Great summer so far for UK, splendid weather and hot festivals, well until today that is but I’m sure the sun will be back. Now I did it again, not updating regularly and there was quite a lot of action since last time so it will be another quick summary.
Last big news was the first Burning Head produced music video, we now have just finished our second video! This was a commission for the Mancunian electronica label Clear Notice, on a track called Emancipation from the talented electronica artist Tricil (Atlanta, USA). We can’t show it online for a while but this will be part of a very original release pretty soon so more on this later – there should be some kind of preview online in the www.burninghead.co.uk site soon. The video features Miss Maleficent Martini, the front-woman of the band Maleficent, and she is a truly talented dancer.
Snapshot of the new Burning Head video for Tricil "Emancipation" out soon on Clear Notice's Enter Calico
Since last updates I went photographing Dead Can Dance’s half Brendan Perry at a really nice show at the Union Chapel, it was great to hear this very familiar voice- as I have been listening to DCD a LOT, beautiful.
Brendan Perry performing at Union Chapel, London on June 10 2010
Then I left for the homeland to photograph French’s biggest metal festival, HELLFEST in Clisson near Nantes, France. This had caused many controversies provoked by a stupid minority of extremist catholics who probably thought this Hell festival was going to feature black masses, sacrifices and who knows the conception of a few antichrists? It is funny how narrow minded some people can be. Thankfully they got ridiculed in their action and the festival was really nothing but a very friendly yet very loud feast of metal. The line up was a real pleasure for the big heavy metal crowd, although the press was handled in an appalling way (or at least for photography) and the pit was invaded by half a hundred photographers of all sorts, which is nothing wrong really, if there had been a hint of organisation to ensure that the ones that are working (and there was already a lot of us) can actually work. Will give it a miss next time. My highlight was Jello Biafra who preformed a truly awesome show in the Terrorizer tent.
Alice Cooper at Hellfest, CLisson, France, 19 June 2010
Slash performing at Hellfest, CLisson, France, 19 June 2010
Motorhead performing at Hellfest, CLisson, France, 19 June 2010
Followed three busy days covering the photography in the VIP & backstage area at Hard Rock Calling 2010 (headliners Pearl Jam, Stevie Wonder and Sir Paul McCartney), another great HRC weekend ending up in gigabytes of photos from which here is a selection: Hard Rock Calling Day 1, Hard Rock Calling Day 2 and Hard Rock Calling Day 3, featuring The Hives, Gomez, Elvis Costello, Bill Wyman, Tiffany Page, James Morrison, The Chakra, Lissie, More Than Me, Alejandro Escovedo, Melissa Etheridge, Diane Birch, Corinne Bailey Rae, The Gaslight Anthem, Robert Francis, Rox, Joshua Radin, Crowded House, Urban Voodoo Machine, Joe Echo, Crosby Stills and Nash and the Jonas Brothers with their mate Frankmusic, pfiou.
The Hives at Hard Rock Calling 2010, Hyde Park, London, June 25 2010
Gaslight Anthem at Hard Rock Calling 2010, Hyde Park, London, June 25 2010
Bill Wyman and Micki Free performing at Hard Rock Calling 2010, Hyde Park, London, June 26 2010
Diane Birch at Hard Rock Calling 2010, Hyde Park, London, June 26 2010
Corinne Bailey Rae at Hard Rock Calling 2010, Hyde Park, London, June 26 2010
That’s all for tonight, lots of things in the pipeline, more in the next blog update!
Non-Stop bank Holiday weekend (Holiday?? what is a holiday?) when the Camden Crawl is overlapped by two shows from the godfather of all punks, the one and only unequaled Iggy Pop with The Stooges playing their 1973 cult album RAW POWER!
Ok forget chronological reporting, here is a gallery of the fantastic show from Iggy & The Stooges. I really don’t understand where Iggy finds all this energy, I mean, you could see the pogo didn’t last a full song as punters were getting tired. Tired? Iggy doesn’t know that word. And he keeps jumping in the crowd from the stage on and on (when not inviting the crowd to join him onstage!). It was also very moving when he was asking for the lights to be on the audience to salute them and everyone would stand and put their hands in the air as a rock’n'roll standing ovation, awesome!
Iggy Pop - Iggy & The Stooges at Hammersmith Apollo May 3rd 2010
The crawl wasn’t quite a sunny weekend out and about, Saturday was rain rain and rain, leaving me drenched and cold by the time most of the shows were done. And Sunday was freezing, and it looks like a lot of crawlers didn’t find time to dry and gave up on waiting outside in the cold. Anyway here is for the artists covered here, in a total random order, all linking to my Flickr galleries:
And as a preview, a video of a sonic mayhem I like to hear, energetic warm up set from Pulled Apart By Horses at the Black Heart pub before their show at Electric Ballroom later. I Punched A Lion In The Throat, awesome.
And to finish with this update, the first of a series of show by Fergie, Will.i.am, Taboo and Apl.de.ap at the O2 Are.na in Nor.th Green.wich, the BLACK EYED PEAS last night!
Black Eyed Peas Perform At The O2 Arena In London, May 5th 2010