spill.  On my way out I shot some long zoom shots of the band who were all playing while being shuttled around the crowd in the air.  I just wish I was back in the crowd.  I think I got some epic shots though.  The irony is that all the photographers who were in the press area had to shoot from the stage and got nothing but zoom shots until Monotonix made the entire crowd sit down Indian style.  What the fuck.  Those guys are so awesome, and I still have no idea what they sound like.

Check out all the insane pictures by clicking here.