“This is a brilliant 42 second film called ”Last Day Dream” where a man watches his life pass before him. Written and Directed by Chris Milk.”
Saw this on Nicholas Scimeca’s blog and I had to reblog it. Chris Milk is one of my all time favorite music video directors. He also did the video for the Modest Mouse song “The Ocean Breathes Salty” the man is a genius!
This photo was taken while I was on tour with Deep Sleep Empire/Another Found Self. At the time there were talks of a tornado passing through the area, the darkness as seen on the right that is rolling in was the purposed tornado. At the time that was this was taken Missouri had already been taking on some heavy flooding from the Mississippi river, we actually drove over a bridge that was near a town that was completely flooded. I’m talking about water up to the roof tops of buildings flooded. I had never seen anything like it, luckily there never was a tornado we didn’t even see any rain.
The venue was an old resturant that was closed down and a kid had turned it into a venue. The place was incredibly hard to find and it was a last minute show thanks to a promoter canceling in St Louis. May I also add that we had made a 7 hour driver to get to this show from Chicago where the night before we were also screwed by a promoter who canceled without telling us. Isn’t touring life exciting?!? Give props to any bands who travel in vans through all kinds of weather conditions to make it to a show just to play music and be heard. It’s not an easy life.
I took a ton of photos on this tour that no one got to see because the bands broke up and I never got a site up showing the photos and blah blah blah EXCUSES EXCUSES. Well no more of that I’ve been going through all the photos and starting to get ready for people to see them. Although the bands are no longer around it’s still a great memory, that and I want to go on tour again. So hopefully this portfolio will catch some eyes and send me in the right direction.
Kevin Devine “Carnival” from the Kevin Devine Daytrotter Sessions.
Kevin Devine’s new record “Brother’s Blood” is definitely making it onto the list of my top 10 for 2009. Yeah I know we’re only a few months in, but Devine’s writing skills and story telling ability are very tough to match. Jesse Lacey (lead singer of Brand New) once referred to him as Bob Dylan for the new generation. Dylan fans might be a little set off by that title, but this dude has something special. I don’t think he’ll get as weird as Dylan did in his later years or try to create a big out spoken rock star image that could fill 500 pages of a book. I do however think Devine represents people who are angry and fed up with others who think the best soultion to our problems is to give up. He’s a voice for those that will never get a chance to rise up on stage and let their opinions be heard. Although he probably never meant to become any of this I dont think there are too many other people that could fill this void. Besides wasn’t all that what Dylan stood for you, before the motorcylce accident?
I can’t believe Stay What You Are by Saves The Day has been out for 8 years now. One of the few records from my high school years that still holds up. Shooting this show would of made 16 year old Matt Adams mark out, eh what am I saying 24 year old Matt Adams was marking out while shooting this show.
To all of my Canadian friends…well all 2 of you. My photo of the band Fucked Up is running in the June issue of Toronto Life magazine which if you live in Toronto has just hit news stands! If you’re not from the area I’m uploading a scan soon. I took this photo back in 07 and at this show a kid would tell me that he respected me for shooting a hardcore show from the crowd. That no matter how many times a body came flying at me or a pit opened up near me I stood my ground and kept shooting. I would pay the price 5 months later when a stage diver would drop kick me knocking my camera out of my hands which led to it being sent to the Canon repair center.
The Chariots new video for their song “Daggers” that will be on their new record. This video reminds me of playing Rampage at the Donora Skating Rink when my catholic school use to take field trips there. I don’t really remember skating, just wasting hours and money on Rampage and The Simpsons arcade game. It was all worth it.
Back in November of 08 I had the chance to shoot Tom Gabel of Against me! when my friend Josh booked him at Garfield Artworks. I was going through some of the photos and found two that I really liked and hadn’t posted anywhere. Tom’s performance was amazing, I’m a huge Against me! fan so getting a chance to see Tom perform acoustic in such a small venue was a great experience. I remember him strumming the opeing chords to Walking Is Still Honest and the crowd just pushing to the front with fans finger pointing in the air screaming the lyrics to the song. Moments like that really remind me why I do what I do.
Northstar was a band that I loved in high school and to this day I still do. They even influenced the name of this blog. I was really into the Long Island/New York scene that was going on back in 2000-2001, but later discovered that the south was starting to make it’s own noise and one band that caught my attention was Northstar. They hailed from Huntsville, Alabama where they played in whatever club, VFW or bar they could get a show at. They got some help in spreading their name to labels when a band called Taking Back Sunday played a show with them and Adam Lazzara called them his favorite band with the greatest lyrics in the world. They caught the attention of Triple Crown Records and released Is This Thing Loaded? in 2002. Triple Crown was one of those labels that if you played this style of muisc you wanted to be sign by them.
Once I bought this record I popped the cd into my cd adpter inside my parents 1999 Buick Le Saber and blasted it. (Side note: in 2003 I would blow out those speakers making my mom very annoyed that she couldn’t listen to the radio, also that same year my friend Ryan Dolton would have a fire cracker he was attending to throw out of the passenger side window bounce back in and melt part of the dashboard.) In 2004 they released their follow up to Is This Thing Loaded? entitled Pollyanna. I bought the record from Eides Entertainment (overpriced store IMO) and kept wondering when the hell is this band going to play Pittsburgh? That’s one thing that still interests me about this band, I never got to see them live. I thought I was finally going to get my chance when they were suppose to play Warped Tour 05, but the band ended up breaking up. Nick Torres the lead singer started a new acoustic style band called Cassino in which I got a chance to see at Cal U back in 06. I do enjoy Cassino but I still wish that I would of gotten a chance to see Northstar. The band did play Cleveland a few times, but back then my parents never enjoyed me driving their car to Pittsburgh for shows so Cleveland would of been out of the question.
I don’t know what it is but whenever a band that I like releases a new song or album I always find myself diving back into their older material. I don’t know what is I’ll give the new record a few spins, but I’m always going from the new stuff right back to the old stuff. Green Day just released their video for “Know Your Enemy” which is the first single from their new album 21st Century Breakdown. I thought the video was good and I dug the song but once it ended I couldn’t wait to dive back into their catalog and listen to my favorite record of theirs Warning. I really believe Warning is very underrated, I only know a few people that rank this as their favorite Green Day album. It was praised by critics, but actually has the worst number of sales of any Green Day record next to their first. It’s hard to believe it’s nine years old, I remember the day that I bought it from the Sam Goody in Century III mall. I believe it was Sam Goody? Doesn’t matter because the store is no longer there. This record was the soundtrack of my sophmore year in high school and through the highs and lows these songs were blasted from my room which was never appreciated by my parents. What I love most about this record is how diverse it was from the earlier Green Day material, definitely more of a Folk/ Pop Rock influence then anything that appeared on their records before Warning. I’m sure everybody has heard some of these songs at some point in their lives, but if you have never heard this record I definitely recommend it.
Favorite Tracks:
Warning, Church on Sunday, Waiting, Hold On, Minority
I just read on their wikipedia page that this album is to be released on vinyl in July. I hope this true because I’m definitely adding it to my collection!
Some photos of Brave Citizens performing at SXSW 2009. My friend Alex Mohler plays drums in the band, he was originally the lead singer of a Pittsburgh band called Isadora who was the first band I ever shot promos for. When I shot the promos for Isadora I was scared out of my mind, I had never shot band promos before and I was constantly thinking about the different ways I could screw this up. Somehow the shoot came out great and started to get me more Pittsburgh based promo jobs. Alex has since moved to LA and joined Brave Citizens. Check them out here, highly recommended for fans of Anberlin and Acceptance.
