Under the bright desert sun, Fishbone took to the main stage and played their brand of ska/punk/funk infused alternative rock to a raucous group of early festival arrivals. Angelo Moore’s energy was contagious, his stage presence easily filling the largest stage of the festival. He even abandoned the stage to sing to and greet those in the front of the audience. The definition of a showman.
The band was a well-oiled machine too. Horns, Bass, Keyboards … they all had there moment in the sun (no pun intended), and it was nothing short of wonderful. The third song they played summed up the overall feeling of their set, “Everyday Sunshine”, and from that moment on I knew it was going to be good day. The two highlights of the set, for me at least, were when (i) Angelo, Walter Kibby and John Norwood Fisher (the three founding members of the Fishbone who still play in the band) took center stage to perform, and (ii) when they covered Sublime’s “Date Rape”. Though I had been kicked out of the pit by that time, I felt that if there were another band that had the right to cover that classic tune, it would be Fishbone.
CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT BLOG ENTRIES OF OTHER BANDS I SAW AT COACHELLA!
This year, I was lucky enough to get approved for a media/photo pass for the first weekend of Coachella. The photo pass allows me to take pictures from the photo pit of each stage, and being armed with an incredible lens, I’ve taken some pretty amazing pictures so far, and I can’t wait to sift through them all and post what I’ve been able to capture.
There were a few acts that I wish could have snapped pictures for (Muse, Queens of the Stone Age, Beck and Arcade Fire), but being a “newby” in the world of concert photography, I wasn’t selected to by artist management to have the privilege of taking pictures. Hopefully, the pics I post of the bands I saw here will help change their opinion of me for the future.
Each entry will contain a little bulb of my overall thoughts of what I was able to see, with a Instagram video post that I posted (my Instagram account is @Methodman13 … you may as well go there now while you’re waiting for the post to go up) and a photo slideshow. I hope you enjoy the moments I captured as much as I enjoyed shooting it. Click on the name of the artist you want to check out to see the blog entry I put up.
Friday | April 11th, 2014
Saturday | April 12, 2014
Sunday | April 13, 2014
UPDATE: 5/9/14: It was a long, glorious, music-filled weekend of music. I think I may have ruined all of the future music festivals I attend because there really is nothing like being in the photo pit, even for only the first 3 songs, trying to capture “moments” of musicians practicing their craft and giving the audience all that they have. I will forever be grateful for the opportunity. Thank you, Goldenvoice. Thank you, Snoop. You made this music dweeb very, very happy.
Opening for Cody ChesnuTT at The Troubadour was a band billed as Madd Vibe. Now, I usually do my due diligence before I go to a concert when there’s a band performing that I’m unfamiliar with. In this instant, for whatever reason, I didn’t. When I got to the venue and the band took to the stage, I noticed that the frontman of the band looked familiar to me. I quickly pulled out my iPhone and Googled “Madd Vibe” to discover that Dr. Madd Vibe is the solo project of Angelo Moore, the founder and frontman of the seminal, Los Angeles based ska/punk/rock/funk band Fishbone! For those of you who don’t know who Fishbone are, they’re just one of the most influential, cult bands of the 1980s, influencing huge bands like No Doubt, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Alice in Chains. And guess what? … they’re one of the acts set to perform on Sunday at Coachella this year.
With the same type of energy that he used while fronting Fishbone when I saw them perform April 2010 at the now closed Air Conditioned Supper Club, he brought his punk-ska fused musical stylings to the Troubadour for a solid set that revealed the strength of his musical ability. Though his music is vastly different than Cody ChesnuTT’s, I think that the seemingly odd pairing was made because the talent bookers thought that anybody going to see Cody perform would appreciate Dr. Madd Vibe’s performance because of the legacy of Angelo Moore and what he has contributed to musical history.
A consumate performer, the energy he and his band had was infectious. I started to get my ska juices flowing at points, and reminisced of the days I rocked khakis, combat boots, a white t-shirt and suspenders. The set times for Coachella haven’t been released yet, but hopefully, I’ll be able to relive some more of my youth in Indio.
Unfortunately, the Flickr slideshow below is not available on mobile devices. If you are on a mobile device, please click THIS LINK to get redirected to the set of photos. If the slide show below isn’t working, then Flickr has disabled their embed option for WordPress and hasn’t yet updated their HTML code, which totally BLOWS! If you can see the slide show below, hooray!
