PART 1: IN PHOTOS

Every year I’ve attended Bamboozle I’ve left completely distraught by the ways of the world. What are the kids listening to? What are they wearing? WTF is up with all these “Free Hugs”? And while this year I fell into a flu caused by dehydration (thank you RedBull tent) and couldn’t move, talk, eat, drink or do anything yesterday, I actually had a great time. I was surprised. Mostly because this year found most of the bands being more homogenized than ever, but you know, that’s ok, really. The kids were all smiling and the weather was tolerable and the people I spoke to all had a great time — and were surprised by it! I caught up with Say Anything’s Max Bemis outside his band’s tourbus on Sunday and shared with him my sentiments of fun and was surprised to hear that he shared them.

I took a ton of video and many photos. Here’s the best of my photo collection, videos and gossip will follow in other posts.

Haley Williams of Paramore.

More Photos after the jump

I’ve been a fan of the “Unforgivable” youtube video ever since Travis Reilly from This is Hell showed it to me on Christmas morning. And even though the video has been viewed about 20 million times, it was nice to see a couple of kids sharing in my brand of LOL by wearing “Unforgivable” merch.

I made it just in time to see Schoolyard Heroes perform. Even in daylight Ryann Donnelly is a bit frightening!

Ryann is so fun and easy to shoot. She’s always delivering amazing photos.

I love love love this one.

Steve Bonnell told me this amazing story about working as a barrista at Starbucks. One day a cougar came up to him and told him a story about her and her girlfriends getting really wasted and playing “Would You Rather.” Matthew McConahey won over Brad Pitt… and Steve won over Matthew! Roar.

Jonah Bregman in a rare glassesless moment.

A gorgeous photo of Ryann (I can’t pick just one!)

Schoolyard Heroes.

I’ve known Mat Devine for ten years now… or as he likes to say “Since Ultra (yes, he calls me that) had braces and was a virgin.” It was nice of him to give me this money shot.

I’ve known Johnny since he was a teenaged boy dating a Playboy playmate. I’m not joking.

Sometimes Mat feels like the stage isn’t big enough for him.

Since I still claim to hold onto my V-Card, I get to take innocent crotch shots like this one.

I love Greg Corner!!!!

Adorable Kill Hannah fans.

Just before Paramore, my best friend Karen and I picked up a disgusting $10 and headed over to catering to eat it. We sat down with Kitty from Mindless Self Indulgence and her boyfriend Gil. I met the two of them at a new years eve party in 2002 at my friend Marti’s house. I kept on thinking I was losing it cause I know Kitty as Jen and forgot that Kitty was her stage name… and people called her Kitty… yeah, so my brain is small. Anyway, Kitty/Jen and Gil loaded up on hotdogs and joined me and Karen to see Paramore. I got this amazing shot of Haley Williams just before getting kicked out of the photo pit.

Jeffree Star is really fun to take pictures of. It’s like you just keep on shooting just so you can find the man underneath the woman.

J* Bandmember.

Another J* dude.

The pink lady.

Riley Breckenridge, the drummer from Thrice, did this 90s lyric quiz with Karen for RecCenter.com. He jokingly suggested that lyrics from Nirvana’s “Breed” were from a Sugar Ray song.

Thrice from the back.

Parker Case from Say Anything is bestfriends with Ollie Stone from the Oohlas. Ollie is one of my best friends so naturally we all spent a lot of time together at Bamboo. I shot this photo of Parker just after some people in my party had sucked on someone from the Starting Line’s volcano. It reminds me of James Iha’s solo album cover.

With a cop car… which makes it even better.

My album cover, taken by Parker.

Karen wore the most ridiculous dress on earth. It was basically a french maid’s body on a shirt to look like her own. I need to remind Karen not to go to any job interviews while wearing that shirt. It was amazing to look at tho. This would be Ollie and Karen’s album cover.

Karen and Parker watching some band.

I went to the Bamboozle TV bubble to see the Photo Atlas and decided to shoot Melissa Sabo’s album cover. She manages the Photo Atlas.

Adorable Alan getting the band and crowed revved up for a song.

Mark playing bass. You know, my business partner Rob and I have worked with many bands and three of them have boys named Mark on bass (the photo atlas, the killers, the oohlas).

Innerpartysystem got on stage earlier than expected, so I ran out to catch them. Here’s a close up.

A crowd shot… they always have great lights at their shows.

I took a bunch of videos from their performance but it all looks insane cos I wanted to dance at the same time.

Well, that wraps up this portion of my Bamboozle adventure. Videos will be up later today!

Tags: , bamboozle, innerpartysystem, jeffree star, kill hannah, mindless self indulgence, paramore, say anything, schoolyard heroes, the photo atlas

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 at 10:47 am and is filed under Live Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.