@AndyShore I do my best at explaining to Zack what Electric Daisy Carnival actually is. It’s hard to put into words when you’re on stimulation overload for two straight days. We talk about how a DJ festival is different than DJs at a festival and why Travis x A-Track were my favorite show of the weekend. Read the rest of this entry »

@shiftywhiteguy:  If you read all of part one, then congratulations, you either have a lot of free time, or some kind of weird crush on me.  Both are admirable.  Here’s Part 2, the end of the weekend.

SATURDAY

9:30 am:  My sunburn has reached epic proportions.  Waking up is kind of painful, and today is obviously a day to stay the fuck out of the sun.  I’m tempted to start pounding beers to make sure I’m nice and warmed up, but this is going to be a long day.  The last thing you want on the Saturday night of Bonnaroo is for a same-day hangover to hamper your progress.  Instead, I try to force a little bit of extra sleep.

11:30:  @andlaurasays sends the day’s first text.  She’s getting her Latin dance fix with Bomba Estereo.  I would love to, but it’s way too sunny.  Besides, I have a very important life event coming up in a few hours.  I have to get prepared.   Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore Travis x A-Trak set the bar high for Electric Daisy Carnival 2010 Los Angeles on Friday night. A-Trak wasn’t done yet. Duck Sauce, featuring A-Trak and Armand Van Heldon, was on the Cosmic Meadow stage Saturday night. Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore There is a ton of hype surrounding Deadmau5 right now. People left Jay Z at Coachella to go to his set. Bryn had only good things to say about his Bonnaroo set as well. I left right after Travis x A-Trak to make sure I’d be in prime position to shoot his set. I wound up in a box in the Coliseum, during my quest to find the right entrance to the photo pit for Deadmau5. It was a sight to see. I could see just how many people were packed into the stadium. Also there were a couple of carnival rides. Kaskade was finishing his set and had dancing onstage. I was glad to get a scope for the enormity of Electric Daisy Carnival, but I wanted an up close view of Deadmau5. Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore My time in the photo pit for Travis x A-Trak at Electric Daisy Carnival 2010 Los Angeles was like Frank the Tank debating James Carville in Old School. I was excited to shoot Travis Barker (no offense to A-Trak–I already shot him at Lolla 09). His flying-over-the-stage drum solo with samples during Blink 182’s encore last summer had me looking forward to seeing him in action with a DJ. Dancing as much, if not more, than I was picture taking probably didn’t help either. Lil John took the stage and my brain turned off. My memory starts to jog with them playing Rage Against the Machine and Beastie Boys, but I don’t recall the songs. Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore LA will be rolling on the Sabbath this weekend as the Electric Daisy Carnival comes to town. The festival is chock full of untz as some of the biggest DJs around fill out this line up. This will be a new experience for me as a Festival Crasher. Usually these types of sets are reserved for the middle of the night, post headliners. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy them. I’ve seen MSTRKRFT, Girl Talk and Tiesto put on phenomenal late night sets at festivals in the last year alone. Reports of Deadmau5 at Coachella and Bonnaroo were excellent too. Here is my top 5 list of sets I am looking forward to this weekend at Electric Daisy Carnival. Read the rest of this entry »

@shiftywhiteguy If you’re a fan of Bill Simmons, you’re familiar with the retro diary, it’s a great way to revisit an important event, and in this case, I need to do this so I can sort through my mind and actually remember all of this amazing 2010 Bonnaroo.  We begin in the car, somewhere around Dallas:

WEDNESDAY

6:30 pm:  My radar detector goes off about .4 microseconds before I see the police car.  Thanks, buddy, where were you on that one?  I wasn’t going more than 77 or so, but I hate flashing lights…and here they come.  Shiftiness wins again.  No ticket.  But, definitely not the way you want to start Bonnaroo.

THURSDAY

4:00 am:  Arrival in Manchester.  That’s right, Texas to Tennessee, 931 miles in 14 consecutive hours, and wasted time by getting pulled over.  I’m a madman. Read the rest of this entry »

@ZackTeibloom Passion Pit is so synth driven, I wondered how they’d sound with just Michael Angelakos on acoustic guitar, later joined by another member on electric. Would the songs hold up without the explosion of synth that is their driving force? Could they take the sweaty dance party, strip it away and make it just be about Angelakos’ voice and sparse guitars and have it work? Absolutely they could.

It was a mesmerizing three-song set with witty banter a lively crowd and an emphatic voice for vinyl. Pretty much everything you’d want from an in-store performance.   Read the rest of this entry »

@AndyShore There are several different reasons to see a band more than one time. You will never see the same show twice with improvisational bands like Phish and Umphrey’s McGee. Other times, the musicians are so good, it is worth catching them live every time. I would put any band with Tom Morello, Jack White and Dave Grohl in that group. Sometimes, the band will play the same set, the same exact way, every time, and they’re still worth seeing every time. That’s probably the rarest kind. Matt & Kim fall into this last category. Read the rest of this entry »

@shiftywhiteguy:  In 2007, Zack was trying to talk me into going to Bonnaroo.  The Flaming Lips, The White Stripes, and many others seemed like pretty good draws, but I wasn’t 100% convinced until he mentioned the band that he knew would catch me hook, line, and sinker:  Ween.  Ween is a one of a kind band, to say the least.  Their music is technically proficient, rocks so incredibly hard, is hilarious, and is a lot of times, really biting commentary and satire on other genres.

As much as I liked Ween, I had not seen them live up to that point.  Ladies and gentlemen, you are simply a Ween fan trainee until you see a show.  There is no way of accurately appreciating this band until you’ve seen the living riot that is a group of Ween fans in the act of worshipping their band.  At that ’07 show, Ween was preceded by Fountains of Wayne.  Zack and I worked our way over to This Tent during FoW’s set to make sure we could get close for Gener and Deaner.  I remember standing right behind a girl who looked at the mass of people huddling around This Tent, then mentioned to her friend, “Wow, Fountains of Wayne really drew a crowd!”  Poor thing, she had no idea what was about to happen to her. Read the rest of this entry »